Dave's Fiction Warehouse

I was on the treadmill yesterday watching Rio Bravo on AMC. It's been called Howard Hawks' finest film, and that may be, but sweating through my fifth mile I was struck mostly by how cheaply life was regarded in the glory days of the Western. In one scene, John Wayne and Ricky Nelson gun down three outlaws who have been distracted by a flower pot tossed out a window. The poor saps are just standing there, and then they're dead in the street without so much as a "drop your guns." When the Duke notices another man trying to flee on horseback, he kills him too. Fifty yards out and a moving target, that's pretty good shooting. But the guy was running away . Might want to review your guidelines on the use of deadly force, sheriff. So we've got four men dead in about 15 seconds of screen time. By way of comparison, the actual gunfight at the O.K. Corral resulted in three fatalities, and we're still aware of it 128 years later. I swear, I watched dozens o...

I've grown disgusted with vampire movies over the past few years. Now that the simpering Gap models of " Twilight " have taken over, with their finicky diets and childish crushes, I'm about ready to put a stake in the heart of the entire genre. Bela Lugosi must be rolling in his crypt right now. Assuming he's still in it. And yet, I come to praise a recent vampire movie that also blends romance and horror. Unlike "Twilight," it succeeds. It's moving, it's horrifying and it's somehow believable. " Let the Right One In, " a Swedish film released last year, is the most engrossing movie I've seen in many months -- and that includes quite a few that didn't involve the undead. Briefly, it's set in 1982 Stockholm, where the misfit boy Oskar has become the target of bullies. You can see why: He's a pale, sensitive lad who seems barely strong enough to lift his own limbs. He goes out at night to role-play some revenge, ja...

I'm not going to be one of those people grousing about all the Michael Jackson coverage. Yes, it's kind of remarkable that he's been dead nearly two weeks and he's still not in the ground, but that's up to the family and the promoters -- and of course the millions of fans, who seem a little too enthusiastic to be called mourners. Fact is, you can't jam several thousand people into the Staples Center and not have a casket there. Let's just hope they had the good taste to keep it tightly closed. I keep thinking of the Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral in 1989, where the mourning got so out of hand the cadaver actually fell out of the coffin. To put things in context, it took just under one week to bury Princess Diana. But then she didn't sell 750 million records. Also, she was quite good looking and seemed to represent a sort of class and dignity that Jackson himself had largely abandoned. You didn't like to think of her being carted, 12 days dead, i...

I need some income. I'm not kidding. The writing thing has not turned into the major score I had hoped, and I'm pretty sure there won't be anything for me in Michael Jackson's will -- not since that day I saw him hitchhiking with his dog outside Winnemucca and slowed down like I was going to stop, then took off laughing just before he reached the pickup. In hindsight, that may not have been my smartest move. I did have some money put away, but I'm starting to think it might not be enough. I mean it wasn't enough before the economy tanked, so I'm not kidding myself. Maybe I shouldn't have taken all my blackmail dough and invested it with this friend of a friend, this cat named Benji or Bernie or whatever. That was in November. I've been trying to call him to see where I stand, but nobody's answering the phone. He makes me show up there in person, he's going to be sorry. Looks like all that cash and cocaine I funneled to the Norm Coleman ...