CINEMA UNDER A SEVENTIES INFLUENCE: ANDREW J. RAUSCH'S THE TAKING OF NEW YORK CITY & THE FILMS OF QUENTIN TARANTINO (WITH KIERAN FISHER)

I got to know fiction writer and literary and film expert Andrew J. Rausch when he used a CrimeReads piece I did for Joe Lansdale Interviews that he co-edited, He puts my work ethic to shame. This year he already has two books out. One is The Taking of New York City that looks at a certain aspect of seventies cinema. He also co-edited with Kieran Fisher a collection of essays on a filmmaker influenced by that era, The Cinema Of Quentin Tarantino.

With The Taking of New York City, Rausch explores the relationship between the city and the movies made and released during one of its most tumultuous and crime-ridden decades. Each chapter is a year where he gives a brief history of the city focusing on crime and the police. He then lists most of the crime and thriller movies filmed in the city that were released that year.with stories about their filming and their authenticity and impact. He shows how these films put the city in a time capsule and how it influenced how we view the city, particularly in that time.

Rausch gives us the good, bad, and ugly of both place and pictures. We get both glowing and dismissive reviews of the films. He champions lesser known flick like A Report to the Commissioner and points out not-so-greats that capture the city in the seventies as with The Massage Parlor Murders. He also reports just as tough as the times were in New York it didn't have the highest crime statistics and it's reputation, reinforced by most of these movies, was blown out of proportion.

He finds great stories and anecdotes about the movies. He describes how Larry Cohen directed Hell Up In Harlem when his star, Fred Williamson, wasn't there for most of the shoot. We read about the original actors and directors attached to Death Wish that would have made it a very different movie. We also meet the real Frank Serpico and get a take on how he was treated by the film business,

The Taking of New York focuses on a seminal slice of film history. Over the decade we see the beginnings and arc of blaxpoitation, the gritty cop drama, and revisionist gangster saga. We also experience how the place. period, and fiction blended to create cinema that now provides safe nostalgia for not-so-great times.

Rausch and co-editor Kienan Fisher gather nine sharp minds to join them in writing about the different aspects of The Cinema of Quentin Tarantino. The collection works as how we look at the artist at this particular moment. Most of the pieces cover his later films with e exception of Pulp Fiction, which always provides something new to talk about, and Jackie Brown, a film growing in reputation. After more than a few decades after Reservoir Dogs slapped the art house crowd around, he has become less worshipped diretor of my Generation X and many of the pieces tackle the contradictions in his filmmaking and films.

Many focus on one motion picture.It kicks off with the heady "Vitae Necisque Potestas" where Dara Waldron uses Pulp Fiction to argue how those contradictions are necessary elements for his work. Charles J. Rzepka wrote the piece that was destined to be my favorite, "Putting The Punch In Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch", looking at the adaption of the book into Jackie Brown. He gives an astute exploration into both artists and works, using it to also look at the idea of adaptation in Tarantino's other films. Scott F. Stoddard shows how Q weaves "Fables and History" with Once Upon A Time.... In Hollywood. Katharine Coldiron uses the KIll Bill movies and Vlad Dimma tackles the H8teful Eight to examine his use of form. and content.

Django Unchained and The H8tful Eight. prove to to be the most covered films in in the collection. Bryan M. Jacks' "The D is Not Silent: Dangerfield, Django, and the Resistance to Slavery" agues how the story uses myth to to address that stain on American history. The editors deliver an entertaining and informed take on how H8tful is actually a (not so) stealth remake of John Carpenter's The Thing. Sue Matheson gives an involving meditation on how both films use genre and melodrama intersect with ides of masculinity, race, and violence.

Two essays focus on the ideas that run through his films. Kevin Quigley's "Quentin Tarantino's Sole Aspect" has astute fun with his foot fetish. In "Whose Truth: Race and Quentin Tarantino", Troy D Smith, also a fiction writer, looks at both sides of the one of the major arguments in his work, often citing other essays. He finds strengths and flaws in both positions and creates the most personal of the essays by telling us how he applies these thoughts to his own novels as a white writer.

The Taking of New York City establishes itself as the more accessible of the two, but both are worthwhile for any one who likes to read about the movies. Andrew Rausch is doing his best to provide for that reading, As of this posting, he just released his third book of the year, Generation Tarantino, that looks at the filmmakers who emerged from the nineties. The man won't stop.