FINAL CUT by Marjorie McCown

Jenn McKinlay: One thing I love about the writing community is the introductions from author to author. In this case, our friend Ellen Byron introduced me via email to Marjorie McCown, today's guest, and I was delighted when I read her post (I have a thing for hats, you know). But here's our guest to tell us more. Welcome, Marjorie!

Marjorie McCown: Many thanks to Jenn McKinlay and her Jungle Red colleagues for inviting me to be here today! 

     I began writing FINAL CUT, a murder mystery that takes place behind-the-scenes of a big budget Hollywood film in production, during the second year of the pandemic -- four years after I retired from the film industry. My protagonist, Joey Jessop, is a key costumer who finds the body of a murdered coworker on set and winds up having to investigate the crime in order to save herself. 

     I spent 27 years as a costumer and costume designer for movies, so setting my story within the professional community that I was part of for a quarter century gave me a lot of comfort as a fledgling author. But as I got farther into the process of writing the book, I realized there was a deeper meaning for me in the return to that familiar world than knowing the customs and vocabulary of the film industry back to front. 

Marjorie's Desk

     Writing became my comfort zone during those Covid years, an activity that not only occupied my creative mind but also helped soothe some of my social anxiety about being cut off from direct contact with so many of the people I love. And that's why revisiting my film career, at least in the pages of the book I was writing, became an important lifeline for me not only as creative inspiration, but as a way to console the part of me longing for connection. 

     There is a strong sense of community within the costuming profession. It's a job that requires the collaboration of many talented people working together as a team toward a common goal. That interdependence fosters lasting bonds with colleagues, many of whom become lifelong friends. For me, those relationships are the most enduring benefit from my film career. 

     One of my greatest hopes as I worked to make the transition from costuming to writing was to become part of a new creative community, though I didn't really know what to expect. I'd always viewed writing as a largely solitary profession, and of course there are hours spent sitting at the computer with only imaginary characters for company. But despite my debut author status, I've already been the beneficiary of great kindness from authors who have been welcoming and helpful -- again, many thanks to Jenn McKinlay for the opportunity to post on this wonderful blog and to Ellen Byron, who introduced us. 

     I do see significant parallels between the occupations of costuming and writing that hadn't necessarily occurred to me before I had a better view of both disciplines, beyond the obvious that they're both creative endeavors. Both have similar processes -- a lot of research accompanied by an obsessive quest to select the combination of elements that will produce the best work. 

     For a costumer, that might mean looking at 500 men's fedora hats at 6 different costume houses in addition to an exhaustive online search to find the perfectly proportioned hat for a character in one particular scene of the movie. 

     The writerly version of that quest is the continual hunt for the exact word or phrase that sparks the emotion we hope to stir in our reader or reveals the soul of one of our characters or propels our narrative forward. And that's one of the shared bonds throughout the writing and costuming communities, one of the most basic features that makes us all true colleagues. It is that obsession we all share as artists, that endless search for perfection. 

 Question for Readers: Do you believe you have an obsessive streak that fuels your work or any of your other interests or activities? 

Leave a comment and be entered in the random drawing for a signed copy of Final Cut (limited to the U.S.). 

ABOUT THE BOOK: FINAL CUT

Every day on a big-budget Hollywood movie in production is full of surprises, but the last thing key costumer Joey Jessop expected to find on the first day of shooting was the body of a murdered coworker. Because Joey found the body, and the victim was seeing her ex, she’s suspected of being the killer. The story soon blows up in the press and social media -- and Joey finds her well-ordered life in shambles. That's when things really start to go wrong for Joey and the movie as a series of dangerous mishaps interrupt the shoot. As circumstances spiral out of control, at work and at home, Joey is forced to take matters into her own hands to try to salvage her career, and to save her own life.

     Marjorie McCown spent 27 years working as a key member of the costume design teams for a string of successful movies that includes Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, The Firm, A Bronx Tale, Wag the Dog, The Aviator, Hairspray, Angels & Demons, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and X-Men Days of Future Past. Her debut murder mystery, FINAL CUT, is set behind-the-scenes of a blockbuster Hollywood movie in production. Marjorie is a member of Sisters-in-Crime and Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Southern California with her cats Monkey and Max.

Bad Movies We Love

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Were you at Malice when Rosemarie and Vince Keenan accepted their award? They described their manuscript as a mystery featuring Edith Head. Wow. The entire audience swooned. All agreeing it was a fabulous idea, and I can tell you, the wave of “why didn’t I think about that” washed over the entire crowd. Led by me.

Well, that book, DANGEROUS TO KNOW, is an Agatha nominee for Best First now! And hurray. And of course it’s deeply and fabulously rooted in old Hollywood.  So what better for the Keenans (writing as Renee Patrick) to talk about—than movies!

They DO Make ’em Like That Anymore…

                  Rosemarie and Vince Keenan

Return with us now to the Second Golden Age of Movie Magazines, the early 1990s—which was twenty-five years ago, and doesn’t that give one pause? Using the standard boy band system of classification, Premiere was the serious one, Entertainment Weekly the cute one, and Movieline the scruffy, pouting troublemaker. Movieline ran blind items, just like Hedda Hopper used to do. And each issue ended with the column that was our shared guilty pleasure: Bad Movies We Love.

BMWL cast its net fairly wide, taking aim at disaster films (the entire Airport series, The Swarm), films that were disasters (Myra Breckinridge), and even Academy Award-worthy fare like The Greatest Show on Earth, Butterfield 8 and Fatal Attraction. (Also making the failing grade: not one but two movies in which half of our sleuthing duo, costume designer Edith Head, appeared as herself: Lucy Gallant and The Oscar.) The spotlighted titles came from a range of eras and genres, but each possessed some element that captivated—a hypnotic atmosphere, a galvanizing performance. They fascinated despite, and often because of, their flaws.

They were, in short, bad movies we love.

And they’re still making them, though Movieline is no longer around to keep track of them. Permit us to share a pair of favorites, joined in a number of ways. They’re both show business biopics from 2004 with leading men named Kevin that employ the same unusual—some would say baffling—structure. And we watch them over and over.

Vince’s choice is Beyond the Sea, a passion project for Kevin Spacey who co-writes, directs and stars as singer/actor Bobby Darin. 

Funds for the movie were cobbled together from several European sources, which accounts for the staging of the title song on what looks like a blustery afternoon in Bavaria with Spacey in a canary yellow suit crooning to Kate Bosworth as Sandra Dee, so cold you can see her breath. Spacey is several years too old for the role—a fact the movie clumsily acknowledges—and hits a few clams when he recreates Darin’s singing. But his enthusiasm for a bygone era of entertainment when the nightclub was king lends this cracked pinwheel of a movie an undeniable verve.

Rosemarie, meanwhile, harbors a soft spot for 

De-Lovely, which chronicles the life of Cole Porter. Most of the maestro’s songs are sung by what K-Tel used to call ‘contemporary artists’ with varying degrees of success. Robbie Williams tosses off the title song with such élan it’s mystifying he never became a bigger star in America, while the less said about Sheryl Crow’s “Begin the Beguine” the better. 

The more traditional musical numbers are uniformly dreadful—Louis B. Mayer singing “Be A Clown”?—but the movie has a refreshing openness to using the tunes in different ways. Anchoring it all is Kevin Kline’s performance as Porter. He’s wholly believable as a man who wears his genius lightly. His talent brings him joy, and it brings him joy to know it brings others joy. Kline may find himself in the middle of cacophonous chaos, but the twinkle in his eye cannot be faked.

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Both movies use the same framing device, taking place in the afterlife with the protagonists telling their own stories in formats they understand: Darin’s as a movie, Porter’s a Broadway musical. And it’s this risky metaphorical gambit—life as a show, and the show as life—that accounts for the films’ strange hold over us. Darin, knowing that illness would eventually claim him early, develops a hunger for performing that sustains him—and is matched by Spacey’s own zeal for the spotlight. And De-Lovely’s ending, with every figure from Porter’s life appearing onstage to serenade him to the Pearly Gates with a rendition of “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” never fails to reduce Rosemarie to tears. Hokey? Absolutely. But it also succeeds in dramatizing the totality of a person’s existence, all the missed chances and found love, in a single rousing sequence.

 There was a third show business biopic in 2004. Ray was a critical and commercial hit, earning a Best Picture Academy Award nomination and a deserved Oscar for Jamie Foxx’s turn as Ray Charles. We enjoyed the movie, but we never revisited it. Maybe it’s not bad enough.

Or perhaps it needed a Kevin.

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HANK:  So Reds, what bad movies do you love? (I loved De-Lovely.) And um, French Kiss. And Speed. And best/worst of all, Point Break.  

(Yesterday's winner of an advance readers copy of You'll Never Know, Dear is Finta! Send me your mailing address: hallie "at" hallieephron "dot" com.)

Renee Patrick is the pseudonym for married authors Rosemarie and Vince Keenan. Rosemarie is a research administrator and a poet. Vince is a screenwriter and a journalist. Both native New Yorkers, they currently live in Seattle, Washington. Learn more at reneepatrickbooks.com

Dangerous to Know

Los Angeles, 1938. Former aspiring actress Lillian Frost is adjusting to a new life of boldfaced names as social secretary to a movie-mad millionaire. Costume designer Edith Head is running Paramount Pictures’ wardrobe department, but only until a suitable replacement comes along. The two friends again become partners thanks to an international scandal, a real-life incident in which the war clouds gathering over Europe cast a shadow on Hollywood.

Lillian attended the Manhattan dinner party at which well-heeled guests insulted Adolf Hitler within earshot of a maid with Nazi sympathies. Now, secrets the maid vengefully spilled have all New York society running for cover – and two Paramount stars, Jack Benny and George Burns, facing smuggling charges.

Edith also seeks Lillian’s help on a related matter. The émigré pianist in Marlene Dietrich’s budding nightclub act has vanished. Lillian reluctantly agrees to look for him. When Lillian finds him dead, Dietrich blames agents of the Reich. As Lillian and Edith unravel intrigue extending from Paramount’s Bronson Gate to FDR’s Oval Office, only one thing is certain: they’ll do it in style.