Jeff wrote:
> There was one reference that puzzled me,
> though. References to movies are a great
> way to bring back a time period and I
> definitely appreciated the references to
> the Hitchcock movies, but then, near the
> end, he uses ficiticious movie titles--
> Friendship Ranch and Carter and Sharp on
> the High Seas. The later being a
> reference to a comedy duo in a novel by
> Elizabeth McCraken and a specific movie
> mentioned in that book. Sounds like an
> inside joke between novelists.
>
> Charles, can you give us any insight on
> these movie titles?
Yes: Max and Elizabeth are friends, so the reference to
Carter and Sharp is an inside joke. (You are the first person
I know to have spotted it.) I don't recall any significance
to "Friendship Ranch," though there might have been
some.
Another inside joke is the reference to a ficitious movie
called "A Sound of Distant Drums": "I make you now. William
R. Metz. Production design at Paramount. You were really up
there for a while...Catherine the Great's palace in 'Scarlet
Monarch.' That big, ah, that kind of desert fortress in 'A
Sound of Distant Drums.' Lemme think."
Back in the PBO era, a number of writers, including Donald
Westlake and Lawrence Block, made an in-joke out of including
references to "A Sound of Distant Drums" in their books --
for instance, in 361 Westlake writes "A little after
midnight, we went down to 42nd Street and saw an important
movie that had been made from a Broadway play called 'A Sound
of Distant Drums.' It was about homosexuality and what a
burden it was" and in GRIFTER'S GAME Block writes "The movie
was lousy, a historical epic called 'A Sound of Distant
Drums,' a technicolor cinemascope package with pretty girls
and flashing swords and people getting themselves killed
flamboyantly. I dozed through most of it." So when the time
came for us to write our books for the line, we carried on
the tradition. (In LITTLE GIRL LOST, when John Blake goes out
to Flushing, Queens, he comments, "A video store was
promoting the latest Chow Yun-Fat import, a film whose
two-character Chinese title was translated as 'A Sound of
Distant Drums.' ")
Here's a challenge for the experts on the list: What other
authors were participants in the great "Distant Drums"
conspiracy? (Our special guest this month once wrote a book
called DIE TO A DISTANT DRUM, but that's different enough
that it may just be a coincidence...)
--Charles
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
--------------------~--> In low income neighborhoods, 84%
do not own computers. At Network for Good, help bridge the
Digital Divide!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/S.QlOD/3MnJAA/Zx0JAA/kqIolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 19 May 2005 EDT