THE KILLER INSIDE HIM: REFLECTIONS IN A SHATTERED GLASS ON MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM'S THE KILLER INSIDE ME

There was a moment, about halfway through Lou Ford's beating of the masochistic prostitute Joyce Lakeland, when I started to feel squirmy, and I am not often put off by violence in films. When Lou later beats to death his fiance Amy Stanton, it wasn't quite as queaze-inducing, though it was perhaps uglier, because Amy's submission to Lou up to then has been mental, not physical, and Amy has twice nearly extracted herself from it.

Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me is arguably the most faithful adaptation of Jim Thompson yet, if anything bringing Thompson's soiopathic killer into sharper focus and catching the strange hallucinatory character of Thompson's manic depressive prose very well. Winterbottom has ridden out the inevitable furore over the film's graphic violence, eventually coming to the public position that his aim was to make it so unpleasant that the audience couldn't get a cathartic lift from it (assuming no one in the audience is another Lou Ford). However, the difference between the violence against the women and the less graphic deaths of men in the film leads one to suspect that Winterbottom saw the misogynist streak in Thompson, the sexual nature of the violence, as an area he wished to explore in greater detail. It's also noteworthy that much of the worst of the violence is done with sound effects, and while the camera focuses on Casey Affleck's Ford, registering the deep coldness behind the character.

Ford is not only a sociopath, but he's a cop, and he is played brilliantly by Affleck. As we saw in The Assassination Of Jesse James (where he played Bob Ford, presumably no relation) and in Gone Baby Gone, he is a master of keeping internal turmoil under wraps, leaving the audience to work out the character along the way. Lou Ford gives him the perfect role to do that, and he makes the best of it; the bland faces of his life in public and his life in the privacy of his own house contrasting with the forces inside him which, we are led to believe, are released by the pleasure in violent sex that Joyce (played by Jessica Alba) opens up to him. In the film, it is as if this sex triggers him, reminding him of who he really is, and everything else flows from that, a flow Affleck keeps tightly under control. I can't think of a star with the same qualities; the actors Affleck most reminds me of are Hurd Hatfield (an easy parallel exists between Affleck's Bob Ford and Hatfield in The Left Handed Gun) and, as we shall see below, Timothy Carey.

Winterbottom remains very faithful to the novel, to the point where Thompson's almost fever-dream recollection of Lou's childhood, looking for the 'explanation' of why he is the way he is, remains difficult to figure out. In the novel it's clear; Lou's father is a doctor, who indulges in sado-masochistic sex with his housekeeper Helene; when he discovers she has initiated Lou, he receives the first and only beating of his life. Lou consults his father's books on aberrant psychology, as if trying to discover for himself what he really is. Because he is aware that he does not fit in. It's what makes his scenes with Amy (Kate Hudson) so unpleasant, because she exists only to the extent she can make him fit in, yet he's resisted any chance to make their relationship one that would fit into society; that the society accepts their affair is one of the small indicators that appearance isn't reality in Thompson's world.

The Killer Inside Me was the first of Thompson's novels for Lion Books, and probably the most autobiographical of any of his books after his first two, more mainstream novels. His father was a disgraced sheriff, who treated young Jim with violent cruelty, and Thompson's family was supposedly the basis for the criminal and incestuous Fargos in his second book, Heed The Thunder. This is 1950s America, in West Texas, and Winterbottom and DP Marcel Zyskind capture the hot dusty simmering beneath the pleasant surface; once or twice they refer a little too explicitly to Edward Hopper; people often link Hopper and Noir, not always successfully, at least in part because the images are so well known, and in part because they don't necessarily convey a sense of violence lurking underneath.

The connection that usually gets overlooked, because of the emphasis on Lou's violent sexuality, is that all the killings in the film grow out of simple corruption, the kind of small town small-scale venality that lies at the heart of much neo-noir (big cities seem to present a bigger challenge to noirists in our era than they did in the 40s and 50s). But when you think about the other great film adaptations of Thompson's work, you see the links running through.

The best is Bertrand Tavernier's Coup De Torchon (1981) based on Thompson's novel Pop. 1280, which was published twelve years after The Killer Inside Me, in 1964. Tavenier (see the IT interview with him here) relocated the story from Texas to French colonial Africa, which makes the racial undercurrents of the novel even more telling. Sheriff Nick Corey in that book is the only lawman in a small town; it's set earlier than The Killer Inside Me and it doesn't have the undertones of 1950s conformity that Winterbottom draws out nicely. By now, Thompson was much more pessimistic and nihilistic than he'd been in 1952, and had drunk a hell of a lot more too. In fact, one of the films it recalls (see the publicity still with the front-lit Affleck and Hudson in a car) is the original Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, in the sense that Lou Ford is acting out the life of a normal American in the 50s, while a so-called 'alien' lurks underneath. The Coens made a whole movie, The Man Who Wasn't There, just to examine that link between Fifties sf and noir.

In the novel, Thompson makes a point of the 'welcome to Central City' signs on the highway in an out of town. One points out that the population has grown tenfold, the other warns against picking up hitchhikers because they might be escaped lunatics. I think the connection is clear, and re-emphasised 12 years later in the title of Pop. 1280.

Thompson's books lend themselves to exploitation; it's a temptation for film makers to simply jump on the salacious elements and run with them, while simultaneously making the 'heroes; more appealing characters. It's almost painful to watch Stacey Keach trying to work against that in the original version of The Killer Inside Me; as if only he among the film's makers understood what was going on. In that context it's interesting that three of the four most faithful versions of Thompson novels have been made by non-American directors, as if Thompson's point, made in his pulp writer stream of subsconscious, were more obvious to outsiders, or perhaps less unsettling to them. My other two contenders were both made in 1990, Stephen Frears' The Grifters (though its screenplay is by the American Donald Westlake), and James Foley's much-underrated After Dark, My Sweet, where even the naming of the characters, 'Kid' Collins and 'Uncle Bob' suggests Thompson's obsession with incest and abuse. (Another notable foreign adaptation, Alain Corneau's Serie Noir (1979), I haven't seen). The runners-up would include Maggie Greenwald's The Kill-Off (1989—it was a bumper time for Thompsons) an off-beat take on neo-noir that doesn't quite catch Thompson's essence, while Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (1972) is more interesting as classic Peckinpah than neo-Thompson. What's interesting too is the way in which elements recur in all the novels and films, and the ways they are turned around.

In The Getaway (recall that Peckinpah worked on Invasion Of The Body Snatchers for Don Siegel) Doc McCoy is less of a psychopath than in the book; Steve McQueen wasn't going to play evil, and Al Lettieri's Rudy is around to bear that burden. And the ending, which in its own way works, is not as apocalyptic as the novel. In contrast to Peckinpah, Winterbottom's ending is, if anything, even more apocalyptic than Thompson's, an explosion that recalls Aldrich's version of Kiss Me Deadly. And, in the end Peckinpah is more concerned with reaffirming his angel/whore view of women than integrating them; of course when they're integrated in Thompson's fashion, they die.

The Grifters incest theme is reflected slightly in the Helene character, whose role is far more ambiguous in the film; it would be easy to mistake her for Lou's mother. What is consistent is the way Winterbottom's film attempts to put the blame on mother, more than the novel did, for Lou's inhumanity, just as the film of The Grifters can make Angelica Huston take the blame for John Cusack's character, while at the same time toning down his pathology.

Thompson did two screenplays for Stanley Kubrick; both times Kubrick tried to snatch screen credit away from him. On The Killing (1956), his original credit was for dialogue, but arbitration from the Writer's Guild got it changed; certainly there is a lot of Thompson, beyond Lionel White's novel, in that book—the loser characters played by Jay C Flippen, Elisha Cook, and Timothy Carey have elements of Thompson's alcoholic fatalism, while Carey's encounter with James Edwards' black car park attendant was taken farther in Thompson's late novel Child Of Rage. And the ending smacks of Thompson, though endings are usually problematic for him—because his heroes are doomed to lose, he often writes them into corners and needs to go apocalyptic in order to get them out. Then again, it may be the only way they (and he) can face this world.

Kubrick brought Thompson back to write the screenplay of Paths Of Glory (1957), though Calder Willingham was then hired and star Kirk Douglas preferred his version. Thompson wound up listed third, behind Willingham and Kubrick in the credits, though, according to Thompson's biographer Robert Polito, much of Thompson's original survives intact. Douglas obviously would not have wanted his character's heroism reduced, but the corruption among the top officers, and the fatalistic attitudes of the ordinary soldiers (again Timothy Carey, and though he's far more over the top, I still see him in Carey Affleck). Despite the problems with credits, Kubrick commissioned two more screenplays from Thompson, including Lunatic At Large, which was rediscovered in Kubrick's papers after he died, which has raised the possibility of a new Thompson film. It's currently in development, with Sam Rockwell and Scarlet Johannson attached, as they say. Around that time Thompson had his first heart attack, Kubrick moved on to Spartacus and then Lolita; he never returned to cheap noir. Thompson's books would continue to be optioned on the cheap, or he would be commissioned to write screenplays for chump change (he had to sue Sal Mineo to get paid the bare minimum for one); among those who mooted projects with him were Orson Welles and Sam Fuller, each suited in his own way to Thompson's material—after all how far is Hank Quinlan from a Thompson character? He also was hired to write a script called Bo about hoboes, for Robert Redford, a mix that seems somewhat less likely. Thompson wrote scripts for a couple of TV shows I have a dim but respectful memory of—a cavalry western called McKenzie's Raiders which starred Richard Carlson (no relation) and a mob thriller called Cain's Hundred--and did lots of hackwork. He died not long after the release of the first film of Killer Inside Me, for which he also received very little.

I go into his biography because where Winterbottom's Killer differs from the usual take on Thompson, is a recognition of exactly why the novel itself holds up so well; that's why I think it is the best Thompson adaptation yet. The modern audience is enthralled by Thompson's gutter world; they love the tales of the sad-sack alcoholic navigating his way around Hollywood, they love the darkness as if it were an antidote to the anodyne pre-packaged world around them; the era of the 90s onward could be seen as a rebirth (or repacking with better technology) of the 1950s. But where The Killer Inside Me stands apart is precisely the manner in which Lou Ford is not only indistinguishable from his fellow humans, but works at making it that way. He is not Phillipe Noiret's louche sheriff, nor is he a crook or gambler or sad sack worker who we know from the start is born to lose. Lou Ford works at being a perfectly normal American, and this is what Jim Thompson seemed to find the most horrific of all. He didn't believe in the American Way—any hitchhiker might be an escaped lunatic, any pleasant cop a Lou Ford. In his world it usually took a woman to set the fuse burning, and that's what makes the violence so upsetting, because it is rage against the self, the self that recognises it is different and punishes those who don't.

NOTE: This essay will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

TALKING CRIME FILMS WITH BERTRAND TAVERNIER

My interview with Bertrand Tavernier, done at the TCM Crime Scene festival, has been posted at Crime Time--you can tweak the link here, and it's also directly below. Look for another, specifically about In The Electric Mist, sometime soon....

Simenon And The Surreal: Bertrand Tavernier talks to Michael Carlson

Bertrand Tavernier was in London to accept the first Master award as guest of honour at TCM Crime Scene, which also mounted a retrospective of (mostly) his crime films at the ICA. After we met at the ICA, we were led through a kitchen, up a tiny works elevator, and through a maze of narrow corridors that made me feel like Eddie Constantine navigating Alphaville, before we finally arrived in a very traditional looking English office — no wonder the ICA keep it so hidden — overlooking St James Park and Big Ben. But once we sat down to talk, the setting disappeared and the time flew past: much as I wanted to inquire about the specifics of his career, Tavenier's is a life spent within film: as critic, publicist, director, producer, and his enthusiasm for his calling remains undiminished by the vagaries of the business. Thus one idea flows into another, and you can't discuss his films without discussing dozens of others. Because we digressed so much, we didn't cover all the bases, so to fill some gaps I've interspersed a few quotes taken from Adrian Wooten's public Crime Scene interview. We also talked more about IN THE ELECTRIC MIST, but that will be the subject of a separate interview later, after I've been to New Orleans. So I began by asking about Tavernier's early embrace of American crime movies...

BT: Well, I was interested in all kinds of film in those days, but perhaps because everyone wanted to write about Visconti and no one was writing about westerns, or musicals, or film noir, I was drawn to that. I was attracted by style; these crime films were saying much more than what they were supposed to say; they were full of information about the American way of life, there was lots of social context, and they were written or directed largely by progressive people, or people forced to leave their own country...

MC: SO MANY OF THE GREAT NOIR DIRECTORS ARE IMMIGRANTS
Yes, they brought things that were not existing, so much, a sense of doubt or skepticism...well, this is too simple but American cinema tends to be about affirmation, and the European was more about doubt. Directors like Siodmak, Preminger, Lubitsch, Wilder, bring this with them.

YOU COULD ARGUE FILM NOIR WAS EUROPEAN SENSIBILITY MEETING THE AMERICAN GANGSTER FILM
Oh yes, but even in France at the end of the 1930s, you had Carne, and films written by Prevert

QUAI DES BRUMES?
Of course.

YOU WERE A CRITIC BEFORE STARTING AS AN ASSISTANT DIRECTOR WITH JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE
I never considered myself a critic; I did it merely out of passion because I wanted to be a film director. But I was not a good AD working with Melville; it was a bad experience, and he was not an easy man to work with, very intimidating to people on the set. But he knew I was not suited, so he suggested I might be better as a press agent, and that proved perfect: I could learn about films without the problems of being an AD, sit in on every stage of the process, and as I became more successful in PR it was special because I could work only on films I liked: so I did PR for Ford, Walsh, Henry Hathaway, and also for Godard, Chabrol, Jacques Demy, Agnes Varda...the second thing I did as a press agent was to make a trailer for the Godard film.

AND FOR YOUR FIRST FEATURE, YOU ADAPTED SIMENON
Because I loved him. I had already written one screenplay, based on Robert Louis Stevenson's 'The Beach Of Falesa', and I'd got James Mason and Jacques Brel to agree to be in it, but I couldn't get the finance. I tried to write another screenplay, about the French Gestapo, but when I showed it to (the screenwriter) Pierre Bost he said 'these people were scumbags, to make them into heroes is dangerous', well, not heroes, he meant they become interesting by being the main characters.

WHICH IS INTERESTING, BECAUSE THAT'S ONE OF THE THEMES OF LAISSEZ-PASSE (SAFE CONDUCT)
Yes, and the French critics called that picture an attack on the New Wave, and they didn't know I'd worked on pictures like Pierrot Le Fou or fought for him on Le Mepris. I saw Godard at his tribute at the Institute Lumiere, and he was very nice to me. But Laissez-Passe is about the spirit of resistence, and the behaviour of people under occupation.

I THINK OF SOMEONE LIKE SODERBERGH TODAY, AND WONDER IF THE CRIME FILM HELPS PROVIDE A STRUCTURE FOR FILM MAKERS
Yes, it does, and it's a structure that you can break or destroy—but you must have a basis. Dexter Gordon said to me once 'before trying to break all the barriers, learn how to play 'Laura'.
When you know 'Laura' in the right mood, then you can expand.' John Boorman once said he only needed the shot of someone putting a rifle in a suitcase. After that, you can go in a lot of innovative ways, because you have that moment of danger and conflict. And in film noir they found thousands of ways, flashbacks, false flashbacks, flashbacks within flashbacks

YES, I JUST SAW 'THE LOCKET' AGAIN
Exactly. Resnais called film noir the best school for telling a story in the most modern way, and it's amazing how they are still very much alive and not dated. Pitfall, The Big Clock, as interesting as they were, maybe moreso. They give the opportunity for the writer to write different dialogue, always interesting. Out Of The Past has wonderful dialogue, it's not one note, and you have the literary, very sparse, like The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle, Crime Wave. The people doing the writing knew they could smuggle ideas in.

WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO THE WATCHMAKER OF ST PAUL
Yes, because Simenon is on of the most important writers in France—at least thirty masterpieces, plus all the great Maigrets. He's often reduced to atmosphere, but suddenly he gets the essence of something, the naked man: we had this wonderful scene, when Noiret lies down on his son's bed, after learning he's a killer, and he's a man deprived of what society has made of him.

NOIRET CONVEYS AN AMAZINGLY LONELY MAN, WHICH I ASSOCIATE WITH SIMENON'S CHARACTERS
Yes, he is alone. My early films are always broken families, people are always lonely. Perhaps because my parents never got along, so I was raised that way.

AND IT'S ODD TO SEE SIMENON SET IN THE SUMMER, IN LYON
He's always done in fog and rain, but I wanted to shoot the film in summer, in great light, because the foggy atmosphere is merely superficial. In fact, about 80% of the screenplay is original, but when you add, when it's good, it's what Jean Aurenche called a gift inspired by the love you have for the book.

YOUR THIRD FILM , THE JUDGE AND THE ASSASSIN, COMBINED CRIME, LIKE YOUR FIRST ONE, WITH A PERIOD PIECE, LIKE YOUR SECOND, QUE LA FETE COMMENCE
I was doing a trilogy with Noiret, dealing with issues of justice, and this was based on a very famous case at the time. I was looking for the texture behind the crime story; the time of Dreyfus, the battle between religion and the state. It's set between the death of Van Gogh and the birth of Freud. It's never been released in Britain, and I don't understand why. (Note: As Adrian Wooten pointed out, it is now available here on DVD). As the killer, we cast an actor. Michel Galabru, who'd done only low class bad comedy films, but he was very good, and brought the uncertainty to the role.

IT'S IN CINEMASCOPE
We shot in the Ardeche, and tried to integrate the landscape. I was influenced by Delmer Daves and he saw that and loved the film. The early films I loved, of John Ford especially, rooted the heroes in their environment, and with wide screen you can show them close up with the landscape still there behind them. I love Anthony Mann, how he gets the landscape into the film, and cinemascope lets me do that.

YOU MENTION DAVES; WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE REMAKE OF 3:10 TO YUMA?
Oh I hated it! Hated it! They take a shortcut through the Apaches and discover a town full of Chinese the sheriff had no idea existed there! Really. In the original, two men are killed in the opening, and those deaths mean something; the first reverberates throughout the picture.

HIS FUNERAL IN CONTENTION THAT MORNING...
Exactly. But in the remake, they kill dozens, randomly. The town, everyone is shooting. It makes no sense.

IT SEEMED TO ME THEY DELIBERATELY INVERTED THE MOST CRUCIAL THINGS ABOUT THE FILM. THE SON IS NOW THE HERO, NOT THE FATHER...
Yes, perhaps because of the audience. They make films for children, so the big choices in this film are made by a child. And the father must die, not triumph.

THEN WE MOVE TO 1981, AND COUP DE TORCHON (CLEAN SLATE), WHICH IS MANY PEOPLE'S FAVOURITE OF YOUR FILMS AND FAVOURITE JIM THOMPSON ADAPTATION
It took me five years to adapt. At first I wanted to set it in Lyon, my native city, but it didn't work. You can't kill someone in France without someone else noticing, the body turning up. I asked Perec, Blier, to help, but nothing worked. Then I was re-reading Celine, and I thought Ah ha! I wanted to ask Jean Aurenche to write it, because he had lived in Africa, and he brought that surreal sense of irony—his sister was married to Max Ernst, by the way— the paying of the workers in cinema tickets for example. Though the scene of the pigs and the dead bodies, that we took from Gide.

BUT THE SURREAL IS THERE IN THE ORIGINAL TOO
Oh yes. But when the Americans adapt Jim they wipe that out, they lose the metaphysical. There is always something strange going on, you're not walking on solid ground, that's why I used the stedicam so much; things are not stable, you can suddenly fall into a pit, that's what Jim's books are about. It leaves no way out for the audience, and I decided to keep that. There is no character who the audience can embrace at the end.

WHICH IS TRUE OF THE GRIFTERS, TO AN EXTENT, AS WELL
Donald Westlake, who wrote the screenplay for The Grifters, said he thought Coup de Torchon was the best Jim Thompson, and Westlake is a very very great writer.

IT WOULD BE ANOTHER DECADE BEFORE L627, WHICH WAS VERY DIFFERENT FOR YOU
It's a story about someone trying to do what he's been asked to do, in this case a cop on the drug squad, but he becomes a pain in the ass because he tries, and he's told not to think about results.
I worked with a real detective in his office, his boss left me completely free, he showed me people dealing, explained the situation. But I made that film out of anger, because I'd had lunch with Laurent Fabius, who was minister of the interior, and he asked me for an example of something he could work on. So I told him my son had been a drug addict, and had taken me in the Metro, at Chatelet, where you could walk through an open drug market, to schools where people were selling, so I said, you could do something about that. And he said he wanted something important! I was speechless! The film created a big controversy in France, the minister of interior was angry, and said their policy was against drug dealing, but they actually did nothing, so the film was supported by the cops who understood. And it became a racial issue, because many, if not most, of the dealers were black. That was simply a fact. But by avoiding a crackdown, they opened the door for the likes of LePen, because it allowed him to then damn all blacks as dealers.

THERE IS A DOCUMENTARY FEEL, LESS LYRICAL, AND YOU'VE DONE MANY DOCUMENTARIES
Maybe it reflects the change in the social situation, the generation. My films seem to take on the energies of their main characters. All the actors were unknowns, Didier Bezace, Phillipe Torreton, Milo, and my son actually plays a young cop. But I wanted to show a hero who is sometimes doing things that are wrong, beating up suspects, because he has grown so frustrated with the so-called correct way, because it doesn't work. My films are about people who are passionate, and that can lead him over the line, into doing things that are evil. In all my films people make mistakes.

WHICH THE SENSE ONE GETS FROM THE BAIT (L'APPAT, aka FRESH BAIT) THAT IT IS THE CULTURE, PERHAPS, WHICH HAS LET DOWN THESE THREE KILLERS
I felt it was an uncomfortable subject, how three people who would not harm anyone, but are ignorant, and dream of becoming rich in America, how could they kill people.

IT'S AS IF IT'S THE EASY WAY OUT?
They are lazy, too. And the pressure eventually turns them into killers. It was released in France on DVD, and I'm sorry it wasn't in cinemas. The New York Times called it a French Natural Born Killers, the same subject but opposite in treatment.

WHICH BRINGS US TO IN THE ELECTRIC MIST, WITH TOMMY LEE JONES AND BASED ON THE NOVEL BY JAMES LEE BURKE. IS THERE A CONNECTION WITH COUP DE TORCHON, WITH THE AMERICAN SOUTH, THE ORIGINAL SETTING OF THOMPSON'S POP. 1280?
Not intentionally, but as you say it, I think there is a similarity. I adore Burke, and his books present something different, and like Thompson there is a surreal element to them

ESPECIALLY IN ELECTRIC MIST...
Yes, with the dreams. So I tried to shoot the dream sequences very straight-forwardly, very very realistically, with no distorted lenses or bizarre angles. He's like Thompson too, in that his books have long sequences written in italics, because they are different from the real, and how do you film italics? In Thompson crime is explained by prejudice, intolerance, humilation. And the other element is Burke's great sensitivity to social context, his sense of place. The past is always there, it's his obsession, it explains the crimes of the present: it all goes back to slavery and the Civil War, things kept under the blanket and not dealt with.

IT'S VERY FAULKNERIAN
Faulkner was a nightmare to interview; the critics were asking all sorts of intellectual questions, and he wanted to talk story specifics. Very American. If you ask is Burke intellectual, I don't know how you answer. Raoul Walsh could quote any line from Shakespeare; Olivia de Haviland once said she walked in on him and he was reading Stendahl, and he hid the book lest she see it.

IF NOT INTELLECTUAL, ROBICHAUX IS A REFLECTIVE CHARACTER, THE THINKING MAN'S COP, AND TOMMY LEE JONES ISN'T ALWAYS SEEN THAT WAY
Oh but for me he embodies everything about Robichaux, for me he is the best American actor. In No Country For Old Men and Three Burials he showed that side. He worked on our script, he's very obsessive, even changing punctuation, and wrote some beautiful scenes, including one with Bootsie where he defines understanding by asking what salamanders understand, that won't be in the finished film. But when you say 'action' there's no fuss. He gives you the inside of Dave Robichaux, and I have never seen an actor who can express contempt for another character in such a restrained way; it couldn't be more intense. Jacques Tourneur understood this: he had his actors speak very low all the time, shot them using only real light: there's only one scream in I Walked With A Zombie, it plays like a confession.

THAT'S AN INTERESTING COMPARISON, BECAUSE THE CREOLE CULTURE IS COMMON TO NEW ORLEANS AND HAITI...
And the food! I used a lot of hot sauce there; I came back with a case of Bin Laden's Most Devilish hot sauce. There is also a very Catholic element, very religious to Burke, but very progressive, very anti-Bush, with the post-Katrina setting.

SO IT'S TOPICAL! WHEN WILL IT BE OUT?
Sometime next year. It was delayed by the writer's strike but I'm mixing the world version in Paris now, and the soundtrack is wonderful, Buddy Guy, Clifton Chenier.

LAISSEZ LES BON-TEMPS ROULEZ! MERCI BIEN....