31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Production history
Following the success of Rear Window, director Alfred Hitchcock was urged by his agent Lew Wasserman to go into television. Hitchcock had initially been wary of the impact TV might have on the film industry, but the opportunity to explore short subjects appealed to him. Alfred Hitchcock Presents would consist of thirty-nine half hour episodes per season. Hitchcock would earn $129,000 per episode, with all rights of sale to revert back to him after first broadcast.

Screenwriter Joan Harrison – who started her career as Hitchcock’s personal assistant – was chosen as producer. Hitchcock’s preference – beyond material involving suspense and mystery – were published stories. He had a file of favorites, and over the course of the show’s seven season run, Roald Dahl, Stanley Ellin, H.G. Wells, Rebecca West and A.A. Milne would be among the many British writers whose tales were adapted for television. Ray Bradbury was the most prominent American novelist to contribute.

In addition to lending his name and taste to the show, Hitchcock was game to appear on camera, to introduce each episode and “tidy up afterwards for those who don’t understand the endings.” An Emmy winning American writer named James Allardice penned the director’s droll monologues, which frequently poked fun at the sponsors. As well made as most of the episodes were, it was Hitchcock’s dry mischief and self-mockery as narrator that set the show apart.

TV shows used to have their own theme music, and for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, composer Bernard Herrmann suggested “Funeral March of a Marionette”, an 1872 tune written by Charles Gounod. The orchestration struck a chord with audiences, and Hitchcock may still be the only director to be recognized by his own theme music. Hitchcock directed 17 episodes of the series, four during the show’s inaugural season:

Opinion
In Episode 1, “Revenge,” Carl (Ralph Meeker) and his wife Elsa (Vera Miles) have relocated to a mobile home park in Malibu. Elsa, a ballet dancer, suffered “a small breakdown” and the couple is here for her health. When Carl returns from work, he finds his wife in a catatonic state following an apparent attack by a salesman. He moves her to a hotel, but when Elsa spots her assailant on the sidewalk – “There he is. That’s him!” – Carl makes a stop.

Adapted by Francis Cockrell from a short story by Samuel Blas, “Revenge” is the best of the Season One episodes Hitchcock directed. It’s impossible to watch and not immediately think of Psycho, due not only to the casting of Vera Miles, but because of its stripped down aesthetic and haunting murder. The episode was remade and chosen to relaunch the series on NBC in September 1985, but by showing the attack, it was far less eerie.

In Episode 7, “Breakdown,” a business tycoon (Joseph Cotten) on vacation notifies an employee that he’s being fired. The employee breaks down and cries, earning the tycoon’s contempt. But upon taking a detour and crashing his car, the tycoon regains consciousness unable to move or speak. Everyone who comes across his body assumes he’s dead, right up to the coroners preparing their autopsy. Francis Cockrell and Louis Pollock adapted the mildly creepy teleplay from Pollock’s short story.

In Episode 10, “The Case of Mr. Pelham,”Albert Pelham (Tom Ewell) approaches a psychiatrist with a problem. People have begun to recognize him being in places he has no memory of. It dawns on him that he might have a double, until Pelham is notified that the double has knowledge only he would know. Then the other Pelham starts showing up at Pelham’s home. Francis Cockrell wrote this episode as well, but it’s not memorable in terms of suspense or much else.

In Episode 23, “Back For Christmas,” Herbert (John Williams) prepares to depart to the States as his nagging wife (Isabel Elsom) needles him about them being “back for Christmas.” Once their guests leave, Herbert kills his wife and buries her in the cellar. He has fun in America, until he receives a Christmas present from his late wife. Adapted by Francis Cockrell from John Collier’s short story, this episode is laced with the black wit and sinister glee Hitchcock is so renowned for.

Nate Meyers at Digitally Obsessed writes, “Watching the series today, little has been lost over the past half century, with every episode featuring masterful direction, elegant acting, and superb writing.”

“Despite the overt tidiness of each episode’s epilogues, this is a set of Hitchcock-directed works that stand the test of time, and comfortably bear multiple viewing,” writes Dan Jardine at Apollo Movie Guide.

David Perry at BC DVD Review says, “The first season puts its best foot forward, with star power, smart writing, and the always enjoyable banter of its famous host.”

“I venture that by this time you can see we are not presenting a romantic comedy tonight.” View Hitchcock’s introduction to Episode 17 from Season One, “The Older Sister”.

By Joe Valdez

Baltimore homicide detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) visits the murder trial of D’Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gilliard Jr.). When a witness recants her testimony, McNulty realizes the drug traffickers D’Angelo works for have gotten to her. McNulty meets with the judge and explains how D’Angelo’s uncle Avon Barksdale has taken over several highrises in the West Baltimore projects, and his crew has racked up ten bodies in the last year.

The judge complains to McNulty’s superiors and demands a special detail be created to investigate Avon Barksdale. That detail includes Lieutenant Daniels (Lance Reddick), a narcotics commander with a law degree and respect for chain of command, and Detective Greggs (Sonja Sohn), a driven “real police” who becomes absorbed by the case the deeper she gets into it.

The rest of the detail are “humps,” cops other divisions don’t mind unloading. Detectives Hauk (Domenick Lombardozzi) and Carver (Seth Gilliam) are “fighting the war on drugs one brutality case at a time.” Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) is a veteran homicide detective who inexplicably works for the pawn shop unit and builds miniature furniture in his spare time. Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost) is the son-in-law of a police major and seemingly a fuck-up.

Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) – who’s never been arrested and no one outside the projects knows exists – reprimands D’Angelo. His lieutenant Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) demotes D’Angelo to managing operations at “The Pit,” a lowrise housing project. D’Angelo’s employees are entry level workers in his uncle’s empire. D’Angelo isn’t sure of which direction to take his life. He tries steering the youngsters away from violence and toward some other way to conduct business.

Baltimore PD has no desire to sacrifice manpower or funds to pursue Barksdale. They instruct Daniels to do quick buy/busts and get this case over with. McNulty explains that won’t work. Barksdale and Bell are too insulated to go near drugs. The only way to make the case is through surveillance and a wire tap. The problem is that Barksdale’s people use pagers and pay phones to communicate.

McNulty seeks help from a district attorney (Deirdre Lovejoy), who clones D’Angelo’s pager. When he gets beeped, the cops get beeped, and they successfully map out Barksdale’s operation. Complications arise when they track money from Barksdale going into the reelection campaigns of local senators, and politics threatens to shut the unit down.

David Simon – a former police reporter for the Baltimore Sun – had served as a writer and producer on the TV series Homicide: Life On The Street. Simon differed with NBC over what they perceived as pessimism on the show. He teamed with writer Edward Burns, who spent the last decade of his career with the Baltimore PD on wire tap cases against violent drug gangs. With producer Robert F. Colesberry, Simon set up The Wire at HBO.

The series he had in mind would be unlike any other cop show on the air. It was serialized, following a single investigation over the course of 12 episodes, each an hour in length. One episode tied into the next, like chapters of a novel. Because the story spanned over a season, Simon & Burns could develop their characters and explore the nuances of how institutions really work.

There would be no musical cues to pump up the mood, or to tell the audience what they were supposed to be feeling. All the music or sound effects were sourced; they physically existed in the world of the story. Shot entirely in Baltimore, the series had big screen quality, rejecting the closed feel of a soundstage and showing the world as the writers knew it actually existed.

This would be a good place for me to state that I do not watch TV shows anymore. I’m a film geek, and while I’ll freely admit there has been great writing in TV Land recently (The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Rescue Me), my Netflix queue has me otherwise committed through 2010.

The Wire has been called the best series ever written for television and I’m inclined to agree. It unfolds like a novel, starting slowly, but rewarding attention by building an epic narrative on the country’s institutions – police, politicians, drug dealers – and the compromises made by men and women within those institutions. This isn’t Law & Order. This is Charles Dickens.

The series explores so much. There’s a heroin addict named Bubbles (Andre Royo) with a photographic memory who becomes a valued informant for the unit when he’s not getting high. Omar (Michael K. Williams) is a wily bandit who robs drug dealers and engages Barksdale in a vendetta. A high school dropout – who can’t stomach the violence he witnesses his employers unleash – is to turn state’s witness, if he can live long enough.

The genius of The Wire is that every character in this world has a role to play. It’s not personal. This is just business. Hauk & Carver discover that everyone in the projects is at a basketball game. They go to the game and are approached by the “project yo’s” they’d normally be chasing. “Ain’t ya’ll on the clock?” “Aren’t you,?”Carver asks. “We’re on break!” “We’re on break too,” Carver responds. A civil conversation follows. Once the break ends, both sides go back to work.

Much of the material was gleamed by Simon & Burns while working with Baltimore cops in the 1980s. One memorable scene has McNulty and his partner Bunk (Wendell Pierce) reexamining a murder scene and communicating with nothing but the word “fuck.”Another great piece of writing has D’Angelo teaching the yo’s chess, explaining the different pieces by comparing them to members of their organization, from the kingpin to the pawns.

The show’s outstanding theme song – “Way Down In The Hole” – is written by Tom Waits and performed by The Blind Boys of Alabama in Season One. Waits lends his vocals to the tune in Season Two, in which the unit reunites to investigate murder and smuggling amid longshoremen at the city’s port. It’s even more brilliant, more addictive than Season One is. Both are available on DVD, and I can’t recommend them enough.

“The king stay the king.” View the terrific opening credits sequence, and D’Angelo explain the game of chess.

“You gotta let these motherfuckers know who you are!” View Hauk, Carver and Pryzbylewski go into the towers at 2 am, drunk, to conduct “field interviews”.

“Ah, fuck.” View the classic crime scene with McNulty, Bunk and one word of English.

Documentary directed and photographed by Amanda Micheli begins in 2000, as Lucy Lawless’ stunt double on the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess – 22 year old Zoe Bell – finds herself out of work when the show ends. Bell leaves her family in Auckland and arrives in L.A., where Jeannie Epper – Lynda Carter’s stunt double on Wonder Woman twenty-five years previous – takes Bell under her wing and attempts to help her career in film.

Epper is daughter of stunt pioneer John Epper, whose entire family has dedicated itself to continuing his legacy. This includes Jeannie Epper’s daughter Eurlyne, who landed on her neck during a routine fall four years previous, and has to watch from the sidelines during her rehab, while Jeannie continues to work into her 60s, even after she donates a kidney.

In spite of her connections, Bell is passed over for a job on a TV series, but a year later, Epper gets her into a high fall training session, where Bell comes to the attention of a scout looking for a stuntwoman to double for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. He invites her to audition for the film’s stunt coordinator, Master Wo-Ping, and director Quentin Tarantino.

In addition to Lawless and Tarantino, Micheli interviews Steven Spielberg – who met Epper when she and most of her family worked for him on 1941 – and he talks about the stuntwoman being a recent breakthrough in Hollywood. Up until the women’s movement, men in wigs routinely doubled for women where stunts were concerned in movies and TV.

Stunt coordinator Terry Leonard – who performed the truck undercarriage gag in Raiders of the Lost Ark – states, “The girls do have a tougher job, just because of the costumes.” With wardrobe that usually features a bare midriff, arms, legs or all of the above, stuntwomen can’t pad up. Footage from Wonder Woman shows Epper never used padding at all.

Double Dare came to my attention after seeing Zoe Bell not only play herself in Grindhouse, but perform a mind blowing moving vehicle stunt that surpasses the one in Raiders. She comes off as the same utterly rad chick here. During her audition for Kill Bill, she wipes out on a flip four times in a row, but what impresses Tarantino is the way she wipes out, getting up, laughing about it, and doing it again. Her toughness wins her the job.

This type of strength among women in show business is what Searching For Debra Winger completely ignored, and I don’t mean physical strength. Stuntwomen don’t complain about getting older, losing jobs or not getting respect. Instead, they do what the men do, only they do it better. As Bell departs for China to train with Wo-Ping, Epper’s advice to her is “Don’t get all frazzled when you’re over there. Just do your job.”

Micheli does such a subtle job telling her story that I hesitate to call the film a “documentary” at all. The camera crew and docu-style is almost invisible, and we’re simply able to follow a professional woman in a two or three year span of her career, being mentored by another woman and overcoming barriers through pure devotion to her craft.

Double Dare is only one hour and twenty minutes long, and while I would have enjoyed seeing a lot more stuff, it feels perfectly framed. Spielberg is wonderfully articulate about the Eppers and the tradecraft of stuntwomen. A segment at a Xena convention is wonderful, and watching Bell receive word she’s won the job on Kill Bill is a joy.

Another joy is watching Zoe Bell do a header off a 35 foot ladder into an airbag (it looks like a 100 foot ladder) and hearing Epper ask her if that was fun. “Fuck yeah!” This summed up the movie for me, which is passionate and a must-see for movie fans. It took Netflix two weeks to make this DVD available to ship to me, but if you can locate it, I highly recommend checking this one out.