Carnival Honey

The greatest source of inspiration so far for my next film has been the novel CARNIVAL HONEY. It's a pulp novel from 1961 written by Orrie Hitt. I've gone on to read other pulp novels from the time, but this is the one that really does it for me. For one thing, it takes place in a carnival. And it's very cinematic, very film noir. But there's this incredible restraint in the writing. Because you never see the carnival itself. You are taken into the trailers, a diner, a house in the country, but not not the carnival itself. It's almost as if this was a movie script and they didn't have the money to show you the carnival. That's how it feels-- like a budget contraint. It's that cinematic. You can see and feel all the sets, you can see the actors, the set dressing. You feel like you are watching a movie, and you enjoy being in the cramped, claustrophobic trailers with their stark lighting and umade beds with satin sheets.

And the sex is very interesting, because they had to make it spiritual in order to pass the censors. So it almost becomes feminized. It's about the total experience, man and woman, union, desire, sensuality. It's not about a male point of view. Also, because so many of these books were churned out so quickly, and the writers had to vary the plots and characters, you have a lot of it told from a woman's point of view. It switches back and forth, but in this book stays longer on the women, on their thoughts and fantasies. A lot of what everyone talks about is women and their options. There's this argument that goes back and forth: should the carnival girls strip all the way, or not? On the one hand it's illegal and they could be shut down, on the other the carnival needs the extra cash it brings in. And everyone in the carnival is concerned for the good of the whole, because if the carnival doesn't make money, they could all be out of jobs. Then there are the girls themselves, their futures, whether or not they should do it from a personal point of view. Everyone seems concerned about this, the reputations and well-being of the girls.

The men are big and brutal and handsome, and a little scary. I thought of Robert Ryan, Jack Palance. The women are like Gloria Graham, Virginia Mayo, Diana Dors, Marie Windsor. Everyone is struggling along, eveyone is in the same racket. You work for a living. You do what you can to get by. Sure, you can go wrong along the way. A lot of the girls go wrong by getting raped or otherwise deflowered as teenagers. The men have no college education, never got a break. It's all very gritty and realistic.

Everyone loves sex. A woman who loves sex is not threatening, is not masculinized or judged. The more she enjoys sex, the more she is a total woman. She gives the gift of her body, and this gift is sacred. There are homosexuals in these books too, and they are equally human, equally dimensional. Their desire is fleshed out the same as everyone else's, from the inside.

It's so different than anything today. It's so basic. It's about human beings, with their desires, faults, and weaknesses. It's stunningly unspectacular. Nothing is embellished. It's a world of realities, of hard facts. Nowadays stories are all trying to be so wacky. But this is so plain. It's about plain men and women. But somehow you know they are a little more handsome, more virile, more busty, with riper thighs, moister lips, a squarer jaw, more sexual, than you and me. And that's why it's so cinematic. You are seduced by seeing the stars in their more intimate moments. And the brilliance of it is, the author paints the stars so you feel you know them, so you feel almost as if you are watching a great noir film. And the restraint in the writing is a lot of what makes it possible to visualize it so clearly.

CARNIVAL HONEY also seems cinematic for me because it fits within a formula I've come up with for creating great cinema with limited time and a limited budget. I analyzed all the really effective low-budget films, and I found they all have the same story elements and production details. More on that next time.