The Driver

Sometime in the early 1970s jobbing Hollywood screenwriter Walter Hill put the word out that he was a big fan of director John Boorman and the film Point Blank in particular. This effusiveness was rewarded with a copy of Alexander Jacobs' mythical (in writing circles) screenplay. Hill has described the reading experience as revelatory. Jacobs didn't waste a word, rattling out scene directions as bursts of pure information; haiku compared to the flowering prose of his contemporaries.

Jacobs rejected standard screenwriting assembly, doling out detail in a manner that hewed closer to bullet points or pure, impartial data. Hill was impressed. Jacobs had created a document that wasn't simply an anonymous filmmaking blueprint. The writer clearly had a voice, a sensibility that demanded his work be read as a complimentary piece of art rather than a disposable outline. Hill resolved to bring the same terse, vital readability to his own work. The Driver stands as the purest example of those labours.

As filmed, Point Blank follows a spectral criminal fixated on the former allies who acted against him. The film presents its lead character as an emotion writ large, pushing closer and closer to the people who turned him into an undying engine. Hill goes a step further, boiling his characters down to even simpler motivations - their job and an attendant will to succeed. Ryan O'Neal isn't playing a heroic archetype struggling manfully against impossible odds, he is simply The Driver. His character defined by an unshakable belief in his own abilities rather than any romantic, interior ambitions.

Although Driver takes payment for his services there is no evidence that he does anything with the cash. His apartment is barren, the cars he uses are procured on-site and trashed immediately after they have served their function. Driver pointedly doesn't care about the money he accumulates, it's just part of a necessary transaction that brings him closer to an opportunity to excel. His opponent, Bruce Dern's rabid Detective, is similarly bloody-minded, willing to break the law in the hope of trapping his quarry. Their conflict exists in the abstract, rules and regulations are irrelevant to both of them, they are simply two experts testing their limits by colliding with each other.

Point Blank

Such close proximity to a read (however abridged) of Richard Stark's originator fiction recasts Point Blank as something of a critique on romanticised villainy. Stark's hero Parker is largely defined by his ruthless lethality, so potent and honed that even the barest contact can prove fatal for a civilian. In contrast Lee Marvin's Walker, although just as brutally determined, hounds his quarry to fearfully seek auto-destruction. Rather than an explicit murderer, Walker is a nagging guilt figure, clouding the minds of his betrayers. He was a better, simpler, man than they. A pleasant surprise then to discover that John Boorman's elliptical fever dream is made greater by source comparison rather than weaker, functioning as a flip-side companion piece to Stark's fantasy figure.

In Point Blank, however capably Walker asserts, there's always a nagging sense that he's an errand boy to a higher, more duplicitous entity. Manning the frame fringe is a grim accomplice, indistinct enough to be mistaken for a figment of Walker's fractured psyche - an effect enhanced by the relentless unreal that pervades the film. Walker, here a beanpole spectre, haunts the underworld. An omen of ill intent, signifying and expediting calamity, but very rarely physically actualising it. Whereas Stark's hero is the lone architect of such downfall, Walker is an unconscious pawn in the thrall of an answer-man, ticking off his gripes. Point Blank is frequently contextualised as a shut-down fantasy. That reading submits that Walker never leaves Alcatraz Island. Instead, dying alone in a cell, he weaves a revenge fiction to ease his passing. This accounts for his indirect impact, and a reluctance to drag his thoughts away from where he fell. Such a framing device also makes sense of Walker's obedience. Who else but death could manipulate such a man? Naturally, come the conclusion, having been made conscious of his role, Walker resists. Rather than seize his prize and disappear into the machine, Walker flees. A victory of individuality.

Draw Parker!

Counting down to the retail release of Darwyn Cooke's take on Richard Stark's The Hunter, Almost Darwyn Cooke's Blog is running a Draw Parker contest. Below be my submission. Stark favoured a young Jack Palance, John Boorman cast Lee Marvin in his LA fever reeler Point Blank, and I'm getting a bit of a Burt Lancaster / Ralph Meeker vibe off what little of Cooke's version I've seen. We'll ignore Mel Gibson. I decided to skew a bit 60s pop Euro cinema for my draft: Lee Van Cleef squint and Belmondo riff-raffery.



Hope you dig. He'll do you harm!

Wow! Rapid turnaround at blog Darwyn. Thanks for posting!