Woman On the Run (Norman Foster, 1950)
Who finds Playland sinister necessarily gumshoes
fate, not unlike Pinocchio ogling the Fat Lady before
dodging phallic double-parkers, bumper stickers
decrying the benefits of spousal abuse. Payback hot
wire exhaust fumes stodgily mashing suburban mush.
They said it was over even before it was over, the song
celebrating insinuation, or, better yet, the benefits of
capitalist degeneration. Those westward petit-bourgeois
wankers, ensconced in ocean-side condominiums,
wallowing in cryptic crossword clues and anxious
evenings of cathode narcolepsy. Gawked while stuffing
coupons into letterbox conspiracies. Others say only
movies make it real, concentrating the mind on guilt
rather than gelt. Leaving idle hands and loose ends to
track some alienated dog walker, thrust into the numinous
night. Witnessing shock and awe gangland murder not
far from where Kid Schlemiel once shared a joint with
Janis Joplin, who, for all I know, was in fact Daffy Duck
in disguise. Or is that stating the obvious? One person's
truth being another's collective amnesia. But, yes, the man
on the leash, marriage on the rocks, would have been
better off had he allowed his mutt to simply crap on
the carpet. Yet any deliberation over whose tail is wagging
what dog can only be speculative. That mask of civility
frozen at the seams, Mrs Dog Walker totes the medicine
that might alleviate her husband's frozen heart. But loyalty
only goes so far; it's not that she wants him dead, just out
of the way. Even if the guy she confides in is not now,
nor ever has been, a confirmed newshound. Still, he speaks
in complete sentences and treats her as if she just might
actually qualify as human. But tattoo this: never fully
trust a man in a film, circa 1950, who purports to take
a woman seriously. As for Foster, his bona fides are
themselves slightly suspicious, from the Mercury Players
to Mr Moto and Charlie Chan. Schlepped his puny budget
from L.A. to San Francisco to hoover the city's crevices.
Call it psycho-geography, but only if emphasising the prefix
of that neologism. As if the gaffer might have been stealing
glances at Schlemiel's tear-stained Baedeker, to give him
license to prowl the city like a wounded coyote woofing
and warping at every pit stop. Either smart before its time
or retrograde after the fact, its laws and stipulations bleed
the Avenues to the zoo and ocean. Holy smokey eyes,
what politics of inevitability do not decry le bon temps
roulet remain forever contradictory, insisting the plot
is not the story, the narrative barely the end of the matter.
"One More Thing "
Adjectives like floating insects in a Hollywood swimming pool.
So 1950s, larger than life, inflated by superlatives. Magnified to
billboard proportions. Though these days big would be biggest.
Leading to the inevitable, if ambiguous: The Biggest Sleep: perhaps
a euphemism for the most boring movie ever, or could it be a pill
to get you through a troubled night? The Biggest Clock, a travelogue,
or a typo in a porno ad? The Biggest Combo, a burger place on
the Strip or the world’s largest aggregation of musicians. Back then
big really did mean something. Like, before the first feature, a Big
Boy to forget the Big One, before the final shrug, as in big fucking
deal. Nodding out in sky scraping impeccable nonchalance. Framed
by cigar-choking expressionist emigrés, their motto: I shot therefore
I was. Time leading to paranoia, perversion to crime, and sleep,
not orgasm, the little death. That coffee thrown in Gloria’s face a
reality only when she clocks herself in the mirror. A woman with
a scar, sister under the mink, more dangerous than a gun or an
explosion. The mark so deep it becomes irredeemable. Which helps
explain why it's always night in high-contrast simulacra. Why in
the land of the minuscule, a less than average shyster can so easily
become king. That is, if size matters, if modifiers have more import
than that which they modify: Clock, Combo, Heat, Sleep, Steal,
Night, Knife, Goodbye. This one goes out to who would remain
anonymous, their ships lost at sea. Continents long since absent,
as insomniacs out of the past darkly. Falling adjectives like confetti
between more frames per second than reality can ever hope to count.
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