Taking things too far.

'So, you're returning The Maltese Falcon and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes so that you can read Paradise Alley.'

'Yeah.'

'I just wanted to make sure that you understand.'

Sometimes my housemates despair of me.

You may recall that I found a new favourite bad film in Sylvester Stallone's Paradise Alley. Not only do I now own it, I've inflicted it upon one of my friends. After she made it through, we scrambled to find the book that started it all. There are plenty of copies of it on Amazon, but we then remembered that our university has a copyright library.

What the hell does that mean? It means that our library has a copy of every book published in the UK for the last Godknowshowmany years. Given, I had to special-order it out of Stacks, and I could only read it in the library, but read it I did. And it was weird.

Mostly, it was awful. Stale dialogue, bland descriptions, and a formulaic plot. Each chapter is a scene from the film, so Sly probably knew he'd be throwing this baby on celluloid. It would be easy to just end it at that, but that would really not be doing justice to what is something of an experience.

One of the more striking aspects of the book is the fact that it has pictures. Not too many and no pop-ups or anything, just these ink jobs by Tom Wright. They're all dark and grainy and slightly off, so of course I loved them. Only example I could find is this.

Stallone does some interesting things with punctuation and line breaks. For the most part, the narration is basic and fairly boring, broken up by stylized dialogue whenever characters speak. Occasionally, though, something like this pops up:

Victor counted his meager salary and smiled at the foreman. But,

Victor's eyes no longer,

Smiled.

Chapter Thirty Four, page 143

It's actually like poetry. I refuse to go off on any tangents of literary criticism because I think all of that is bullshit, but the playful structuring is really fun, if nothing else.

Pictures and funny punctuation are not the only things that kept me reading, though. There is a general image of Stallone as a mumbling, muscle-bound moron, which is completely false. The man is a member of MENSA and, quite literally, a genius. Despite Paradise Alley's monotony of drab writing, there are definite moments when I sat up straight to read a sentence again, such as when Annie sees a 'building that looked like it was trying to find a quiet way to crumble' (Chapter Ten, page 64).

Perhaps you're not convinced. That's fine because I'm not trying to convince you. All I'm after is conveying what a strange ride this book is. More often than not, it reads like it's Stallone's journal when he was drafting the screenplay. With sections like,

The phony soldier was Cosmo Carboni and he was Victor's older brother, and was no masterpiece of kindness.

He had a medium skeleton.

Well, maybe not medium.

But odd.

No, odd is the wrong word.

Cosmo Carboni was an angular piece of hustling machinery bent into the form of a man...

Chapter Two, page 16

I'm not entirely convinced that it's not.

Either way, I think I really enjoyed it.

~

To make this slightly cooler, I combined my obsession with this beast and my new addiction to Polyvore. What would I wear to be an extra in this classic? Something equal parts gaudy and sentimental.

Paradise Alley by Liz OT featuring Jigsaw dresses

Items in this set:
Silk Satin Faggotting Dress, 160 GBP
ASOS Nude Back Seam Sheer Tights, $14
Suede pumps, $455
ASOS BLACK Deco Pod Across Body Bag, $37
Tasha Sinamay Flower Hair Clip, $38

Play me out, Tom.

Be forewarned--I went a little crazy with the screenshots

It is a fact that I have a penchant for bad movies. Not in the ironic way which allows people to get away with owning such classics as Newsies (an all-time favourite of mine) or She's All That (be honest!). I get enjoyment from taking my brain out and just allowing these take me away to a simpler state of mind and I won't apologize for it. There are few things in this world I enjoy more than rifling through the bargain bin at the supermarket for some trashy gem or another. After being given an iTunes giftcard for Christmas, I saw fit to rent a movie that I've been dying to experience. That movie was Sylvester Stallone's Paradise Alley, and I was in no way disappointed.

This movie combines some of my favourite things:

Men is suspenders,

hard liquor,

seedy nightclubs with shitty lighting,

fierce bitches,

this guy,

and bleak snapshots of humanity.

It's an underdog story about three brothers trying to escape Hell's Kitchen in 1946. Times is hard, they are different, people are cruel, some love stories, they succeed in the end. I know it's a tired story. I don't care. I also don't care about how 'stylized' it is. If I could shoot a movie, I'd want it all done in dark alleys, makeshift doctor's offices, and clubs named Sticky's, too. You keep doing your thang, Sly.

I spent most of the movie waiting for Cosmo to jump into the ring to save Victor and wondering why all of these men are so fucking sweaty.

If you say it's because they're in Hell's Kitchen--har har har-- I'm telling Frankie that you like like him.

Now, maybe it's just because the movie is surrounded by a fine haze of cigarette smoke and desperation, but I was quite in love with the ladies' clothes. The mid-Forties were a good time to be a destitute vixen.

These girls are only extras, but don't try and tell me you wouldn't pay a quarter for a dance with them.

Then there's Bunchie. Great shoes and a sick hat, but she only gets two shots because she's a whore. No, really. She'd do you for a Klondike bar.

That brings us to the leading lady and object of desire of the two eldest Carboni brothers, Annie. Why? Because she's a babe and does art or some shit.

Her dress here has convinced me that Rodarte's dress for Target may be just what every gal needs to stomp on the heart of her lover when he becomes an asshole who exploits his brother.

Hey, you never know.

It's not just the ladies. I, personally, think Stallone makes an adorable drunk Santa.

Just don't laugh at him. He's sensitive.

Oh fuck. You made fun of him, didn't you? Now he's gone and crashed his car into the bar.

Who's going to clean that up?

Maybe this guy.

Uhhhh...Now it's time for wa-hey-hey-heyyyyy too many shots of Mr. Waits.

For anyone who's not entirely sold on this masterpiece, we'll finish with Stallone yelling at a monkey.

Fair?