John Paizs's Crime Wave (Canadian Cinema)

Ball, Jonathan

University of Toronto Press（2014/02発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 277 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781442648128
• DDC分類 791.4372

Full Description

John Paizs's 'Crime Wave' examines the Winnipeg filmmaker's 1985 cult film as an important example of early postmodern cinema and as a significant precursor to subsequent postmodern blockbusters, including the much later Hollywood film Adaptation. Crime Wave's comic plot is simple: aspiring screenwriter Steven Penny, played by Paizs, finds himself able to write only the beginnings and endings of his scripts, but never (as he puts it) "the stuff in-between." Penny is the classic writer suffering from writer's block, but the viewer sees him as the (anti)hero in a film told through stylistic parody of 1940s and 50s B-movies, TV sitcoms, and educational films.

In John Paizs's 'Crime Wave,' writer and filmmaker Jonathan Ball offers the first book-length study of this curious Canadian film, which self-consciously establishes itself simultaneously as following, but standing apart from, American cinematic and television conventions. Paizs's own story mirrors that of Steven Penny: both find themselves at once drawn to American culture and wanting to subvert its dominance. Exploring Paizs's postmodern aesthetic and his use of pastiche as a cinematic technique, Ball establishes Crime Wave as an overlooked but important cult classic.

Contents

Acknowledgements

1 The Top! Few Films Made It!

2 Beginnings and Endings

3 The Greatest Color Crime Movie Never Made

4 The Stuff In-Between

5 Twists!

6 The Gap Exposing the Real

7 An Alternate Universe 

8 From the North

Production Credits

Further Viewing

Notes

Selected Bibliography