In Memory of Kit Carson, independent/underground filmmaker, actor and founder of US Film Festival

Kit Carson passed away this week. Best know for the films "Texas Chainsaw Massacre II" and "Paris, Texas" - which he wrote, and his son, Hunter Carson starred in, he was amongst other things my sisinlaw's beloved uncle. He'd been ill for a bit.

From film critic Robert Wilonsky's obit:

To call his career eclectic diminishes the word. The Irving-born Carson, a product of the University of Dallas, was an actor, his filmography ranging from Sidney Lumet’s "Running on Empty to an episode of Miami Vice in which he soared. He co-wrote Jim McBride’s 1983 remake of Breathless starring Richard Gere. He served as inspiration and mentor to Roman Coppola, son of Francis and maker of the movie CQ, which was partially cribbed from David Holzman, a black-and-white parody of cinema verite. He was an art-house-hold name.

“I met Kit on Paris, Texas, he was there as writer and father of the young co-star,” writes Allison Anders on Facebook this morning. She wrote and directed such films as Gas Food Lodging and Grace of My Heart, and went on to direct several episodes of Sex and the City. “He was later of one my advisors at the Sundance Lab and from there, a friend. I only discovered later all the incredible things he had done before Paris Texas, as a filmmaker and writer. He wrote some of the best pieces on pop culture in the late 60s for Eye Magazine and later Rolling Stone. So glad to have known him.”

Writes Anders, Kit’s was “a life truly lived on his own terms.”


Robert Wilonsky's obit on independent film maker and auteur, L.M. Kit Carson

Wed Reading Meme....

As an aside, it never fails to astonish me how differently people read and process information. Which is odd, since I know we all think differently. So, you'd think it would go without saying that of course we read differently too. Case in point? I was reading reviews of two books on Amazon this week. The first one was of Jojo Moyes' novel Me Before You - and one reviewer claimed that the book was realistic or more realistic than novels about quads and the wheelchair bound who didn't want to commit suicide. Her comment blew my mind - mainly because nothing about Moyes novel struck me as realistic. I found it jarringly unrealistic in places and patently absurd or illogical in others - to the point that I could not finish the novel. Other reviewers state how beautifully written and/or eloquently written it is - and I'm thinking, okay, I've read engineer's technical scopes of work that are better written than this. Proust, it's not - granted not everyone has read Proust or Joyce or for that matter Edith Wharton, Margaret Atwood, etc...so if your reading background is limited to Nicholas Sparks, Danielle Steele and James Patterson...can sort of see how you might think this is beautiful writing. If I squint. (Apparently I'm more of a book snob than I thought?) The other was The Duke of Midnight by Elizabeth Hoyt - wherein one reviewer claimed that the Duke was such an ass that he hesitated to save the heroine and had to pushed into doing it. Eh. Not in the version I read. He forgot everything, and dove in after her. She was the ninny who decided to dive overboard so that he could get a good shot at her captor. The reviewer was also upset that the Duke coerced/seduced her into having sex with him. Again, not in the version I read - in that version, she went into his bedroom, around midnight, to give back his signet ring which was swinging between her breasts, then proceeded to kiss him. When he asked about her reputation, she said she didn't care. Sort of sounds like she seduced him. I'm thinking the reviewers and I did not read the same books?

1. What did you just finish reading?

The Duke of Midnight by Elizabeth Hoyt - eh, it was okay. The Duke is a bit dense and a bit of a selfish ass. The big conflict, which doesn't quite work for my modern sensibilities, was that the Duke could not marry a lady's companion, because he owed the title, and his father's memory - a lady of quality. Except the lady of quality is a ninny. And a bit on the shallow side, actually more than a bit, come to think of it. Plus he can't stand her. So, she has money - not like he needs any.
And social standing - again not like he needs it. Granted the lady's companion does have a mad and murderous brother (actually he's not really mad, more like falsely accused), and a mad father (who apparently was bi-polar, but they didn't diagnose stuff like that back then). But other than that, she's perfectly respectable, everyone in his family adores her - heck they all keep telling him to marry her instead, but for some pig-headed reason, up until the end, he thinks he should keep her as his mistress, and marry the shallow ninny for convention and to honor his dead father's memory? Ugh.

I spent a good portion of the novel wanting to smack the Duke upside the head.
The heroine's brother has my undying devotion because he does just that - smack the Duke upside the head, while chained no less.

The heroine on the other hand is one of the better one's I've seen to date. She's not beautiful, rather common or ordinary in appearance with gray eyes, which is a trademark for this writer. Hoyt's characters are seldom described as "beautiful" - in fact, often, it is the shallow, nasty characters that are described in this manner (such as Lady Ninny (Penelope) who is breathtaking, and a true beauty, but a nasty shallow nitwit.) The heroine's only failing is she falls head over heels with the nitwit Duke. Artemis. Cool name. And she's quite courageous. Although I agree with the Duke, diving into the freezing cold Thames with heavy skirts and gun pointed to your head is not the smartest idea in the universe.

There's another story in the book that parallels the one above, and acts as a bit of an analogy to it. Hoyt writes her own take on old fairy tales. And uses snippets from her fairy tale to introduce each chapter. So you get two stories in one. Sometimes I prefer the fairy tales to the actual story. This fairy tale/legend - is a twist on Tam Lin. It's called the Legend of King Herla and is about the wild ride. The King is cursed to ride the skies for eternity, or until the white dog that sits upon his horse jumps down. Tam and Lin are twins - brother (Tam) and sister (Lin). Tam somehow or other ends up becoming part of the wild ride and can't get down. Lin saves Tam by
joining the ride and hanging on to him no matter what beast he changes into. Then she saves the King and all his riders by taking the little dog down off his horse. That's the gist, the story is actually well told. Making Hoyt more interesting than most.

2. What you are reading now?

Darling Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt - which I'm enjoying more than I'd thought. Read a lot of lukewarm reviews - so I'd gone into it with low expectations. Hoyt is an interesting writer - her characters as previously stated are not described as necessarily beautiful in appearance. And they aren't always wealthy. The two in this novel are down-on-their-luck. One is a famous but poor actress/playwrite and the other a landscape designer in hiding from the law (he was falsely accused of murdering his three friends in a bar and sentenced to Bedlam). The landscape designer, who was introduced in the previous book, Apollo Grieves (aka Caliban) is a gentle giant. He's over 6 feet, with large hands, large feet, and a broad shoulders and chest. A craggy face that his sister affectionately compares to a gargoyle, with it's knobby nose, thick brow, and dull brown eyes.

But he is truly my favorite hero to date. The man is just adorable. He's kind, witty,
self-deprecating, artistic, and strong. When he's introduced in Duke of Midnight, he sacrifices himself to save a fellow female inmate from being brutally raped. And in this novel he forms a rather amusing and sweet relationship with the heroine's young son and his dog.

Actually this may be the first of Hoyt's novels, outside of To Seduce a Sinner, in which I truly liked and appreciated both the heroine and hero, often it is one or the other. Normally, her heroine's are ninnies or don't have much to do. Duke of Midnight and Darling Beast - they seem to be more with it, a bit more savvy, and a lot wittier.
This heroine does "breeches" roles - she plays men on stage in comedies or women pretending to be men.

Not sure about the fairy tale though - it's The Minotaur, the twist is that it is told from the Minotaur and his father's point of view.

3. What you are reading next?

Eh, no clue. Either the Meredith Duran or one of the Courtney Milan's. Whatever strikes my fancy. My mother had rec'd the Magicians by Lev Grossman, but after reading 75% of the book, and giving up on it, I'm beginning to wonder. She's doing this to me - persuades me to buy a book, then tells me just enough about it to make me regret buying it. The problem she had with the Magicians is it spends too much time on the make-believe world that the characters are obsessed with and journey to, as opposed to the practice of magic in a reality based world. Basically, my mother wanted to read an adult Harry Potter, not an adult fanfic of the Chronicles of Narnia.