Brian & Stan:
A new book about Nazi rocket scientists arrived in the mail on Monday -- because I ordered it -- and I've been cheating on Rohmer behind his back. But I promise to take a big bite out of BALLS! between now and Sunday. Actually, I'd love to finish it.
Holy cow, it's like some really subtle joke on thrillers, though.
Q: What if, instead of plutonium or micro-chips or diamonds, or black-market body parts, or the President's step-daughter, or a hijacked stealth bomber full of missing pages from the Hammer Codex, what interested all these characters was heating Buffalo, NY?
A: That would be pretty boring.
Lou Gossettt made two pay TV movies about postal inspectors -- The Inspectors and Inspectors 2: A Shred of Evidence. This 1998 article from the Seattle Times can explain it better than I can:
The U.S. Postal Service is backing production of a made-for-TV movie
about heroic postal inspectors who track down a mail bomber. "The
Inspectors," starring Louis Gossett Jr. and Jonathan Silverman, is
scheduled to air on the Showtime cable network Sept. 20.
The movie falls into a television nether world between commercial
sponsorship of programming and infomercials, similar to magazine
advertorials in the way it blurs lines dividing art and advocacy.
"I don't think it would be a good thing if it became a trend," said
Dorothy Swanson, president of the nonprofit Viewers for Quality
Television, Inc. ...
Showtime financed the movie's production, while the postal service is
promoting it. Television sets in post offices will show clips of the
movie, life-sized cardboard cutouts of Gossett in his postal inspector
uniform will be distributed and ads will be placed in magazines. (Dan Mihalko of the postal inspector's office)
didn't know what the agency was spending for promotion.
"Although we hope to get positive PR out of it, it's not a PR piece,"
Mihalko said. "It's a thriller based on a mail bomb investigation by
postal inspectors. The movie will stand on its own."
Postal inspectors? Meet the gas man.
Brian - I see by the IMDB that someone we worked with on TIME OF YOUR LIFE was in both those postal inspector movies.
ReplyDeleteHere's a question: what is the most boring profession ever made into the lead character in a purported thriller (book, movie or TV show)? I think postal inspector sets the bar pretty high.
The Beachcombers.
ReplyDeleteThen Lance Parkertip, Notary Public. But Don Martin was kidding.