HEAT 2: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Wading into a movie by Michael Mann. That scene, in a diner, where those two characters have a truly mad conversation? You look at that chat and, on the surface, it’s a regular talk. Underneath it all, though, the conversation is mad. Elsewhere in the movie, there’s criminal activity involving the use of a drill.
   And the main criminal in that film wants out. He’ll do one last big score. This guy contemplates his fate while staring at water. Why? He’s a Michael Mann Man. And he uses a lot of…Michael Mannerisms.
   His name is Frank. The movie is Thief. In another diner his name is Neil. The movie is HEAT. That scene, in a diner, where those two characters have a truly mad conversation? You look at that chat and, on the surface, it’s a regular talk. Underneath it all, though, the conversation is mad. Elsewhere in the movie, there’s criminal activity involving the use of a drill.
   And the main criminal in that film wants out. He’ll do one last big score. This guy contemplates his fate while staring at water. He knows that whatever time he gets…is luck.
   In the Miami Vice movie, Gong Li manages to tell us, twice over, that TIME IS LUCK. This blog post is hidden in the wheel well, to fool you into thinking it’s the only one.
   HEAT 2 is the book prequel/sequel to a movie by Michael Mann. We’ll see if the book is made into a movie sequel. The one thing stopping that would be Mann’s death. He’s 83 as I type this, and I guess he’s looking to make one last big score. Whatever time he gets is luck. So. What does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?
   To have any hope of enjoying HEAT 2, you must be steeped in the Michael Mannverse.
   The book is a sequel to a movie. Think on that for a second. There is no novelisation of the film itself. That throws a few curves into what should otherwise be a straight road of a book. Mann teamed up with a novelist to bring HEAT 2 to life.
   I don’t know which novelist for sure, but a casual glance at the internet hints at two writers being in the frame for the job: both men. When the collaboration finally hit the shelves, crime writer Meg Gardiner had her name on the cover.
   HEAT 2 is the first Meg Gardiner book I’ve read. I’ve watched an unholy amount of Michael Mann movies, television products, and analysis of same. Mann likes to fix things after the cinema release of a movie.
   No. Better to say that he hates to fix things, but he fixes. So Frank, contemplative, looking on a seascape from an alien world, comes from a scene restored to Thief. Filmed, but cut out for the cinema. Sometimes things go the other way...
   Mann removed the word detritus from HEAT. It’s there in HEAT 2. The word stood out in Mann’s movie, was conspicuous by its absence when cut, and is therefore notable for its appearance in the Meg Gardiner collaboration.
   Again. To have any hope of enjoying HEAT 2, you must be steeped in the Michael Mannverse. Okay, maybe Meg Gardiner’s readership came on over to see what the fuss was about. But. This book is for people who have seen and enjoyed the film. That’s a bare minimum requirement.
   It helps if you’ve watched…
   The Jericho Mile.
   Thief.
   Manhunter.
   Miami Vice for television and the Miami Vice movie.
   Crime Story. L.A. Takedown. Robbery Homicide Division. Luck. Tokyo Vice. All for television.
   The car advert with Benicio del Toro. This is for Mercedes-Benz, with the title Lucky Star.
   Go beyond HEAT and watch the deleted scenes from that movie as well.
   Then there’s the cluster of films: The Insider, Ali, Collateral, the other cut of Miami Vice, Public Enemies, both cuts of Blackhat, and interviews with Michael Mann.
   Yes, all the other stuff. He had a hand in The Kingdom. It feels like a Michael Mann film. Speaking of which, I’d recommend To Live and Die in L.A. It’s an attempt at a Michael Mann movie without Mann as the director. This features William L. Petersen, who has a bit-part in Thief and is the Michael Mann Man in Manhunter.
   What else? All the other stuff I didn’t mention. The Last of the Mohicans, and so on. If you want to go above and beyond the call of duty in watching a series put together by a bunch of people who went above and beyond the call of duty, there’s the gargantuan ONE HEAT MINUTE, which analyses HEAT cinematically, one minute at a time.
   I’d think about the length of the movie before you even contemplate diving deep on that one. Every minute of a very long movie is given its own episode. If you think you have the patience to handle a 40-minute discussion of one minute of film footage, try it on. And on and on. Half an hour, 40 minutes, an hour…minute by filmic minute.
   An unholy amount of content, right there.
   Where to start? Chuck Adamson. Chicago police. On the hunt for Neil McCauley and his whole fucking crew. Adamson co-created Crime Story for television. You’ll spot him in the movie Thief, on which he advised. He told Mann a whole bunch of anecdotes…
   Neil McCauley was a criminal who called off a heist when he heard a sound in an empty building. McCauley correctly realised the noise was from cop surveillance on the site. This story is worked into the movie HEAT. The cops and the robbers know who they are in this whole situation. Adamson meets the criminal on the street and decides to have coffee with McCauley.
   That scene becomes the biggest scene in HEAT. I know. For some of you, the action is the juice. I’ll settle for it…you know what I mean…I’ll buy that. Moving on. Adamson is in on an ambush of a heist, leaving McCauley and his crew nowhere to go. One guy temporarily escapes. At the movies, he becomes the character of Chris. Adamson shoots McCauley dead.
   Mann writes it up as a script of 180 pages. In the movie business, a page of script generates one minute of film. The time isn’t right, the stars don’t align, so he guts the script and turns it into a television movie called L.A. Takedown.
   Pre-production on a project is a huge thing for Mann. He spent longer filming the bank scene in HEAT than he spent on pre-production for the TV movie version. It took days to film for television and months to make the story fit on the big screen.
   Mann recycles things. Xander Berkeley is on television in Miami Vice. He’s Waingro in L.A. Takedown. And he’s a very nervous Ralph in HEAT. Ralph’s actions lead to the destruction of a television set. You’ll find that scene in Crime Story.
   What’s my point? If you had to write a prequel/sequel to a Michael Mann movie, you’d have to deliver a lot of Michael Mannerisms. You’d need to serve up a montage. Highlights. There’d be no way around that.
   But it’s okay. Mann did that already, across movies and television. Driven men, good at what they do, do bad things. They stare at water. Obsess over time, and luck, and the price of tea in China. They are Michael Mann Men.
   And they must deal with Michael Mann Women. There are two types of Michael Mann Woman. The first: she’s seen some shit. And the second: she’s not seen any shit, but she’s gonna see a shitload of shit soon. None of this ends well.
   In HEAT, Diane Venora plays Justine. She’s married to the driven detective, out on the edge, Vincent Hanna. It’s Diane who has her line about detritus cut from the movie. She gives a great speech after everyone’s gone home.
   The detective returns to the restaurant to pick up his wife after dealing with the fallout of Waingro’s murderous inclinations. Waingro of the television movie is incredibly different from Waingro of the big screen outing.
   Justine lays into Vincent and his inability to be there. (Vital, given Vincent’s command to a snitch to BE THERE elsewhere in this film.) Justine’s speech is riveting. It nails Vincent to the restaurant floor. Sets out his faults. He responds by stating, pretty much, that these faults are assets in the hunt for criminals.
   Faults, in trying to keep a marriage going. His third. HEAT unfolds with criminal inevitability. Cop and robber are tuned in to an exclusively shared frequency. Both understand each other. More than that. They understand that they are the only two players on this field who understand each other. This field is the entire world. A whole planet, and only these two guys relate to their opposites.
   How do we know they are opposites? Vincent Hanna picks up a gun and leaves his home. Neil McCauley arrives home and sits a gun down. Both are driven men on opposite sides of the law. Mann spells it out using everything. Cinematography. Sound. Editing. The guns, clothes, everything. Both men, home, strike a pose on opposite sides of the law. This is all deliberate.

In the case of Neil McCauley, we’re treated to his scene contemplating water in a colour called Michael Mann Blue™^. What is this? It signifies mood, setting, terrain, forthcoming actions, choices, mistakes within choices, and fate. Mann recycles this colour or variations of it across his works.
   The movie leads to a clash. And, leading away from that clash, into possibilities. Clash. The bank robbery goes to hell. Only Neil and Chris make it out, and Chris is barely in any shape to carry on. All Neil has to do is drive to the airport and he’s gone. Possibilities.
   But he’s not the guy to let things go. His way out is for absolutely ever. Never coming back. A multimillionaire. He’s off to Fiji, to stare into the ocean and contemplate life. Except. He has to kill Waingro, who set him up to take the biggest fall. And so he does stop by to kill Waingro.
   Neil has brought a woman to the scene of the impending crime. Eady is the Michael Mann Woman who has not seen any shit. From the moment Neil is exposed as a participant in an ultra-violent robbery, Eady sees a shitload of shit. And none of that ends well for her.
   Adamson killed McCauley. The movie gives us the same story. Cop kills robber. It’s a Warner Brothers movie, by way of Regency. Turns out that crime does pay, but at what cost? Neil’s friend Chris escapes, knowing he can never be with his wife or child again. And? There’s a prequel/sequel book to this? Where the fuck can that even go?
   We’re told on the cover that the book deals with 1988 to 2000. Meg Gardiner had to give the audience the Michael Mannverse. But that’s okay. Michael Mann already handed us that. It is difficult, to move fixed pieces into a story. Playing with someone else’s building blocks, according to certain – very certain – rules and expectations.
   Clearly, Meg Gardiner faced the same problem everyone else ever had with Michael Mann. He’s thorough. Driven. I guess he stares at seas, oceans, lakes. Contemplating his existence. HEAT featured pretty rough shooting locations. Anyone who worked on that movie and The Last of the Mohicans just shrugged it all off.
   What did Meg Gardiner do? She got on with it, and had a blast. Is it a Michael Mann crime story? Yes, it is. What must that feature? The idea that time is luck. We tick that box off. Someone must stare out into water and contemplate the meaning of things.
   Movie: Mann gives us Neil McCauley staring out at water. Michael Mann Blue™^. Book: Meg Gardiner offers us the detective, Vincent Hanna, discovering the same location and staring out at the same body of water.
   We have confirmed lore. It is hinted at, in Al Pacino’s performance as Hanna, that the detective indulges in cocaine from time to time. We had this revelation in discussions of the movie. It’s in the book as part of the official fabric of the story.
   There are loads of tiny details here, from across the Mannverse. I mentioned deleted scenes from HEAT. One is a short but memorable sequence with a visit to a fence/informant in a place packed with cheap television sets. Cut. Gone. Lost.
   Recycled as a scene for use in the book.
   How does the story unfold? It opens with the consequences of the bank job. Eady has seen some shit. She puts in an appearance to tie off a loose end or two. Then she’s out. Justine and her daughter Lauren are given a few moments in the narrative.
   We learn that Vincent Hanna did not divorce all of his wives. One died. Does this contradict the movie? When Nate is discussing Hanna’s career with Neil McCauley, there’s a mention of two divorces. Current wife is Justine. Maybe Nate got the details wrong. Nate makes a few errors of judgement in the movie.
   He misjudges a businessman, leading to the betrayal at the bank. And he misjudges Neil, in giving away Waingro’s location…believing that Neil won’t give a shit. Neil gives a shit and blows Waingro away – creating the inevitable cops-and-robbers collision that ends the film. So here and there, Nate slips up.
   Looking back, I liked the use of current wife in the movie. It’s a small set-up for Justine’s ejection from Vincent’s life. Maybe he’s into women on Prozac. This is where he goes wrong. There’s a scene near the start of the film with Hanna in a stressful family situation. Wife and stepdaughter in the building. Hanna being asked about…well, being there…and he has to duck that responsibility to go and fight crime. So he dashes downstairs.
   And we have that near the end of the film. Hanna in a very stressful family situation. Wife and stepdaughter in the building: now a hospital rather than a home. And another conversation about, y’know, being there. He dashes downstairs to fight crime.
   Maybe his earlier wife had just barely divorced him and he still thought of her as his wife when he raced to be with her as she died. That would square away the story.
   Where are these characters in the book? Justine, Lauren, and Eady are mentioned. But there’s a shift in focus to the flashback. It’s 1988, and Neil is still alive. Still taking down scores. He has another Michael Mann Woman to encounter. She’s seen some shit.
   Chris meets his future wife Charlene for the first time, and becomes obsessed with her. She’s seen some shit. The other members of the crew, Michael and Trejo, are given almost no time in the story.
   It’s Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. Hanna blew a guy away there, and we’re talking about a fucking maniac. Expect violence. Loose ends? In the immediate aftermath of the bank robbery in the nineties, we have Hanna not doing something.
   Waingro’s corpse is on a slab. There’ll be a DNA sample to try to tie him to unsolved crimes. He’ll be revealed as the serial killer Hanna was tracking in a movie subplot. We never reach that scene.
   Back to the eighties, in Chicago. Here are scenes we’ll never get, for reasons of story integrity. Hanna can only have a vague brush up against Neil and his crew. That must be maintained and it is maintained. Playing with other people’s building blocks.
   The narrative needs a Waingro villain. And it gets one. Neil is in town, planning to take down scores. The home invader, Wardell, is Waingro – but packing double the worst trouble anyone ever had. Neil is interested in scores. Wardell becomes interested in Neil. Hanna is there to take down Wardell. All sorts of cats running around after mice.
   Hanna is with the Chicago force. The only familiar person on his crew is Casals, who leaves Chicago with Vincent Hanna and goes to Los Angeles for the movie portion of the story. We get virtually nothing on Casals as a character.
   This is the Neil show, the Hanna show, and the Chris show, with Wardell flitting between sideshow and main show. There’s a theme here, concerning Wardell. In the movie HEAT, Hanna has a cop on his crew: Bosko.
   Bosko is played by Ted Levine. A Michael Mann regular. In Crime Story, Ted Levine plays a villain who just keeps getting away. And I was reminded of that character thread in this book. Crime Story is Chicago, through and through. In HEAT 2, Wardell, as scummy as he is, just keeps getting away.
   This is foreshadowing. Introduce your villain in the flashback. Give Neil and Chris more character background. Show that Vincent Hanna is the edgiest cop on the edge. Build Wardell as a stone killer.
   In the past, the action is the juice. We’re concerned with a high-risk score that has to go just right or everyone is dead. It’s taking the cartel’s money and vanishing into nowheresville, fast.
   This more or less plays out okay. What’s not okay is Wardell, who has cut into this crew. His plan is to throw his men at Neil’s men, post-heist, and reap the rewards.
   Everything is fucked up. We see why Neil avoids attachment after this. His crew has to fade away. Wardell, being the villain we’ll definitely return to in the future, escapes with loot. Building blocks. Plot set-ups. It’s very Chicago.
   Belongs to the Thief and Crime Story segments of Mann’s career. HEAT, before there was HEAT. This part of the job, Meg Gardiner does well. She does the other part well, too, but…before we even get into that…
   Time passes. Many characters are dead and gone. Vincent Hanna is still in Los Angeles, with his crew. Drucker. Casals. Who is left? Nate. Chris. His wife Charlene. We go through what happened to Chris and where he is now. Building a criminal empire. Staying away from his wife. Longing for her. In the movie…
   This part is super important. On the run, Chris can’t resist trying to see Charlene. It’s a trap. The cops are waiting. Charlene gives a signal. Warns him off. He drives out. Cops brace him on the street anyway.
   His identity holds up. And then we see him lost in despair in his car, as he is about to head off into a new life – leaving Charlene behind for eternity. That’s what we take away from the movie. The Michael Mann Woman sends the Michael Mann Man away. Cut and dried. That is it.
   So where can this book go? Wisely, it sticks to that level of finality. Chris does distantly see Charlene again through a window. They talk on the phone, but that is all.
   He knows he still has to let her go as the book unfolds. This could have been easy to fuck up. But finality is finality. We don’t want them to get back together, and we don’t need that. The characters don’t need that.
   Instead, we have this new criminal empire. It carries Chris back to Los Angeles. He wants to take down Vincent Hanna. Wardell resurfaces as the villain. What’s the tone of this later part of the book?
   It is generated from a cluster of movies: The Insider, Ali, Collateral, the other cut of Miami Vice, Public Enemies, and both cuts of Blackhat. For the cops-and-robbers stuff, you have Public Enemies. Mann occasionally dipped into biographical pictures. John Dillinger died in Chicago, so this is very Chicago.
   As for the other stuff. The Insider and Ali both feature dense layers of paranoia. Collateral, Miami Vice, and Blackhat are certainly involved in crime…but they give us something different. Collateral does what HEAT did before. It made Los Angeles seem new, fresh, showing us a hidden visual side to Hollywoodland that’s normally so generic in cinema.
   Pause for thought. HEAT did that. And then Collateral did that, all over again. Fresh, twice. Which brings me to Meg Gardiner. She has to give us these characters again. Fresh, twice over. So she leans heavily into areas that interested Mann to a greater degree in his later films. Oh, he was always interested in this stuff.
   However, there’s a shift from the earlier work. This exists in Collateral to an extent, but comes to the forefront in Miami Vice and leaps from the screen in Blackhat. Massive criminal organisations. Heavy on the tech-stuff. No borders. International activity.
   Electronics to the left of you, computers to the right, and people in the shadows. Driven. Dedicated. With high-end skill-sets.
   It’s hard to write about Miami Vice without stating underrated, or deserves a second look. Maybe check out the alternative cut of the movie. Barry Shabaka Henley, and we’ll call him a Michael Mann regular, is one of America’s best-kept acting secrets. He’s part of a cast dedicated to bringing the story to life.
   There are Michael Mann fans who walked away from fare like Miami Vice, Blackhat, and the television show Luck. “Mann had lost his touch.” They want HEAT. Okay. HEAT 2 isn’t for those people. HEAT 2 is for people who were into HEAT, Collateral, Miami Vice, and Blackhat.
   I know Blackhat is a hard sell. Cyber crime. Was it a movie out of time? Right on the edge of what was happening, and yet somehow a decade ahead of itself?
   A movie that was going to inform the mainstream audience of internet criminality’s all-pervasive threat – all the way up to government level. No one wanted to know. Shit like that’s all over the news on the daily, these days. In the fabric of existence, at breakfast and on through to sunset and after.
   If you don’t like Miami Vice or Blackhat, I have news for you. Put the HEAT movie on. Enjoy what you have. No one has ruined your movie experience. Coming up into the year 2000, HEAT 2 gives you a party like it’s 1999 vibe.
   Songs are referenced. But beyond those, you can feel the soundtrack. Mann sometimes employs multiple composers for his movie work. Across different eras, I could see Mann dividing the musical tasks accordingly. A little bit of Elliot Goldenthal here, James Newton Howard there, Lisa Gerrard with Pieter Bourke. Maybe the unused finale track Goldenthal created for HEAT. Mann likes to recycle, after all.
   Would HEAT 2 work as a movie? To get the job done, it’s pretty much a full recast of HEAT. Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer, and Tom Noonan are gone. Noonan would have been a great return actor: the character of Kelso has a cyber security role to play in the book.
   The book works as a book. Once you are through the immediate aftermath of the bank heist in 1995, and the building of a villain back in 1988, the conflict escalates into 2000. Mann wasn’t happy, having to change the finale of Miami Vice. You can see the locations being used in the book. Unfinished business for Mann, perhaps.
   Things go phenomenally bad in Neil’s past. We are treated to the origin of Neil’s desire to visit Fiji. He never gets there. Chris is the one who is home-free at the end of the movie.
   In the book, the three-way firefight involving Vincent, Chris, and the beyond evil Wardell…that’s the payoff to Chris setting up a new life for himself. He’s closing in on a big score so that he can get out. But he turns from that to take a chance on extinguishing the detective who killed his buddy.
   If you can’t stand Miami Vice, this is no-go for you. Same for Blackhat. That’s on the basis that Chris involves himself in the life of a Michael Mann Woman. It’s a lengthy sequence. He has to be doing SOMETHING that’s going on far from Los Angeles. And if that global cyber criminal enterprise doesn’t float your boat, you’ll wonder why you are reading all of that stuff.
   This is meant to be 1,500 words, and I’ve gone over that for obvious reasons. The movie. And the Michael Mann world-view across many movies and television shows. I had to mention those things as a backdrop to a few references in the book.
   The book works for me. It is not about doing thrill-seeker liquor-store hold-ups with a born to lose tattoo on anyone’s forehead. Meg Gardiner gave us a mini-series that would barely be contained as a movie. You might not be into the technological criminal empire that Chris goes for.
   It’s there to beef Chris up as a character who has changed somewhat over time. The build-up to the finale, the shootout, is terrific. I feel there’s a finality to the ending…that isn’t about opening the possibilities of a sequel: HEAT 3. More…setting a mood saying we’re done here, and the protagonists never see each other again. A door is left open, but not much.
   In the end, Meg Gardiner shows that in giving us driven people doing intense things, she is herself a Michael Mann Woman. She’s seen some shit. I’d write more, but this blog’s transponder has been put on a bus to San Clemente. Or possibly Des Moines. So long, reader. You take it easy…you’re home-free.

 

UNEARTHING STAR WARS TELEVISION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

“You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” James T. Kirk, Battlestar Yamato. Episode Three: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

I think the most annoying think about the character Ahsoka Tano is that she’s called Ahsoka and not Ashoka. Whenever I go to type this name out, I have to correct something that shouldn’t have to be corrected. Rewind. Fix that name. She’s Ashoka.
   Now a rather annoying/endearing/but truthfully annoying side character can come along in a STAR WARS show and call her Ash for short. Lightsabres hum into life as she jokingly takes offence. You can’t shorten her name as it is. She should be Ash. But I see from the space wildlife documentary ALIEN that this seat is already taken. Ahsoka she must be.
   I tuned in for the first episode of – checks notes – AHSOKA. It’s the habit of streaming companies to drop two or even three episodes of a new show on you, providing a mini-binge so that you can get into the show’s stride or rapidly walk away if the whole thing isn’t for you.
   AHSOKA started off with two episodes available. I watched the first one and stopped dead. There seemed to be a lot of things going on in the show that weren’t really things going on at all. Let’s have a shot of this motorway leading to a tower. I guess that’s meaningful, somehow.
   Here’s a ceremony starring Clancy Brown. He’s portraying a guy, I guess. We’re waiting on a famous rebel from the rebel days. But she’s so rebellious that she doesn’t turn up for the ceremony. Going off to that tower is her priority.
   To quote Al Pacino, I am…over-fucking-whelmed.
   After I watched the first episode I wasn’t pointing at everything, DiCaprio style. I had the distinct impression that I’d missed something. Like, oh, I don’t know, an entire television series. Unnervingly, there were multiple guides online telling me about the sort of homework I had to do…just to follow this show.
   REBELS somehow passed me by. Apparently, aside from a few other things on the list to watch, this was the thing I should have watched first. I didn’t head straight over to episode two. Instead, I started watching REBELS. The format is short enough to make it easy to mini-binge.
   Around twenty minutes per episode.
   Pretty soon I was pointing at everything, DiCaprio style. That was in the AHSOKA opening episode. And so was that. This. Those. Her. Him. That there. Jesus Christ, it’s Jason Bourne Clancy Brown.
   What’s REBELS like? It’s full of STAR WARS cheese, and is all the better for that. Stormtroopers still can’t shoot for shit. Droids constantly save the day when they aren’t clowning around. Other film ideas sneak onto the show with varying degrees of success…3 GODFATHERS, JAWS, other STAR WARS movies...
   I shouldn’t have to do homework to catch a show. Okay, yes, I should watch a few STAR WARS movies first; I’ll grant you that one. But don’t you get the feeling that the world was a much better place before we started numbering World Wars and STAR WARS films?
   Hailing from the world of boardgaming you’ll just end up confused by ANDOR, which isn’t a series of Tolkien-lite boardgames packed to brimming with cardboard pieces. ANDOR is set around the same time as REBELS is – leading up to the rebels actually getting somewhere against the EVIL EMPIRE®.
   In STAR WARS, Episode IV: A New Marketing Strategy, the rebellion finds the somewhere it gets to is between a rock and a hard place. This means the odd cameo in ANDOR, and more of the same in REBELS. Spoiler alert: stormtroopers are in plentiful supply.
   The format for REBELS is one of a spaceship with a crew acting like an extended family of misfits. STAR TREK crewmembers, with less planet-hopping and plenty of STAR WARS. The rebels spend far too much time on the one planet. That’s where the levels of disbelief reach cheese-laden proportions.
   But we waive that point. We do not press it. We look over it.
   To wipe out the regular cast of rebels would mean destroying the whole planet they are constantly using as their base. If only the EVIL EMPIRE™ could come up with some sort of handy beach-ball sized gadget to crush that problem. Maybe a bit larger. Need to look into the physics of that.
   Away with the concept of physics in STAR WARS, and also STAR TREK. Never let science get in the way of the story. If you did, the main cast would be dead after the first firefight in a cupboard. Hangar. I meant to type hangar.
   Noisy infiltration of Imperial Base? Check. Last-minute daring rescues? Check. Bickering rebels who must band together to face the greater threat posed by the Disney Empire®? Check. Clunky references to STAR WARS movies? No, they have to be MacClunkey references.
   We’ve been down this path before. THE MANDALORIAN ran for two series. And then it became the BOBA FETT SHOW. Then it went back to being THE MANDALORIAN again. If you weren’t interested in Boba Fett and skipped all of his episodes, returning to the regular show after a self-imposed gap would leave you wondering about a few things.
   Making the later episodes of Fett’s show essential viewing for the next Mandalorian series is all about the business of getting people to watch both shows…and less about the business of telling a good story. It’s like, oh, I don’t know…
   Doing a 2006 Superman sequel to a 1980 Superman movie while ignoring the really rubbish Superman films made after 1980. So the thing is…26 years go by, but in the movie Superman has been away for five years. Everyone is recast for reasons of a quarter of a century going by. Some of the music score and dialogue is reheated from earlier movies…
   And the plot is a mix of Lex Luthor restructuring American real estate from the first film…while throwing in a dash of Lex Luthor turning up at Doc Savage’s Superman’s Fortress of Solitude from the second movie. We’re ignoring Richard Pryor and Nuclear Man from later outings. Thankfully.
   Superman Returns. I watched it once. And I’m still waiting for that movie to start.
   You can watch two watchable Superman films, skip two skippable Superman films, and still come to the conclusion that the fifth Superman film was not required.
   Luckily, there’s only one movie about a shark called JAWS. Then there’s Highlander. There can be only one. That lone movie, The Matrix, is terrific. Those two ALIEN documentaries and the two TERMINATOR films…so glad no one continued with those franchises. There isn’t a ROCKETEER animated series. I don’t know where you are getting these lies from.
   Though there is a TERMINATOR television show that allowed Dean Norris to appear in the movie and TV versions of the story. We cut that much slack to the accountants and other bean-counters.
   What is my Superman point? A franchise that continues after a gap means nothing to the viewers who missed the earlier stuff, no matter the quality of the material. That’s what we learn from Boba Fett. Here’s Ahsoka. She’s been in those pesky CLONE WARS. Fair enough.
   And she’s already had her live-action debut in someone else’s show. Miss REBELS and you are left staring at a lot of deep symbolic landscapes that have shallow symbolism for us. So much for episode one that stopped me in my tracks.
   Disney owns MARVEL, and the problem of how much homework you need to do is even more pronounced over there in the superhero setting. Away with the physics of superheroes. The question you must ask is this: do I REALLY need to watch this, that, those things, and all that other stuff just to follow the latest show?
   In the case of AHSOKA, I don’t think I had any choice. I was forced to stop. Then it was up to me to seek out the big plug for the massive gap I sensed. Luckily, watching REBELS, I viewed something that was fun. As I type this up, I am around halfway through the run of rebellious hijinks.
   Will 70+ episodes of REBELS place me in good stead to return to several episodes about Ahsoka? Doesn’t matter. I’m having fun watching a bunch of misfits sneak around Imperial bases. Even the bane of science fiction, the ventilator shaft, doesn’t spoil the show.
   Do you need to go back and watch that thing to understand this thing? Depends. That’s as good an answer as I can give you. To dodge REBELS, you might be left puzzled by many a twist and turn, and character introduction, and basic chunk of plotting. The consequence of doing a bit of homework meant that I unearthed a good show I hadn’t really taken in, when it appeared a few years back.
   So do we live in a golden age of television? Whatever that means. Now that we’re free of television’s shackles, and choose our own way of watching, consuming stories, perhaps we are. You still have to hack through a lot of fool’s gold to reach the good stuff. Remember this.
   On that point, I’ll return to REBELS. Spoiler alert: stormtroopers are easy to impersonate. That’s also a spoiler alert for STAR WARS. I won’t say which episode, in case you haven’t seen any of it. You can safely skip the Ewok spin-off movies. I think everyone did.

JAZZ WITH MARJORIE ELIOT.

Take the ‘A’ Train to Sugar Hill.

   Looking for something away from the standard New York tourist trail, I happened on an entry for Marjorie Eliot’s jazz concerts. The first time I saw Marjorie was in a movie starring Al Pacino as a cop named Frank Serpico. Marjorie portrayed the victim of violent crime in one of the world’s most brutal cities…

   New York: in the 1970s, as much known for being the Bad Apple as for the jazz-man’s appellation Big Apple. These days, New York is still a dangerous place – for different reasons. Witness the flooding as a storm comes calling at high tide. Waves wave the subway goodbye.

   The next time I saw Marjorie Eliot, she was opening her apartment door to me in Edgecombe Avenue. Jazz splashed into the hallway, as though some elixir of life escaped its confines – spreading vitality to the wider world note by note.

   If you think you’ve discovered jazz by listening to any of the ordinary popular mass-market releases of the past fifteen years…then that’s your thought and good for you. Dig deep. Find Fats Waller tinkling those ivories. Discover Lady Day doing incredible things to incredible songs.

   There are no mistakes in jazz. In jazz, there is simply…improvisation. Jazz has many homes. Sometimes it seems as though jazz has no home at all. It throws a hat on a peg and calls a hallway home, for the time being.

   This is the story of my visit to one of the many homes of jazz. A big green apple painted in skyscraper tones – New York, New York. Though it’s not just the dizzying skyscraper heights that seem made for jazz.

   You can also feel that decadent vibe underground. The subway is packed with people, and scattered with musicians who will veer in and out of jazz as the mood takes them. It is illegal to beg on the subway.

   If, however, you happen to sing as you stroll down a railway carriage…

   And you happen to be holding an empty cup in your hand…

   Who are you to complain if people decide to throw money into that cup?

   No matter how refined jazz becomes, there’s always going to be that hint of decadence about the music. By decadence, I mean fun. What you mean by fun is your own business.

   Mr Einstein’s equation E = mc² can also be written mc² = E. Taking a leaf out of that book, it’s possible to say, no matter how decadent jazz becomes, there’s always going to be a hint of refinement about the music.

   Whisper this, folks. Jazz isn’t exactly the new kid on the musical block. There was a time when jazz was wholly reviled and simultaneously praised as a rebellious lowdown dirty young item. That era is not the period through which we’ve lived. I’m wary of nostalgia for a time that never was.

   Why jazz? They keep telling us jazz is dead. And we let them tell that lie so we have more jazz to ourselves. When writing fiction, you shouldn’t listen too closely to the music in the background. If you do, you won’t be writing fiction – you’ll be listening to music. Let the background sound slide around.

   Jazz knows how to slide.

   I listen to instrumental jazz in the background. Or movie scores. Sometimes I combine the effects and listen to a jazzy movie score. If I want to stop writing and listen to vocal jazz, I will. Anyway, when writing fiction don’t get too caught up in the music.

   Plenty of people will tell you they hate jazz, though they’ll not realise they’ve enjoyed it in movies down the years. Jazz doesn’t have to try too hard. It isn’t there pretending to be cool or affecting a pose. Oh, people attempted to force that foolishness into every aspect of culture – even jazz. Charlatans are soon unmasked.

   My trip to Marjorie’s home began with a transatlantic telephone call. I decided to invest in the expense. There’s a miserly Scottish theme to this tale that I must return to. For once in my life, I was delighted to be put on hold while the answering service kicked in.

   Music played while I waited. This was clearly a jazz recording made by the musicians who regularly attended Marjorie’s apartment concerts. Once in a lifetime, I enjoyed the music playing while I was on hold. I left a message saying I’d try to drop by and catch a Sunday concert.

   And so…

   There I was in New York on a Sunday afternoon, heading for Harlem. I was low on time, having swept in from Coney Island. I’ll do my bit for tourism and say I really liked the aquarium down there.

   How to get to Harlem from midtown? Take the ‘A’ Train to Sugar Hill. That blue ACE line beckons. My best bet is actually the C train. There are no C trains to the stop I’m after. Instructions posted to subway pillars warn that C trains are temporarily out of commission. Either take the A train or hop on the red 123 line and pull the ripcord as you near journey’s end.

   I turn to look for the A train’s location. An Asian man is one step ahead of me. He spends time rattling the metal gate clamped across the route to the A train. I hop one step ahead of him by marching to the surface and heading for the red line and a rendezvous with the red uptown train.

   That was my original plan. Penn Station was closest, and I considered the red uptown train. But I was looking to do a tourist thing. Taking the A train. A blue train. To Sugar Hill. The frantic trip through Penn Station to reach a red line uptown train didn’t quite turn me into a native New Yorker.

   But I could see why so many people bustled.

   Take the ‘A’ Train is almost an Ellington composition. There was an Ellingtonian hand to the music – and that hand belonged to the Duke’s son, Mercer. Billy Strayhorn threw the piece into the round filing-cabinet. Mercer’s hand reached in and saved the composition from obscurity. The Duke adopted Strayhorn’s number as the band’s anthem.

   There’ll be no A train for me today as I head for Sugar Hill. I am, of course, wrong.

   Harlem. The Jazz Age. Prohibition. Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes. The Cotton Club. Duke Ellington. By the time I pass through the turnstile and head for Harlem, I’ve already been through the place and enjoyed raucous jazz at a reconstituted Cotton Club.

   So I’m returning to Harlem. And I’ll bump into someone I met there. Small world.

   Keeping an eye on the stations. I cross 110^th, thinking of movies from 1970-land. The Seven-Ups, Across 110^th Street, The French Connection, and, naturally, Serpico. I’d read the book by Peter Maas. Frank Serpico’s dissection of cop-speak had me in stitches.

   I was no longer travelling through the New York of the Jazz Age, or the violent New York of so many cop movies. The producer of Serpico, Martin Bregman, had trouble getting the film into production after a glut of violent cop movies in the early 1970s.

   New York had a violent reputation and dined out on it for decades after the crime statistics started to fall. Blinking on emerging from the subterranean journey, I walk through a lovely sunny afternoon. The only crime was that the afternoon wouldn’t last.

   By this time I’m up in the 150s. Most of my tourist maps don’t climb that high, which is a crying shame. There is much to see downtown, but there’s much to see all over New York, and by that I refuse to restrict my definition to the isle of Manhattan.

   You might be forgiven for thinking that the area’s favourite son is Duke Ellington. Passing the Duke Ellington School, I walk through a very Spanish Harlem in which most of the inhabitants indulge in a love of what I can only describe as street chess.

   No, they don’t race along the canyons passing pawns to each other. That image was prompted by my walk to Washington Square, when I shadowed a game of American Basket Football.

   The school may be named for the Duke, but Tito Puente is the local hero in this street going by what’s playing on the air. I’m now late for the start of the concert. Let’s say I’m stylishly late.

   I’ve reconnoitred the landscape in my mind. Leave the train. Head north. Turn east. Catch sight of the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Turn right and I’m on Edgecombe Avenue at a building Duke Ellington might have called a Harlem Airshaft. The building is no mere airshaft. Paul Robeson once called it home.

   Triple Nickel. So called for the 555 address. An inhabitant strolls out into the glorious daylight. I ask if Marjorie Eliot is still running concerts.

   “I believe so.”

   Armed with that information, knowing she hadn’t missed a Sunday concert, I advance on Marjorie’s abode. I am buzzed in to reach apartment 3F. This makes me nervous. I have no desire to upset the music by throwing in a note of discord.

   There are no mistakes in jazz. In jazz, there is simply…improvisation. My improvised trip across the city carries me to this point. I expect the musicians will work around my unexpected note. Marjorie opens the door. There’s a cliché here that happens to be true…

   You just follow the sound of the concert to find the right door.

   She welcomes me and throws a jazz tune at me by uttering the words Special Dispensation. At least, those words sound like a jazz tune. Composers had a lot of fun with wordplay. I think of Minor Yours by Art Pepper or Jumpin’ off a Clef by Al Haig.

   Music soars. I warm to Marjorie for her use of the phrase in our brief conversation. She says more than I do. We cause minimal fuss to the guests. It’s standing-room only for me. Not everyone can stay for the second set, so Marjorie assures me I will be seated eventually.

   Sunday. I’m late to the party, and pass well below the salt. But I don’t mind. I’m practically in the kitchen. The view is unimportant. I’m there to listen. Dozens of people are crammed in. Mentally, I see an empty space gradually fill as folding chairs stretch their legs. There’s much preparation in making wonderful music happen. Many rituals are involved.

   I hear the bass-man doing his thing. He’s giving Jimmy Garrison a run for his money.

   Straight down the apartment’s right side is the hall. More chairs are camped there. I spy Marjorie’s friends and all the regular visitors. You couldn’t be happier to see a more mixed bunch of enthusiasts. I come under the heading of irregular visitor.

   There’s a familiar face in the crowd.

   Out of sadness, music. Marjorie started the concerts to fill the despair of a Sunday on which her son died. During a break in the concert, I’ll spot a dedication carved to a second son. There isn’t a sad atmosphere, though. The jazz is terrific.

   Marjorie has a sense of pride in the arrangement of a structured jazz concert. Even the buzzer, admitting another latecomer, chimes with what’s going on. The music flows. It is divided into two vast sets of an hour each. Vast, though over too quickly.

   The afternoon daylight mellows and the blue fairy lights come on. There’s a break, and some leave-taking. Everyone is offered one of those Granola-type health bars and a cold fruit drink. I pocket the bar for later and consume that fruit drink.

   There’s a chance to take a few photos of the piano and the bass. I sit, framing the shot through an arch. And I do something I’ve done several times before. Not paid attention.

   I commit to the centre of the image and snap away. The light is fading. Only much later, do I realise that a woman leaned against the arch and canted her head in a pose for my photograph. If I’d looked left or right, I’d have taken that in.

   It’s absurd that I didn’t see this. She’s RIGHT THERE in the picture.

   We kick off with the second set, and I sense something about Marjorie’s pride in a structured jazz concert. The music lives. I suspect, strongly, that we’ll be given a performance of the Rodgers-Hart number, My Funny Valentine.

   There’s no mention of this, except through the vibe in the air. Light fades as flowers do. Early evening. Marjorie takes a turn at the piano. There’s the illusion of singing. She plays without opening her mouth. I think of Chet Baker and Julie London. (Both are represented on the soundtrack to yet another 1970s cop movie, Sharky’s Machine. Burt Reynolds didn’t film in New York, though.)

   Jazz invites darkness, though the fading light is a welcome thing. The humanity of the artistry fills the space. For a few minutes, it’s all about Marjorie working her way through pain in a beautiful rendition of a classic. I’m happy to put her arrangement up there with some very big jazz names.

   To finish the show, the musicians gather and belt out…

   Of course. I do take that A train in the end. Musically, at least. Mercer Ellington’s hand reaches into the basket and saves a tune played in Marjorie Eliot’s packed parlour. That’s almost the final note. I meet a familiar face.

   She’s my tour-guide from earlier in the week. We went around in her company and stopped off at the Cotton Club. She’d never been to Marjorie’s before. Sunday wasn’t even her day off – she’d handled a gospel tour that morning. I suspected she’d return to Marjorie’s – a business card was handed over. My writer’s mind says a friendship was formed.

   Marjorie came by. She thanked me for being so patient without a chair and, by extension, without a view. I declared that even from around the corner, I could tell that she had a great bass-man who really enjoyed what he was doing.

   The great bass-man instantly loomed over me to thank me profusely for that. It was time to take my leave, so I returned to Marjorie for that long-shot. There’s a miserly Scottish theme to this tale that I must return to.

   I took a chance on the concert being there. This was my last night in New York. In Scotland, I’d stuffed an envelope with dollars for the concert. What if the concert doesn’t go ahead? Spend the money on food during your last day in New York. You’ll still have to eat before you fly home.

   In the Jazz Age, inhabitants of Harlem Airshafts would throw rent parties. I wasn’t in the Jazz Age, and the Triple Nickel isn’t exactly an airshaft. No – Marjorie’s concert wasn’t a house-rent party. I am Scottish, and miserly, and never put money in an envelope for her. If you hear a vicious rumour of that stripe, ignore it.

   I handed her the money in the envelope and she, not expecting that, thanked me. The cash went some way to defraying the cost of feeding the musicians, I’m sure. With that, I was out the door. At home, I’d stare at a Chet Baker album. Minor Yours. Jumpin’ off a Clef. No. My Funny Valentine is on the other disc. I went through the photographs and discovered that a woman had improvised a pose…

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