Dalton Trebeck: The Early Films

You may wish to know about Dalton Trebeck's early years. While there are biographical details available, date of birth, early jobs, they are unfulfilling. I would like to imagine Mr Trebeck born moments before entering the cinema as a full-grown action star.

Yet there are early films, before he made his name and entered the mainstream in the urban crime trilogy: Bullet In My Brother's Gut, Swimming From Nicaragua and Burn My Hated Demon's Heart, made by the producer/director Jummy "Sphinx-boy" Rainer, who would then go onto make the Dalton mega-hit Die Hard riffs Head Rush (hospital siege, no guns, just fighting and inventive use of drugs, more John Carpenter influenced than Die Hard) and Spine (NASA and terrorists, killer satellites, surprisingly tense and emotive). Hack Dick Freeburn made Totem, the Die Hard on an Indian reservation (yes the finale was in a Indian burial ground). It was during the shooting of that film that Jummy Rainer, prepping the yet unnamed Dalton 3-d Ghost movie, died in a car crash.

It was never the same after that. Spook-Game was the name of the ghost film, was not in 3-D, was heavily re-written to have a serial killer sub-plot (post-Seven craze) that made no sense with the ghost aspect. There were also a lot of spies and it was a horrible mess. Dalton avoided publicising it nor was interested in making a film for two years after that bomb, returning to a few lacklustre action films, such as Gem (jail thief film obviously, but had yet another serial killer), Switch The Ditch (bank heist, double crosses, felt DTV) and Dial D For Detonation, a bomb squad film without suspense (If Dalton is looking at two wires, you think he's going to chose the wrong one? There are five of those scenes.) The bomb squad film, his publicised come-back, was such a disaster that it was all over for Dalton theatrically. This was the first film that Gabriel Van Dyke and Dirk Michael Wheatley appeared, as his buddies. So he went to Japan.

So there are a few early films where he was not the star, made before he was plucked to be brute Sean Santiago in Bullet In My Brother's Gut.

The first one was a vampire henchman in a low-budget, for many years unreleased Cannon flick Hunger Slash, a honest to goodness made in Israeli lesbo vampire flick. Yes, this was so bad that even Cannon wouldn't release it, even with lesbian sex scenes. It was meant to be Europe but no-one tried to hide that it was shot in Israel. You watch it kind of hoping that someone points out that the main vampire is obviously Jewish and try and make that old testament aspect interesting, bring in some Palestinians and Muslim faith but no such luck. She's meant to be a good Catholic girl, seducing many people of various genders for no explained reason. Dalton has the David Bowie part but doesn't die apparently. He simply is there and then is not in the second half. Must have died off-screen.

During the making of this film he was spotted as something interesting by Cannon and placed as second lead in the Delta Force rip off SEAL Squad, a film not as bad as Navy Seals. (Yes, Cannon would rip-off their own movies). His natural charisma dominated the alleged star Jonathon Likie and the film was a minor hit on video, is always on late-night TV.

Next came the Cannon Charles Bronson flick Domino Twelve, where he was the doomed partner, dying at minute twenty. He had three scenes but there met Jummy, who was the writer. Jummy hated Bronson, saw Dalton as a star in the making, and on that film vowed to make a film with Dalton as the lead.

The funding was raised while Dalton played a doomed boxer in Euro-pudding Box For Glory. Dalton plays the supposed villain who drops dead in the ring at the end, ruining the hero's chance at glory. The lead was some Irish git that no-one remembers. It was an awful film. It could have ruined Dalton if the funding hadn't been raised for Bullet In My Brother's Gut.

During this time Dalton also did a small role in an unreleased and reportedly unfinished Godard film Spring Notre, a film about crooked elections. Apparently Godard called Dalton "a very nice man."

That is all that there is to say about the early years of one Dalton Trebeck.

Dalton Trebeck's Japan Trilogy

The Japan Trilogy is as follows: Into Death Us We Kill, Respect For The Mad Buddhist Death and A Father's Tale.

Into Death Us We Kill has many good points. It's the first in the two films made by Derek Q DeLain, who also directed A Father's Tale. There are no American supporting parts. Trebeck says ten lines in the film. There are no subtitles, the Japanese saying a few words here or there and you know what they mean. People butcher one another in many a small Japanese town. Many a young lass goes into the online porn trade, tutored by aging men. Through it all Dalton murders his way to get back his kidnapped daughter, taken in the first scene in Tokyo. Its episodic, essentially Trebeck going from town to town, murdering gangster scum and accidentally killing many innocent bystanders. Trebeck looks increasingly unhinged throughout. He ends up finding his daughter dead, then decapitates all that he sees in a small town. This is a film with three whorehouse shoot-outs, two destroyed police stations (the police are in on it), ten castrated businessmen (one is a politician) and no message beyond brutal revenge. It's great but unseen largely in America due to its insane levels of violence.

Respect For The Mad Buddhist Death is a Warwick Jehane film, the first collaboration stalled by many falling outs. It's the only one of the three Japan films that received real American distribution and is the best one. It has the dumbest plot but the best direction. It has Dirk Michael Wheatley being a CIA agent turned priest, butchering Buddhist Japanese children in the first five minutes, his friend played by Gabriel Van Dyke sent in to kill him. Gabriel loses an arm and a leg in a brutal fight. Then we cut to Dalton. Dalton is murdering a family of yakuza, is betting attacked by men, women and children, hacking them all to bits with a sword. He walks out of the house, looks around, goes to the next house. Next scene he gets a call from Van Dyke, telling him of Wheatley being in town, gone mad. Dalton goes to meet Wheatley, sees that Wheatley has gone too far, tries to kill him. What we have is a ten-minute long fight which goes from Buddhist temples to hotels, murdering literally hundreds. Dalton is left for dead, is rescued by surviving Buddhist, is brought back from death. Wheatley stays on the hunt while Dalton recovers, killing people, burning bodies and buildings then disappearing. He looks tortured. Buddhist track him from spirits, sending Dalton after him, Dalton always too late, finding burned out remains and being blamed, as a white man. So he repeatedly has to fight his way out. Which he does without pity, destroying already injured men. Wheatley then falls in love with a Japanese woman, then kills her for being unpure. Then he does it again. Dalton keeps reliving old assignments, all scene, where he kills people, feeling ashamed. Dalton also kills a pig that is said to be the re-incarnation of an old enemy. That's unusual, even for a Dalton Trebeck film. Finally, after a few near misses, Wheatley attacks a yakuza mainstay, Dalton running in halfway through the scene, they both killing the yakuza before turning on one another for a brutal yet quick fist-fight, Dalton literally beating Wheatley to death before himself being shot by a child survivor. This is a film, massacre after massacre, that offers continually inventive, off-hand brutality. It's genius.

A Father's Tale is the quiet one. There is literally no violence for the first hour. Trebeck finds a baby from a dead prostitute and looks after it. He is in a Japanese village (one of the ones destroyed in Into Death Us We Kill). For the next hour he looks after the baby, interacts with the locals, speaks some Japanese, and is kindly to all. He does a pretty good job of being human. He plays a CIA agent who is hiding out, having been turned on by old friends. The film becomes an action movie when the father of the baby returns to the village, a thug trying to be a businessman, finds out about the dead hooker (who he wanted kept alive, was in love with). This man hunts down those who killed her, or plotted to have her killed. Trebeck is off-screen for half an hour here as this guy kills a lot of people. Finally the two men meet, Dalton deciding it is best to hand over the baby to the father, that he will look after him. Dalton moves on, continuing to be in hiding. This was supposed to be a start of a Japanese series but due to the lack of Trebeck action it was never released in the US. It did well in Asia and the Trebeck part was recast film to film, different director every film, no continuity, the films becoming violent and ungainly. They do not bear watching.

So it was odd to Eastern Europe after these Japanese films. Is a shame. He did a great job there.

Psycho Remake And What Happens To Directors As They Age Or Die

The Psycho remake by Gus Van Sant, one of the most original directors working today, from a distance seems like a very important film in his development (kind of like Dead Ringers with Cronenberg, who went towards quieter subject matter) Here is the film, that while flawed, moved away from the mainstream narrative and was interested in people that as unknowable. Before this Van Sant seemed prone to having people talk too much about theme. After it, save a minor film, he went to the amazing films like Gerry and Elephant. It's ironic that he made the move within a film that's script is the mother of over-explanation (joke is intentional, couldn't resist).

The film is made from a real division. The Hitchcock original is visually brilliant (though very contained, only working within nightmare logic.) Norman Bates is a great, original character is a hodge-podge of every over-wrought theory on sex and violence (from mother-love to skinning to voyeurism to jealousy). They don't miss one and it doesn't make sense as a character when you think about it. But the dream logic on Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, trapped in their own polite private hells, more genuine and oddly British than any Merchant Ivory film has ever managed, has real resonance and manages to focus the stupid aspects of the story. Many of the talk scenes work beautifully even if they are only directed to surface readings, the cast doing deeper work than Hitchcock likely cared about. The end reveal is great as visual nightmare imagery, gives a lot of the undercurrent of fear that runs from the beginning but doesn't make a lick of sense as character. The last five minutes of the original is really bad. So I'm saying essentially that as visual entertainment its a stunner but as a script its got some woeful qualities.

The remake is interesting in that it insists on being shot by shot, is fascinating in many ways yet is hamstrung by the script flaws Hitchcock created. The remake doesn't go in for literal dream logic. Its a film about emotional distance. The people in it are confused, fidgety. The visual style is of rooms with far too much information, from the offices, to Norman's front office, to the stores. The film is very European in that it expresses this through colours that explode through clothes, lighting that is perfect and rich, full of life. Yet the framing, while studying Hitchcock, is not focusing on what Hitchcock loved, which was showing information, then more information, showing the logic of suspense and then making it loopy and neurotic, so the plot becomes nightmarish. This film obscures plot points through diluting focus by so much colour, so you follow but from more objective quality. And you see the people not sure how to interact with one another except through cliches, suspicion or over-expressed emotion that pops through and causes awkwardness. Eyes are always watching others. The Marion Crane voice-overs, while in the original showed plot information and signs of nervousness, now dominate with nervous energy and lack of focus from the main character. Norman Bates is seen in the remake as not a likable fresh-faced young man but instead is a lonely neurotic who isn't quite right. For me, all of this is fascinating. All of the polite notes of the original are betrayed in subtle ways, showing a different world. The talk in the back room in the original was terrific but here is very desperate, as Vince Vaughn, in one of his best performances, is a fidgeting, hollowed out scared freak. When Marion Crane is killed, Norman is not a character you care about following here, is distanced. As a character work its far more intriguing on some level than in the original, as it places the tortured killer in his proper place, is not damning, is viewing him as one of many confused souls. Unlike Hitchcock, Van Sant isn't abusing your natural sympathies by making you identify with a killer for what are actually weak reasons on a rational level (he seems so sweet and victimised) even though they have interesting aspects. This levelling out on the characters, as well as distance, means that the second half loses a little in momentum (But the Macy- Vaughn verbal duel is great). The killings also lose immediacy as you are both disturbed by and aliented from the characters more, and by the killings themselves not being Van Sant's strength. The nightmare logic of the final ten minutes, when Norman's demons are revealed don't have any punch. They do look weak and grabby towards psycho-analysis. It's a shame in that while Van Sant's visualising does a lot of great stuff on character and mood, the plot does hobble him. What's good about Vaughn's performance, that he is hollowed out, nervous tics that cover vacant, nervous emotions, also suggest darkness, that hints at what's coming. But they also suggest something more mysterious and open to interpretation that was written in the original script. Some of the plot suspense that Hitchcock liked, that in his closed-off world added threat when Norman bates seems nice, seems to waste time when you feel there's something wrong, due to performance.

So it's an unique film, far more fascinating than has been suggested on the remake's initial release. Hopefully people will begin to look at it more objectively. It may have a chance now as I don't think Hitchcock has the same cultural currency that he had when it was made. Hitchcock, it seems to me, is sort of like John Ford. He was of an era, was an entertainer who had great craft, who made a few great films that went beyond the limits of entertainments, had lots of interesting instincts. But to be a real lasting artist never really made enough great films, was not focused enough on what his work was about. I think in the last ten years Hitchcock has fallen away a little. Everything you can write about him, from Catholicism, Freud, use of suspense, misogyny, has been written. There's nothing really left. He's not as interesting as a person or as a director as Welles, Murnau or Kubrick, not to mention European masters like Bression, Antonioni, Bergman or Bunuel (if you want pervert as artist, he's the real deal), nor the Japanese genius of Ozu. He's not even as interesting as a British director as Powell-Pressenger, who made more great films, were consistent, hugely under-explored. All of these difficult directors have had far less writing done on them, probably because they are more difficult as subject matters. Hitchcock at the moment is in a slump. It'll be interesting to see what his real legacy is, as it is forming.

Directors are odd as they age. After death they become geniuses for five years then a lapse. When they come back into interest, they always seem different, as if now complete and following a period of what could have been. Someone like Hitchcock is defined already, wouldn't have gotten better as there was little curiosity. Someone like Wells you can't help but wonder. As the movie brats approach the age when some will soon likely start dying, it'll be interesting to see what occurs. Will Speilberg and Scorsese last much beyond their deaths? My bet is Coppola will get the long-term praise, as his seventies work still towers above all else. His failings will mean he's less praised than people such as Bresson but he seems the most interesting still.

Of the younger generation, still in the potential, its a little bleak. Cronenberg, Malick and Van Sant seem to have gotten a second wind, Schrader remain interesting but of the younger generation from them there's a slight dullness and collapse that seems reminiscent of the movie brats in the early eighties. Fincher made Zodiac, a toweringly dull film with no character or point, following Panic Room, an over-produced tech exercise with no ambition. He seems so focused on technical aspects that he ignores content now. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing good work now but not great. He always seems poised but seems better at craft than having an over-view of what he wants to do with his film. The Coens seem to be faltering uninterestingly between too broad comedies and humourless dramas but seem to have lost a spark, especially with dialogue, their great strength. Wes Anderson is faltering badly. His first two films were wonderful, the next two good but a tad ill-defined but still great mood. Now The Darjeeling Limited is such a bad film, so under-written and terminably stupid that it's hard to work out what the hell is happening with him. Essentially, is he aiming to be like Preston Sturges, once great, now a has-been after a brief flush. Alexander Payne seems focused on being horrendously smug and pretentious, Tarantino gone la-la on his movie geek fixation (but he doesn't, to me, seem terminal as of yet), Sofia Coppola interesting but too vague as of yet. You wait for some passion from her. Other people of interest are the Wachowski brothers, who like Fincher seem to be a bit too technophile but have more ambition (when they go wrong at least its wrong in ways that you think, that's interesting) So they seem to have promise, although they could avoid stating the subtext so much. As could Christopher Nolan, another director interested in visualising ideas, even though he can be a bit tin-eared. But his fascination with self-destructive duality obsessed loners is pleasing. Let's hope he starts watching Melville movies. Aaronofsky I never really liked and The Fountain makes me not want to bother any more. One of the more interesting directors came a few years ago, is from this generation. Adam McKay does Will Ferrell comedies but is such an inventive entertainer with Anchorman and such-like, that he's just as original as the others mentioned. And more consistent. Of course the king of inconsistency is Steven Soderberg, who is all over the place, but does make interesting films generally (save a few Ocean's films) and recent films like Solaris and Bubble and the promise of the forthcoming Che make you wish more directors were as nuts as he obviously is. He still seems the brightest hope of this bunch. Hopefully the above is just a sign of looking at a weak moment of this generation and not the sign of something going horrendously wrong.

Anyway, over-long rant over, go see Psycho remake. It's really interesting.

William Shatner's Hair

For reasons best known to my subconscious I watched Star Trek 3 (on the plus side also watched a documentary of Italian gialli genius Dario Argento)

Well, it wasn't very good, neither downbeat or meditative enough to be a film genuinely about grief nor flight of foot in a way that is an exciting adventure. Basically they're in grief, go to a planet, have a few fights, go to Vulcan, make Spock better. The end. Not much in the way of story there. Not even blowing up the Enterprise or killing Kirk's son helps it be interesting. The death of Kirk's son is hilarious, first the incompetent death itself, which is one of the weakest fights even to disgrace celluloid, and then Shatner's reaction, which is is pure ham, not one moment that's not fake, making it a laugh riot.

It was the film where it was becoming obvious that watching these old guys fight wasn't really working, was very mirth-inducing. Shatner spends most of his time keeping in his ample stomach. The fight between Kirk and the Klingon, despite being against a backdrop of an exploding planet, is truly hilarious, no punch ever seeming to land but gets a reaction, the pauses between cuts, reactions, all painfully slow. (Someone, not Shatner, does a back-flip as Kirk). Worst is Shatner's hair-piece, blown by strong wind. I swear I was getting distracted and missed half the fight watching this bloody thing.

And then the finale. A Vulcan ceremony done against lots of fades, set against some truly bad acting (especially by Scotty, who just doesn't seem to give a f**k). And that final line, minutes after Spock gets his brain back. "Your name is Jim, isn't it?" Pure cheese.

So, long story short, I have so little pride that I will watch Star Trek 3 of a Sunday afternoon.

An Obituary Three Years Too Late.

Yes, this is an odd one.

Essentially I was looking through the internet and found out that a writer I liked as a teenager, John Brosnan, died in 2005.

Brosnan was a heavy drinker apparently but he did write some fun sci-fi books, both fiction and non-fiction, such as The Sky Lords trilogy (lots of fun) and The Primal Screen (a book on sci-fi films, which is great and I still have). There was also novels under pseudonyms, such as Harry Adam Knight (HAC), which was The Fungus and Simon Ian Childer (SIC), which had a terrific pulp novel called Tendrils ("Long black glistening streaks of people-eating death" and it lives up to that. Back cover also has "Their insides were being dissolved, digested and sucked out until only skin remained").

He also wrote some fun columns for Starburst magazine, which were fun and nasty to Trekkies and Dr Who fans, as well as being truly nasty to dumb sci-fi fans. It was great.

So there goes a figure from my youth.

Does Loyalty Count For Nothing?

I ask this as I got messed around on getting a job that I have done quite a few times before (stagehanding at a pantomime), is easy, is something I'm competent at, am usually over-qualified for the job I'm doing there. So I usually apply for it, get it, usually it was not even needing an interview as hiring was a backstage concern over personnel used. That kind of thing happened a lot. Yet it comes around and I get messed around due to corporate upgrades, meaning the office people take over, and what was a simple filler job that leads to little during the year but is good for Christmas, becomes a job I can't even get, as there is sudden corporate concerns on the situation. Is it me or does office rules become more complicating rather than simplifying. I have to wonder how professional these types of people actually are, because the decisions make you wonder how they study the areas under their control in their job. Certain jobs, such as backstage theatre, have always been pretty much based on personal ties, knowing who can do what, really are not areas that these people know about practically and yet they make decisions about it. I don't think theatre works with too tight a rein like this, treating it in a corporate way. Of course I'm biased.

Am still alive, honest

Yes. I simply have not anything interesting to write about. Have been busy but not in any way that would create anything that could be remotely mistaken for fascinating. Alas.

Unless anyone wants something on the hilarity on the McCain-Palin combo. But The Daily Show does that better.

Please Burn After Reading

The intro to the positive Phillip French review of Burn After Reading reads: A cast of morally bankrupt Americans descend into paranoia and madness in the Coens' brilliantly contrived comedy-thriller.

He's so very wrong.

This is the Coen Brothers worst film, is easily the worst film I've seen all year in the cinema and is high on the worst films on the decade.

I've defended the Coen brothers and their weaker films, defended Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, found many good things in them. I love Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Big Lebowski among others. I'm a huge fan. Yet this film is taking the piss. I now know what those Star Wars fans meant by the "raping my childhood" line. Although this is more molesting my teenage auteur discovery-type of thing.

First thing I want to know if they were drunk when writing and directing this. I wonder because the script just wanders from scene to scene without any interest in plot or character. Actions occur, we having many scenes that simply wander without interest through locations without curiosity to what goes on with character. The film is incredibly tolerant of boredom. All the plots end up combining in ways that are obvious from the get-go and the film then ends, many characters left off-screen for their pay-off, like someone just turned off the light and went home, utterly disgusted.

The writing is better than the direction. There is no unconventional sequences, intriguing moments. The images are flat and vague. On the rare occasion that they use cinematic storytelling it seems like a rip-off of fifties Hitchcock rather than a bounce from it for some individualistic insanity. For example there's one repeating location, a park, which has various meetings, crying out for some visual imagination. Yet it remains a boring park. Inter-cutting between characters in scenes are awkward, ill-paced and ugly at times.

The acting is dire, especially from Malkovich, who doesn't even try. He's like a bad, bored Deniro performance, yet somehow tops late-era DeNiro in how vague, uninspired and deeply annoying one actor can be on the screen. Everyone is playing idiots yet all are painfully one-dimensional and almost impossible to give life to (Clooney's distinguishing feature is in regard to a sex-toy, which is an awful joke). Which leads to the dialogue, usually the Coen strong-point, here being TV-movie like, directed to monotone in many scenes, no-one seeming to be paying attention, acting scenes unshaped to give specific beats, are simply read without focus.

This is such a wretched mess that I'm furious that the Coens' are responsible.

Siege the book

The first novel I wrote, Siege, is now available at Lulu on book or download form (link available at Blog List). It was written a while ago, and I have tried to avoid revising it, save sorting a few mistakes. I'm quite proud of it, am glad to have it available.

Another novel The Study, will be available from next month, same format.

Of the two The Study is the easier read, is a little more commercial, is based around family dynamics while being a thriller. Siege is a little more ambitious, is darker. The first six pages of Siege are available at LULU and I'll probably post a few other examples soon.

Polanski documentary

This will be brief. As a Roman Polanski fan, I watched the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired, and was appalled by it.

The subject matter was very interesting but the film-makers managed to do nothing with it. A good chunk of the film was showing Polanski's past, which tended to paint his life and interests in a very obvious fashion, showed information that you could get with a little research without comment worth a damn, managed to find no intriguing opinion on him, simply commented that he liked to party and made dark films, that he had an awful past, that his wife and unborn child was killed.

The rape case was a mess in how it was handled. The film seemed to avoid trying for objectivity, was stacked completely in favour of Polanski. The crime was pushed to the background for so much of the documentary, save for a few talking heads of the victim and the testimony, which was typed white testimony against black background. That simply wasn't good enough. This was a man who had sex with a thirteen year old girl. And yet the film was far more focused on how the judge was messing with Polanski, how poorly he was treated, how he couldn't proceed with his next film, yet they seemed to be letting him off with probation for a very serious crime, which he should have gone to jail for. The judge looked to be scared of giving Polanski jail time, yet not wanting to give him jail time, which was a mess of course. But it wasn't worth half the film, wasn't interesting in itself, nor in its handling, as it became special pleading for a sex offender. If this was not a famous film director, all the defences of Polanski would be seen as ridiculous and he would be thrown in jail, seen as a sex pest. That happens to others who do this horrible crime. But the film focuses away from that, from any objectivity, on a minor element of a crazy judge, the fear of jail due to his actions causing Polanski to flee, rather than face the crime itself and the way the law was bending to suit the defendant, because he was a talented film director. A focus on sex offenders, a contrast of the handling of the case to other sex offenders would have made a much better and more honest film.

So film never takes any intelligent stance, in what is a very difficult subject matter, never truly gets into the horror of the crime, nor chastises Polanski. Basically it's a complete disgrace.