Tag Archives: John Huston

What Writers Can Learn From It Happened One Night, Part 2

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Last week we began a discussion of Frank Capra’s 1934 classic It Happened One Night. It was spurred by my meeting with a couple of young ladies at Trader Joe’s who do not watch black-and-white movies. Matters took an alarming turn in the comments when Brother Gilstrap told of a 22-year old fellow in media who’d never heard of Clark Gable or John Wayne!

This almost drove me to drink. Instead, with hope in my heart and zeal in my fingers, I clack on.

The plot of It Happened One Night (which Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin refined after priceless feedback from a writer named Myles Connolly) is simple. Spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) wants to get to her husband in New York, flier King Westley. But she is held a virtual prisoner on her father’s yacht so he can pay off Westley to have the marriage annulled. She dives overboard and swims to freedom. Wishing to stay incognito she gets on a night bus, but is woefully deficient in street smarts. Another passenger, a fired newspaper reporter named Peter Warne (Clark Gable), spots her and offers her help her get to Westley in exchange for her story, exclusive. She resists until she realizes that only he can keep her on the down low. And so the journey begins.

Death Stakes

As I’ve written many times, the best fiction is about a battle with death, which comes in three forms: physical, professional/vocational, or psychological/spiritual.

For Ellie, it’s psychological death, as it usually is in a romance. The standard trope is that unless they two “soul mates” end up together, they’ll “die on the inside.” Here, there’s a twist: Eillie wants to get to Westley mainly to rebel against her controlling father. She’ll “die inside” if she isn’t allowed to live her own life.

For Peter, it’s professional death. His editor at a New York newspaper has told him never to show his face there again. Peter needs a story, a scoop, or his reporting days are over.

Lesson: Nail your death stakes from the jump, or your plot will have a weak foundation. You can have more than one on the line, though one should be primary. For example, a thriller will almost always have physical death as the crux, but the character can also have psychological challenge as well.

A Romance of Opposites

Morality and Relationships, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT – Once upon a screen…Who are these two at the start of the picture? Ellie is a spoiled brat. Thus, one part of the plot is The Taming of the Shrew. But the brilliant move by Capra/Riskin is that Peter is an egotist who also needs taming. It’s a perfect balance.

There are two main romance tropes: 1. The couple who hate each other at first, then grow into love; and, 2. The lovers who want to be together but are kept apart by other forces, e.g. Romeo and Juliet. This movie is obviously the first kind.

Lesson: Know your tropes because the readers expect them. Disappointed readers do not become return buyers. Your task is to originalize how tropes are played out. This movie does that exquisitely.

Three Unforgettable Scenes and No Weak Ones

Writer-director John Huston once said that a great movie must have at least three unforgettable scenes, and no weak ones. Here are the three I’d pick in It Happened One Night.

1. Early in Act 2 Peter, to conserve their money, rents a single cabin at an auto camp, registering as husband and wife. Ellie is aghast. Peter ties a rope across the room between the two beds and throws a blanket over it. “Behold the walls of Jericho,” he says. “Maybe not as thick as the ones that Joshua blew down with his trumpet. But a lot safer. You see, I have no trumpet….Do you mind joining the Israelites?”

Ellie just stands there, defiant. So Peter decides to show her how a man undresses. It’s “quite a study in psychology.” He takes off his coat, his tie, then his shirt. He’s about to remove his pants when Ellie quickly scoots to the other side.

What made this unforgettable was not only Gable’s delivery of the lines, but the fact that he wore no undershirt. After this movie came out, undershirt sales in America suffered a serious decline!

2. The most famous scene in the movie is the hitchhiking scene. Peter has been bragging to Ellie how he knows everything, including the right way to dunk a donut. “I ought to write a book about it.” On the road, he explains to Ellie he can get a ride by the magic of this thumb and explains the various thumb moves. He says he’s going to write a book about it called “The Hitchhiker’s Hail.” Ellie is not impressed.

As cars stream by, Peter tries every one of the moves and not a single car stops. Crestfallen, he says, “I don’t think I’ll write that book after all.”

Ellie says, “You mind if I try?”

“You? Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’ll stop a car and I won’t use my thumb…It’s a system all my own.”

Ellie then waits for the next car. When it comes she raises her skirt and sticks out her attractive gam. The car screeches to a halt. The taming of the egotist has begun.

3. The wedding scene at the end, when Ellie is about to marry King Westley once more and makes an unforgettable escape.

Lesson: However you plan your scenes, be ye outliner (before) or pantser (during) push yourself to the original, the fresh, the unanticipated.

Spicy Minor Characters

I call minor characters the “spice” of great fiction (see Mr. Charles Dickens for the Master Class). Two of them come by way of two of the best character actors of the time, Roscoe Karns and Alan Hale.

Mini Tribute: Character Actor Roscoe Karns | Classic Movie Hub BlogKarns plays Oscar Shapeley, an oily (and married) traveling salesman who fancies himself a ladies’ man. On the night bus he starts yakking to Ellie. “Shapeley’s the name and that’s the way I like ’em.” On and on he goes, until Ellie cuts him down with a line.

“Hoo hoo!” says Shapeley. “There’s nothing I like better than to meet a high-class mama that can snap ’em back at you, ’cause the colder they are, the hotter they get. Yessir, that’s what I always say. When a cold mama gets hot, boy how she sizzles. Now you’re just my type. Believe me, sister, I could go for you in a big way. Fun-on-the-side Shapeley they call me, with accent on the fun. Believe you me!”

Peter has been watching all this with amusement, but finally saves Ellie by telling Shapeley to move to another seat because “I’d like to sit next to my wife.” Shapeley quickly complies.

Later, Shapeley will show up again, after figuring out who Ellie really is. Peter will then scare the pants off Shapeley by pretending to be a mobster who is “holding that dame for a million smackers.” And if Shapeley talks, the mob will find him and his family. Scared to death, Shapeley runs off into the woods.

Davelandblog: It Happened One Oscar NightIn the hitchhiking scene, the car that stops is driven by Alan Hale (you may remember him as Little John in The Adventures of Robin Hood). He is loud, jovial, talkative.

“So, you’re just married? That’s pretty good. But if I was young, that’s the way I’d spend my honeymoon. Hitchhiking. Yes, sir.” He begins to sing: “Hitchhiking down the highway of love on a honeymoon!”

It turns out he’s a “road thief” who picks people up then drives off with their luggage. It’s a short bit, but a flavorful spice.

Lesson: Do not waste your minor characters by making them clichéd or throwaways. Give them a life of their own, with unique tags of manner and speech. Readers love spice. It’s one of the best ways to elevate your work above “AI slop.”

Dialogue

I’ve long held that the fastest way to improve any manuscript is with sharp, orchestrated dialogue. The movie is full of smart Riskin banter. One example: When Peter first sits next to Ellie on the bus, she is not pleased. He offers to put her bag up top for her. She gets up to do it herself. The bus lurches forward and she falls back on Peter’s lap. She quickly scoots off. Peter grins. “Next time you drop in, bring your folks.”

Lesson: Standout dialogue is a craft that can be learned. I ought to write a book about it.

Pet the Dog

A “pet the dog” beat is a moment in Act 2 when the lead helps someone who needs it, even though it comes with a cost. In the movie, the passengers on the night bus are bonding by singing “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” (a popular ditty of the day). Then the bus hits a muddy rut and comes to a hard stop, tossing the passengers. They mostly laugh, but suddenly a little boy is screaming “Ma! What’s the matter with you? Somebody help!” Peter rushes over, determines the mother has passed out and assures the boy she’ll come around.

“We ain’t ate nothin’ since yesterday,” the boy says. He says his mother has a job waiting for her in New York but had to spend all their money on the tickets. Peter reaches into his pocket for a bill, a ten-spot he and Ellie need for the trip. He hesitates. Ellie takes the bill, hands it to the boy and tells him to buy something to eat at the next stop. The boy says he “shouldn’t oughta” take it. He holds the bill out to Peter, “You might need it.” Peter waves him off and puts on a smile. “I got millions.”

Lesson: Pet the dog moments deepen our bond to characters. Think of Katniss with little Rue, or Richard Kimble getting the distressed boy to the operating room in The Fugitive. The key is that the act puts the character in a worse position in the plot.

Final Thoughts

Capra always said that the Gable in It Happened One Night was the real Gable—unabashedly masculine, with a vein of sardonic humor. Colbert showed herself adept at drama, comedy, and pathos, playing a “brat” whose inner decency finally breaks out. In true rom-com fashion, each transforms the other for their ultimate good.

Would that today we had more movies as tight and multi-faceted as It Happened One Night.

And books, too.

Black-and-white movies forever!

Comments Welcome.

Note: It Happened One Night is free to watch on YouTube.

And for your viewing pleasure, here’s the famous hitchhiking scene:

Learning from The Maltese Falcon

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Read on to the end of this post, for you will get one of the greatest trivia questions of all time. Use it to flummox your film snob friends (and isn’t that what life is all about?)

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett is one of the great American novels. In fact, I think it should replace The Great Gatsby on high school reading lists (that is, if they still have high school reading lists that look at quality fiction for no other reason than that it has quality). The book is more exciting and true to human life than Gatsby, and has all sorts of characters and themes running through it.

I mean, come on! Greed, sex, money, murder, mystery, and the hero’s code. Gatsby teaches kids (who can get through the book) that you don’t always get what you want. The Maltese Falcon teaches a much better lesson: don’t trust somebody just because you think they’re hot like Brigid O’Shaughnessy.

And do the right thing, even if it tears your heart out.

The novel has been made into a movie three times. The first version starred Ricardo Cortez, an actor with a handsome smile and all the acting range from A to B. He had “Latin features” which was a big deal at the time (late 20s, early 30s) because of Rudolph Valentino’s popularity. But Ricardo Cortez was no more Latin than a plate of gefilte fish. He was born Jacob Krantz, son of Morris and Sarah Lefkovitz Krantz, in the Bronx. But the studio heads saw a chance to turn him into a talkies version of Valentino. Thus, the new name.

In this 1931 film, Cortez plays Sam Spade as a kind of laughing Lothario, always giving ladies’ legs a creepy once over. A strange choice, given the tone of the novel, which was captured most brilliantly by the John Huston version starring Humphrey Bogart, made in 1941. (The other version was a loose one, Satan Met a Lady (1936) starring Bette Davis and Warren William. This “light-hearted” rendition was not met with critical acclaim. The leading film critic of the day, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, said of it, “So disconnected and lunatic are the picture’s incidents, so irrelevant and monstrous its people, that one lives through it in constant expectation of seeing a group of uniformed individuals appear suddenly from behind the furniture and take the entire cast into protective custody.”)

Dwight Frye as Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon (1931)

But I will give the Cortez Falcon props for one great casting decision. In the book there’s a “gunsel” named Wilmer Cook. He’s the henchman and catamite for the fat man, Casper Gutman. While nicely played by Elisha Cook, Jr. in the Bogart film, Dwight Frye makes an unforgettable Wilmer in the 1931 version.

Frye is best known for his portrayal of Renfield in the Bela Lugosi Dracula. Man, you can’t forget his crazy laugh and his desire to eat flies. And those eyes! He was dubbed “the man with the thousand-watt stare,” and that’s what he brings to Wilmer.

More interesting things you should know about The Maltese Falcon:

  • There are three prop falcon statuettes still in existence from the 1941 movie. Each is valued at around $1 million.
  • In the novel, the fat man is Casper Gutman. In the shooting script for the 1941 version, for some unknown reason, he is listed as “Kasper Gutman.”
  • In the Bogart version, the fat man was famously played by English actor Sydney Greenstreet, in his film debut. At 357 pounds, he certainly embodied the character. The Warner Bros. wardrobe department had to make special clothes to fit Greenstreet. Interestingly, Bogart wore his own clothes for the part of Sam Spade.
  • Mary Astor, who plays Brigid O’Shaughnessy, won an Oscar that same year for her role in The Great Lie. She wasn’t pleased. Why? Because she thought she should have been put up for Brigid! She is brilliant in both movies.
  • Bogart, of course, was a noted onscreen smoker (only Bette Davis rivaled him). But the studio didn’t want him to! Why not? Because they thought that audience members seeing Bogie light up might be tempted to step into the lobby for a quick smoke during the movie. In fact, the studio almost fired John Huston over this issue. But Huston convinced them that Sam Spade’s cig was an indelible part of his character, and the cancer nails remained. (Bogart died of cancer at the age of 57. His widow, Lauren Bacall, later admitted, “Cigarettes killed Bogie.”)

Tips for writers from The Maltese Falcon:

  • It may be the greatest “show, don’t tell” novel ever written. It is in what is called Cinematic-Omniscient POV. That’s because there is no dipping into the thoughts or feelings of any of the characters. It’s like watching a movie on the screen. You see the scene and hear the dialogue.
  • The orchestration of characters is brilliant. You should always create your cast to not only be different from one another, but also in such a way that conflict may arise between any of them at any time. Spade, Brigid, Joel Cairo, Gutman, Wilmer, Effie (Spade’s secretary), Iva (Spade’s mistress), and Detective Tom Polhaus are all unique and have various mini-conflicts with each other throughout the book.
  • Hammett was a master of dialogue, too. The characters all speak with unique voices. One of my favorite examples, from both book and movie, is this exchange between Spade and Joel Cairo, coming some time after Spade knocked Cairo out in Spade’s office.

Spade said: “Let’s go some place where we can talk.”

Cairo raised his chin. “Please excuse me,” he said. “Our conversations in private have not been such that I am anxious to continue them.”

Or this between Gutman and Spade:

“Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. And I’ll tell you right out that I’m a man who likes talking to a man that likes to talk.”

“Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?”

The fat man laughed and his bulbs rode up and down on his laughter. “Will we? We will,” he replied. His pink face was shiny with delight. “You’re the man for me, sir, a man cut along my own lines. No beating about the bush, but right to the point. ‘Will we talk about the black bird?’ We will. I like that, sir. I like that way of doing business. Let us talk about the black bird by all means, but first, sir, answer me a question, please, though maybe it’s an unnecessary one, so we’ll understand each other from the beginning. You’re here as Miss O’Shaughnessy’s representative?”

And now, friends, the great trivia question. Keep this in your back pocket for the next time you get into a film discussion with a know-it-all.

What is the final line in the 1941 movie version of The Maltese Falcon?

You’ll no doubt get the answer that it’s from Bogart: “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

Ah, but there is one more line after that! It’s from Ward Bond, playing Spades’ cop friend Tom Polhaus. He responds, “Huh?”

Have a look!

 You are now the most interesting person in the room. Congrats!

Have you seen or read The Maltese Falcon? (If your answer is no to either, correct that gross mistake ASAP!) What’s your favorite classic detective novel or movie? What can we learn from it?

How to Give Your Readers Unforgettable Moments

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The legendary movie director John Huston once remarked that a great movie is comprised of “three great scenes, and no weak ones.” Not bad advice that. We don’t want any weak scenes in our fiction. But we also want those moments that reach deep into the reader’s heart.

I thought about this recently while watching an early episode of the old cop drama Hill Street Blues.

I didn’t watch the show religiously when it first aired, as it began the same year I started law school. I was kind of busy. What I do remember is how much I liked the central character, Francis Xavier “Frank” Furillo, played by Daniel J. Travanti. He was the right mix of tough and compassionate, and Travanti was perfect in the role.

A few weeks ago I ran across a channel specializing in vintage cop shows and started watching an episode of HSB. It was a two-parter titled “Jungle Madness.” The show had several plot lines, one involving John “J.D.” LaRue (Kiel Martin) as a cop going down the drain due to alcoholism. In Part 1, LaRue’s drinking causes an incident that might have gotten him killed. Furillo takes him aside and gets in his face. “You’re a drunk!” he says, and tells him he either admits this to a police doctor or he’ll be drummed off the force.

In Part 2, LaRue hits bottom. No money. Kicked out of bars. Alone.

At episode’s end he nervously walks into an AA meeting. The leader asks if there are any newcomers. Slowly, LaRue raises his hand. The leader asks him to please stand and tell everyone his first name.

“I’m John,” he says, “and I guess I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, John,” the group responds

As he’s about to sit down he hears, “How you doing, J.D.?”

Astonished, LaRue looks over and sees … Captain Furillo. And the twist of this tough captain being there, an alcoholic himself, was a totally unexpected heart punch. The expression on Travanti’s face was acting perfection. I’m going to admit it—the waterworks turned on.

We love moments like that, don’t we? So how can we create them for our readers?

Brainstorm. Before I write, even before I outline extensively, I do an exercise I call “killer scenes.” I take a bunch of 3 x 5 cards to a coffee house, tank up, and start jotting random scene ideas for my plot-to-be. I don’t think about how they connect or if I’ll even use them. But when I’m done I’ve got a stack of scene ideas, some of which I hope will become stunningly memorable.

Use music. On iTunes I have a library of mood music, mostly drawn from movie soundtracks. There is music to inspire action, suspense, heart tugs and so on. Music brings out emotions in us, which vibrate the imagination. My most perfect ending—to both book and trilogy—is probably in Try Fear. And it came to mind as I was listening to the Beatles song “I Will.” To find out why it worked, you’ll have to read the books (heh heh).

Listen to a character. We’ve all had the experience of a character doing something unanticipated in a scene (or at least wanting to, which starts an argument with the author). Well, give the character a fair hearing and if you get persuaded, put it in. I once had a wife who was supposed to get out of town because her husband was in jeopardy. I had her trip all planned. But she refused to leave. And it was the right move.

Re-work scenes in subsequent drafts. Your first draft will have some scenes that work and others that need to be cut or revised. Any scene that has potential can be improved. Up the emotion in the characters. Improve the dialogue.

I will never forget that scene at the AA meeting in Hill Street Blues. If you’d like to see the episode, it’s on YouTube (the AA meeting starts at the 37:40 mark).

What’s a memorable moment you recall from a movie or book?

How to Write About Negative Leads

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

In my writing workshops I talk about three kinds of lead characters: the positive, the negative, and the anti-hero.

The positive lead is the traditional hero. This is someone who operates according to the shared morality of the community. It might be an ordinary man or woman who gets caught up in extraordinary circumstances (e.g., Tell No One). Or, it could be a hero with skills, like Jonathan Grave or Liam Neeson in Taken.

We root for positive leads because they represent us in the fight against evil and bad guys.

The anti-hero is someone who has been divorced from the community for some reason. They usually live according to their own code. The plot involves them being dragged into some trouble happening within the community. The story question then is: will they be reconciled to the group, or once again assume the role of outcast?

Rick in Casablanca begins the film sticking his “neck out for nobody.” Gradually he is pulled into a Nazi resistance scheme. At the end, he rejoins the community and the war effort. Ethan Edwards in The Searchers comes in from the wilderness and gets involved in finding his niece, who has been taken captive by Comanches. At the end, in one of the most memorable shots in movie history, he once again is consigned to the wilderness again.

Then there is the negative lead. This is someone who is engaged in an enterprise that offends our collective morality. The quintessential example is Ebenezer Scrooge, but also many of the leads in crime and noir fiction, such as Jack in The Vengeful Virgin, a book I wrote about last week. Indeed, some of the most popular fiction out there is about negative leads. Gone Girl anyone?

So what’s the secret to this kind of story? I’ve identified eight motifs in this regard:

  1. The Slow-Motion Car Wreck

You know how people are (including you). You’re on the freeway and there’s a big wreck ahead, even on the other side of the median. Flashing lights and crunched metal. You slow down a bit for a look. It’s human nature.

A book about a negative lead can be like the wreck itself, in slo-mo. I think of Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, where the lead, his brother and a friend discover a crashed plane with a big stash of drug money. Should they report it? Or try to keep it? And when they decide to keep it, will they be able to sustain the secret without bringing disaster upon themselves and their loved ones?

I remember reading the book and actually saying out loud, a couple of times, “Don’t do that … please don’t do that!” And then they do it. I had to turn the pages, watching this wreck, hoping against hope that these guys wouldn’t descend further into the darkness.

  1. The Redemption Hope

Another reason to read about a negative lead is hope for their redemption. This is the way it is with Scrooge as he starts to get his angel visitations. It’s also what happens with Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.

The key to this kind of story is to show us, early on, that the character has the capacity for moral change. With Scrooge, it begins to happen when he is taken to his boyhood past, his loneliness at school. It brings out deep emotion in Scrooge. There’s a heart in there after all! We read on to see if that heart can be warmed again.

With Scarlett, it’s her moxie, her guts, her strength. Like when she defies polite society by dancing with Rhett while she’s supposed to be in mourning. She uses her spunk selfishly most of the time. If only she can turn it in the right direction before it’s too late! If she does, frankly, we would give a damn. So we read on.

  1. Inner Turmoil

Sometimes, seeing what the wrong choices do to the inside of a character makes us want to find out what happens. Witnessing the emotional turmoil of a character automatically triggers our interest, because we experience it ourselves all the time.

In The Vengeful Virgin, Jack Ruxton is a knot of conflicting emotions once he falls for the alluring Shirley Angela and the two hatch a plot to murder the old man she cares for. Brewer gives us the insides of Jack throughout, as in:

Doom. You recognize Doom easily. It’s a feeling and a taste, and it’s black, and it’s very heavy. It comes down over your head, and wraps tentacles around you, and sinks long dirty fingernails into your heart. It has a stink like burning garbage. Doom. I sat up all night with the lights on. Waiting.

Passages like that kept me going, even though what Jack was doing was immoral. There’s a sort of catharsis in seeing massive inner conflict in someone else. We can put our own on hold while we’re reading!

  1. Comeuppance

This idea applies when we read about a real crumb. We want him to get his just desserts. He deserves to go down.

Once again, I turn to The Vengeful Virgin, because there’s a point in the middle of the book where any sympathy we might have for Jack is wiped out. His jilted lover, Grace, keeps hounding him, and getting in the way of his plans with Shirley. Grace is not a bad person, just stupidly in love with the guy.

She surprises him one night outside Shirley’s house. He’s so outraged he hits her. Hard. Staggers her. Then hits her again. Then twists her arm behind her back and shoves her into her car.

This disturbing turn makes us want to see Jack get what he deserves. (**Spoiler alert** … if you plan to read The Vengeful Virgin, skip down to #5.)

In an ending that rivals, perhaps even surpasses, Jim Thompson, Jack Ruxton, guilty of two murders, is shot by a drunken and envious Shirley, who then turns the gun on herself. She dies, but he survives, only to be arrested, tried, and sentenced to the electric chair. The last lines:

Yes, that’s how it was. Grace, she was always burning. Then Shirley and I began burning. And then the money burned. And now there was time to burn.

Then, after there was no more time, they would burn me.

 

  1. Love Conquers All

With a hat tip to Huey Lewis, there’s just something about the power of love. Especially in noir. In films like Gun Crazy and They Live By Night, doomed lovers grab our hearts even though we know it won’t end well. It can’t. In the moral universe of noir, you pay for your sins.

James M. Cain’s classic The Postman Always Rings Twice bonds us to the murderous couple. Drawn first by lust, by the time the book gets to the end, the two are truly part of each other. There’s poignancy on the last page as Frank Chambers awaits his appointment with the electric chair (Old Sparky is a familiar last stop in these books!):

Here they come. Father McConnell says prayers help. If you’ve got this far, send up one for me, and Cora, and make it that we’re together, wherever it is.

 

  1. At least he’s better than the other crumbs

One of the hardest of the hardboiled writers was Richard Stark, pen name of prolific author Donald Westlake. He created Parker—thief, killer, heist man. Not a shred of sentimentality in this guy. So why do we root for him? In the first book, The Hunter, Parker has been double-crossed and left for dead after a heist. He goes after the money he’s owed, taking on “the outfit” (the crime syndicate) to get it back. Not the whole stash, you understand. Just his half of it.

In other words, compared to the other criminals involved, Parker’s cause is “just.” It’s a remarkable feat, which is why no less than seven movies have been made about this character (the two best are Point Blank and Payback}.

  1. Such a charmer

Tom Ripley, the protagonist of several novels by Patricia Highsmith, has been described as “charming, literate, and a monster” (Roger Ebert). Also “a likable psychopath.” Talk about a challenge! Yet Highsmith pulls it off.

  1. Will They Get Away With It?

Finally, we sometimes read or watch a criminal caper story and actually find ourselves hoping, just a little (or maybe even a lot), that the negative leads get away with it.

My favorite film example is The Asphalt Jungle. Directed by John Huston, the film is about a group of thieves coming together to pull off a big heist. There’s a sympathy factor in operation for each of these desperate men, and you find yourself pulling for them even as the cops pull the net tighter and tighter. It’s really one of the great crime films of all time, with a memorable early appearance by Marilyn Monroe.

Okay! Let’s open this up. What’s your favorite book or movie about a negative lead? What made it work for you?

***

 

BTW, if you want to get in on the ground floor of a series with a hero, try ROMEO’S RULES