Recently I was flown out to Los Angeles for my
first experience at an event called a distributor’s
screening. According to what I can gather, this is an
event where the producers of a finished film that was
made outside of the ‘Studio system’ show their film
to the Studios and/or other distributors (the folks that
take films and make sure they get to your local
cineplex).

I’ll be truthful, the main reason I went was to take
care of business regarding my spies Hallenbeck and
Houdini (a fella y’all aren’t really aware of, but that
provides an incredible amount of information off the
record). The secondary reason for going was to see
this movie called THICK AS THIEVES and
hopefully to ‘discover’ a cool film.

So I accepted. The film was by a first time
(feature film) director, but starred Alec Baldwin,
Rebecca De Mornay, Janeane Garofalo, André
Braugher, Michael Jai White and Julia Sweeney.

Now I have no great love for Alec Baldwin
movies. I enjoyed GLENGARY GLEN ROSS,
BEETLEJUICE, HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, THE
SHADOW and THE EDGE... but I absolutely despise
MALICE so much, that the feelings I have from
watching that complete waste of celluloid leaves a
bad taste still to this day when looking at Alec.

I can’t look at Rebecca De Mornay and not see
her humping Antonio Banderas through a chain link
fence. That was the last film I walked out of.
Michael Jai White gave a lackluster performance in
SPAWN and that’s pretty much all I know of him.
Garofalo is a pet fave of mine, usually being a bit of
sunshine in everything I see her in, even if her
characters are closer to the depression of a Seattle
rain. I loathe Julia Sweeney, as in I get strong mental
twitches at the mention of her name. However, André
Braugher is someone that I am constantly searching to
see perform more.

So basically the cast had a fairly even mix of
loathes and loves. There was no background on this
fella Scott Sanders that directed. I knew zip, nada,
not a thing. However, according to producer talk
Scott loves the page, but like anyone is gonna fly me
to their screening and say, “Harry, we think what you
do is morally reprehensible and the only reason you
are here is on our hopes and prayers that you don’t
wig out like that bastard Hallenbeck.”

Meanwhile in my life, the part of me that I give a
glimpse of from time to time, a very important
development is occurring. Something that almost
made me cancel going. I’m sooooo ready to share it
with y’all, but until it’s locked and loaded... well I
have to keep my damn trap shut about it. It kills me.
The entire trip is peppered with anxiousness of the
impending announcement. Alas, I’m still having to
wait.

I head out. I didn’t ask to stay anywhere in
particular. I just told them that I needed to have a
room that I could hook up online at. Now here’s
where the story begins.

I got off the plane. They gave me a check to
cover transportation costs, ie cabs (a very costly
animal in L.A. I might add), but I hadn’t deposited it
till the day before. (Stupidity on my part). I thought
I had plenty of money in the bank account, but
apparently the matmos decided to devour my bank
account. For when I got off my plane in L.A. and
went to the handy Credit Machine, I had a negative
balance. FEAR.

There is nothing worse than the FEAR of being
stuck in Los Angeles without transportation. I pull
out my wallet and begin counting the money. $22.
My hotel is somewhere on Sunset. I begin digging in
all my pockets, a $5 bill, a few $1s... In all my total
was $42. So I walk outside and hail a cab (one foot
off the curb, wave with one hand while whistling.
Learned that in New York)

I ask the fella how much it would cost to get to
where I had to go. “$35 to $45” Gulp. I get in and
pray that the traffic gods are with me. You see I
know once I get to the hotel, I can begin to survive. I
hate having a fixed focus on a meter. Every eighth
mile ticking money away, every 40th tic of the
seconds hand tearing free another portion of the pile
of filthy lucre in my sweaty palms.

It felt cold. I begin shivering in the t-shirt I was
wearing. It was dawn in L.A. Traffic was seemingly
light, but that didn’t stop the money eating machine
from continuing it’s assault at my well being. When I
arrived at the Hotel, I found that I still had $4.
Yippee!

$4 in Los Angeles. Hmmm. I walk into my
hotel. This is the most outrageous place I’ve been put
up in yet. The CHATEAU MARMONT. Gothic
ceilings, nestled away in a green oasis right off of
Sunset Blvd. As I approach the desk I begin doing
the ‘Charm of Making’ under my breath. You see,
my credit card is dead, and I KNOW they are going
to ask for it to cover incidentals. Nobody ever pays
for incidentals, at least not in my experience. This
usually means I’m left with about $75 in phone calls
as each local call is a dollar to a dollar and a half.

The counter lady is very cute.

“Hi ummm, I’m supposed to uh have a room
here under Harry Knowles”

“Check in isn’t till 2pm”

Watch check: 10am.

Harry’s brain says,
“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh”

“Ummm, well like I’m uh here”

“Well let me see what I can do sir, your credit
card please”

Harry’s brain, “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh”

“Sure, here uh ya go.”

This is where I get nailed. Instantly I begin
thinking of calling up the producers and griping about
the incidentals not being covered, and the check in
thing, etc.

“Sir, is this the same card you used to reserve the
room with?”

>{?“NO, in fact I believe everything was being taken
care of by...” I begin fumbling through papers looking
for Producer’s name. “....this fella”

She takes the paper from me. The only proof I
have that there is some reason for me to be here. I
begin doing that whole Harry Lime thing in the streets
of... hell you know the flick!

“Ok sir everything has been taken care of.”

I look and it turns out that they took care of
everything. Cool. I’m told my room would be ready
in 45 minutes, so I decide to go to the lunch area and
get some scrambled eggs.

Ok, now from where I come from scrambled eggs
cost like $3, but here they cost like $14 and a glass of
tea costs like $3 and so on. My god I would be
sooooo screwed if the expenses weren’t taken care of.
As I begin sipping my tea, I’m told by the desk lady
that I’ve been upgraded to a cabin and my cabin was
ready immediately. So I ate my outrageously
expensive eggs, and listened to a guy pitch another
guy the script from RUDY, or at least that’s the
storyline I heard being pitched. I felt like turning
around and saying, “That film didn’t work pick
something else!” but I let it go.

Then I get shown to the CABIN. Talk about a
walk, it was like ten minutes of twists and turns to
finally arrive at my Cabin. This place was insane.
Soon as I was in, I began calling the L.A. people like
I do everytime I hit town.

While talking to one individual I met during the
screenwriter’s conference, I’m told that my hotel was
where John Belushi died. Suddenly I begin looking
around. “Don’t worry Harry, he was in one of the
cabins facing Sunset” ....

I was in one of the cabins (of which there are
two) facing Sunset Blvd. I ended the conversation
fairly quickly thereafter and walk outside. I see a
hotel staff person and I ask them if my cabin was
where Belushi passed away. It was, and this
wooooooooonderful person even showed me where
they found him.

This was one of the most disturbing rooms I’ve
ever been in. As a child Belushi was a patron saint of
mine. His cries of “FOOOOOOD FIIIIIIGHT”, his
singing as a Blues Brother, hell I even loved 1941... I
take that back, I love 1941. And here I was in the
middle of a cabin alone with the knowledge that this
is where that happened. There are just a few days
where I remember everything when a certain person
died. I remember learning about BRUCE LEE’s
death, ELVIS PRESLEY’s, JOHN LENNON, THE
CHALLENGER and BELUSHI. Of course the days
Gene Kelly, Jimmy Stewart and Jim Henson died...
well I could barely operate.

It’s strange, they are people that I never met, that
I never cracked jokes with, that I never talked on the
telephone or saw on a street. They were flickers of
light caught by a device somehow. Ethereal beings at
most. Not tangible, but in my psyche they were as
real and tangible as anyone. And the knowledge of
being where one of my patron saints died... well... I
wasn’t even sure how to act.

So I called up Robogeek. “Rooooobooooo,
ummmm they put me in the room where Belushi
died.” Silence. Robo is very in tune with these sorts
of emotional things. He’s ummm sensitive. There
was nothing really to talk about, I mean... it
happened, and I had to live with it.

But gosh I really wish I didn’t know.

Hallenbeck and Flunky Sidekick arrived. They
both went in to use the restroom. We sat in the living
room talking a bit, when suddenly a strange groaning
came from the walls and ceiling. Knowing what I
knew, I began to get weirded out, but it was not the
groans of a ghost, but of the pipes in the walls of the
jo.. I mean bathroom.

We went to Houdini’s to talk about missions,
acquisitions and the training of future spies. We
learned the uses of advance technologies, and learned
to repair them. In all it was quite boring.

Hallenbeck and Flunky Sidekick decided to blow
off going with me to the screening. SO I put the hard
sale on Houdini, who then called up Blackstone and
away we went.

The screening was a few blocks from my hotel.
The HARMONY something or another on Sunset.
You can see the DGA (Director’s Guild building)
from it.

As we get there, we hook up with Blackstone and
head into the place. I meet the director. A very
enthusiastic fella. He seemed very very
happy/nervous/eager to get through the night. I can
only imagine. To go out with your first film, and to
fly some damn loud mouth like me in... well it can
just suck so hard if things didn’t click just right.

Houdini wasn’t excited at all to see the film.
Blackstone didn’t even know why he was there really.
And me... well I was told it was a bit like MIAMI
BLUES. Hmmmm, I kinda like that movie.

A pair of screenwriters sit in front of us and we
all begin talking about the screenwriter’s conference.
The fellas had nothing to do with the film, they just
wanted to see a flick this particular night and
happened to have free passes to this.

We all begin talking about the insanity at Warner
Brothers. It’s a staple.

Then Scott Sanders, the director, comes out and
does a very very very very short intro and gets the
hell out of dodge. The lights go down, and the film
begins.

When all was said and done everyone in the
group I saw it with enjoyed it. The audience enjoyed
it and I liked it. It’s not a perfect film. I think it had
a few pacing problems in just a couple of spots, but
hey that’s nitpicking.

The one reason for all of you to see this film is to
see just how cool Michael Jai White is. I really didn’t
like him as SPAWN, but here, as the upwardly
mobile semi-intelligent gangster... well he’s just way
too damn cool. He just hits line after line after line.
The audience ate up his character. I came away
saying, “John Singleton should cast this guy as
SHAFT.”

His character just lifted the film about 2 notches
above where it would otherwise be. Except that’s not
really true, because the other characters are pretty
darn good. Baldwin is a sedate thief with a blow
torch and a cute doggie he loves.

The basic non-spoiler plot is that if you were to
knock off a bank, the money can be traced, but if you
were to knock off a printing company that prints
‘Green Stamps’ well you can sell them back to a
grocery store for something like 25% of their value,
cause the store can get 50%. So the mob sets this all
up to make a bunch of quick easy non-dangerous
money. Of course everything sorta doesn’t work the
way it’s supposed to, and we end up with a “if it can
go wrong it will go wrong” crime dramedy.

This isn’t a great film, but I like it. The femme
parts are pretty small, with both Garofalo and
Sweeney with little more than cameos.

Alec is pretty sedate in the film, until a key event,
then he ummmm gets motivated.

I have no idea of budget, I have no idea of the biz
side of this flick, but it’s a good little film. My group
and I all felt that it was a bit long in a couple of spots.
Especially the establishing shots which I felt took too
long to establish the locale, but once we got into why
we were there, it was fine. Especially when Michael
Jai White or André Braugher appeared on screen.
Those two had a lot of chemistry together, and damn
MICHAEL JAI WHITE SHOULD PLAY SHAFT!!!!
He’s perfect.

If you get a chance to check the flick out, do so,
it’s worth your time. I think we’ll see more out of
Scott Sanders. The film was a solid start for him.
OH ONE LAST THING.... The music, if at all
possible they should change it. It just didn’t feel right
for me, of course whenever you’re dealing with
music, there are different tastes and whatnot, but I felt
the music dragged the film, whereas it needed some
propellant from it. Just like in LOCK, STOCK AND
TWO SMOKING BARRELS... music is very
important to this ensemble piece. This film looked
like it was screaming for jazz, it had that sort of look,
but the tempo was way down, pick that beat up and
this movie should fly.

Of course that’s my opinion. People liked the
film, but I think it could be a bit better than ‘liked’
with the right music it could be ‘loved’ It’s right
there on that edge. I’ve put a lot of thought into that.
You see this is the sort of film that asks for help. It’s
made outside the regular system, which means
everything is piled against it. It needs a little help and
a push. The next screening they should do, they need
to recruit an audience from the Burbank area, young
under thirty types will dig this flick. That was the age
group of my group, but most of the audience was
older, and it needed to be a packed house with
distributors and young uns. At least that’s how I
think it should be.

Hopefully you’ll get to see this flick. And Alec...
make more movies like this and many many less films
like MERCURY RISING.