Forum / It takes a villain

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    Mathew Paust
    Sep 04, 02:37pm

    From my blog:

    Two debut novels with an identical theme—terrorism at the Super Bowl—came out in 1975 bringing singular success to their authors: they sold to the movies. Both films—Two Minute Warning and Black Sunday--starred big-name actors. One flopped, the other hit. The author of the flop published 14 more novels, yet today is essentially forgotten despite winning a PEN award for one and success on the screen with another. The hit's author is known as the creator of arguably the greatest modern fictional bad guy: Hannibal Lecter.

    It might be no accident that Thomas Harris's blast-off success, Black Sunday, also features a weighty villain—a ruthless operative in the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September. By contrast, the villain in George La Fountaine's Two Minute Warning is a young man of little substance with no interesting motive, the stereotypical lone gunman soured on life, as much a victim as those who fall within his rifle sights.

    The famous Goodyear blimp hovers as a symbolic paradox in the fate of these two stories. In Two Minute Warning a TV camera in the gondola provides the first glimpse of the sniper hidden behind the scoreboard. Terrorists hijack the blimp in Black Sunday to deliver a bomb whose shrapnel can prove lethal to all 80,000 people inside the stadium, including the U.S. President.

    Blimp as good guy, blimp as bad guy. Which one looms on book cover and movie poster? Bad blimp, of course. Why we are fascinated more by villains is above my pay grade, but we are. A primal thing maybe. The thing that could end up giving Donald Trump control over our hair styles like that other child monster has over his subjects, in North Korea.

    (<b><i><a href=http://mdpaust.blogspot.com/2015/08/forgotten-books-two-minute-warning.html#more>more</b></i></a>)

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    Gary Hardaway
    Sep 04, 02:56pm

    Fuck Trump.

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    Mathew Paust
    Sep 04, 03:27pm

    Go, Bernie!

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    Gary Hardaway
    Sep 04, 04:09pm

    Yes!

  • Samuel Derrick Rosen
    Sep 04, 09:01pm

    Always preferred Two Minute Warning because of John Cassavetes and Jack Klugman.

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    Mathew Paust
    Sep 05, 03:15pm

    Don't think I saw the film, Samuel, altho I like both actors.

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    Chris Okum
    Sep 05, 08:20pm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJZ6Fxg8f0U

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 22, 05:17pm

    Fear is a great political motivator and it sells a lot of books.
    Who doesn't love a truly evil villain?

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    Mathew Paust
    Sep 22, 07:18pm

    Agree all the way, James, until the bastard's on the ballot.

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 22, 11:00pm

    Many of them are...

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    Nonnie Augustine
    Sep 22, 11:20pm

    I just signed on to follow you on Twitter. Great blog, Matt. If the King of No Thought gets on the ballot I will figure out a way to commit voter fraud, in the very least. If he wins I will move to someplace where they take in political refugees. Or maybe I'll write a non-fiction book full of lies.

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 23, 01:34am

    Fiction... non-fiction... maybe Opra will read it. Is there an "h" at the end of Oprah? Why don't I know these things?

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    Nonnie Augustine
    Sep 23, 03:45pm

    Yes, James. An haitch.

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