Movie Reviews for Writers: Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane

 

If you are a fan of pulp fiction or hard-boiled detectives in particular, Mickey Spillane isn't a name you're unfamiliar with. This documentary, written by Mickey's oft-time writing partner Max Allen Collins, can tell you all the reasons why that's true. 

"Mike Hammer was not the first fictional private eye," says Otto Penzler. "While Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were successful and well-known, they never approached the kind of success in terms of readership numbers or magnitude of recognition that Mickey had. If it weren't for Mickey Spillane creating the basic mold, the other writers would have had a hard time inventing it. 

"You were influenced by Mickey Spillane whether you've read him or not," says author Parnall Hall, "because every other private eye writer is influenced by Mickey Spillane."

As true as that is, I prefer the way author Miriam Ann Moore phrases the same idea: "Nobody ever hit a noun against a verb like Mickey Spillane." 

So, what can such a renowned writer teach us?

Write your own kind of moral code

Remember that you don't answer to anyone but yourself. You are not beholden to your church or parents' religion, or even the community standards in which you live. You do you, as the cliche goes. 

But, be warned, that kind of freedom can get you in trouble with that church, those parents, or that community.

Says Penzler, 

"In the mid-1950s an author named Frederick Wortham wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent which primarily attacked comic books as supposedly a cause of juvenile delinquency. The only author he attacked aside from comic book writers was Mickey." 

And it wasn't just Wortham. Spillane was catching hell from lots of different critics, as the narrator expounds over clips from his movies. 

There was a storm of controversy over Spillane's strong sexual content and violent action scenes. Along with comic books and rock and roll, Spillane was blamed by commentators as a prime cause of juvenile delinquency. Spillane was blasted as a prime mover in America's moral decline.

 Loren Estleman, author of The Amos Walker Mysteries, explains futher.

We were a very Puritan Nation right up through the 1950s, and it was only at that point that the old standards and barriers began to fall, and I think it was through people like Mickey Spillane getting out there and effectively butting his head against the wall that made those walls collapse. It wasn't violence or sex for the sake of violence and sex. It was there to propel the characters and to propel the story along.

Mickey himself makes it clear that he was never one to shy away from sex or violence. "Sex and violence are punctuation marks in the story," he says. And not just those two topics either. He also didn't shy away from addressing politics in his work, according to Penzler: "He was not afraid to write about politics, and he was not afraid to write about politics from a point of view that was not necessarily the most popular in the say, Eastern establishment of New York publishing."

All of that way of thinking (and of writing) made its way into Spillane's work because it came from his background. He wasn't an ivory tower author, but a regular Joe who wrote. As he says:

It's kind of like a blue-collar existentialist where you're talking about people trying to think about what's right and wrong, but on the everyday level of the "Who's on my ass today?" or "Who's going to, you know, kill me?" or "What what kind of decision can I make uh to keep my myself alive and still try to do the right thing?" 

Look for opportunities

As a blue-collar writer, Mickey was always on the lookout for paying work. Never one to rest on his laurels of Mike Hammer's success, he also turned to short, two-page detective yarns in the backs of comic books. 

There was some postal regulation that in order for them to get mailing permits for the subscriptions on the comic books they had to have a certain amount amount of text material. Now you got 25 bucks a shot for two pages of these things. Now this usually would take about 10 minutes to write, 20 minutes to write, but at that time 25 bucks was a lot of money, and you could write four a day you're getting $100 a day when a hardworking man out there is making 35 a week.

(Personally, I'd love to track some of these.)

 

Something will define your work

Spillane knew his work well enough to know and accept the fact that there would be certain trademarks or habits would mark it as his own. He didn't try to fight those kinds of identifiers or re-invent himself to keep fans and critics surprised. He accepted both his style and any limitations and wrote the way he knew Mickey Spillane could write. 

One of those marks, as the narrator recounts over a scene from I, the Jury, was his endings, which began as early as I, the Jury. 

"The swift violence of Mike Hammer's retribution was matched only by Mickey Spillane's abrupt punch to the solar plexus endings." 

It's something Mickey was proud of. 

Baby, when you're writing a story, think of it like a joke with a great punchline. Get the great ending, then write up to it. 

The ending was a make-or-break moment for him, says Collins. "One thing Mickey was very clear on in his work and even enunciated was that the first chapter sells the book the last chapter sells the next book."

Spillane cared so much about the importance of his story endings that he once put $1000 on the line in a bet with his editor. 

I said a perfect book is written with the climax on the last word of the last page, so if you took the last word away you wouldn't know what the book was about. When I turned in Vengeance, I turned it in without the last word on the last page he just asked, 'What was that word? What was the word?' 'Give me a thousand bucks. He gave me a thousand bucks. I gave him the word."

Screw the critics

According to Penzler, Mickey was able to speak directly to readers so critics despised him. They not only thought of him as low-brow and common, but also vulgar in his writing. It was a sentiment Mickey didn't allow to get him down. In fact, he often turned in back in his critics faces. Says he:

I went to a tea party, if you can imagine me at a tea party, you know, but anyway there they had this funny little guy who was a very self-important fellow. He came to me, and he said what terrible commentary in the reading habit of the American public that you have seven, the seven top best sellers in America today. Whatt I could think of to say but was, well, you're lucky I didn't write three more."

He knew that critics didn't call the shots, not really. It's the readers. "Critics don't decide anything," he says. "Publishers don't decide anything. No, no, the public is the one who decides everything."

He was equally hard on the writers in that equation. "Writers don't have talent. Writers have mechanical aptitude."

Everything must be done with the reader in mind. 

Don't get full of yourself

But that idea of being tough on the writer kept him humble, kept him true to his blue-collar way of approaching his life and his work. Sure, he was a best-seller. He was a movie star even. But he never embraced the kind of highfaluting way of letting that think himself any kind of star. In fact, he didn't even like to refer to himself as an author.

I am not an author. I am a writer. A writer is on a day-today job all the time. He's writing. This is a job for him. He's making money to keep the smoke coming out the chimney. I don't want to go out and dig ditches every day of the week.

I think we could use a lot more Mickey Spillane's in this business. 

[Link] #WriteTip PIs, Lawyers and Clients: Who’s Driving the Bus?

by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman

Recently, I’ve read this scenario in several private eye novels: In a first-time meeting with a new client in a defense lawyer’s office, the PI runs the show while the lawyer stays mum in the background. Sometimes the PI gets aggressive with the client, going full-tilt interrogation mode, demanding to know what the client said and did at a crime scene, for example. Meanwhile, the lawyer sits idly nearby, saying zilch, the epitome of passivity.

I’ve never met a milquetoast criminal lawyer. Especially on their turf.

Better to double-check for accuracy than propagate a cliche in your story.

After reading similar scenes in multiple books, I began to wonder if some writers are reading scenes like this in others’ private eye stories, so they copy the same set-up as if it’s realistic. Nope. It’s not. Copying a scenario, especially one involving a legal setting, without conducting some research to check accuracy is lazy writing. You might as well put your PI in a trench coat, carrying a sap, and swilling whiskey while on the job. You know, the stuff cliches are made of.

Let’s look at a few reasons why a PI wouldn’t behave like this.

Read the full article.

Pulp, Noir, and Hard-Boiled: You Got Your Chocolate in My Peanut Butter!

Obviously, as pulp and adventure writers we all know that Noir is a film term and that pulps helped birth hard-boiled stories, but there is no denying that the terms get sort of all mixed into the batter of a detective-ish cake -- and even by folks who are "masters" of the medium such as film critics and fiction reviewers. So, in light of that, I figured it was time to talk about why and how the grandchild of the group (Noir) reached back up the line and influenced the future of it forebears.

Pulp, Noir, and hard-boiled... Academics and casual fans alike blend them together like ingredients in the same soup. Why is that so easy to do?

Pj Lozito: "Noir" is a film term, really. Although the French had Série Noire books most of the folks who (mis)use the term never heard of that. I'm sure we all have ! Film Noir was named after it. "Pulp" was fiction-delivery system. It contained many types of fiction, Western and romance being the most popular. You could even say science fiction was the next most popular as ASTOUNDING is still with us as ANALOG. Certain pulp mystery stories were filmed and came be called "film noir" (after the fact). But other film noir, like KEY LARGO, derived from a play. I had a film professor who held HIGH NOON can be seen as flim noir. He had us go see BODY HEAT, as a modern noir. So they are noir without being pulp. Other pulp was filmed, The Shadow and The Spider, for example, and have nothing to do with noir. "Hard boiled" fiction was grown in the pulps but a hard-boiled writer like James M. Cain were never in pulps.

Scott Rogers: It's easier to blend them together - visuals are similar, character archetypes are similar, many of the stories fall under the thriller or crime category.

Gordon Dymowski: I think all three genres have the same basic ingredient: stripped-down, straight-ahead prose. All three are "gut" literature, focusing more on direct emotions than, say, their more literary cousins.

Of the three, in regard to writing prose fiction, let's talk about Noir. What allowed it to jump from film into prose? What are the elements that separate it from the other two?

Gordon Dymowski: Unlike pulp and hard-boiled, I think noir tends to be "darker", focusing on more base emotions and hard-scrabble lives. Noir also has a greater moral complexity to it - pulp and hard-boiled tend to focus on the "good-guys-must-always-win", while noir tends to have more pessimistic events play out.

The other distinctive aspect of noir is where it happens - in the shadows, in smoky out-of-the-way places, on the streets. Pulp can handle grand tableaus, and hard-boiled literature can have a wide range of settings....but noir is best kept on a "street" level, focusing on people trying to make their way in a very tough, harsh world. Writing from a more psychological perspective often leads to stronger, more atmospheric writing.

Scott Rogers: The theme of noir "no good deed goes unpunished"

What are the elements of Noir-storytelling that attract you as a writer? 

Scott Rogers: My favorite trope of noir is the voice over or narration. Although many hate it, it's my favorite part of Blade Runner and think it's what pushes it into noir territory.

Gordon Dymowski: One of the reasons why I enjoy writing noir is that it's easier to focus on character and setting rather than plot and narrative. At times, writing about people struggling and getting by can be liberating, even if the story is heading for disaster. Plus, noir allows for some nuance in character - many of the characters share some form of moral compromise, and so it provides an opportunity to explore the darker side of character.

How do those elements make you a better writer?

Scott Rogers: It helps me get into the character's head.

Gordon Dymowski: Focusing on more complicated morality and richer character exploration means that, as a writer, I have to make more of an effort to craft a three-dimensional experience. It's easy to throw in random "noir" elements (smoky bar, femme fatale, etc) - it's much harder to create and maintain a world that "feels" real. (While pulp and hard-boiled don't necessarily need to be "realistic", noir demands a form of realism.)

What works of both screen and prose would you recommend to writers looking to to develop a better understanding of and appreciation for Noir storytelling?

Scott Rogers: Dashiell Hammett, Frank Miller, Jim Thompson, Elmore Leonard, Jonathan Latimer, Billy Wilder

Gordon Dymowski: For writing, Jim Thompson - even if the only novel he wrote was THE KILLER INSIDE ME, he would still be a noir grandmaster. However, Thompson has a great body of work that *demands* you read it...and is definitely worth reading.

Another recommendation - CLEAN BREAK by Lionel White. It's a pretty taut example of noir (it was adapted by Kubrick & Thompson into the movie THE KILLING) and not coincidentally, available for download via Manybooks.net http://manybooks.net/titles/whitelother10clean_break.html

Nugget #65 -- The Coast of Florida

In reality, private detectives seldom got the girl, more often than not got 

stuck photographing cheating lovers, and rarely got to beat the cops 

out of any famous murder cases. And they never, ever, ever had leggy 

dames with curves like the coast of Florida lining up outside their offices 

for double entendres, sultry seductions and hard-boiled adventures.  

But honestly, none of that matters when I start to read or write. 

[Link] Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"(1950)

Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic. Old-fashioned novels which now seem stilted and artificial to the point of burlesque did not appear that way to the people who first read them. Writers like Fielding and Smollett could seem realistic in the modern sense because they dealt largely with uninhibited characters, many of whom were about two jumps ahead of the police, but Jane Austen’s chronicles of highly inhibited people against a background of rural gentility seem real enough psychologically. There is plenty of that kind of social and emotional hypocrisy around today. Add to it a liberal dose of intellectual pretentiousness and you get the tone of the book page in your daily paper and the earnest and fatuous atmosphere breathed by discussion groups in little clubs. These are the people who make bestsellers, which are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob-appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity, and lovingly tended and watered by certain much too powerful pressure groups whose business is selling books, although they would like you to think they are fostering culture. Just get a little behind in your payments and you will find out how idealistic they are.

The detective story for a variety of reasons can seldom be promoted. It is usually about murder and hence lacks the element of uplift. Murder, which is a frustration of the individual and hence a frustration of the race, may have, and in fact has, a good deal of sociological implication. But it has been going on too long for it to be news. If the mystery novel is at all realistic (which it very seldom is) it is written in a certain spirit of detachment; otherwise nobody but a psychopath would want to write it or read it. The murder novel has also a depressing way of minding its own business, solving its own problems and answering its own questions. There is nothing left to discuss, except whether it was well enough written to be good fiction, and the people who make up the half-million sales wouldn’t know that anyway. The detection of quality in writing is difficult enough even for those who make a career of the job, without paying too much attention to the matter of advance sales.

The detective story (perhaps I had better call it that, since the English formula still dominates the trade) has to find its public by a slow process of distillation. That it does do this, and holds on thereafter with such tenacity, is a fact; the reasons for it are a study for more patient minds than mine. Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that it is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

Yet the detective story, even in its most conventional form, is difficult to write well.

Continue reading: http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html

HUGH MONN IS BACK IN HIS FIRST FULL LENGTH NOVEL!

Pro Se Productions once more proves to be a leader in genre fiction with its latest release. A man of the far future plying his dangerous trade like one of the past.  1950s Sensibilities collide explosively with Science Fiction Action and Danger once again as Lee Houston, Jr. follows up his debut 2012 collection with HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE: CATCH A RISING STAR!

Thick, red lips were just a shade darker than her crimson skin tone, but both were in striking contrast to her long orange hair. Her eyes appeared to be only irises, as black as a starless corner of the universe resting on a field of white, but that toothy smile was brighter than a supernova. She was dressed in white like everyone else, but her outfit was a sleeveless, short hemmed number at least one size too small, that did everything possible to accent every aspect of her figure.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Hugh Monn, the private detective?” asked the older man with an accent I couldn’t place. After all, it’s a pretty big universe and xenology wasn’t one of my strong suits, so I couldn’t identify any of their races or species. Besides, the woman was the only one present any insensitive jerk would call ‘alien’. Outwardly, all the men appeared to be as human as me.

“There’s no pleasure involved from my perspective,” I said, while motioning my head to indicate his traveling companions. -- From Chapter 1 of HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE: CATCH A RISING STAR

Hugh Monn, the private detective of the far flung future, is back in his first full length adventure!

In Lee Houston's latest installment of his 1950s style detective in the future, Hugh is hired as a security consultant when actress Ruby Kwartz comes to the island nation of Galveston 2 to record a new vid.  What is supposed to be an easy assignment turns deadly when Monn discovers that everyone around Ruby has a hidden agenda and someone wants to make sure this production will be her last.  Can Hugh Monn catch a rising star before she falls?

"After writing short stories for his first book," states Houston, "I wanted to create longer adventures for Hugh in a second anthology, but CATCH A RISING STAR took on a life of its own and became his first full length novel.  Fans of the private detective in the far flung future not only get more action, adventure, and mystery in this tale; but more Big Louie too."

"We're excited," comments Tommy Hancock, Pro Se Partner and Editor in Chief, "to not only have Hugh back for another adventure, but to see Lee push both himself and this wonderful world he's imagined into a full length novel.   The definitely different mix of Science Fiction with the Detective genre as well as Lee's placing of Hugh somewhere along the center of the Private Eye spectrum makes the concept a fun, exciting one and one that appeals to many types of readers."

As for Hugh Monn's first adventures, Ron Fortier, noted Reviewer, Author, and Publisher stated: "What is particularly refreshing in these tales is that Houston wisely opts not to make his hero a hard-boiled, typically cynical type. Hugh Monn is a genuinely nice guy who likes people and aliens alike and is sincere in trying to make his world a better place for all to live in. He's a good guy I liked meeting and hope to see him again real soon."

HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE: CATCH A RISING STAR features an excellent and evocative cover by David L. Russell as well as stunning cover design by Sean E. Ali and e-book formatting by Russ Anderson!  Available in Print at Amazon and from Pro Se's own store for only $15.00!

This stunning addition to Hugh's adventures is also available for $2.99 as an e-book! Available for the Kindle, via the Nook, and at Smashwords in multiple formats!

For More Information on the author, visit his Pro Se page.  For more about Pro Se itself, go to www.prose-press.com.

For interviews, review copies, and questions, contact Morgan Minor, Director of Corporate Operations at MorganMinorProSe@yahoo.com.

[Link] Dangerous Dames: A Timeline of Some of the Significant Female Eyes, and the Date of their First Appearance

"If it's that delicate,... maybe you need a lady detective."
-- Marlowe in The Little Sister (1949)

Despite various bimbo eyes whose pulchritudinous assets often far outweighed their mental equipment (to paraphrase one critic), competent women eyes have been around for a long time now. That they've finally come into their own is something we should all be grateful for. After all, they have helped rejuvenate the entire private eye genre. It's about time. But they've been around for years.

To see the full listing, visit: http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv138.html

[Link] Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder" (1950)

Editor's Note: This is perhaps the single finest essay on the art of writing pulp detectives, and I'm thrilled to have found it available online. Enjoy! -- ST

Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic. Old-fashioned novels which now seem stilted and artificial to the point of burlesque did not appear that way to the people who first read them. Writers like Fielding and Smollett could seem realistic in the modern sense because they dealt largely with uninhibited characters, many of whom were about two jumps ahead of the police, but Jane Austen’s chronicles of highly inhibited people against a background of rural gentility seem real enough psychologically. There is plenty of that kind of social and emotional hypocrisy around today. Add to it a liberal dose of intellectual pretentiousness and you get the tone of the book page in your daily paper and the earnest and fatuous atmosphere breathed by discussion groups in little clubs. These are the people who make bestsellers, which are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob-appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity, and lovingly tended and watered by certain much too powerful pressure groups whose business is selling books, although they would like you to think they are fostering culture. Just get a little behind in your payments and you will find out how idealistic they are.

The detective story for a variety of reasons can seldom be promoted. It is usually about murder and hence lacks the element of uplift. Murder, which is a frustration of the individual and hence a frustration of the race, may have, and in fact has, a good deal of sociological implication. But it has been going on too long for it to be news. If the mystery novel is at all realistic (which it very seldom is) it is written in a certain spirit of detachment; otherwise nobody but a psychopath would want to write it or read it. The murder novel has also a depressing way of minding its own business, solving its own problems and answering its own questions. There is nothing left to discuss, except whether it was well enough written to be good fiction, and the people who make up the half-million sales wouldn’t know that anyway. The detection of quality in writing is difficult enough even for those who make a career of the job, without paying too much attention to the matter of advance sales.

The detective story (perhaps I had better call it that, since the English formula still dominates the trade) has to find its public by a slow process of distillation. That it does do this, and holds on thereafter with such tenacity, is a fact; the reasons for it are a study for more patient minds than mine. Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that it is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

Yet the detective story, even in its most conventional form, is difficult to write well. Good specimens of the art are much rarer than good serious novels. Rather second-rate items outlast most of the high velocity fiction, and a great many that should never have been born simply refuse to die at all. They are as durable as the statues in public parks and just about that dull. This is very annoying to people of what is called discernment. They do not like it that penetrating and important works of fiction of a few years back stand on their special shelf in the library marked "Best-Sellers of Yesteryear," and nobody goes near them but an occasional shortsighted customer who bends down, peers briefly and hurries away; while old ladies jostle each other at the mystery shelf to grab off some item of the same vintage with a title like The Triple Petunia Murder Case, or Inspector Pinchbottle to the Rescue. They do not like it that "really important books" get dusty on the reprint counter, while Death Wears Yellow Garters is put out in editions of fifty or one hundred thousand copies on the news-stands of the country, and is obviously not there just to say goodbye.

Continue reading: http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html

ALL PULP’S ROUND ROBIN INTERVIEW - THE RUBY FILES

In March, Airship 27 launched its 45^th title (the 4th of 2012) about a 1930’s pulp detective named Rick Ruby. All Pulp sat down with co-creators/writers Bobby Nash and Sean Taylor, writers Andrew Salmon and William Patrick Maynard, and editor/publisher Ron Fortier to delve into The Ruby Files.
You can read the All Pulp Round Robin Interview in its entirety at http://allpulp.blogspot.com/2012/03/all-pulps-round-robin-interview-ruby.html

All Pulp updates regularly. Please visit http://allpulp.blogspot.com/ for news, reviews, and interviews of your favorite pulp-related entertainment.

THE RUBY FILES is now available.
Digital Edition - http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/airship27hangar.html
Print [Amazon] - http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Files-One-1/dp/0615609236/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_10
Print [Indy Planet] - http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=6797
Please visit the official site for The Ruby Files at http://rickruby.blogspot.com/.