John Paizs's Crime Wave / / Jonathan Ball.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press Pilot 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Ball, Jonathan,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2018]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Canadian Cinema
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 p.)

John Paizs's 'Crime Wave' examines the Winnipeg filmmaker's 1985 cult film as an important example of early postmodern cinema and as a significant precursor to subsequent postmodern blockbusters, including the much later Hollywood film Adaptation. Crime Wave's comic plot is simple: aspiring screenwriter Steven Penny, played by Paizs, finds himself able to write only the beginnings and endings of his scripts, but never (as he puts it) "the stuff in-between." Penny is the classic writer suffering from writer's block, but the viewer sees him as the (anti)hero in a film told through stylistic parody of 1940s and 50s B-movies, TV sitcoms, and educational films.In John Paizs's 'Crime Wave,' writer and filmmaker Jonathan Ball offers the first book-length study of this curious Canadian film, which self-consciously establishes itself simultaneously as following, but standing apart from, American cinematic and television conventions. Paizs's own story mirrors that of Steven Penny: both find themselves at once drawn to American culture and wanting to subvert its dominance. Exploring Paizs's postmodern aesthetic and his use of pastiche as a cinematic technique, Ball establishes Crime Wave as an overlooked but important cult classic.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. The Top! Few Films Made It! -- 2. Beginnings and Endings -- 3. The Greatest Color Crime Movie Never Made -- 4. The Stuff In-Between -- 5. Twists! -- 6. The Gap Exposing the Real -- 7. An Alternate Universe -- 8. From the North -- Production Credits -- Further Viewing -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography