I spent most of yesterday at Noircon in Philadelphia.
I not only chatted with old friends Reed Coleman and Eddie
Muller, who knows noir as well as anyone I've ever heard
about, but a I had lunch at the same, very small table with
Vicki Hendricks and Christa Faust, and I finally met Megan
Abbott. (These three women are arguably the vanguard of the
new female noir.) All three were on the femme fatale
panel.
OK, enough name dropping.
One terrific segment included back-to-back showings of
half-hour TV versions of Goodis's "The Professional Man." One
from HBO and another from Showtime.
They were interesting takes. The Showtime version, with
screenplay by Harold Rodman, who was present, and directed by
Steven Sonderberg, was the far edgier of the pieces. The
rolls were all male and the actors included Brendan Frasier
and Peter Coyote.
Ironically, in spite of the role reversal in the Rodman
version, it was truer to the story than the the one with
screenplay by Nicholas Kazan, that starred Christian Slater
and Bridget Fonda.
A copy of Goodis's story was in one of the anthology
"magazines" of MURDALAND, which was in my convention book
bag.
I drove up to Philly for the day, and obviously missed much
of it, but what I saw and experienced was excellent.
Jack Bludis
http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JackBludis
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