1970s Buried Treasures – THE OUTFIT.

Location

Anthology Film Archives has been running a film festival all week entitled ”Buried Treasures”, featuring a small arsenal of under-recognized badass action & crime movies from the 1970s. The schedule was selected by William Lustig, who created the cult DVD company Blue Underground and who directed more than a few cult films himself [read what I wrote about Vigilante here]. Pretty much all of the films chosen are “buried treasures,” little-known films that fell by the name-check wayside and are only known to the most avid movie nuts.

Films like Rolling Thunder, the Willam Devane/Tommy Lee Jones revenge picture, written by Taxi Driver’s Paul Schrader.

The Stone Killer, an early collaboration between Charles Bronson and his Death Wish director, Michael Winner.

Freebie & The Bean, a buddy crime comedy starring James Caan and Alan Arkin.

And The Outfit. Aw man, The Outfit.

Basically, there’s this mystery novelist, Donald Westlake, recently deceased. In his long and storied career, Westlake was so incredibly productive that he had to take on pen names just so people wouldn’t doubt his productivity. One of those pen names was Richard Stark, and it was Richard Stark who wrote the Parker novels. Parker is a brutal, determined, amoral thug who cut a path of badassery through twenty-odd slim and spare novels. Folks, let me tell you something: I recently tore through the first three Parker novels and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Anyone who appreciates direct, concise, visceral storytelling will dig. Start with The Hunter, The Man With The Getaway Face, and The Outfit, and trust me, you won’t want to stop reading.

Because of their clearly cinematic nature, several of the Parker novels have been adapted to film. The Hunter has been filmed a couple different ways, as Point Blank (starring the unparalleled Lee Marvin) and Payback (with Mel Gibson, a step down), and very recently, it was released as a beautifully drawn graphic novel.

The Outfit is not technically a Parker movie, since the main character was renamed Macklin, but the story is mostly the same. Robert Duvall stars as the Parker character, with Joe Don Baker (eventually Chief Karlin from Fletch) as his ally, and the amazing Robert Ryan as the main villain – that is, if you can call anyone in a Parker story “the villain”, since they’re pretty much all villains. The Outfit was directed by John Flynn, who also made the aforementioned Rolling Thunder, and Out For Justice, which is probably the best of the best Steven Seagal movies. (I mean it!)

Long story short, The Outfit sounds fucking awesome.

And I still haven’t seen it! I couldn’t make tonight’s screening, and the disappointment is potent. Let me try to paint a picture:

I don’t know if girls have feelings like this, but I know all guys can relate: Having to miss out entirely on this film festival feels something like one of those nights when you catch a smile from a pretty girl and for whatever reason, you don’t ever get to even talk to her. Quick story:

One time, way back at the beginning of my time in L.A., I was in my local bar and I saw the actress Rachel Leigh Cook, you know, the girl from She’s All That, sitting with a friend at the other end of the bar, smiling at me. Feel free to disbelieve me on this one, but it was her, and I know when I’m being ignored, and for that one shining moment, I was being the opposite of ignored. So, given as good a “GO” signal as I would ever get (even if not, still worth a try, right?), I get up and head over there. I’m approaching... I’m approaching... Catch her eye through the crowd… Unbelievably, she’s still smiling... I’m six feet away... I’m smiling… Suddenly – out of the crowd, out of nowhere – a HARPY swoops in on me. I’m sorry if the term “harpy” offends. This was just an incredibly sloppy, sweaty, stringy-haired, dangerously inebriated older woman – you couldn’t rightly use the popular term “cougar” to describe her, because the big cats have a certain grace that this lady did not. No, “harpy” is the right term after all – half human, half vulture. ALL of her completely fascinated, for no great reason at all, with yours truly. Asking me questions: How’s my night. Where am I from. What do I do. And so on. Aggressively forcing eye contact, when all I’m trying to do is get a glimpse around to see if the girl’s still there. And sure enough, very soon afterwards she wasn’t. The harpy delayed me long enough. Rachel Leigh Cook and her friend got up and left. Maybe they thought I was already taken. Technically, I had been. Then, as if on cue, the harpy was distracted by another helpless young man she found equally appealing, or maybe she noticed a field mouse. I don’t know what made her leave. But the damage had been done. I was delayed. The girl left. And thereby happened another “almost” story for the “almost” archives.

Anyway, that anecdote may offer some idea of how it feels for me to knowingly miss a rare screening of The Outfit. I know that makes my priorities seem a little off-balance, but it’s just how I feel right now. And if I can’t get honest with you, who are the entire internet, then how can I be honest with anyone?

All of the above is to say that there is one last film left in the “Buried Treasures” showcase: It’s called Darker Than Amber, and it was directed by the same man who made Enter The Dragon and Black-Belt Jones, so it could well be worth seeing and the show ain’t yet over. We’ve got us another chance to go see that pretty girl at the end of the bar.