James Wong Howe was one of Hollywood's greatest Asian American craftsmen, so because it's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, peep Howe's handiwork below

Sweet Smell of Success (Photo source: DVD Beaver)

The Elmer Bernstein-scored Sweet Smell of Success is one of my favorite older movies because it's cynical, hard-bitten, pre-curse-words-allowed-in-movies Hollywood screenwriting at its best. Its cinematographer was James Wong Howe.

Sweet Smell of Success (Photo source: DVD Beaver)

Sweet Smell of Success (Photo source: DVD Beaver)

Howe's sterling work in black and white also graced the first Thin Man installment and Hud, two films that I first saw on TCM and are always worth revisiting on that channel, partly because of Howe's cinematography.

The Thin Man (Photo source: FilmFanatic.org)

The Thin Man (Photo source: FilmFanatic.org)

Hud (Photo source: This Distracted Globe)

Hud (Photo source: This Distracted Globe)

In 2004, I wrote and recorded three Asian Pacific American Heritage Month interstitials for the Fistful of Soundtracks channel. One interstitial centered on Howe. The other two were about Margaret Cho and Homicide: Life on the Street writer James Yoshimura. Below is the entire three-minute interstitial I did on Howe. The last time I heard my Howe segment was about eight years ago. I forgot that I worked Method Man's "Bring the Pain" into the segment. Nice choice for a bed, 2004 me.

Take it away, partial transcript of 2004 me:

"Howe was one of the first cinematographers who perfected deep focus photography, in which both the foreground and the distant background are clearly seen. Another Howe innovation was the way he shot the boxing sequences in Body and Soul. A boxer himself when he was a teenager, Howe grabbed a pair of roller skates, climbed into the ring with the actors and filmed the action with a handheld camera. Though only five-foot-two, Howe was a badass. He was described by those who knew him as a tough perfectionist and a taskmaster. He was openly hostile to film crews. He was particularly hostile towards racists and had to deal with them on and off the sets. In an L.A. Times article, Howe's Caucasian widow recalled an incident at a restaurant in which a bigot tried to humiliate Howe and his wife by shoving them off their seats. Howe got the best of the bully using his high school boxing skills… Howe died in 1976, leaving behind a body of work that influenced cinematographers everywhere. Howe was a man who worked hard with his lights and camera to capture beauty, even if it was in a town that exhibited the ugliest behavior towards him and his people."

Come on, everybody, wear your roller skates today. (Photo source: Film Monitor)

James Wong Howe prepares to film The Thin Man on the 1934 movie's set. (Photo source: Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans)

"AFOS A-Go-Go" 09/30/08-10/06/08 playlist

1. Cleavon Little, "I Get a Kick Out of You," Blazing Saddles, La-La Land
2. Frankie Laine, "Signature/Main Title," Blazing Saddles, La-La Land
3. Dave Grusin Trio, "The Long Goodbye," Fitzwilly/The Long Goodbye, Varèse Sarabande
4. Roy Budd, "Jazz It Up (MC/M4)," The Marseille Contract, Castle Music
5. Donald Byrd, "Wilford's Gone" (from Cornbread, Earl & Me), Do You Pick Your Feet in Poughkeepsie?, Paul Nice
6. Joseph Koo, "The Killing Fight" (from The Big Boss), Do You Pick Your Feet in Poughkeepsie?, Paul Nice
7. Danny Elfman, "The Little Things," Wanted, Lakeshore(*)
8. Buffy, Spike, Sweet, Giles, Xander, Anya, Tara and Willow, "Walk Through the Fire," Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling, Rounder
9. Ennio Morricone, "Il Giardino Delle Delizie" (from The Garden of Delights), The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music, Rhino
10. Isaac Hayes, "Source No. 3 (Caffe Reggio)" (from Shaft), Shaft Anthology: His Big Score and More!, Film Score Monthly
11. Quincy Jones, "Theme from The Anderson Tapes," The Reel Quincy Jones, Hip-O
12. Quincy Jones, "Money Runner" (from $), The Reel Quincy Jones, Hip-O
13. Bear McCreary, "The Mask of Fargo" (from the Eureka episode "Noche de Sueños"), Eureka, La-La Land
14. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, "Aggressive Expansion," The Dark Knight, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
15. Thomas Newman, "Jazira Maroun (End Title)," Towelhead, Lakeshore
16. John Morris, "Noble Farewell/Finale," Blazing Saddles, La-La Land

17. Lalo Schifrin, "End Title," Cool Hand Luke, Aleph

(*) An interesting L.A. Times column from June about the recording of "The Little Things" can be found here. It mentions that Elfman recorded an alternate version of "The Little Things" with Russian lyrics for Wanted's Russian release.

A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series returns to the channel schedule next Tuesday.

Paul Newman (1925-2008)

If you've never seen the Newman cult favorite Slap Shot, you're missing out on one of the 10 greatest sports flicks of all time. After reading about the death of Newman, whose performances I've always enjoyed watching because of what Alan Sepinwall calls Newman's "anti-vanity," I immediately popped into my DVD player the only Newman movie in my DVD collection, Slap Shot. (I wish I had a copy of Nobody's Fool in my collection, but Slap Shot sufficed.)

Every time someone posts a list of their favorite sports movies, they tend to pick the earnest ones (Rocky, Rudy, Field of Dreams, The Pride of the Yankees) as their favorites. You know, movies that make grown men cry? To borrow a classic Kay Howard line from Homicide: Life on the Street, "Oh, make me puke!" I prefer the more off-kilter and humorous sports flicks like Slap Shot, Diggstown, Breaking Away and Shaolin Soccer.

Nobody's Fool may be my favorite Newman movie, but Slap Shot contains my favorite Newman character, Reggie Dunlop, the aging hockey coach with a rather relaxed attitude towards on-the-rink behavior. Dunlop's insults are so delightfully foul-mouthed and politically incorrect that I'd hate to see what this movie is like when it airs on basic cable ("You know, your son looks like a fuddy-duddy to me. You better get married again 'cause he's gonna wind up with somebody's sock in his mouth before you can say Jack Robinson.").

I doubt TCM will include Slap Shot in its inevitable Newman marathon tribute. Even though TCM never censors its movies, I don't think they've ever aired a movie that's filled to the brim with F-bombs like Slap Shot.

Moviegoers in 1959 winced when they saw Jimmy Stewart discuss panties and sperm in the courtroom in Anatomy of a Murder. They probably had a coronary when they heard Newman curse up a storm in Slap Shot.

No wonder Newman considered Dunlop to be his favorite character and called Slap Shot the most fun movie shoot he ever did. I guess he didn't mind wearing what has to be some of the ugliest pants in movie history. (Plaid trousers? That pair of bell-bottom leather pants Newman tried to rock later in the film? Not even someone as cool as Newman in Slap Shot, Kurt Russell in Escape from New York or Eddie Murphy in his concert movies could persuade me to slip into a pair of leather pants. There are two things I'll never wear: leather pants and open-toed shoes. They're the least manly-looking pieces of fashion ever invented.)

It's interesting that Newman's final role was in another sports movie (and an animated one too!), Cars. I'm glad he went out as a talking Hudson Hornet instead of a planet-eating lardass.