The Headhunter becomes the Headhunted!

I like Jo Nesbo.

He mixes the sublime with the vulgar in a way that the best genre writers should. The best stuff, though, that elevates the material. It takes something taudry or cliched-- like murder and greed and theft-- and it turns it into high art. Michael Chabon does it. Donald Westlake did it. Stephen King certainly does it. So does Jo Nesbo.


The adaptation of Headhunters does not do this and while I could go on and on as to why that is the case, I do enough of that here already. This is about being positive. It's about how Jo Nesbo can turn out a good yarn*.

On my podcast episode about the Headhunters film I kept on perseverating  on the idea that "the book was better." As a rule, I hate that phrase. It's lazy, it doesn't mean anything, and worse, it's pretentious. In this case, it happens to be true (which is the worst kind of cliche). While the movie a tolerable, competent thriller, the novel is an ecstatic celebration of that genre.

What makes it worth reading is the ending. It is not exceptional in its writing, Jo Nesbo, for all of his talent is not a Graham Greene or a Cormac McCarthy. Whether because of his translation** or because of his actual style, he's a straight shooter. What he excels at is not so much the prose as it is the form.

The back cover sells Headhunters as a Coen brothers like caper, which is rather disengenious as it's as straight as they come. There's a guy, he's a scum bag, and he commits crime. There is no irony. There is no distance. And there certainly isn't a tone (the Coen brothers, if anything, have that down). I don't now too much about the Norweigians, but I doubt that they have this dry of a humor. . . That is until the last chapter.


Until the last chapter where the narration changes and suddenly you realize that you haven't been reading a violent crime novel, but a comedy of errors. A joke, writ large, with the last chapter serving as the punchline. And what's more, as a twist, it works. It works really well. Because Jo Nesbo's been doing this sort of thing for a while. He knows his way around a murder or two. He also knows his way around a joke.

So, avoid the movie. Read the book. And if you're desperate for a Norwegian movie go watch Trollhunter instead. I mean, I guess.

I read Headhunters smack between Ledfeather and The Long Goodbye, which are two. . . very different books. I also read it on a road trip with my dad. Like the best crime books (the Stark series leaps to mind), it moves at a clipped pace. I doesn't have to fight to keep your attention, because it doesn't give you the time to get bored or annoyed. There's no ruminating, there's just action.

The trick Nesbo plays with Headhunters, especially at such a point in the story is something worth experiencing. . .or at least something to distract you from how boring Wyoming if it ever comes down to it.



THE AD GAUNTLET

I wrote a couple of comic book stories. They're collected in The Freshman Fifteen and Old College Comics Presents along with a lot of other stories from people much more talented than myself. I'm rather proud of the fact that these books came together and I am even more proud of the fact that they are pretty good.

You can listen to more of this type of nonsense on White Guys, Square Glasses. We sometimes talk about crime and we mostly talk mad shit. We just underwent a format change, so we'll be tackling movies like Headhunters more often. . . but hopefully, you know, like, better.


You can also follow my twitter. Hey. It's all optional. Nobody's forcing you, here.

*He's also the only point of connection I have with this attractive Norweigian woman that comes into my work, but that's neither here nor there.

**Then again, I've never made that excuse for Haruki Murakami, but then again, who knows?

Bottom of the World

When Bioshock Infinite came out there was quite a lot of talk. There was praise, there was debate, and there was also a lot of misplaced umbrage. It was a game worth considering, though, for many reasons. It was big, beautiful, and it was trying, if not succeeding, at a lot of very big, very weird ideas. Burial at Sea: Episode 1 will give birth to no such debate.

On the whole Burial at Sea is. . . alright. It's Rapture, it's vigors plasmids, it's Elizabeth and Booker on a new adventure (but not really), and Sandor Cohen shows up, and it isn't much else than that. By featuring these characters and featuring this world 2K has created a world that seems to say "Hey, here I am!" and not much else. Good for it. After the explanation of the title "Infinite" to go back to a city (albeit a well loved city) is anti-climatic to say the least.


While this incarnation of the Elizabeth/Booker/Comstock relationship has a particularly brutal origin, it fails to do anything with it (again: this only gets worse when you consider where our heroes were left at the end of Infinite). By the time the big twists of Episode 1 are are made, the game is over and you're left with a distinct sense of confusion. Why is Elizabeth here? Why is she kind of a bitch all of the sudden? Where are the twins in all this? Why is this so by the numbers?

It happened. It's over. The end. See you next time! (Because you know you are going to play the next episode and that's one of the more frustrating things about this DLC. They've got you and you know it.)

Though, the game isn't an abject failure. The combat is still enjoyable (and with samurai warriors, for some reason) and Rapture, as overplayed as it might be, is still a beautiful, amazing place. One side-quest even hints at the highs experienced in Infinite. In this quest, you're made to follow a man who, after designing the department store/prison that the action takes place in for Andrew Ryan, was then abandoned by his employer to the men he sought to condemn. It's the old Bioshock chestnut of "It wasn't supposed to be like this!" Yet, like Rapture's art deco designs and Big Daddies, it's an old tune that works. And it works in this case because that trope is played well all the way to its conclusion, which reminded me of one of the more tragic quests you would get in a Fallout game.

Of course, that mission comes to an end about half of the way through the main game, leaving you with three or four other storylines that don't seem to go anywhere (or do they? And do I care?).

Burial at Sea: Episode 1 fails to deliver either the highs or the lows that the game proper delivered when it first came out. It even fails to match the quality of Bioshock 2's much lauded DLC, Minerva's Den. As much as Minerva's Den played and looked like an expansion pack of a better game, it had a complete story that was worth seeing to the end. They tried to do something with this second-tier sequel and they succeeded. In this case, what we have is  an episode that doesn't work because it failed to reach for something bigger, weirder, bolder. It just aimed for the expected and it hit it. What were are given instead is something that is acceptable, pallatable. And I suppose that isn't the worst thing in the world.



(Also, what's the proper title for this DLC? Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea: Episode 1?)

So Long Stink State: Road Trip Journal IX

Yesterday we finally got the fuck out of Wyoming

We're now in northern Colorado and it's almost as though we're back in a civilized part of the world. There are people with teeth and there isn't nine bars open at breakfast and it doesn't look like a place that's just looking for a bomb.

Even my dad, in his obliviousness to Wyoming's hicks and horrors said that Colorado is a great state. Apparently it's his favorite state to travel to outside of Ohio (and telling from his constant, unsolicited editorials, it might even be nicer than California, which he apparently hates passionately. He says this almost like we're not going back there). Colorado is a pretty nice place. I have some pretty decent memories of this place and, at the very least, it isn't Wyoming.

Hey, why does Wyoming have so much wind? Because Nebraska blows.

Here's proof that I'm no longer on the frontier: This coffee shop that I'm at sells kombucha.

Part of the trip's appeal is to see things and places that I don't normally see in California. Things like indigenous trees. Things like open country. Things like fresh air. Things that LA normally doesn't care about or can't be bothered to have. Though, Colorado has the same kind of appeal that a lot of Los Angeles has, which that it doesn't make me immediately and palaply feel the specter of death.

I mean, they smoke weed and make kombucha up here. This is God's country. Clearly.

I guess I should draw more. Or just do more of something. Listening to podcasts and twiddling away on a “travelogue” is hardly actual work. I'm supposed to get stuff down out here. In a way I sort of have. I started and finished Ledfeather, a book my friend gave me. It's. . . incomprehensible, but I finished it. Since it's by an Indian and Indians, I'm just going to assume that it's a cultural thing so I don't have to live with the thought that the only Native American author I've ever read (besides, like, one Sherman Alexie short story). The idea of that makes me sad. Guilty sad. White guilty sad mess.

I am writing, though. That's nice. I also started up Jo Nesbo's Headhunters, so that should be fun. I can imagine Jamie Lannister pulling a Chigurh.

Anyways, I'm at a coffee shop. There's a flat screen TV on the wall (because what doesn't have a screen nowadays?) and the news is playing. The story is about Paris Jackson testifying in a civil trial. And now I kind want to go back to the country. I know the news over there is going to be the same. It's just that I get the sense that up there people might not watch it. The kombucha is nice, at least.

High Light of the Day: We saw a bear.

Low Light of the Day: It was a baby bear separated from it's ma. Shit suuuuucks.

In which I make fun of Hitchcock

I’m much too old to be batting against the classics. A serious attack on classic is too time intensive for a man who works 40 hours a week and, generally, it's an immensely unattractive quality. Everyone hates a know-it-all. In that regard, it’s a much younger man’s game.With that said: Fuck it, it's easy and I'm bored.

Come along, won't you?

With that said, I found Vertigo to be one of the most profoundly boring movies I have ever seen. Just. . . God, it went on forever. It’s half of an awesome ghost story, then at a certain point I just stop believing that it was worth Jimmy Stewart’s while not to fuck Barbara Bel Geddes. It’s preposterous.

So, yeah, naturally, I'm still going to make fun of Hitchcock, specifically Strangers on a Train.

Strangers on a Train continues that fine tradition of delivering well-paced, well-acted story that you just want to yell at somebody for. And loudly. Right in their ear. It is also the perfect example of a film that could have ended in its first hour if any of its characters bothered to act like normal people with reason and an intelligence slightly above that of a sea sponge with secondary concussion syndrome.

It’s the classic example of where a movie that could end twenty minutes in if someone just bothered to pick up a phone and act like a sensible person who doesn't like murder, which I think is most people who don't huff glue as a vocation or live in Florida.

I mean, hey, you, tennis dick! Just call your lawyer and then call the cops! It’s literally that easy. Do it. Do it now. You are engaged to be married to a US senator. He has a good lawyer. He probably has people in his employ who specifically exist to get rid of things like murder charges. Or the bodies that result in murder charges. Haven't you seen Michael Clayton? Hire exactly Michael Clayton right now, you idiot. You goddamn fucking idiot. Then maybe marry the woman you want to marry anyways so your conversations are privileged. Have you never heard of crime before?

Maybe it’s just because I’m not in the right head space or I’m just a cynic or maybe it’s because I watched too much of The Wire, but isn’t lawyering up pretty much de riguer? I mean, if you want to ruin a perfectly good murder movie plot, isn’t that what you do?

QUICK IDEA: Two lawyers, who are each others’ clients begin to murder people, but can’t go to the police for threat of losing their lawyer’s license! It’ll be called From Here to Attornies. Or something I’ll work on it.

Then there’s the fact that no one ever suspects anyone Bruce (the murderer) as anything but a lunatic who is probably capable of murder. Well, that's not entirely true. Some people probably think he's gay, but then immediately after that they think he's got a death or two to his name. At the very least he is understood to be that gay murderer friend of yours at the party.

He even strangles some old blue hair at a party! I'd like to think there is some satiric intent and that these people are just too polite to call the police, but deep down inside I just know that Hitchcock just really wanted to have that dramatic tennis scene go down.

Strangers on a Train is a series of conveniences and, it gets annoying, until you arrive at the climax, which is a fist fight on an out of control merry-go-round.. And at that point you realize that Alfred Hitchcock is truly the master of suspense because the whole time you were worried that this sort of silly series of events wasn't going to end with amusement park ride peril.

And if I didn’t clarify: THE CLIMAX IS A FIST FIGHT ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND. A PLOT POINT IS A CARNIE’S ABILITY TO CRAWL UNDER SOMETHING. THERE IS A CLOSE-UP OF HIM WIPING HIS BROW.

A CARNIE WIPES HIS BROW IN CLOSE UP, PEOPLE.

And, yeah, it’s kind of a thrill. And it’s kind of harmless. There’s really nothing to it. And then you have a murderer fight a WASP on an amusement park ride. And that’s pretty fun. That’s maybe the movie in microcosm.

Considering that Patricia Highsmith wrote the selfsame novel that this film was based on, I have to wonder what a Talented Mr. Ripley film directed by Alfred Hitchcock would have looked like. Now there's a guy you don't have to worry about calling his lawyer every fifteen minutes.