CHAPTER 4: September, 1956

The explosion launched a brilliant orange fireball into the Las Vegas night sky and rattled windows in casinos on the Arrowhead Highway two miles away.  The blast took off the roof of the guard building, launching bodies onto the driveway and lawn and firing knife-blade fragments of glass and Spanish tile through the air.

The quartet of Mafia guards charging from the main building caught the worst of the blast.  Slivers of tile ripped through soft flesh.  Guns flew from dead hands and the bodies skidded to a bloody stop on the sprawling front lawn.

The Red Menace slipped from the safety of the pool house, hopped the small wall next to the driveway and darted up the drive.

Zhadanov must have been alerted to the assault.  Not only were the grounds crawling with armed Russians but all the estate lights had been turned on.  The black cloak and mask worked best in shadow, and the Menace was clearly visible as he ran.

He heard the zing of a bullet as it whizzed by his head, heard the soft thwack as it struck the grass.  From the angle of that one shot, the Red Menace knew instinctively where the sniper would be, and he found the man crouching behind a fat chimney on the uppermost roof, a rifle with silencer peeking out around the brick.

The Menace narrowly avoided a second bullet and slipped his gun from his  holster as he ran.  With a gloved thumb, he flipped the dial above the butt a single notch, aimed up at the roof and squeezed off a single shot.

The gun popped and the gas-propelled miniature grenade soared up past the floodlights to the roof.  The ensuing explosion pulverized brick and ripped a Cadillac-size chunk off the third floor roof.  The gunman fell amid the raining remnants of the chimney, flopping in a lifeless heap on the patio.  The hail of heavy debris scattered lawn chairs and tables and shattered the French doors.

The Red Menace ran past the body, boots crunching glass underfoot, and ducked through the shattered doors.

A hail of bullets heralded his arrival inside and he barely avoided being cut to ribbons, diving for protection behind a gaudy silver sofa and scampering on hands and knees to the safety of the marble wet bar.

Bullets chewed the sofa behind him, sending puffs of nylon and stuffing dancing crazily throughout the living room.  Two people were already hiding behind the bar.

Jeb Wilson was hunched with his back against the small fridge, automatic in hand.

Beside the MIC agent crouched Olga Cherblonya.

The beautiful Motherland agent pressed her hands to her ears to muffle the sounds of gunshots but seemed otherwise unfazed by the chaos around her.

“Fashionably late,” Jeb said.  “We had to start the party without you.”

“I missed the bus,” the Menace said with a grin.  “You okay, Wilson?”

“Still in one piece.”  Wilson pulled a deep breath into his barrel chest and jumped out from cover.  Bracing his gun on the bar he squeezed out three shots in rapid succession, then dropped down to safety once more.

From the shouts across the room it was clear he’d hit one of the gunmen.

The words were in Russian and Jeb growled in disgust as he slapped in a new clip.  “Russian Mafia.  Now I’ve seen it all.”

Thanks to the Red Menace, MIC had learned of Zhadanov, the high level Russian agent planted in Las Vegas.  He was supposed to infiltrate the Mob and await further orders, which would be issued once the great Soviet takeover of the U.S. came.  But Jimmy “the Weasel” Zito from Portland, nee Anatoly Zhadanov from Minsk, had gone rogue.  The brutal Russian had murdered his way up the chain of command to become one of the greatest Mob kingpins in the western United States.  In his lust for power, Zhadanov had started a bloody Mafia war that had spread to several major American cities.  It had gotten so bad that the Russians had decided to pull his plug and had sent Olga Cherblonya to stop him.  For now, the Russian beauty was an arms-length ally.

“Zhadanov is upstairs,” Olga said in a smoky voice and exotic accent that had been a mesmerizing siren song to many a foreign agent.  She sat on her right hip, long legs tucked up beneath her backside.  She had kicked off her high heels and was now barefoot, and her sequined silver gown sparkled in the bright light cast by gaudy chandeliers.  “Main stairway is through those doors.”

“Piece of cake, darlin’,” the Red Menace said with a wink.  His gun was in his gauntlet once more and he repositioned the tiny dial with a practiced flick of his thumb. With a soft pop of compressed gas propellant, a fat pellet launched across the room and struck with a loud plop the wall above the archway that led into the foyer.  The tacky wallpaper instantly erupted in flames.  The combustible liquid landed on the silk curtains that framed the door and splashed down on the two remaining thugs.  Fire immediately burst out on curtains, clothing and hair.  The men screamed and dropped their guns as they attempted to slap out the flames.

Jeb popped up from behind the bar and sent both men to eternity with two quick, clean shots to the forehead.

Jeb, Olga and the Red Menace ran across the living room.  Jeb was first through the burning archway.  He took it at a leap, landing on his shoulder and rolling to safety behind a carved granite statue of Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility.

When he glanced around the statue, something blocked his view.

“God, I hate these commie perverts,” Jeb muttered, and with a single .45 slug made Dionysus a whole lot less fertile.  “Clear!” he shouted.

[The good guys split up once they make it upstairs, with the Red Menace and Russian agent Olga heading off together.]

“If I was a tacky turncoat Russkie, where would I hide?” the Red Menace asked.

“Zhadanov was loyal communist until your decadence transformed him,” Olga insisted.  “It is capitalist system to blame for what he has become.”

“Whatever floats your Battleship Potemkin, Comrade Knockers.”

They had reached the last door.  The Menace held a gloved finger to his lips and motioned for Olga to stand back against the wall.  Once she was safely out of harm’s way, he stepped in front of the door, gave a vicious kick with his heel, and dove out of the way of the sudden explosive hail of bullets that launched from within the room.

The barrage chewed apart a garish tapestry on which an embroidered Zhadanov frolicked unclothed amongst a bevy of B-girl wood nymphs.

In the hall, Olga winced as the gunfire continued and the Red Menace shielded her with his body.  “If he hadn’t shot that thing to shreds, I would have,” the Menace said, nodding to the tattered remnants of the X-rated tapestry.

“Is not time for the joking,” Olga snapped, fingers plugging her ears.  The gunfire from the bedroom was petering out.

“Is time for you to stay put,” the Red Menace suggested firmly.

The gunfire stopped and the Red Menace heard the distinctive click of a magazine snapping in place as the gunman reloaded.  The Menace took advantage of the brief pause, diving into the room and sliding on his belly behind a paisley fainting couch.

Zhadanov was standing by the bed wearing a purple silk robe open wide over a pair of striped silk pajama bottoms.  The Russian’s hairy belly hung over the waistband, his fat fingers were covered in rings that looked like diamond-encrusted ashtrays, and his jet black and usually perfectly Brylcreemed  pompadour was a wild mess.

“I ain’t comin’ quietly!” the Russian screamed in the flawless American Mobster accent he had learned from imported Edward G. Robinson movies at Moscow University spy school.

Zhadanov trailed the Red Menace with a hail of bullets that tore wallpaper to shreds, ripped pictures from the wall, blasted tonics and powders on the bureau, and shattered the huge, gilded wall mirror that stretched from bureau to closet.

The Menace ducked from cover and fired a single shot.

The bullet caught  Zhadanov in the shoulder, the Tommy gun sprang from fat hands and the Russian Mobster tumbled back and disappeared between bed and armoire.  The gun bounced across the unmade bed and fell to the floor with a clatter, and suddenly the entire Vegas mansion was smothered in unnatural silence.

The Menace glanced back and saw Olga peeking around the doorframe, long blond hair spilling down one bare shoulder.  In his head he heard a sonorous voice repeat a warning for the hundredth time:  “Never trust a red, Patrick.”

But the voice in his head was wrong.  Olga Cherblonya had been vitally important in finishing off Zhadanov.  In this one case, Russian interests had aligned with those of America.  And what was possible now was possible again in the future.

Zhadanov stirred.  The Menace heard a grunt and the soft rustling of silk.

“On your feet, Zhadanov!”  the Menace snapped as he crept over to the bed.  “I count to five and I don’t see both hands, I’m blowing the floor out from under you.”

On the bedside table was a small picture of a woman who could only be Anatoly Zhadanov’s mother.  The woman was the spitting image of  the Russian spy but for the Babushka and darker facial hair.  Mama Zhadanov’s face had more Russian moles than the British Secret Service.

The frame was solid silver and highly polished, and had the Red Menace not glanced at the picture he would not have seen the reflection of Olga Cherblonya, a snub-nosed .38 in one delicate hand, creeping in behind him.

The Menace dropped and spun.  Too late.

Olga’s first shot only grazed his chest.  He had twisted sideways so the bullet that was meant for his heart only tore away a chunk of meat beneath his shirt and scraped a painful path along his side, exiting the back of his cape.

But something was wrong.  A flesh wound should not have caused such excruciating pain in his chest.  His heart.  The bullet must have struck between beats.  It felt like it would burst out of his chest.  The gun dropped from his hand and he fell flat on his back to the carpet.  Gasping for breath, clutching one hand to his chest.

Olga advanced, a wicked grin of triumph on a face once beautiful, now the victorious visage of a some hell-sent demon.  From the corner of his eye the Menace saw Zhadanov pulling himself up on the other side of the bed, a pistol in hand, palm pressed to his bleeding shoulder.

“You let the mook shoot me,” he groused to Olga.

“Drop ridiculous accent,” she commanded.  “You need this cover no longer.  We have succeeded in mission.  You leave this hateful land tonight and return with me to Russia in triumph as hero of the people.”  Olga cast a murderous shadow of the Menace’s prone body.  The smile was gone as she raised her revolver and took careful aim at his forehead.  “Goodbye, Red Menace.”

The Red Menace #1:  Red And Buried is now available for purchase through Amazon’s Kindle service.

This is the first time the Red Menace costume has been out of mothballs in over a decade, and Podge Becket finds that maybe the cynical 1970s aren’t the place for an outfit that seemed perfectly normal in the innocent 1950s.

CHAPTER 8

Their luggage had been searched.

The practice was common in totalitarian regimes, and the only difference from country to country was whether or not the host nation wanted its guests to know about the invasion of privacy.  In this case, the Cuban government did not want Podge aware that it had riffled through his shaving kit and underwear.  Everything had been neatly removed from their bags and great care had been taken to replace each item in the precise same spot where it had been found.  But even professional snoops weren’t perfect.

A twisted collar here, a misaligned pant crease there.  To a trained eye, even one a decade out of practice, it was not difficult to see if one’s bags had been tampered with.

Podge was not worried that the official government snoops in Uganda or Cuba would find his greatest hidden prize.  No enemy ever had.

The special false bottom in his suitcase was undetectable, and if by some bit of freak luck it was ever discovered it would simply look as if the lining of the bag were coming loose.  Only careful manipulation of a hidden lock opened a secret compartment.

If an enemy ever tried to open the false bottom, a canister of colorless, odorless gas would release and render unconscious any nearby living creature.  The range would vary depending on the location, but in the case of the Revolución Grande Hotel, Podge estimated that at least three floors would succumb to the gas.

Podge successfully avoided rendering the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of the Grande unconscious and slipped from the secret compartment a bundle of carefully folded red cloth.  He gave the fabric a vigorous shake and it spread out wide across the bed of his hotel suite without so much as a single visible wrinkle.

“You know, I never really realized how silly this thing looked,” he called out to the living room as he reached back inside the suitcase.  He placed the matching mask next to the cape.  “Oh, geez,” he muttered.

Both mask and cape were bright red, almost glowing.  He stepped back several feet and watched the luminescence fade and the red change over to midnight black.

“And it would have made a hell of a lot more sense just to make it black all the time.”  He stepped forward and the cloth turned red once more, back again and the cloth once more faded to black.  “What were we thinking?”

“Not we,” Wainwright replied.  “You. I made the mistake of telling you about the strange properties of those berries I found in the Philippines, but you’re the one who insisted I use the dye on the cape.  I, if you don’t recall, argued vigorously against it.”

Podge changed into a pair of black slacks and matching shirt.  He was glad Wainwright was in the other room as he dragged the cape around his shoulders.  He checked his reflection in the big mirror above the bureau.

“Holy cats,” he muttered.

Podge had never been embarrassed to don the cape back in the old days.  He was much younger then, as had been the world.  A creeping cynicism had bled into every corner of society since the 1950s and the innocence of those long-ago years had been replaced, bit-by-incremental-bit, with a world that Podge no longer recognized.  So sinister were the subtle forces of change that even Podge, aware that they were taking place, did not realize how deeply they had taken root in his own attitudes.  It was as if someone had crept into his house and replaced everything he owned with exact replicas.  It might look like his home, but there was an indefinable, otherworldly strangeness to it.

Never in the past thirteen years had he felt more starkly the utterly changed world around him than he did in that moment, standing in his old cape before the mirror in his Havana hotel room and feeling the complete fool.

Better to do it fast and get it over with.

Podge went to work on his other suitcases.  Other hiding spots yielded a dozen mismatched pieces of black metal.  Some bits were hidden in plain sight as parts of handles, hinges and protective metal corners.  With expert hands, Podge assembled the parts into his familiar gun.  He loaded in the more exotic weaponry, finishing up by slapping in a clip of conventional bullets.

He had tested the weapon regularly in Hawaii over the past decade, the only aspect of his previous life that he had allowed into his current one.

He slipped the gun in his holster.  Spare clips and assorted weapons he stashed away within the folds of his cape.  The last few were the mask and gauntlets which he held in one hand as he walked out into the suite’s living room.

Wainwright had spread the Cuban documents, including blueprints to Castro’s house, out on the coffee table and was writing hastily in a yellow notebook.  As was always the case, the doctor’s pen never seemed able to keep up with his brain.  His hand was scribbling seemingly with an independent will as he looked up at Podge.

Podge was relieved when Wainwright didn’t make some smart-alecky remark about the cape.  Although the hint of worry on the older man’s usually bland face did nothing to help relieve the squishy feeling in the pit of Podge’s stomach.

“How many Cuban security agents did you see outside?” Wainwright asked.

“Lots.  I guess the front door is out of the question.”

“Well, let’s just hope they leave me alone.  I have enough with all your homework to worry about without a bunch of pineapple herders poking their noses in on me.”

“They’ll stay put unless they’re told not to.  The ones I saw are staked out for the night.  So.  You gonna wish me luck?”

“I am, and I do,” Wainwright said.  His hand was still writing and he turned his attention to it, as if checking it to make certain it hadn’t made any errors while he was not watching.  “Do me the great favor of not getting yourself killed tonight, Patrick.  There are very few people in this world who are worth a spit.  I’d hate to be left alone to deal with the morons and lunatics who constitute the rest of the human race.”

Podge watched the top of his old friend’s gray head as he hunched over his work.

With a tight nod, Podge tugged on his black gauntlets.  There was only one thing left.

Podge lifted his mask and pulled it down snug around his ears.

It was the first time he’d donned the mask in thirteen years.  He thought it would feel strange and so was surprised at how normal it felt.  Like pulling on a favorite childhood shirt that he should have outgrown decades ago but which somehow still fit absolutely perfectly.  It covered tightly both hair and face down to his nose.

Without another word, the Red Menace turned and slipped into the dark spare bedroom.  Wainwright heard the door to the balcony open and the brief sound of honking horns and the hum of evening traffic before the door clicked shut again.

“God help us,” the doctor said to the empty room.

With a worried exhale, Thaddeus Wainwright threw down the pen and fished in his pocket for his silver cigarette case.

The Red Menace #1:  Red And Buried is now available for purchase through Amazon’s Kindle service.

But even then, some dumbass would do this.

The nominees:

“Forrest Gump” – The part that always confused me was he said, “She tastes like cigarettes,” like it was a bad thing.

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” – For my money, the oddball nominee at the time. I like it more now, but back then I was convinced it was only nominated because it’s British.

“Quiz Show” – I love the part when Herb Stempel cranes his neck to see what’s going on in the other soundproof booth, CLONKS his head on the glass, then checks-real-quick to make sure no one in the studio audience saw him. We saw ya, ya sponge-memoried freak.

“The Shawshank Redemption” – Great movie, saved by the studio’s rejection of the alternate ending, in which Red goes to Buxton, but can’t distinguish one hayfield from another because he’s never read a Robert Frost poem, screams in agony; meanwhile, the grocery store owner calls his P.O., who calls the fuzz, who come to Buxton, and gun him down. As life flickers from his eyes, he realizes he’s laying on a piece of volcanic glass that has no business being in a hayfield in the middle of Maine. He laughs to FADE OUT.

“Pulp Fiction” – I think you know how this is going to end.

What should have been nominated:

“Forrest Gump” – I mean, I don’t smoke anymore, but cigarettes are really tasty.

“Quiz Show” – Also, when Rob Morrow gets embarrassed because mustard is on his face. You can read Morrow’s mind: Trying to fit in with the WASP, and this happens?!

“The Shawshank Redemption” – I love that actor that plays the mean guard. He was awesome in “Bad Boys,” in which Sean Penn mashes his nose all over his face with a six pack inside a pillow case.

“Speed” – Pop quiz, hot shot: There are only five spots available for your favorite movies of 1994. What do you do. What do you do? You leave off “True Lies,” “Dumb & Dumber,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Nobody’s Fool,” and “Police Academy: Mission to Moscow,” even though they’re all totally awesome.

“Pulp Fiction” – During my 4 1/2 years of college, no movie was as debated with friends and in classes as much as “Pulp Fiction.”

The winner: “Pulp Fiction.”

Its immediate impact turned out to be a lasting impact. It felt like Quentin Tarantino was a flash in the pan for sure — but we’re still debating that point after a few more love-it-or-hate-it movies. I remember a couple of conversations in particular: One was in a writing class, where a grad student who was no doubt friends with Michael Stipe snarked, “The only reason anybody likes that movie is because the critics loved it.”

A friend of mine responded, “Then why did so many people like ‘Ace Ventura?’”

“Same reason,” shot back Mr. Detached and Oh So Cool.

I’m still scratching my head about that one.

It’s a movie of moments, real movie moments. Tarantino rips off so many movies by way of other movies and TV shows, it’s dizzying. Gangster hit men talk like my roommates at the time–sarcastic snide–”Well, you are aware that there’s this invention called television and on this invention they show shows, right?”

A boxer tough enough to kill a man in the ring flips out on his girlfriend, then acquiesces in shame, only to continue the flip out later when he’s alone in the car. Boxer’s name is Butch. Which means nothing. Because he’s an American, and our names don’t mean shit.

The crime boss casually strolls to a doughnut shop and grabs a dozen doughnuts. Just like me. Everyday. Sometimes twice a day. Oh, except that in the middle of the crosswalk at Fletcher and Atwater, he spots a guy who crossed him sitting in a Honda, whips out a gun, fires as he’s creamed by the Honda, the bullet nearly hitting Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin.

Tarantino rips everyone off, but his movies work because they’re populated with characters we can relate to; that behave like us and converse like us. Only different.

My wife and I still say we “ain’t got no friendly people in the eight-one-eight,” even though it’s no longer true.

As late as 1997, a guy I worked for was still claiming he was the “Foot fuckin’ master.” Everyday.

It’s close, but it’s the movie that to me has had the most lasting impact of all the movies released in 1994.

“Pulp Fiction” had the feel of an event movie for college-aged kids. “Reservoir Dogs” and “True Romance” had developed cult followings in frat houses and dorm rooms everywhere, and the buzz surrounding “Pulp Fiction” strangely intensified after it won the Palme D’Or at Cannes. There aren’t many mainstream hits to be found on the list of films to win the Palme D’Or between 1990 and 2009. Some great movies, but nothing approaching the level of fun Tarantino injects into three interwoven stories of L.A.’s criminal underbelly. I don’t recall, for example, midnight showings of Jane Campion’s previous films complete with party atmosphere and booze the weekend that “The Piano” opened, at least not in Athens, Georgia. But the weekend “Pulp Fiction” opened, the Georgia Theater unspooled “Reservoir Dogs” to a raucous crowd who cheered when Tarantino’s name danced across the screen. He was more than a director, he was a rock star. His movies have continued to be events, which sometimes works against him.

We’ve all seen it, some of us love it, some of us hate it. In no particular order, here are my ten favorite moments from “Pulp Fiction.”

1)   The ultimate piercing. A great, tense sequence. Love how Vincent Vega stammers as he relates to Lance all the trouble they’ll both be in if Mia Wallace dies on the carpet. Catch the subtle moment between Vega and Mia in a subsequent scene, after Butch double-crosses Marcellus.

2) “Check out the big brain on Brett!” Hilarious, fraught with tension, each line of dialogue is better than the last. Christian Slater delivered a similar query to Bronson Pinchot in “True Romance.” but didn’t sound quiiiiite as scary. Darkly funny set up for later: “Marcellus Wallace don’t like to get fucked by anyone except by Mrs. Wallace.”

3) “Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!” Love the freeze frame before Honeybunny has finished delivering the line. That these two freelance armed robbers disappear from the movie only to show up in the final act when they’re forced to confront real badasses, is one of the movie’s many pleasures.

4) “Step aside, Butch.” A simple line that leads to Marcellus Wallace’s great speech. Something about the simplicity of the line gives it an oh, shit, here it comes, quality that I like better than the obvious, “I’ma get medieval on your ass!” line that follows.

5) “I didn’t call you a mongoloid, I called you a retard.” Or is it the other way around? In any event, Butch talking to his forgetful French girlfriend in the mongoloid voice – “My name is Fabi!” – cracks me up every time. Who hasn’t mocked their forgetful boyfriend/girlfriend like this?

6)  Butch/Vincent staredown. I’ve witnessed white guys who hang out with black guys lashing out at new white guys trying to enter the fold. As though they want to impress the black guys.  Or maybe Vincent just thought Butch was a chump. Whatever – it’s a quiet but great moment in the movie.

7)  “It’s the one that says Bad Motherfucker.”

Butch singing along to “Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler brothers and hitting the low note. There’s an authenticity to the low note that adds to the scene, just before Butch is caught.

9) “I’m the Foot Fuckin’ Master.” Again, great dialogue that sets up so much for later.

10) Vincent Vega’s death. Butch fires as the Pop Tarts (it was Pop Tarts, right?) eject from the toaster. Fire alarm screams, and continues screaming as Butch exits for his getaway. Don’t know why that detail makes me smile, but it does.

Of course, depending on my mood, I could find ten more moments that stick with me better than these ten. “Pulp Fiction” is probably not the best movie ever. I know it has its detractors, people who say the non-linear storytelling hides the flaws in the story. I personally don’t buy this argument, because the movie is what it is. I don’t think you can argue that if it’s something it’s not, it’s no longer good. If “Casablanca” was told in a linear fashion, would it be the same movie? I dunno. Fact is, it’s not linear.

I will allow you to retort below.

The key to any great year at the movies is a great summer at the movies, and 1994 had that. I can’t personally decide which movie that summer was my favorite, so I’m starting with my wife’s favorite. My wife grew up in a small town in South Georgia. They didn’t have a movie theatre. Not that she was in the stone ages, but going to a movie was, to her, an event, not a regular occurrence. We had been dating for only about a month, when one Tuesday afternoon in December of 1991, I said, “Hey, let’s go to the movies.” Puzzled, she replied, “It’s Tuesday.”

As good a day as any, I replied, before whisking her off to see “The Last Boy Scout.”

Three years later, she was worse than me. We would watch two movies in an afternoon, three if they weren’t playing at the General Cinema theatre, with its uncomfortable red seats. Our tastes were not discriminating, we would see anything. On July 15, 1994, we went to see Disney’s Angels in the Outfield (co-starring Matthew McConaughey and Adrien Brody!), then ducked into the next auditorium to watch True Lies. My wife saw it at least ten times that summer.

Proving that some things don’t change for Cameron, it was at the time the most expensive movie ever made. It cost a reported $100 million, a sum for which you can now make the first act of a summer movie. Every dollar is up on the screen in this gloriously self-aware action comedy. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s about a spy who believes that his wife is cheating on him. Taking time off from saving the world from Nazis and Muslim terrorists, he sets a trap to catch her in the act, which inadvertently drags her into the world of international espionage and terrorism.

Has it stood the test of time? I think so. The scene where Schwarzenegger, under the influence of truth serum, tells a roomful of terrorists how he’s going to dispatch each and every one of them only moments before he dispatches every single one of them is alone worth the price of a rental. The acting is solid, Curtis is great, Tom Arnold is surprisingly good, future Clooney collaborator Grant Heslov is funny, and no one can out-Ahnuld Ahnuld.

Culturally, I think it’s a relevant piece of work because of the controversy it inspired. With True Lies, Cameron came under heavy criticism for depicting Arabs as terrorists. Whenever a group complains about their depiction in a movie, I always side with the movie. At no point in True Lies did I think the as yet to be anointed King of the World was making any sort of comment on all Arabs or all Muslims. Two years earlier, Muslim terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center. Seven years later, Muslim terrorists would again attack the World Trade Center. And a year after that, Hollywood officially caved to the demands of politically correct Muslims by changing the bad guys in a Tom Clancy movie from Muslim terrorists to Nazi terrorists.

True Lies was also called misogynist at the time, due in large part to the trap set by Schwarzenegger to catch his wife cheating – he forces her to strip. All in all, Cameron got beat up pretty bad on this one, and had no rewards or box office titles to show for it. It made nearly a hundred fifty million domestically, almost four hundred million globally – but this was before anyone gave a rip about the global box office. Domestic was all that mattered, and True Lies was certainly no bomb, but it was not a humongous success, either.

Where does True Lies fit in the canon of Cameron’s work? It’s not his best movie, but it’s not his worst either – although I wouldn’t even call my least favorite of his movies a bad movie. But I think that as gifted as he certainly is, he is a cynical kid, eager for recognition and acceptance, and I believe that the criticism from the cultural elite stung him badly. The misogyny angle really had to stick in the craw of the guy who gave us badass Sarah Connor. The hero of his next movie, Titanic, was a little guy, a poor street urchin slash artist, who was paired with a female protagonist who willingly strips naked for him. The villains were greedy and rich and free of ethnicity. Result: jackpot, baby! No one that I can recall rushed to his defense in the wake of his perceived racism and misogyny in 1994. Cut to Avatar, 2009: in the wake of criticism from the right, the cultural elite had his back.

Ultimately, True Lies exists as a bridge between Cameron’s Terminator/Aliens phase, and his King of the World status. Nothing in the movie gives the impression that he feels he has anything to prove, so in that sense, it’s a pretty honest piece of work. He only means to entertain, doesn’t care about preaching to us, and that’s a good thing.

Hope you’ll come back next week for my ruminations on Hoop Dreams. I’m not sure what ruminations means, but it sounds appropriately pretentious.

Quentin Tarantino exploded on the world film scene in 1992 with “Reservoir Dogs,” a brutally profane yet ingeniously plotted and often funny deconstruction of the heist-film genre. He took things to a whole other level in 1994 with “Pulp Fiction,” reviving the foundering careers of superstars John Travolta and Bruce Willis while launching the star careers of Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman while winning a Best Screenplay Oscar himself. 

Yet in the 15 years since that classic, Tarantino hasn’t been able to score quite as big an impact. 1997’s “Jackie Brown” made just $39 million, while the two “Kill Bill” films scored $70 million each yet were considered hyper-violent trifles compared to what he was really capable of. And he really bottomed out with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which made up half of “Grindhouse,” a three-hour homage to the trashy drive-in films of America’s past. Its 21st-century audience didn’t get the joke and largely ignored it, earning just $27 million at the US box office. 

Tarantino knew it was time to dig deep if he was ever going to recover his relevance, and the result was this summer’s smash “Inglourious Basterds,” which radically re-imagines WWII history with its focus on Brad Pitt leading a team of the US military’s toughest Jews on a mission to kill and scalp as many Nazis as possible – before a series of ingenious plot twists give the team of Basterds a shot at taking down Hitler himself. The film has proved to be a smash hit with critics and audiences alike. Following a smash $38 million opening that was by far Tarantino’s biggest ever, it also proved to have legs, placing in the top 3 a full four weeks after its release – a staggeringly uncommon occurrence that has earned it nearly $110 million with no end in sight. 

Sitting down for a Q&A at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Tarantino offered plenty of insights into the creative process behind “Basterds” and the rich sense of film history that permeates its multi-layered entertainment. Since the film is entering its 5th weekend in theatres, giving people plenty of chances to see the film already, I’m including some of the questions that feature minor spoiler details.  

BIG HOLLYWOOD: It’ll surprise people how little the Basterds are actually in the film. Should we preserve that? 

QUENTIN TARANTINO: If you consider the Basterds the six guys in the background of Pitt, yeah they become incidental to the mission itself once the story goes on. To me, the story has three leads: Aldo (Pitt’s character), Shoshanna (a Jewish woman who escapes a Nazi slaughter) and Landa (the most ruthless Nazi). The first 3 chapters are setting up these leads, and Chapters 4 and 5 are now the adventure begins. You can also say everyone in the movie is an inglourious basterd, not just the little group. 

BH: This is a movie that shows a love for cinema… 

QT: I would definitely say so. One thing that cracked me up when I was first writing the first scene between Zoller (a Nazi who tries to charm Soshanna) and Soshanna and they’re debating (classic film directors) Linder vs. Chaplin, or he’s debating and she’s listening, I thought ‘OK I go make my WWII movie and it becomes a love letter to cinema.’ I guess I cannot not have that love show. 

BH: You’ve done wonders for epic film, can do 2 ½ hours to tell a complex story. Should studios let others do that? 

QT: I don’t see most movies holding to the traditional 90 minute format. Romantic comedies are 100 minutes these days. The new time frame now normally seems to be 2:10, 2:15, for any film trying to do something beyond a little comedy or horror film. But everything needs the time that it needs. I think that my movie is exactly the right length to tell my story and be entertaining. I can cut 20 minutes and make it seem longer because it becomes disjointed or abrupt, and you don’t feel as involved. But here you can say ‘wow that really flew by.’ When I went to Cannes, we hadn’t watched it with an audience. So we did, heard what didn’t work and then spent two days nipping it and it wound up a minute longer – but it feels 12 minutes shorter. 

BH: How long did you work on this film? 

QT: I put pen to paper on this at first in ‘98, around the time of  “Jackie Brown.” People said along the way that Schwarzenegger would be in it, but that was all rumors. I’m not against him, but some said Bruce Willis, Stallone – none of that ever came from me. 

BH: When you started, was it a more traditional war movie? 

QT: It changed, but what gets me to sit down and write something in the first place is something, usually a very thin idea. “Reservoir Dogs” was bam, sit down and write a heist movie. You don’t see the heist, but still it’s a heist movie. Then I hope I get beyond that and it becomes its own thing, but hopefully still developing the pleasures of the genre I’m dipping my toe into. Yet the whole idea is to expand beyond it. How this has changed from what I came up with then is I had a different storyline in mind way back when, I wrote the first two chapters to introduce the characters but the story I had was just too big. I had the opposite of writers’ block, I couldn’t stop writing. And like (his idol, Italian director) Sergio Leone, I couldn’t introduce a character without giving them a 20 minute scene. I had to go back to it, realizing I had to get over myself thinking I can’t work on that puny a canvas of 3 hours. So I did “Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2,” then I came back with a new story, and the new story is one about (Nazi) Frederick Zoller being like a German Audie Murphy (a famed American soldier turned actor) character who gets a movie made about him, and the mission would be the blowing up of the actual premiere of the film. 

BH: What would you like us to say about the alternate history of the film? 

QT: I don’t want you to say who gets killed, but you can say there is a point in the movie where history went one way and we went another. My idea was my characters changed the course of the war. It didn’t happen because they didn’t exist, but if they had existed it would all be fairly plausible. 

BH: You have a real passion for cinema and use touchstones from the past in your current films. Out of current films or the past 20 years, anything that inspires you? 

QT: I just wrote down my top 20 movies of the past 17 years that I’ve been directing. I was happy to find it was hard to break it down to 20. There’s a lot of terrific filmmakers out now, like my contemporary Paul Thomas Anderson. I feel I’m Marlon Brando to his Montgomery Clift. But that was an interesting reality. Brando and Clift were better actors because they always knew the other was there. I remember something that when I met Brian DePalma, a hero of mine, he was talking about having a friendly rivalry with Scorsese. While he was doing “Scarface,” a big epic with Pacino, and on a day off went to see “Raging Bull.” And that opening shot of rain, slow-motion, Jake LaMotta dancing and he thought, “Ugh, there’s always Scorsese. No matter how good you are or what you do, he’s always looking back at you.” But in last couple decades, great directors would include Paul, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater – not because we’re friends, but we’re friends because we respond to their aesthetic. I’m not friends with David Fincher but I love his work. To me, some of the best cinema on earth is coming out of Korea. They’re amazing. Just two guys have done five of the best 20 films of the past ten years. 

BH: Are there any good B-movies left nowadays? 

QT: I wanted to see “Get Snow,” that Norwegian Nazi zombie movie. Straight to video, there was something lost by losing the theatrical experience, but now films on DVD with no theatrical release in America will get them overseas.. Who thought overseas fans would all of a sudden get into the horror film in a big way like “High Tension.” Or these Spanish horrors released by Dimension Extreme. These are very extreme movies, very few of Japanese horrors play US theaters, you watch them on DVD. I actually have seen “Kurosawa’s Pulse” at theaters, but most find it on DVD. It’s different than when Roger Corman had Concorde and they just put out their films straight to video. Every month I read Video Watchdog to see if something cool has reared its head. Is there a “Lost Boys 4?” 

BH: Where does (the main Nazi villain) Landa rank among your characters? 

QT: When I wrote him, I knew not only is he one of the best characters I’ve ever written, he’s the best I ever will write. One of the things I felt happy about with that sequence at the opening, I always felt that there’s this weird aspect that my scenes a lot of times are meant to stand alone the way you would listen to a greatest hits album. And in that self-aggrandizing analogy, I’d say the Sicilian scene in “True Romance” [a verbal confrontation between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper] was my best work. I knew I’d come close, but never top that. But when I wrote the opening scene in this movie, with the Jew Hunter and the French farmer, I thought, ‘I did it!’ That’s up to you to decide of course, though. 

BH: On a typical day, what’s your routine on set? What’s your ritual? 

QT: The bar sequence (of “Basterds”) was like a little movie unto itself, or a one-act play – so much so that I had people do the whole sequence in one long run. By the third day of rehearsal we had that scene down. A scene like that, there’s a lot of dexterity going on, because you have one table with Bridget and our boys, and the other table with Nazis and they’re playing a game. It was like a one-act play, so much so that I asked in rehearsals if we could wind up doing it as one long run. The third day of rehearsal we had that thing down, and with one more week I could have taken it to the Berlin stage. What could very well happen is we’re preparing (actress Diane Kruger), working something special for her, but the whole time I’m filming the German soldiers’ game, then I move over to film what bartender is doing. Then I really get into the card game, and there’s so much dialogue in it. So I’d film it but I’d be like, “I’d like to do the other angle the next day.” A sequence like that took two weeks to shoot, it’s like its own little movie, there’s a lot of juggling elements, and when you’re figuring out the directing of it you’re figuring how to juggle and how to keep it going. 

Anybody who’s a director and gets more than 5 hours sleep a night must not be passionate. If you can sleep well, you must not be doing the job right. 

BH: In “Basterds” you bring back old actors like Rod Taylor, or reinvent someone like Mike Myers, yet sometimes you discover someone totally unexpected like Christophe Waltz (the main Nazi Landa, considered an Oscar shoo-in by most critics). Would you say this is your best casting yet? 

QT: It was the toughest, a tough delivery but we had a beautiful baby. I was precious about my casting – that whoever I cast was perfect to play the different facets of a character. Every once in a while I cast an actor who’s not my type. Hopefully, you don’t notice that but I notice that. You have to be both physical and verbal, and obviously you have to have a facility with dialogue if you’re gonna do one of my movies. You’ve gotta be hungry for it – instead of saying “Awww, I gotta learn this three page thing,” but say “Yeah! I’m gonna OWN this! It’s MINE!” and you take it and make it your own. You also gotta be smart to do my stuff. 

BH: In 17 years of doing this, what’s your biggest triumph and your biggest disappointment? 

QT: I guess the career goal that I always go to is winning the Palme d’Or for “Pulp Fiction.” There’s only one list of filmmakers more prestigious than those who’ve won it, and that’s the directors who haven’t. I took it very hard when “Grindhouse” didn’t do well. I like the movie, I’m very happy with that and what we did, and when we had an audience it played like gangbusters. I never had that kind of a flop before and it hurt my feelings, but you get over it and I’m lucky that I’m in a position to follow my muse, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

On my Facebook profile page, I dutifully filled out my personal interests. Under favorite movies I listed “anything Quentin Tarantino”; under novels I listed “anything Elmore Leonard.” What I left out under “movies” was “anything Elmore Leonard which seem like Quentin Tarantino” and vice versa. To me, they are almost indistinguishable. I have read virtually all of Leonard’s books. I just purchased today his latest, “Road Dogs.” I have seen nearly all of Tarantino’s movies. I have read or seen many of their works multiple times. I still get surprised by a Leonard movie from time to time. I recently saw “3:10 from Yuma” on TV. There was something rivetingly familiar about it. It turns out it was adapted from a 15 page short story by Leonard that I had never read.

The first Elmore Leonard novel I read was “Rum Punch.” I was vacationing in St. Martin with my family in 1995 and we had rented a house. I just picked up a book at random on one of the shelves and began to read. I remember two things clearly. I kept having to reread these short, seemingly simple, sentences to understand them. This fits with what I have subsequently learned to be a rule of Leonard’s; “if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” The second thing I remember is that the characters were shockingly amoral. It was almost frightening. But not so frightening to prevent me from reading the other Leonard book in the house, “Freaky Deaky.”

It is still amazing to me to that “Rum Punch” was the only collaboration Leonard and Tarantino have had in films. “Rum Punch,” of course, became the 1997 hit film, “Jackie Brown.” There have always been rumors about other films. At various times, Leonard novels, “40 Lashes less One,” “Killshot,” and “Freaky Deaky” were all rumored to become Tarantino movies. “Killshot” has already been made without Tarantino.  Some movies which Tarantino directed seem like they were written by Leonard (“True Romance,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” in particular, even “Kill Bill: Volume 1″) and some Leonard novels which became movies seem like they were produced or directed by Tarantino (“Be Cool,” “Get Shorty”–I have not yet seen “Killshot”).

When I first saw “Pulp Fiction” (on video, a year or two after its release), I assumed Leonard had to be involved. “Pulp Fiction” is one of my top 5 movies of all time. I still see new things when I watch it. To this day, I could swear I read in the movie credits that Leonard advised on “Pulp Fiction”; but he had nothing to do with it. In my memory, before writing this essay, I actually thought “Be Cool” and “Get Shorty” were Tarantino movies. But of course they are not. And I now remember being surprised back then they were not! I did not even see “Reservoir Dogs” until last year on DVD and, at first, thought it might have been a Leonard novel I missed. It was not, obviously. Interestingly, there are some crossover actors/producers in both sets of films, as well as in their one common film, which helps contribute to my illusion. They include; John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, James Gandolfini,  Danny DeVito (a producer of “Pulp Fiction” and “Get Shorty”), and probably some others.

It turns out there is a pretty strong link between Tarantino and Leonard besides just my own imagination. Charlie Rose interviewed Tarantino in 1994, the year “Pulp Fiction” was released. To quote Tarantino;

QUENTIN TARANTINO: Oh, I love Elmore Leonard. In fact, to me True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie–

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: -that he didn’t write, you know. And like, actually, I actually owe a big debt to like kind of figuring out my style from Elmore Leonard because, you know, he was the first writer I’d ever read……

What they both have in common is an ability to tell a compelling story. The characters are completely amoral, yet can still be appealing. They retain, usually, some moral code, even if self designed. They are not evil, but certainly do not follow traditional morality either. Somehow, we still want to find the protagonist and root for them. Clearly, they are tapping into something beneath the surface of our conscious minds which we somehow find “freeing,” at least during the fantasy of reading their books or watching their movies. In a moral world, can we justify such fantasies? I really have no idea, but they provide some “great escapes.”

I am also quite lucky. I have both a new Leonard book and a new Tarantino movie to look forward to. Perhaps if they collaborated more, there would be only one.

That was the best year for movies that I can recall. That summer alone we had “Forrest Gump,” “True Lies,” “Speed,” and everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Cannes winner “Pulp Fiction.” And we also had “The Lion King.” I remember the critic for my campus newspaper, The Red & Black (Go Dawgs!), panned the film, noting that the “Circle of Life” song, sung by a gay man, was really about keeping groups of people, particularly minorities, in their place. I thought this was bizarre and brought it up with some of my classmates.

I was a drama major. Hellooooo! What was I thinking!

Turns out the movie was homophobic and racist. Scar, the villain, was clearly gay, I was told. I missed that. By missing it, i.e. not having an opinion on the sexual preference of a cartoon lion, I was also a homophobe. Huh? As for the charge of racism, the hyenas, famously voiced by Cheech Marin and Whoopi Goldberg, were stereotypes of blacks and Mexicans. But, as I pointed out, James Earl Jones, a black man, voiced the role of Mufasa. The response still floors me: Yes, but he wasn’t portrayed as a black person.

Did you catch that?

Because Mufasa’s not shucking and jiving, he’s not a black person. I can’t pretend to have called my friends on this; frankly, I was stunned. The PC mindset had led my friends to charge the film with racism, and in doing so they revealed themselves to be slaves to stereotypes. Racists? Probably not. But certainly not deserving of their pious attitude toward Uncle Walt and Company.

Which brings me back to “Borat.” I happen to agree with Christopher Hitchens, who notes that the film makes Americans look more tolerant than the left seems to believe. The sequence in a “black” Atlanta neighborhood doesn’t work as humor if the viewer doesn’t have some pre-conceived notions about black street culture. The elitists were falling all over themselves to point out the rodeo audience cheering Borat’s pro-Bush, pro-War on Terror speech–guess they didn’t notice the woman rolling her eyes. I bet there were more reactions like this…on the cutting room floor, of course.

The elitists’ favorite scene, though, was the one that made fun of them intolerant southerners. The one where Borat insulted the host, crapped in a bag, and, in a move that busted up the party, invited over a prostitute. To the elites, the fact that she was OBVIOUSLY a prostitute had NOTHING to do with her presence breaking up the party. You remember, she was black. And this crowd was clearly offended to be in the presence of a black woman.

I don’t think this is the case and the reaction reveals more about the elites than the scene itself reveals about the great unwashed southern masses. In the end, the Liberal elites had to interpret the movie in this way, if only to excuse themselves for embracing a movie with wall-to-wall juvenile poop and penis jokes. With “Brüno,” they’re taking the “Lion King” approach, embracing it less than they did “Borat” and pointing out the stereotypes. I can’t wait to see what it reveals about them.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

#1 – JAWS
I saw this all-time classic as a 9-year-old on opening day, and saw it a second time at the Saturday matinee. To this day, I am afraid to swim in the ocean. That shark is always there in my imagination. The poster is literal, but haunting.

#2 – CHINATOWN
This is truly a work of art. The smoke shrouding the ultimate mystery of Evelyn Mulwray, and the stylized version of Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), the hard-boiled detective who unravels it all.

#3 – THE DARK KNIGHT
Impossible to separate Heath Ledger’s death from his remarkable interpretation of The Joker. This is an amazing image. In 30 years, I will look at this poster and immediately feel the impact of Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece.

#4 – BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
You can almost hear Audrey Hepburn warbling “Moon River” at the sight of this iconic poster. Every woman wanted to be her and every man wanted to be with her.

#5 – SECRETARY
The 2002 cult classic about a sadomasochistic relationship between a demanding lawyer (James Spader) and a submissive secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The movie is an under-appreciated gem. The poster may be even better.

#6 – UNFORGIVEN
This is my favorite poster made for Clint Eastwood’s masterful revisionist Western. Simple. Classic. Tells you everything you need to know about Clint’s Bill Munny character.

#7 – AMERICAN BEAUTY
A beautiful image that suggests the perversity that lies just beneath the surface of the suburban neighborhood created by screenwriter Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes.

#8 – SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
“You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won’t you?” You can almost hear Dr. Hannibal Lecter say it. The Death’s-head moth “lodged” in Clarice Starling’s throat. Brilliant image.

#9 – VERTIGO
An ode to acrophobia as Detective Scottie Ferguson (as played by Jimmy Stewart) battles his fear of heights while becoming obsessed with Madeleine Elster (the stunning Kim Novak). This kaleidoscopic design immediately brings the strains of Bernard Hermann’s amazing score into my head.

#10 – PULP FICTION
Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in all her swagger. Yes, she does wind up with a sharpie circle on her chest and a shot of adrenaline, but the whole gritty movie is captured with this image.

HONORABLE MENTION
- in no particular order -
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
SWEENEY TODD
MEAN STREETS
AMADEUS
GONE WITH THE WIND
METROPOLIS
KING KONG (1939 Fay Wray version)
CLOVERFIELD
THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.