Cleveland City: The Screenplay

Merriam-Webster Definition of femme fatale:   1   a seductive woman who lures men into dangerous or compromising situations   2 a woman who attracts men by an aura of charm and mystery The Harvey Weinstein tragedy is prompting a lot of discourse about sexuality, politics, power, media, society, law and money. The lid's been blown off the Great American Value System. Social media is exploding even more than usual with opinions, arguments, trolls, supporters and lots of women, and even a few men, opening up about their tales of harassment and abuse. Woody Allen just publicly sided with Weinstein. (surprise!) While Weinstein's wife, his company and the Academy have all severed relationships with him.  Rose McGowan and her #rosearmy quit Twitter for one day after they shut her down for publicly posting a phone number. A Twitter stranger replied to one of my tweets supporting McGowan, calling her public statements "hypocrisy" and "do...

I love Film Noir.  Classic Noir. Neo Noir. Scandinavian Noir. All of it. I can watch Double Indemnity , The Usual Suspects and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (both versions) over and over again and with each viewing learn something new, something I missed on the previous dozen viewings of those films. What I love about Noir is that it juxtaposes nefarious behavior with love, crime with passion, theft with grit. To the uninformed it's a great escape of superiority: we watch others behaving badly and then we feel good about our lives. But if we give it the care and respect it deserves, Noir opens up the complexity of the human condition. We are all flawed. We are all lovers and thieves and some of us had to steal for love. Some of us loved only to be robbed. Out of our time, our dignity, our truth. While the "nothing is what seems" premise that drives so much of this genre may seem trite on surface, most of us have absolutely no clue of what's going on behind...