Posts Tagged ‘Encore for Murder’

Publisher’s Weekly, the Spillane Doc, Encore and More!

Tuesday, December 20th, 2022

For those of you looking for cyber stocking stuffers, or who will need a way to use that Amazon gift cards you’ll be receiving, four of my books are on sale as Kindle titles right now for a meager $1.99 each until the end of 2022. You can avail yourself of the Collins/Clemens titles Executive Order, Fate of the Union, What Doesn’t Kill Her and my solo title, Girl Most Likely. Also available for $1.99 (not sure for how long) is my collaboration with SCTV’s Dave Thomas, The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton, a science-fiction-tinged crime thriller.

The three Clemens co-authored titles are among my bestsellers at Amazon, and Girl and Jimmy are two of my personal favorites, which if you haven’t tried, you have this opportunity to brighten our mutual Christmases by doing so.

Executive Order cover
E-Book:
Fate of the Union cover
E-Book:
What Doesn't Kill Her cover
E-Book:
Girl Most Likely cover
E-Book: Amazon

The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton cover
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link

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Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction (Mysterious Press) will be out February 7 of next year, which is sooner than it sounds. James Traylor and I had a nice if brief interview with longtime Spillane buff Michael Barson in the latest Publisher’s Weekly.

You can see it here, including color photos of me and of co-author Jim Traylor, which we are considering releasing as NFT trading cards at $99 each.

This week I’m planning to shoot the material for the expanded edition of my 1999 documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane. Several years ago, the doc was edited (and slightly updated) from forty-eight minutes to thirty-some) for the Criterion release of Kiss Me Deadly.

I’ve been planning to reinsert some footage we cut initially (it had run something like fifty-three minutes), and to insert new interview footage with myself, to cover things not discussed and to include what has happened regarding Mickey’s work since his death in 2006.

Phil Dingeldein, my partner in cinematic crime, has found a very good copy of the documentary among our materials and shared it with me. At risk of sounding foolishly boastful, I had forgotten had good it was. Further, it was tightly edited with Chris Christiansen’s terrific score playing almost non-stop beneath. That made it problematic to insert anything that had been previously edited out, material we would have to locate among the dozens of tapes from the 1998 shoot. Mickey’s interview footage had taken up ten Betacam tapes alone.

And as tempting as it might be to restore what I’d been encouraged to cut years ago, disrupting the smooth edit of what arguably is my best work as a filmmaker is not worth doing. For this reason, I’ve decided to expand the current cut in a new way. It will open with an explanatory introduction by me, and at the conclusion of the original documentary a sort of epilogue will follow, bringing the Spillane story up to date. It will also expand the doc to around an hour, which is considered feature length in the documentary game.

The tricky thing is that this new footage will be primarily me talking on camera, which is something not even my late mother would have relished seeing. Our challenge is to include enough interesting visual material to edit over my mug as we can manage. Oh, you’ll see plenty of me, just not enough to turn most stomachs.

We will be covering Mickey’s final novel (Something’s Down There) and his passing, including his request to me to complete the last Mike Hammer novel (The Goliath Bone) and to develop his unfinished material. But it will also briefly discuss our friendship and our collaboration on various projects, including anthologies of his and other mystery writers, the Mike Danger comic book series, and the documentary the viewer will just have seen.

The focus will be on the posthumous collaborative novels and conclude with the 75th anniversary of Mike Hammer’s debut in I, the Jury (1947). We’ll include documentary footage of the production here in Muscatine, Iowa, of Encore for Murder with Gary Sandy, including interview footage with Gary and the actors who play Velda and Pat Chambers. This should connect Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane – the 75th Anniversary Edition nicely to the feature version we’ve recently completed of the Encore for Murder live performance. I am hopeful that we will see a Blu-ray and/or DVD of the new version of the Spillane doc with Encore for Murder as a bonus feature.

As I said, the expanded documentary will come in around sixty minutes or a tad under, and should be a good length for the streaming services and possibly for PBS. Whether Encore for Murder will stream or not, I can’t say. But I will do my best to make it available to any of you who are interested. I am probably too close to know how good it is or isn’t. Clearly Gary Sandy is wonderful as Mike, and the local actors are much better than I could ever have hoped. Several clearly are professional level, and everyone does well.

The production’s MVP is Chad Bishop, who has (under the burden of my supervision) edited Encore for Murder from the actual performance and two dress rehearsals, with the bulk of the footage taken from the former. Chad was the on-stage foley person – part of the fun of doing a Golden Age Radio-style show is having the sound effects performed on stage. But in addition to doing all the foley work, Chad was mixing the sound and laying in recorded sound effects and music cues…all done live. If he had not pulled that feat off, we couldn’t even have considered putting together a “movie” version of our production.

I know I’ve talked about this before, but I look back on what we did in September of this past year with a bit of wonder.

I was initially approached to do a Dick Tracy radio show and refused, then offered the use of my play “Encore for Murder,” which in 2011 Stacy Keach had recorded with a full cast for Blackstone audio. Later Gary Sandy had starred in live productions in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 2012, and in Clearwater, Florida, in 2018. I had been present for both, not directing but able to work with the director and actors in both cases.

So when local theater maven Karen Cooney – who is affiliated with the Muscatine Art Center – asked me to do a Golden Age Radio-style play, I of course thought of “Encore.” Initially I was going to play Hammer myself, but Karen suggested I ask Gary. It was a long shot, and I said I’d think about it.

Before taking that step, I wanted to see what kind of cast Karen had put together. I attended the first table read and was impressed. I went home and told Barb I thought the actors were quite good, but didn’t trust my judgment – I wanted them to be good, after all. Barb, who is totally no-nonsense (she has to be), agreed to come to the next rehearsal. I read Hammer, which seemed to perk the players up even further. When Barb and I went home, she said, “You’re right. They’re good.”

I called Phil and got the project on his radar. I told him if this thing came together, we should try to shoot it with multiple cameras. Throughout the month or rehearsals, co-directing with Karen, I kept Phil in the loop. But it wasn’t till the week of the performance that I said, “Let’s do this thing. I don’t want it to disappear into the ether.”

We shot the two rehearsals and the performance with multiple cameras (four), some provided and operated by Phil, others by Chad, who runs Muscatine’s public access channel 9. On performance night, unbeknownst to us, one of the key cameras ceased to function for the last ten minutes of the show. That’s one of the places where having dress rehearsal footage came in handy.

Keep in mind Gary was only present for three days. The rest of our cast is amateur (a few are pro-am, having appeared in some indie films). But we would at the very least have something for Chad’s public access channel, and I was – and am – hopeful one of the two PBS stations in my area might be interested.

I think it’s likely that the Spillane documentary will be on some streaming services. Whether Encore for Murder will be deemed worthy remains to be seen. I will let you know, and be frank about our fate.

As I said last week, I will be entering this into a couple of Iowa film festivals.

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Who Killed Santa?  A Murderville Murder Mystery

If you have Netflix, I would guess you are occasionally disappointed, even frustrated, by their original fare. But when they get it right, they get it right. And their Who Killed Santa? A Murderville Murder Mystery is hilariously wonderful. You should probably watch the six episodes of the Murderville series on Netflix first; but it should work on you even without that.

The premise is that a famous actor or sports star portrays the partner of Terry Seattle, a homicide cop played by Will Arnett. The mysteries are actually clever and can be solved if you pay attention, which the guest stars sometimes don’t. You see, they have not seen the script, which makes them the butt of the jokes cascading through each episode – at least when Arnett isn’t taking the comic heat himself.

It’s based on a wonderful British series, Murder in Successville, which ran for three seasons. The celebrities on Successville are not always recognizable to an American audience, but it works just the same. You can find those original episodes on You Tube. (I wrote a little bit about Murderville before, back in February of this fading year.)

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Matt Clemens and I did a joint interview on a podcast hosted by the talented and gracious Terrence McCauley that you may find of interest. Matt was excellent. I will tell you frankly that I sucked. I talked too much, I didn’t wait for the questions, I was searching for words, and my only excuse was the podcast hadn’t got on my calendar and I was caught flatfooted by it. But Matt is good.

Here’s a nice essay on the film version of Road to Perdition.

Here’s another.

This essay looks at the tropes that can be found – or in some cases were generated by – Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. I am mentioned.

This years-late review of my Dick Tracy: The Secret Files anthology is well done, if a tad late in the game.

The article calls Road to Perdition one of the best crime comics of all time. You bet! But, uh…where’s Ms. Tree?

M.A.C.

Stockings Well-Stuffed

Tuesday, December 13th, 2022

I have been getting my stocking stuffed early (I am very happy to say) with good reviews for The Big Bundle and Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction.

You may recall that The Big Bundle received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and went on to being one of PW’s Books of the Week. Now here is PW’s starred review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction (due out the first week of February and can be pre-ordered now):

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction cover
Pre-order now!
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction

Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. Mysterious, $26.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-61316-379-5

In 1947, Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) unleashed his hyperbolic private eye and WWII vet, Mike Hammer, on the world with I, the Jury, a revenge saga that featured a major infusion of sexual innuendo and unfettered violence that scandalized not only other mystery writers but also the publishing industry and beyond. In this illuminating biography, the first devoted to Spillane, MWA Grandmaster Collins (the Nathan Heller series), a late-life collaborator of Spillane’s, and critic Traylor provide incisive analysis of Spillane’s unique career. Employing exhaustive research and their access to Spillane’s personal archives, the authors move from Spillane’s precocious childhood to his time at comic book publisher Timely writing text fillers; his WWII service as a flight instructor; the epic breakthrough with the Signet/NAL paperback edition of I, the Jury; the superstar years of 1948–1953, when each Mike Hammer novel was reprinted in the millions; and his surprise conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness movement. Spillane’s growing appetite for acting and star-making turn in the 1970s as a TV pitchman for Miller Lite beer is recounted in colorful detail, while his long-delayed triumph in being named a Grand Master by his MWA peers in 1995 is quite affecting. The book concludes with several highly informative appendices, including Collins’s fascinating “Completing Mickey Spillane.” This definitive work is indispensable for any fan of the revolutionary Spillane and his two-fisted novels. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Feb.)

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Not to leave The Big Bundle out of the mix – available now on e-book and on audio and in hardcover next month – here’s a great write-up from that pro’s pro in prose (sorry!), James Reasoner.

Big Bundle cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:
The Big Bundle – Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins’ Nathan Heller series began in 1983 with True Detective. (Almost 40 years ago? How is that possible?) True Detective is one of the best private detective novels I’ve ever read. Through 18 more novels and story collections since then, Collins has maintained an incredibly lofty standard on this series and kept it alive through several different publishers, a pretty impressive feat in itself.

The Heller series moves to Hard Case Crime, a match that seems well-nigh perfect to me, with The Big Bundle. The Heller novels always involve real-life crimes, and in this one, it’s a high-profile kidnapping in Kansas City in which the six-year-old son of a wealthy Cadillac distributor is abducted. The kidnappers want $600,000 in ransom money. There’s something off about the whole deal, however, and Heller is called in to try to help recover the boy before it’s too late.

A lot of twists and turns and violence and tragedy ensue. The kidnappers are caught, but only half of the ransom money is recovered. What happened to the other half? That’s the question that brings Heller back to Missouri five years later, in a high-stakes mystery involving not only many low-level criminals but also Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa.

As always, the research is thorough and meticulous, the background is fascinating, and the pace is great. Collins had me staying up later than usual and flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen. And of course, Nathan Heller is a great protagonist, smart, stubborn, plenty tough when he needs to be. The Big Bundle is classic private-eye fiction, just like the rest of the Heller series. I had a great time reading it and give it a high recommendation. It’s available in e-book and audio editions now, and a hardcover is on the way.

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I have been working on the video presentation of the Mike Hammer radio-style play, Encore for Murder, performed here in Muscatine, Iowa, on September 17 with Gary Sandy reprising his role as the famous detective. Phil Dingeldein, Chad Bishop and I recorded the performance on multiple cameras (and recorded two dress rehearsals, too, for protective coverage).

Chad – who was the on-stage foley artist, again radio-show style – is an expert editor (among much else) and he and I have been assembling the show from the available material. It’s a big but fun editing job.

I frankly think it’s very good, but there’s a chance I’m just deluded. I can tell you I am almost giddy being back in an editing suite and working on what is essentially an indie film again. I think our local cast did a terrific job supporting a pro like Gary, whose presence raised everybody’s game. Gary, as you may know, played Lt. Max Anderson in my feature, Mommy’s Day (1997)

Phil and I, of course, are longtime collaborators. It’s always a joy to work with him. (He produced the two commentaries I did, and the restored Brian Keith pilot film, for Classic Flix on I, the Jury as well as the forthcoming The Long Wait.)

What are we going to do with this thing?

I am considering entering it in a few Iowa film festivals, and may offer it to Iowa PBS and/or the Quad Cities PBS station, WQPT. I will show it to my buddy Bob Blair, the honcho at VCI home video, where we are talking about releasing an expanded version of my documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (1999), which is still in progress. Encore for Murder might be a bonus feature there…or possibly a separate release. I need to see how people outside the Muscatine bubble might react.

I can only say that everywhere I go around here, I am still hearing from locals about how great the show was…and it’s been almost three months since our one-night performance.

For you Mike Hammer fans, I promise that at the very least I will make it available here, possibly as a DVD.

Stay (as we used to say) tuned.

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If you are looking for stocking stuffers (for yourself or others) and have already ordered the Classic Flix Blu-ray/4K/3D I, the Jury, here are other Mike Hammer flicks that are available on Blu-ray at Kino (all under twenty bucks each):

The Girl Hunters (Mickey as Mike; includes my commentary)

My Gun Is Quick (flawed but interesting)

I, the Jury (1982 remake with Armand Assante)

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I have said here several times that the Michael Bay movie The Rock (1996) is really the slightly disguised last Sean Connery-starring James Bond movie. The proof has been assembled here, and it’s worth your time if you’re at all a Bond fan (are you listening, Matthew Clemens?). (How about you, Nate Collins?…It’s a Nic Cage movie, son!).

The great J. Kingston Pierce at the equally great Rap Sheet site catches people up to what I’ve been doing of late. I should say that my assumption (which Jeff reports) that Too Many Bullets will be one of the longest Heller novels to date did not come to pass. Oh, it’s pretty long – 80,000 words – but that’s the length of The Big Bundle, and both fall short of True Detective and Stolen Away, in the door-stop length department.

Here’s a good Big Bundle review at Bookgasm, though I disagree with the reviewer’s assessment of the second half of the novel, the second section having been singled out for praise elsewhere (some nice reviews are already posted at Amazon).

I am very pleased (no surprise!) with narrator Stefan Rudnicki’s reading of the new Mike Hammer book, Kill Me If You Can. He’s managed to make the loss of Stacy Keach as narrator much easier to go down. Stefan is the honcho at Skyboat Media, and while first appearing back in 2015, this essay on my work and Skyboat’s interest therein you may find worth your time. A video clip of Stefan at work on Quarry’s Choice is included. By the way, Stefan and Skyboat just picked up the short story collection, originally published by Mysterious Press, A Long Time DeadA Mike Hammer Casebook. Should be out on audio next year.

It should be noted that Kill Me If You Can might be considered a collection, as the Hammer yarn of that name might rightly be considered a novella, and the rest of the book includes five Spillane/Collins short stories, two of which are significant Hammer tales taken from film scripts of Mickey’s.

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Several books are reviewed here, and one of them (scroll down) is Kill Me, Darling.

Next is this very good and wide-ranging essay (at the sublimely named site Monkeys Fighting Robots) on my work with an emphasis on Road to Perdition. Check it out.

The prose novel version (the one from Brash Books) of Road to Perdition gets a nice write-up here. It’s about books you might like if you’ve enjoyed the work of George V. Higgins. Somewhat ironically, it was the fiction of Higgins that made me stop reading other authors of crime fiction because I felt myself being too influenced by his distinctive style. The same write-up (from author J.T. Conroe) makes an appearance in a column about Richard Stark’s The Hunter.

Finally, this is an annotated list of the best 12 Mickey Spillane novels – and about half of them I had something to do with! That’s gratifying, but in any case, this is worth a look.

M.A.C.

A “Big” Book Giveaway

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022
The Big Bundle cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:

I had hoped to do a book giveaway with copies of the Spillane bio, but I don’t have enough copies to do so – what I have has to go out to a handful of professional reviewers. Apologies.

But we do have a book giveaway this week – the new Nathan Heller, The Big Bundle, from Hard Case crime. I have ten trade paperbacks of the novel (which will be published initially in hardcover – these are ARC’s, Advance Reader’s Copies).

[All copies have been claimed. Thank you for your support! –Nate]

Because the physical copies of the book are tied up at the London docks, the novel won’t go on sale until some time in January. But the e-book is available Dec. 6 and the audio (indeed read by the great Dan John Miller!) is available now. So you should be able to post Amazon reviews as soon as you’ve read the book.

By the way, I received copies of the audio of The Big Bundle a few days ago, so it exists!

Speaking of which, here’s a spiffy review of The Big Bundle from the Considering Stories web site to whet your appetites:

THE CASE OF THE MISSING $300K:
MAX ALLAN COLLINS’ THE BIG BUNDLE
by Daniel Robichaud

When detective-to-the-stars Nathan Heller is called in to consult on the kidnap job in 1953, he’s got a few successes under his belt for work he’s done. The big marks on his record in terms of working kidnapping jobs was the work he did on the Lindbergh Baby case, which history has shown did not end at all well. Still, he’s a fresh set of eyes and ideas for the job, and the person or people who took Robert and Virginia Greenlease’s son Bobby from a boarding school are not exactly criminal masterminds. They snatched the kid just fine but walking the parents and the authorities through the ransom process has been trial after trial, with bumbling, idiocy, and amateurism on the kidnappers side. However, the ransom is the biggest on record so far: $600,000 in cash.

Well, Heller finds himself involved, but not as much as he might’ve wished. The FBI is calling the shots, when the local law is not interfering, and when Nate has the opportunity to wait for the perps and tail them or beat the answers out of them, he’s pulled away in an effort to save the kid’s life. By the novel’s midpoint, that particular mystery is mostly resolved: the fate of the kid is answered, the kidnappers are identified, and the money is recovered. Well, half of the money is recovered. The rest of the cash just vanishes into midair. All of that is historically correct, author Max Allan Collins finding gaps in real history to find a space for his fictional detective’s involvement along with some sly reworking of the facts and involved persons in order to make a satisfying narrative. As Westlake alluded in the opening of his tabloid-themed novel Trust Me On This, the real world seldom relies on plausibility while novelists are constrained by an audience’s suspension of disbelief.

One could consider the book to that point a rather involving work in its own right, but once that case is resolved, Collins really opens up the period and the scope, as parties are interested in figuring out just what happened to the missing cash. Fast forwarding to 1958, we find Senator Robert Kennedy convinced the money has made its way to the Teamsters via gangster connections—his Senate Rackets Committee is trying to find a platform to prosecute the leadership of that union. However, Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa believes the cash ended up in crooked hands. Both of these men want Nate Heller to go looking, and all roads lead him back to Saint Louis where the money disappeared in the first place.

It is there that Nate finds himself once again in crosshairs, people working angles and exploring various lines for locating the missing cash. Some familiar faces might know more than they are letting on, but all of them are interested in getting their own piece of the action, whether that’s a percentage of the missing fortune or a kickback. Will Nate find out what happened to all that boodle, or will he wind up one more victim, his career or even his life laid upon the sacrificial altar of mankind’s greed?

Max Allan Collins has been chronicling the life, times, and career of Nate Heller. The Big Bundle is the eighteenth novel featuring the detective, though he’s also appeared in numerous short stories and novellas. Heller’s adventures kicked off with 1983’s True Detective (which takes place in the 1930s). The books are generally engaging historical thrillers, balancing good research, engaging characters, and twisty mysteries. This eighteenth volume is no exception, either.

In The Big Bundle, we find Heller in his late forties. He’s got enough experience to know how to handle himself, and he’s not as prone to the sorts of leaps that younger folks get up to—but he’s also not so old that he’s completely risk averse. There’s a measured quality to his embrace of trouble that is engaging. Here’s a guy who will still get in over his head, who better understands the stakes as well as his own abilities. It’s the perspective of age that makes this adventure all the more intriguing. In fact, Collins has never shied away from involving Heller in some major historical crimes and situations.

The historical elements in The Big Bundle are big headline stuff from the times, in fact. The details behind the Greenlease Kidnapping and its resolution are easily available to true crime afficionados, and the general beats of the case are unchanged here. Those in the know will not find surprises in the flow of the case itself, but Collins does inject his character into the scenario in unexpected ways. Because Nate Heller has a history with corruption himself, he’s just as often seen as a force of law and order as a tool of the Chicago mob, and this dual reputation gives him access to places and people that normal law enforcement cannot. Collins uses the duality quite nicely here. That he gets to engage with people on both side of the case is quite enjoyable.

The later stuff takes a bit more license with history, using some big events and personalities as well as some created characters. It all rings just true enough that I don’t feel compelled to check a history book, which is how I most enjoy my historical fiction. A lived-in sense of the world, and a quirky perspective on the times are more enjoyable for me than a strict, dry, academic approach to the subject. Fans of James Kestrel’s Five Decembers will find plenty to love in Collins’ playing with history. The Big Bundle is a straight-ahead suspense yarn, a pairing of mysteries nested comfortably in real world events, more or less.

And though it is the eighteenth book in the Heller series, it stands on its own quite well. The first person narration hits on some of the events from past novels but does so without spoiling the secrets and suspense those books contain, inviting us to continue with the Heller series if we like the character here.

And there is plenty to appreciate. Nate Heller is a detective, and therefore a kind of knightly character committed to the resolution of mysteries. He’s not necessarily as righteous as Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, but he does walk down some mean streets. And given the aforementioned dual reputation, he’s as bound to rub elbows with racketeers or hoods as he is with honest citizens or law enforcement. In fact, Heller is a just character in terms of his understanding of right and wrong, as it applies to the way he operates and leads his life. But he also compartmentalizes this moral code while operating in a tough world.

The Big Bundle is a sprawling epic of mystery and suspense, a private eye story without any dames walking into offices but plenty of big, bad world to challenge our point of view character’s moral compass and detective skills. The book is bound to win new fans to the author’s series character, and one hopes Heller gets a bit of the same treatment as either Collins’ Quarry or Nolan characters, which both saw new releases as well as reissues of the earlier books in slick, new Hard Case Crime editions. The book is a dynamite read.

The Big Bundle is available for pre-order in eBook, hardcover, and audiobook editions from the fine folks at Hard Case Crime. The earlier novels have appeared in affordable eBook, paperback, and audiobook editions along with much of the prolific author’s backlist.

Check out the website here.

I have completed Too Many Bullets, the even newer Nathan Heller novel (out some time next year), and thanks to my indefatigable editor at Hard Case Crime, Charles Ardai, it’s really completed. Charles is blazingly fast, at least with my books. As almost a practical joke, I sent the novel out on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, saying it was just in time to ruin the long holiday weekend.

Well, Charles had finished his read-through and had all his notes…Friday morning! I spent the day dealing with his notes and fixing typos and such he’d spotted (and I’m pleased, even proud to say he likes the novel a lot). And now, with the ink barely dry…the novel is finished. Really finished.

Charles and I even worked on the backcover copy, which will also appear on the HCC web site.

All that remains is, at some point, a proof-reader to go through it and I’ll have a few questions to answer. Understand that this process can take months. And months. To finish a novel and two days later be doing the corrections and editorially requested tweaks is…astonishing.

Now I feel a little lost. I puttered around Saturday not knowing what to do with myself. This is a common feeling I have when I finish writing a book. I am working my ass off to finish it, then…what am I to do with myself?

I am taking most of December off from novel writing – I will have my draft of Antiques Faux to write come January. But I will be working on the video edit of the Mike Hammer play with Gary Sandy, Encore for Murder. I’ve seen the first act of two from editor Chad Bishop, and I like it. Not sure what to do with it, since it is after all an amateur production…though Gary, a real pro, is at its center; and the local cast seems pretty darn good to me.

As you may recall, this is a radio-style production, scripts in hand, though there is costuming and a big screen for scene-setting slides. We did this professionally, twice, in Owensboro and Clearwater, and I think this one stacks up nicely.

One idea I have is to include it as a bonus feature on the proposed disc of the expanded documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, which is in progress.

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A movie recommendation and a Blu-ray recommendation….

The Menu

The Menu (in theaters now) is an excellent black comedy with a strong cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Anna Taylor-Joy (in probably her best post-Queen’s Gambit role). Writer Seth Reiss is a veteran of the Onion and Comedy Bang! Bang!, his co-writer Will Tracy comes from Succession. Those credits make a lot of sense, because The Menu is very funny and very dark. The critics have mostly liked it, but miss the point by focusing on the film as a satire on the foodie culture when it’s much more about class in general.

El Vampiro Negro

From Flicker Alley on Blu-ray comes El Vampiro Negro, another outstanding Eddie Muller discovery, the best yet of the South of the Border noirs he’s dug up (which is saying something). Despite the “Vampiro,” this is not a horror film – rather, amazingly, it’s a remake of Fritz Lang’s seminal crime thriller M (1931), in which Peter Lorre made himself known to the world in all his creepy glory. M is one of the great movies, and it spawned a strong American remake of the same title by director Joseph Losey, a film doomed to be underrated.

What is amazing about El Vampire Negro is that it rivals the original and, in my admittedly skewed view (but one that Muller agrees with), is my favorite of the three versions. It just might be superior to the original. (Muller agrees.)

While Negro has familiar elements from Lang – the whistling by the serial killer of “Hall of the Mountain King,” for instance – it has an entirely new twist by putting women…the mothers of the little girl victims…at the center of the narrative. The main character, nowhere to be seen in M, is a chanteuse (Olga Zubarry) in a seedy nightclub. Madame Zubarry is excellent, alternately recalling young Marilyn Monroe and Gloria Graham. The seeming hero, a pillar of law enforcement, is a bully and a creep (though humanized by his love for his crippled wife). The shadows and Dutch angles are superbly rendered. This is a genuine noir find.

El Vampiro Negro
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Rod Lott, guru of Bookgasm, also has the Flick Attack movie site, where he talks about I, the Jury (1953) and does so intelligently.

M.A.C.

New Mike Hammer Book Giveaway & Encore For Murder

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
Kill Me If You Can cover
Hardcover: Target Purchase Link
E-Book: Google Play Kobo
Digital Audiobook: Google Play Audiobook Store
Audiobook MP3 CD:
Audiobook CD:

As our celebration of 75 years of Mike Hammer rolls on, the new Hammer novel, Kill Me If You Can, is about to be published by Titan today (September 20).

We have ten copies of the book for the first ten who write me in exchange for a review on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble and other review-friendly sites. Kill Me If You Can comes chronologically after Velda’s disappearance and charts (among much else) Hammer’s descent into depression and the bottle…and yet it’s a rousing good time! I promise. As a bonus I have included five short stories (two of them Hammer tales, significant additions to the canon) taking place in the “Hammer-verse.”

[All copies have been claimed. Thank you for your support! –Nate]

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I’m involved in many things to celebrate this 75th anniversary of the publication of the novel I, the Jury (1947), including this December the ClassicFlix release of the film I, the Jury (1953), with a 4K Disc as well as a regular and a 3-D Blu-ray. I’ve done a commentary for the film and also included a remaster of the Brian Keith/Blake Edwards 1954 Mike Hammer pilot film (with an on-camera wraparound). Wolfpack has already published The Menace by Mickey and me (a novelization of an unproduced horror screenplay), a collection of his three Young Adult adventure novels, including the previously unpublished title yarn, The Shrinking Island; and a terrific anthology of novelettes and short stories, Stand Up and Die!, which includes a Spillane/Collins “Hammer” story.

Still to come are an expanded, updated version of my 1999 documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and the definitive biography, Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by Jim Traylor and me coming out from Mysterious Press in January 2023.

The most quirky and (for me at least) particularly fun iteration of the Hammer celebration has been the local (Muscatine, Iowa) presentation of my Hammer play (from a one-page Spillane synopsis), Encore for Murder. We presented the one-time only performance on Saturday, September 17.

A generous array of photos accompany this update, and I will share some thoughts and memories about it. However, first I’ll mention that we recorded the production and will, at the least, be excerpting scenes (and a few cast interviews) from it in the expanded Spillane documentary.

Noted radio announcer Max Allan Collins introduces the play.
Noted radio announcer Max Allan Collins introduces the play.

It began with a phone call from local theater maven Karen Cooney, who wanted to mount a play in the style of an old radio show as a fund-raiser for the local Art Center. She thought doing a Dick Tracy radio show would be fun and I, of course, was the logical person to provide the script and participate generally. I turned her down flat, saying I had no interest in promoting Dick Tracy, a property I was fired off of in 1993.

A few days later I called Karen back and said, “However – I have an existing Mike Hammer script in the radio style that you could use.” I explained that this was the 75th anniversary of Mike Hammer’s debut and I was looking for ways to promote that – particularly fun ways.

I told her that Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinnati fame had played Hammer in this play, Encore for Murder, at a mystery festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 2012, and again in 2018 at the prestigious Ruth Ekherd Hall in Clearwater, Florida. Gary’s involvement, and mine, grew out of his co-starring with Patty McCormack in my indie feature, Mommy’s Day.

Encore for Murder was originally recorded in 2011 for Blackstone Audio (in a longer version) by the great Stacy Keach and a full cast including Mike Cornelison and Tim Kazurinsky.

Rene Mauck as Velda with Gary Sandy as Mike.
Rene Mauck as Velda with Gary Sandy as Mike.

Initially for this local presentation, I was going to read Hammer, and the production would be much like the Owensboro one, which was strictly actors at microphones with a sound-effects table in the orchestra pit. Karen wondered if Gary Sandy might consider coming to Muscatine to appear in our production. Somewhat reluctantly, not wanting to put a friend on the spot, I agreed to ask Gary and find out what it might cost to bring him in, because that would be a fund-raising effort unto itself.

I thought getting Gary to do this was a very long shot, but he not only immediately said yes, he refused any compensation (beyond expenses and lodging, which I insisted upon). This began to get me thinking about the more hybrid presentation we’d done in Clearwater, with costumes and more stage action, as well as a giant screen with scene-setting slides and musical cues, and a foley table right on stage to invoke the feel for a studio audience in the days of Golden Age radio.

Still, with a local amateur cast, I didn’t want to get carried away.

My role was co-director, basically letting co-director Cooney cast it (she knew local dramatic talent and I didn’t) and get the play on its feet. When Gary arrived, I would step in and fine-tune. When I went to the first table read of the script, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of the cast.

I went home and said to Barb, who was keeping her distance from this project, “Am I crazy, or could this cast actually be pretty good?” Her answers were “Yes…and maybe.” I begged her to go the second table read and give me her opinion. I read Hammer myself. Afterward, Barb said, “Yes, they’re good.”

From then on I went to all the rehearsals and read the Hammer role, to give the cast a sense of pace and tone. Karen wanted a table read with Gary on the phone, a conference call. Again, somewhat reluctantly as I hated to impose on him, I asked….and Gary wound up doing two table reads.

Gary Sandy does not do anything half-way.

We rehearsed initially in a small black-box theater at Muscatine Community College (where Barb and I had gone in 1966 – 1968, and I taught from 1972 – 1977). We were not able to get into the rather impressive Muscatine High School auditorium until the Tuesday before the Saturday show. Five days to mount and perform it.

Oh…kay….

Gary was coming in Wednesday, traveling during that day, and might stop by and say hi to the cast (all our rehearsals began at 6 p.m. as the school was using the theater till then – we would have to strike the set every time). We’d only have him Thursday and Friday before the Saturday performance. Making this truly problematic was our foley artist, Chad Bishop – studio manager of Muscatine Access Channel Nine – would be controlling the live action sound effects and the prerecorded ones too, as well as the audio mix and musical cues…all from on stage!

(I provided the Stan Purdy music from Mickey’s 1954 Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Story LP, and from Chris Christensen’s score for the 1999 documentary.)

The pre-recorded sound-effect cues included things like tire squeals, crashing glass through a skylight, and a plethora of gun shots. Gary would have to conform to these prerecorded cues or unintentional hilarity would ensue.

Gary Sandy as Mike Hammer. Foley artist Chad Bishop at right, the full cast on stage throughout.
Gary Sandy as Mike Hammer. Foley artist Chad Bishop at right, the full cast on stage throughout.

So I got very involved in the directing that first Tuesday night in the real theater space. I was on stage talking to Chad about his foley work and the difficulties they created, when I turned and found myself nose to nose with a grinning Gary Sandy.

After a six-hour drive, the unannounced Gary stepped right in and we ran the full first act, sound effects and music cues and all. The next night we ran the second act the same way. Much of this had to do with Gary coordinating with Chad. But it was thrilling, really was, to see this already very good cast get pulled up at least a notch by Gary’s performance level. I was already impressed by the way every single cast member took direction – because my experience is in features, I work on tweaks not broad strokes, and you might think local talent would have difficulty with nuance. In this case, at least, you’d be wrong.

Gary was not happy with the fedoras we had for him, and neither was I. I decided to try something very special. I have one of Mickey’s Miller Lite-era porkpie Stetsons that his wife Jane gave me – in a hat box with Mickey’s own writing on it. Gary’s mouth dropped open when I presented it to him in his dressing room and said, “If this fits, it’s yours…until after the performance.” Each time he wore it at rehearsal, he returned it to me in the hat box and I brought it again the next day. He only wears it at the open and close of the show…but for the play’s final lines, when he steps out very close to the audience, he looked amazingly like Mickey.

Mike Hammer (Gary Sandy) about to make his exit.
Mike Hammer (Gary Sandy) about to make his exit.

We had two dress rehearsals – Friday night and Saturday afternoon, with only a couple of hours between dress and the Saturday night performance. These were intense and I was tweaking the cast performances and my script throughout it all – some changes were made after the final dress rehearsal!

That dress rehearsal had gone well but not flawlessly, and I left wondering whether this was going to be a bullet train or just a train wreck. I was also concerned because we were up against a televised University of Iowa football game. I knew, from playing band jobs on such nights, audience size would be negatively impacted.

But the turnout was very good – three-hundred souls when we’d been under two hundred on advance sales. The silver lining was a V.I.P. After Party, meet-and-greet/Q and A at the great Merrill Hotel, which had sold out at fifty bucks a pop.

My longtime film/video collaborator Phil Dingeldein joined with Chad and his assistant Jeremy Ferguson in positioning stationary cameras around unobtrusively. Phil shot the dress rehearsals (often roving) and the live performance. He had not been to any of the other rehearsals and he, like Barb, was surprised by the cast and the level of this local production, done under tight, unforgiving circumstances, not to mention a nonexistent budget.

The audience loved it, laughing in the right places, drawing in breath at the tough action – our record was a standing ovation, or I should say Gary and the cast (including hilarious on-stage foley artist Chad Bishop) received a standing ovation.

Where do we go from here? I know we obtained footage that will give us some interesting new moments for the expanded documentary. Having Gary and his Velda (Rene Mauck) and Pat Chambers (Chris Causey) talking about playing these iconic roles alone is a big plus.

Phil, Chad and I will edit the performance together and then there will be hard thinking to do. On the positive side, we have a lot of footage, or “coverage” as we say in the feature film game. I would love to share Gary’s charismatic performance as Hammer, as to date he’s the only actor to perform as the character in a stage play; his take in Encore is amusing without being campy, able to spoof one moment and slide into genuine tough-guy menace the next. One thing I’m considering, if Gary gives his blessing, is including it as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray of the expanded Spillane documentary.

Obviously we have to see how well it comes together as a video presentation (it’s high-def and I already know Phil shot it well). Perhaps if people understand the context, and the small miracle of this local production (Muscatine is a town of 24,000 after all), they will find the experience entertaining and even worthwhile…particularly with a pro like Gary Sandy at its center.

Phil Dingeledin on the camera at ENCORE FOR MURDER, with Max looking on.
Phil Dingeledin on the camera at ENCORE FOR MURDER, with Max looking on.

But can we, as filmmakers, capture the excitement and enjoyment of those in the theater that night?

Stay, as they say, tuned.

M.A.C.

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Fans who made the trip to Muscatine for ENCORE FOR MURDER: Mike and Jackie White.
Fans who made the trip to Muscatine for ENCORE FOR MURDER: Mike and Jackie White.
Max, co-director Karen Cooney, and Gary Sandy at the V.I.P. after party.
Max, co-director Karen Cooney, and Gary Sandy at the V.I.P. after party.
The cast of ENCORE FOR MURDER hams it up at the after party.
The cast of ENCORE FOR MURDER hams it up at the after party.
Max, Gary and filmmaker Phil Dingeldein at the after party.
Max, Gary and filmmaker Phil Dingeldein at the after party.