April 12, 2011 (XXII:12) Stephen Frears: THE GRIFTERS (1990, 110 min)

Directed by Stephen Frears Written by Donald E. Westlake Based on the novel by Jim Thompson Produced by Robert A. Harris, Jim Painter, Martin Scorsese Cinematography by Oliver Stapledon Editing by Mick Audsley Music Composed by Elmer Bernstein Anjelica Huston...Lilly Dillon John Cusack...Roy Dillon Annette Bening...Myra Langtry Pat Hingle...Bobo Justus J.T. Walsh...Cole Four Oscar nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Huston), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Bening), Best Director (Frears), Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Westlake). Stephen Frears (June 20, 1941 in Leicester, England, UK) has 53 directing credits, some of which are: 2010 'Tamara Drewe', 2009 Chéri, 2008 “Skip Tracer”, 2006 The Queen, 2002 Dirty Pretty Things, 2000 Liam, 2000 “Fail Safe”2000 High Fidelity, 1997 “A Personal History of British Cinema by Stephen Frears”, 1996 The Van, 1996 Mary Reilly, 1990 The Grifters, 1988 Dangerous Liaisons, 1987 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, 1987 Prick Up Your Ears, 1985 My Beautiful Laundrette, 1984 The Hit, 1979 Bloody Kids, 1975-1979 “Play for Today”, 1979 “Afternoon Off”, 1978 “Doris and Doreen”, 1978 “Me! I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, 1977-1978 “BBC2 Play of the Week”, 1977 “Black Christmas”, 1973 “Sporting Scenes”, 1971-1973 “Follyfoot”, 1971 Gumshoe, 1970 “Tom Grattan's War”, and 1969 “Parkin's Patch.” Donald E. Westlake (July 12, 1933, Brooklyn, New York – December 31, 2008, San Tancho, Mexico) has 39 screenwriting credits or credits for novels made into films, among them 2009 The Stepfather, 2006 Payback: Straight Up - The Director's Cut (novel The Hunter/ as Richard Stark), 2005 Ripley Under Ground, 1999/I Payback (novel The Hunter/ as Richard Stark), 1995 Two Much (novel), 1992 “Stepfather III”, 1990 The Grifters, 1990 Why Me? (book / screenplay), 1987 The Stepfather, 1974 Bank Shot (novel), 1973 Cops and Robbers (novel / screenplay), 1967 Point Blank (novel The Hunter / as Richard Stark), and 1962 “87th Precinct.”

JIM THOMPSON (September 27, 1906, Anadarko, Oklahoma – April 7, 1977, Hollywood, California) was an American novelist, many of whose works were translated to film, among them 2010 The Killer Inside Me, 1996 Hit Me (novel A Swell-Looking Babe), 1993 The Getaway, 1993 Fallen Angels (story “The Frightening Frammis”), 1990 The Grifters, 1990 After Dark, My Sweet, 1989 The Kill-Off, 1981 Coup de Torchon (novel Pop. 1280), 1979 Série noire (novel A Hell of a Woman), 1976 The Killer Inside Me, and 1972 The Getaway. Thompson also worked on two screenplays for Stanley Kubrick: 1957 and 1956 . Oliver Stapleton (1948, London, England, UK) has 53 cinematographer credits, some of which are 2010 Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, 2010 Unthinkable, 2008 How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, 2007 “The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Journey of Radiance”, 2006 The Hoax, 2005 Casanova, 2005 An Unfinished Life, 2003 Cheeky, 2003 Ned Kelly, 2001 The Shipping News, 2001 Buffalo Soldiers, 2000 Pay It Forward, 1999 The Cider House Rules, 1999 A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1997 The Designated Mourner, 1996 Kansas City, 1993 Look Who's Talking Now, 1993 “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”, 1992/I Hero, 1990 The Grifters, 1989 She-Devil, 1989 Cookie, 1988 Earth Girls Are Easy, 1983-1988 “The Comic Strip Presents...” (6 episodes), 1987 Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, 1987 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, 1987 Prick Up Your Ears, 1985 My Beautiful Laundrette, 1983 ABC Mantrap, and 1982 The Secret Policeman's Other Ball.

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Elmer Bernstein (April 4, 1922, New York City, New York – August 18, 2004, Ojai, California) won a Best Music, Original Music Score Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). He has 240 composer credits, some of which are 2002 Far from Heaven, 1999 Bringing Out the Dead, 1999 Wild Wild West, 1997 The Rainmaker, 1996 Bulletproof, 1995 Devil in a Blue Dress, 1993 The Age of Innocence, 1993 Lost in Yonkers, 1993 Mad Dog and Glory, 1992 The Babe, 1991 Rambling Rose, 1991 Oscar, 1990 The Grifters, 1990 One Day in Dallas, 1989 My Left Foot, 1988 Funny Farm, 1987 Leonard Part 6, 1986 ¡Three Amigos!, 1986 Legal Eagles, 1985 Prince Jack, 1985 Spies Like Us, 1984 Ghost Busters, 1983 “Thriller”, 1983 Trading Places, 1981 The Chosen, 1981 An American Werewolf in London, 1981 Honky Tonk Freeway, 1981 Stripes, 1980 Airplane!, 1979 The Great Santini, 1979 Meatballs, 1979 Zulu Dawn, 1978 Animal House, 1977 Billy Jack Goes to Washington, 1976 The Shootist, 1975-1976 “Ellery Queen” (17 episodes), 1974 The Trial of Billy Jack, 1973 Cahill U.S. Marshal, 1972 The Magnificent Seven Ride!, 1970 A Walk in the Spring Rain, 1969 The Bridge at Remagen, 1969 True Grit, 1968 I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, 1967-1968 “The Big Valley” (24 episodes), 1966 Hawaii, 1966 7 Women, 1965 The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965 Baby the Rain Must Fall, 1964 The Carpetbaggers, 1964 The World of Henry Orient, 1963 The Great Escape, 1963 Hud, 1962 To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962 Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962 Walk on the Wild Side, 1961 By Love Possessed, 1960 The Magnificent Seven, 1960 From the Terrace, 1959-1960 “Johnny Staccato” (26 episodes), 1958 Some Came Running, 1958 Anna Lucasta, 1958 God's Little Acre, 1958 Kings Go Forth, 1958 Desire Under the Elms, 1957 The Tin Star, 1957 Sweet Smell of Success, 1956 The Ten Commandments, 1955 The Man with the Golden Arm, 1953 Cat-Women of the Moon, 1952 Battles of Chief Pontiac, 1952 Sudden Fear, 1952 Boots Malone, and 1951 Saturday's Hero. ANJELICA HUSTON...Lilly Dillon (July 8, 1951, Santa Monica,

California) won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Prizzi's Honor (1985), directed by her father, John Huston. She also acted in her father’s final film, The Dead, 1977. Some of her other 73 acting credits are 2010 When in Rome, 2008-2009 “Medium” (8 episodes), 2008 The Kreutzer Sonata, 2007 The Darjeeling Limited, 2006 “Huff”, 2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2002 Blood Work, 2001 The Royal Tenenbaums, 2000 The Golden Bowl, 1998 Buffalo '66, 1995 The Crossing Guard, 1993 Addams Family Values, 1993 “And the Band Played On”, 1993 Manhattan Murder

Mystery, 1991 The Addams Family, 1990 The Grifters, 1990 The Witches, 1989 Enemies: A Love Story, 1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989 “Lonesome Dove”, 1988 Mr. North, 1988 A Handful of Dust, 1987 The Dead, 1987 Gardens of Stone, 1985 Prizzi's Honor, 1984 This Is Spinal Tap, 1983 A Rose for Emily, 1982 Frances, 1981 The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1976 The Last Tycoon, 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and 1969 Hamlet. JOHN CUSACK...Roy Dillon (June 28, 1966, Evanston, Illinois) has 59 acting credits, some of them for 2010 Shanghai, 2008 War, Inc., 2007 Martian Child, 2006/I The Contract, 2005 The Ice Harvest, 2003 Runaway Jury, 2001 Serendipity, 2000 High Fidelity, 1999 Being John Malkovich, 1999 Cradle Will Rock, 1999 Pushing Tin, 1998 The Thin Red Line, 1997 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997 Con Air, 1997 Grosse Pointe Blank, 1996 City Hall, 1994 The Road to Wellville, 1994 Bullets Over Broadway, 1993 Map of the Human Heart, 1991 Shadows and Fog, 1990 The Grifters, 1989 Fat Man and Little Boy, 1988 Eight Men Out, 1987 Broadcast News, 1986 Stand by Me, 1984 Sixteen Candles, and 1983 Class. ANNETTE BENING...Myra Langtry (May 29, 1958, Topeka, Kansas) has appeared in 30 titles, some of which are 2010 The Kids Are All Right, 2008/I The Women, 2006 Running with Scissors, 2004 Being Julia, 2000 What Planet Are You From?, 1999 American Beauty, 1999 In Dreams, 1996 Mars Attacks!, 1995 The American President, 1995 Richard III, 1994 Love Affair, 1991 Bugsy, 1991 Regarding Henry, 1990 The Grifters, 1990 Postcards from the Edge, 1989 Valmont, 1987 “Miami Vice”, and 1986 “Manhunt for Claude Dallas.” PAT HINGLE... Bobo Justus(July 19, 1924, Miami, Florida – January 3, 2009, Carolina Beach, North Carolina) appeared in nearly 200 films and TV drama and series, some of which were 2008 Undoing Time, 2006 Waltzing Anna, 2006 Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, 2001 Morning, 2001 The Hunter's Moon, 2001 Road to Redemption, 2000 Shaft, 1998 “Homicide: Life on the Street”, 1997 Batman & Robin, 1995 “Truman”, 1995 Batman Forever, 1995 The Quick and the Dead, 1993 “Cheers”, 1992 “Citizen Cohn”, 1992 Batman Returns, 1986-1991 “Murder, She Wrote”, 1990 The Grifters, 1989 Batman, 1988-1989 “War and Remembrance”, 1985 Brewster's Millions, 1985 The Falcon and the Snowman, 1984 “Magnum, P.I.”, 1983 Sudden Impact, 1982 “Hart to Hart”, 1980 “M*A*S*H”, 1979 Norma Rae, 1979 When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?, 1977 The Gauntlet, 1975 “McCloud”, 1974 “The Six Million Dollar Man”, 1973 “Kung Fu”, 1972 “Ironside”, 1971 “Gunsmoke” (6 episodes), 1970 WUSA, 1970 Bloody Mama, 1969 “Bonanza”, 1968 Hang 'Em High, 1967 “Mission: Impossible”, 1966 “The Andy Griffith Show”, 1964-1965 “The Fugitive”, 1963 “Twilight Zone”, 1963 The Ugly American, 1962-1963 “The Untouchables”, 1956 “The Alcoa Hour”, 1955-1956 “The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse”, 1951-1954 “Suspense”, and 1954 On the Waterfront. J.T. WALSH...Cole (September 28, 1943, San Francisco, California– February 27, 1998, La Mesa, California) appeared in 74 films and TV series, among them: 1999 Hidden Agenda, 1998 Pleasantville, 1998 The Negotiator, 1996-1997 “Dark Skies” (19 episodes), 1996 Sling Blade, 1996 Executive Decision, 1995 Nixon, 1995 Black Day Blue Night, 1995 “The X-Files”, 1995 Outbreak,

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1994 “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”, 1994 Silent Fall, 1994 The Client, 1994 The Last Seduction, 1994 Blue Chips, 1994 Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, 1993 Red Rock West, 1993 Sniper, 1993 One Little Indian, 1992 Hoffa, 1992 A Few Good Men, 1991 True Identity, 1991 Backdraft, 1990 The Russia House, 1990 Misery, 1990 The Grifters, 1990 Why Me?, 1989 Dad, 1989 Wired, 1988 Tequila Sunrise, 1987 Good Morning, Vietnam, 1987 House of Games, 1987 Tin Men, 1986 Hannah and Her Sisters, 1985 Hard Choices, and 1982 “Little Gloria... Happy at Last.”

Stephen Frears (Screenrush.co.uk): Armed with a keen visual awareness and compelling ability to tell a story, Stephen Frears became established as a leading director in British cinema and TV in the 1980s. While studying law at Cambridge, Frears' interest in the stage was piqued and soon after obtaining his degree, he joined London's Royal Court Theater. He did not become involved in film until 1966 when Karel Reisz offered an unemployed Frears a job as assistant director on "Morgan" setting the stage for his apprenticeship as assistant director to Reisz, Lindsay Anderson and Albert Finney before he had the opportunity to step into the director's chair for "Gumshoe" (1971), a satire on American detective films with Finney as a romantic dreamer who envisions himself a private eye.

It was not until 1984 that Frears would work on another project intended specifically for theatrical release. During this interval, he worked continuously in TV, refining his craft while developing a reputation for workmanlike efforts and an ability to get along with both writers and actors. Frears returned to feature filmmaking with "The Hit" (1984), a taut, well-crafted thriller which, like "Gumshoe," provided an interesting twist to the crime genre. Terence Stamp played an informer living out his days in Spain, with John Hurt as a hard-boiled hit man hired to take him back to Paris to receive his comeuppance from the crime boss he had snitched on. This downbeat film regarded its characters and their predicaments with a biting sense of humor, a quality which has marked all of Frears' films.

With "My Beautiful Laundrette" (1985), shot in 16mm on a budget of only $900,000 for British television, Frears achieved a breakthrough. Working with writer Hanif Kureishi, the director portrayed the effects of racism and underemployment on working-class London through the eyes of a young Pakistani attempting to carve his own place in the world. The next Kureishi/Frears effort, "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid" (1987), dealt with these same themes in a multi-layered look at the social relations revolving around a liberal, educated, mixed-race couple (Pakistani and upper-middle-class British) living in a poor section of London. Though the themes were not explored to their fullest, the rich visuals and good

performances made for an entertaining film that exposed many of the inequities of British society.

Between these two efforts, Frears directed Alan Bennett's adaptation of John Lahr's biography of playwright Joe Orton, who was brutally murdered at the height of his fame by his longtime lover and roommate Ken Halliwell. Rather than a standard biography, "Prick Up Your Ears" (1987) concentrated mainly on the relationship of these two men as a study of marriage gone tragically sour. In 1988, Frears fulfilled his longtime wish to work in the Hollywood system, a move he hoped would broaden his potential while providing greater financial rewards. "Dangerous Liaisons," an adaptation of Christopher Hampton's play (which itself was based on Choderlos de Laclos' 18th-century novel), displayed the customary Frears trademarks: good performances and witty dialogue. But it was also his most glossy, stylized film, lacking the conviction and force of his earlier efforts.

As if in response to this, Frears' next Hollywood outing, "The Grifters" (1990), retained the stylization (a timeless Southern California floating somewhere between the 1950s and the 80s), but added the grittiness that had informed his British features. Adapted from the novel by Jim Thompson and starring John Cusack, Annette Bening, and Anjelica Huston, the film garnered critical acclaim and confirmed Frears' bankable status in Hollywood, capped by a Best Director Oscar nomination. He followed with "Hero" (1992), a lightweight Capraesque fable about the power of the media and the nature of heroism. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis and Andy Garcia, the film received some positive reviews but fizzled at the box office. Moreover, it broke little new ground for the director who reportedly clashed on set with star Hoffman.

Frears had better luck when he returned to England to direct "The Snapper" (1993). Based on a novel by Roddy Doyle and made for British television, this film was a sequel to Alan Parker's "The Commitments" (1991) centering on an Irish working-class family coping with the teenager daughter's pregnancy. It featured a literate script and strong performances, particularly from Colm Meaney as the father confused by circumstances. Frears directed the third installment "The Van" (1996), again starring Meaney, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Before its release, however, the helmer had spent almost two years on "Mary Reilly" (1996). Adapted from Valerie Martin's novel that recounted the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde story from the point of view of a parlor maid, "Mary Reilly" opened to lackluster box office and harsh reviews, with critics carping over the miscast Julia Roberts as Mary and John Malkovich as Jekyll/Hyde.

"The Hi-Lo Country" (1998) reunited Frears with producers Barbara De Fina and Martin Scorsese from "The Grifters" and revealed the director completely at home with the Western genre. Overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility studio money entailed, he insisted the movie be made as an independent and successfully grafted film noir onto the Western, benefiting from a superb, charismatic turn by Woody Harrelson as the "last real cowboy". Keeping to his penchant for variety, Frears next helmed "High Fidelity" (2000), a quirky comedy exploring the romantic misfortunes of its main character. John Cusack starred in a fearless and ferociously funny performance, as well as co-adapting and remaining faithful to Brit writer Nick Hornby's excellent source material, despite switching the London locale to Chicago. The director continued to push the envelope in his career by making his American TV debut at the helm of a live small screen remake of "Fail Safe". The two-hour, black-and-white CBS project was a personal project for producer-star George Clooney and although

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Frears did yeoman work, capturing the drama's inherent suspense, it proved too old-fashioned to audiences raised on the razzmatazz of MTV.

Frears surprised Hollywood with his next career move, heading back to Europe to direct the French film "Liam" (2000) which chronicled the effects of Liverpool's Depression on the family of sprightly, if stuttering, 8-year-old (Anthony Borrows). He remained in Europe to make the dark, critically-trumpeted morality meditation "Dirty Pretty Things" (2003) featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tatou as immigrants caught up in the shadowy secrets of a hotel's black market underbelly. Frears next made the rare jump to television, directing the made-for-British-television movie "The Deal" (Channel Four, 2003), a political drama that focused on the relationship between England's Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (David Morrissey) and their eventual fallout when Blair dishonored an agreement made between the two allies. Frears won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Single Drama in 2003, an honor shared with producers Christine Langan and Peter Morgan.

Back in the feature world, Frears directed Dame Judi Dench in "Mrs. Henderson Presents" (2005), a moving and amusing story about a recent widow (Dench) of considerable wealth and connections whose dissatisfaction with the prospect of a quiet, lonely life prompts her to buy a theatre. Wary of the local competition, she introduces naked dancing girls, much to the delight of patrons and dismay of the government, which fights to shut the theatre down. Though known for its typically strong performance from Dench, "Mrs. Henderson Presents" did earn Frears a 2005 Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. Frears again found himself the recipient of critical adulation for his next film, "The Queen" (2006), a quiet and richly textured look at Queen Elizabeth II (an excellent Helen Mirren) during her struggle to publicly mourn the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen again) privately and publicly battles Her Majesty to in some way honor Diana despite the Queen's strict adherence to tradition to mourn the death in private. Mirren was hailed by critics and bestowed various awards for her strong, nuanced performance, while Frears quietly earned his own recognition, including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director - Motion Picture. Though he was passed over for perennial Hollywood Foreign Press Association favorite Martin Scorsese, Frears went on to earn his second Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards. From the Wikipedia entry on Frears: Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant.[1] He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late '20s.[2] He was educated at Gresham's School, Norfolk from 1954 to 1959, and later went on to study law at Trinity College,

Cambridge from 1960 to 1963…. Frears currently lives in London with his wife, the painter Anne Rothenstein, and his two younger children Frankie and Lola. He also has two children, Sam and Will

(a stage and film director), from his previous marriage to Mary-Kay Wilmers. Early in his career he made a programme featuring the band The Scaffold and is name checked in their hit song, "Lily the Pink". Hal Hison on The Grifters, Washington Post, January 25, 1991:

Stephen Frears's "The Grifters" is a delectable con job of a movie. It seduces you into believing it's merely a cheeky trifle, and then, when you least

expect it, lowers the boom. Indeed, the tone of this nimble, persistently odd movie is

wicked and buoyant. With a script from Donald Westlake, who worked from the Jim Thompson novel about a trio of small-time crooks, the picture is brisk and sleekly contoured, with a sophisticated sense of cynical fun. The line Westlake and Frears walk skirts the edge of parody; it's the most puckish of film noirs. Their characters are scoundrels, but they have a hipster's arrogance; they play the sucker for nobody, and the sneaky thrill here comes from watching them work the angles for the upper hand.

Frears plays up the venal gamesmanship of his wise-guy opportunists; clearly, he appreciates the precision craftsmanship that goes into their con artistry. Though the milieu resembles that of "The Sting," in spirit the picture recalls "Beat the Devil" or "Prizzi's Honor." Like Frears's last movie, "Dangerous Liaisons," "The Grifters" is a celebration of amoral scheming; it has a knowing, ironic glint in its eye.

There's a sly deception in the movie's jauntiness, however. It's not what we might have expected it to be: It's not shallow. But it doesn't do what most movie adaptations of Thompson's novels do; it doesn't roll out the existential thunder drums.

Instead, Frears penetrates to the human element in Thompson's tabloid universe, to the core of his characters' lives. The movie has teeth, and it bares them without losing its mangy skid-row sass. Frears has assembled a sublime cast of actors to play his sleazy pack of operators. Roy (John Cusack), who claims to sell matches and lives in a borderline reputable hotel in L.A., plays the "short con," working low-risk nickel-and-dime grifts designed to keep him in the game but out of trouble.

What Roy shoots for in his everyday life is a kind of bland anonymity; he's low-key to the point of invisibility. Roy is inured to a scaled-back, bunkered-in existence; he doesn't mind being a small-timer. There's a problem, though; his girlfriend, Myra (Annette Bening), is built for limousines and the fast lane. She used to work the high-end cons, suckering oil-rich Texans out of their millions. Recently, though, she's fallen on hard times and casually turns tricks to make ends meet. With her platinum tastes, Myra is itching to get back into the big money, and she sees Roy as her ticket. Roy sees otherwise; if the "long con" artist slips up, he goes to jail, violating the first of Roy's two commandments -- never do time.

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With his soulful eyes and tiny,

pensive mouth, Cusack is like a Valley Boy Byron; his patter is tough, but he looks too sensitive, too poetic, for the line of work he's chosen. It's shrewd for Frears to have picked the fresh-faced Cusack for the part of Roy, and brilliant of him to choose Anjelica Huston to play the part of his mother. Lily, who's only 14 years older than her 25-year-old son, drops in on him just after he's had a baseball bat shoved into his gut. She's in the business too, handling "playback" at horse tracks around the country for a Baltimore-based bookie (Pat Hingle). But even after she's rushed Roy to the hospital, saving his life, he wants nothing to do with her. They're blood enemies, really, and though Roy's animosity toward Lily has something to do with her abandoning him at an early age, the tension between them goes far beyond that into something Oedipal.

Lily's protectiveness can't be fully explained as blossoming maternal urges, either. Sex is a major figure in the geometry Frears sets up between his characters. The film's real battle is between Myra and Lily, who both want a piece of Roy — who decides he wants nothing to do with either of them. Lily's haughty disdain for Myra is riotously lowdown; she manages to snub her with nearly every feature of her anatomy. Huston's thoroughbred elegance has never seemed swankier than it does here. She appears more womanly here than ever before, and with her snow-white hair cropped close to her head, her limbs seem so impossibly elongated that the sight of her merely walking across a room in her stepladder heels becomes an eye-popping occasion. (Imagine the spirit of Mae West entering the body of a giraffe.)

But if Huston's physical attributes seem grandly overscaled, her emotions are precisely tailored and exact. None of the characters in the novel is fully articulated; they're sketches really, cartoons. But if Huston is a cartoon, she's drawn in flesh and blood. She brings a vital conviction to her scenes; they're scorchingly immediate, and her ability to get in sync with what Lily's feeling is what gives the movie weight. She may be the best we have.

As Myra, Bening gives one of the most feline performances in movie history; she's pure cat. If Huston anchors the film, Bening supplies it with something else -- something like a champagne tickle. She slithers through the movie, clothes on and clothes off, as if the camera were some sort of aphrodisiac. She's the latest in a long line of movie vixens, but she brings a joyous lack of inhibition to the assignment. She takes naughty manipulation to new levels of abandon.

"The Grifters" is pretty sparsely populated; it's mostly these three rats, but Hingle does execute a suave bit of cruelty as Lily's mobster boss. His presence drops a little gravel into the mix. What's fascinating about the film is how it never loses its Southern California airiness; it never turns dark, even when it turns grim. The range of colors in Oliver Stapleton's cinematography is splashy without being overbright or gratuitously stylish. Frears has taken a novel approach to Thompson's losers; he's decided to have fun with them. And as a result, that's what we get too.

Allen Barra: “Time for Jim Thompson to Be Famous Again,” Wll Street Journal, 17 June 2010:

'You just wait," Jim Thompson said in 1977 shortly before his death in near obscurity. "I'll become famous after I'm dead about 10 years." If Thompson was known at all when he died, it was for his contribution to the script of Stanley Kubrick's first film, "The Killing," or for his hackwork on countless TV shows and "novelizations" of series such as "Ironside." His prediction for his fame was off by three years. In 1990, three of Thompson's novels were made into films, most notably "The Grifters," starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by Stephen Frears. The film earned four Academy Award nominations.

Now it's 2010, and time for Thompson to be famous again. His best-known novel, "The Killer Inside Me," has been made into a controversial film (in limited release Friday) by the English

director Michael Winterbottom, starring Casey Affleck as the seemingly amicable, dim-witted and murderous small-town Texas sheriff, Lou Ford.

Nearly all of Thompson's books are currently in print from Vintage paperbacks. At least one is in the process of being optioned

for movie production, with others likely on the way. Later this year, "South of Heaven," one of Thompson's last books and few noncrime novels, will be republished in a special edition by Arion Press with illustrations by the black-humored cult artist Raymond Pettibon. Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma Territory, in 1906, the son of a legendary lawman. He liked to tell the story that he was born in a jail. After a hard-scrabble existence in which he was everything from a doorman in a seedy hotel to a golf caddy to the director of the WPA's Oklahoma Writer's Project, he embarked, at age 43, on a career as a writer of crime fiction after failing at "serious" novels in the socially conscious mode of John Steinbeck. (He had also attended college for a while in the 1920s. The man

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whose novels are so often called "hellish" once described hell as the College of Agriculture at the University of Nebraska.)

He had 29 novels published in his lifetime, nearly all of them what were once called paperback pulps—most printed by Lion Books, whose volumes generally sold for 25 cents and whose authors included Robert Bloch, the author of "Psycho," and David Goodis, whose "Shoot the Piano Player" became a film by François Truffaut. But by the time of Thompson's death, his books were out of print in this country.

Though written in the 1950s and early '60s, all of Thompson's crime novels are a nightmarish reflection of the Depression he grew up in. He created a noirish world of prostitutes, pimps, con artists, gamblers and corrupt lawmen—the last as revenge on a father from whom he was alienated.

The French, of course, first appreciated Thompson's brand of Americana. "In America," says Arnold Hano, Thompson's editor at Lion Books, "if someone had heard of Jim but had not read him, they thought of him as a producer of drugstore book-rack fodder. In France, they thought of him as an American Dostoyevsky. To the French, he was the inheritor of Poe's legacy, someone who could open doors to the darkest parts of the human mind."

The torch that lit the way for the Thompson revival was the French writer-director Alain Corneau's "Série Noire" in 1979, adapted from "A Hell of a Woman." Two years later, Bertrand Tavernier turned "Pop. 1280" (yet another thriller about a murderous sheriff) into "Coup de torchon" and set it in French Equatorial Africa. The film, staring Isabelle Huppert and Philippe Noiret, was a huge international hit nominated for an Oscar as the best foreign film. (As good as the film is, one can't help wonder what Jean-Luc Godard, who had earlier expressed interest in acquiring the film rights for the novel, might have done with it.)

What spurred the Thompson revival with American readers, though, was Barry Gifford's Black Lizard Press. Mr. Gifford, a Bay Area novelist best known for his "Sailor and Lula" novels, had read "The Killer Inside Me" when he was 13 and was "enthralled." In 1982, in Paris, he read several of Thompson's books in French editions, acquired the rights for his own company, and reprinted 13 of the most popular crime classics—including "Savage Knight" (1953), "A Swell Looking Babe" (1954), "After Dark, My Sweet" (1955), "The Getaway" (1959), "The Grifters" (1963) and "Pop. 1280" (1964). Black Lizard's paperback editions featured introductions by Mr. Gifford and appropriately lurid covers from artist Jim Kirwan that you could indeed judge the books by.

Over the years, Mr. Gifford says, "I've met a lot of people who think they know Thompson from the movies made from his books—'The Getaway,' for instance, which was the most successful movie made from a Thompson novel." (The 1972 film, directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, was a box-office hit—though Thompson received no screen credit for it.)

"But the movies generally soften or distort Thompson's vision," Mr. Gifford says. "He's just too raw and to graphic for mainstream America."

And probably he always will be. Donald E. Westlake, LA Times obit, January 2, 2009 Donald E. Westlake, a prolific mystery writer who won three Edgar Awards and an Academy Award nomination for screenplay adaptation in a career spanning five decades, has died. He was 75.

Westlake collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack on his way to dinner New Year's Eve while on vacation in Mexico, his wife, Abigail, told the New York Times.

The author of more than 90 books—most of them written on a typewriter—Westlake wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West -- in part because people didn't believe he could write so much, so fast.

"In the beginning, people didn't want to publish more than one book a year by the same author," Susan Richman, his publicist at Grand Central Publishing, told the New York Times.

In recent years, Westlake wrote under only his own name and the pseudonym Richard Stark. More than 15 of his books were made into films, and he wrote a number of screenplays -- most prominent among them, "The Grifters," the adaptation of the Jim Thompson pulp novel, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991.

As Stark, Westlake wrote a dark, spare series about a one-named criminal called Parker. "The Hunter," the novel that introduced Parker, was described by critic Anthony Boucher as "a harsh and frightening story of criminal vengeance . . . written with economy, understatement and a deadly amoral objectivity." The book was later adapted by director John Boorman into the 1967 film "Point Blank," starring Lee Marvin. And in 1999, the book was the basis for the Mel Gibson film "Payback."

But writing under his own name, Westlake produced a series of books, comic in tone, about the criminal turns of John Dortmunder, whose efforts at organized crime are anything but organized.

In reviewing Westlake's "Don't Ask" in the Los Angeles Times some years ago, critic Kenneth Turan called Dortmunder Westlake's "most durable character."

Turan also noted that in these books, "Whatever can go wrong in the man's elaborate attempts at larceny invariably does, and in the most amusing and unexpected ways possible."

Westlake's latest novel, "Get Real," is scheduled for release in April.

Donald Edwin Westlake was born July 12, 1933, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was raised in Yonkers and in Albany and attended several colleges in New York state but did not graduate. He served in the Air Force in the 1950s.

His first novel, "The Mercenaries," was published by Random House in 1960. His early works dealt with organized crime as seen from within. Critics said his early work showed a rigor and objectivity worthy of Dashiell Hammett.

Frears—THE GRIFTERS—7

Westlake quickly established himself as a master of what

Boucher called "sustained narrative and observation within the framework of a self-consistent world, alien to law and convention."

Westlake was given Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America for best novel, "God Save the Mark," in 1968; best short

story, "Too Many Crooks," in 1990; and for the screenplay for "The Grifters" in 1991. In 1993, he was awarded the title of Grand Master, the organization's highest honor.

JUST TWO MORE IN THE SPRING 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXII: Apr 19 Jafar Panahi DAYEREH/THE CIRCLE 2000

Apr 26 Ridley Scott BLADE RUNNER1982

PRELIMINARY FILM LIST FOR FALL 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIII:

1933 Mervyn LeRoy, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 1938 Anthony Asquith & Leslie Howard, PYGMALION 1948 POWELL & PRESSBURGER THE RED SHOES

1959 Marcel Camus BLACK ORPHEUS 1963 Martin Ritt, HUD

1967 Arthur Penn BONNIE AND CLYDE 1967 Robert Bresson MOUCHETTE

1967 Frantisek Vlacil MARKETA LAZAROVÁ 1977 Peter Weir THE LAST WAVE

1981 István Szabó, MEPHISTO 1989 John Woo THE KILLER

1997 Erik Skjoldbjærg INSOMNIA 2008 Götz Spielmann REVANCHE

1964 George Cukor MY FAIR LADY CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu …email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center

and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.