The Exiled and The Devil’s Sideshow
The Angola Rodeo survives when other prison rodeos have closed because, of all places in America, Angola is the perfect stage.
By John Griswold
Crossing Over
Bridges are opportunity frozen in steel, a chance to pass from one side of an obstacle to the other. The Chain of Rocks Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi River north of downtown St. Louis, is a truss bridge finished in 1929. For many years it was part of Route 66…
Get Shorty: Act 3, the Series
The producers of the Epix TV series Get Shorty, about (small) organized crime going to Hollywood for new opportunities, say it is merely “influenced by” the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name. They even suggest that a security guard at the studio in the…
Get Shorty: Act Two, the Movie
With the second season of the new Get Shorty TV series now available, I wanted to revisit Elmore Leonard’s 1990 novel (previous post) and the 1995 movie of the same name. What happens when a narrative spine is used to make a new animal? In…
Get Shorty: Act 1, The Book
Get Shorty is a TV series with two seasons in the can and rumors of a third. The first season was released by a lesser-known subscription service, Epix, in August 2016 and found its way to Netflix this year. The second season was released by…
Babette’s Feast and the Spirit of the Holidays
French actress Stéphane Audran died this year at 85. Audran had a long career and more than 100 film and TV credits. She worked with directors Luis Buñuel, Éric Rohmer, and former husband Claude Chabrol, was in The Big Red One with Lee Marvin, and…
Buster Scruggs and the Watchful Eye of Death
The new Coen Brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, was released on Netflix November 16, after a (very) limited theatrical release. The National Board of Review made it a top-10 pick for 2018, and it won an early award (for best screenplay) in Venice. The Coens…
The Wax Dummy’s Shame
Here come the mannequins Avert your eyes Avert your eyes Tall and cool and terrible no common ground no common ground for you and me they’re an awful sight to see … The tourists looked glumly through the windows of the wax museum. It…
A Monument We Can All Celebrate
When they conquered distant lands, the Romans erected fornices and triumphal arches to help locals celebrate becoming Roman subjects. Ungrateful Gauls and Britons had other feelings: “If … we bend our necks to the yoke, the Romans do but lay on heavier burdens, as…
Looking Up, Looking Down
When I topped the bridge, smoke twisted like tornados from the stacks of chemical plants in Sulphur and Westlake and rose a thousand feet into the sky. It is hard to say why the scene impressed me this time. We live with the industrial: city-sized puzzles of pipes and tanks…
The Genius of Hot Sauce
The reason we are told to make lemonade from the lemons that life gives us is obvious: Lemons rot because no one but unsuspecting babies in YouTube videos eats them raw. But as a commodity, lemonade is problematic too. Sugar is not local to our lemon grove and is costly,…
What It Means to Try
I was not thinking of the modern catastrophes of movement and making-do that end so many human relationships in our time. For some reason I was thinking of Bobby McHein.