#fly paper

[busterkeatonsociety]

This Day in Buster…May 27, 1924

There are no flies on Sherlock Jr! Buster Keaton tells the Santa Ana Daily Register: “The elimination of the lens fly & screen flea is a great step forward.  From 1908 to 1923 patrons of the picture theaters were often annoyed by seeing a huge fly on the leading woman’s face during a tensely dramatic scene.  All this has now been done away with.  Fumigation sprays which kill all flies floating within sight of the camera are now used on the studio sets.”

[acmeoop]

Flies in the Ointment “The Warners 65th Anniversary Special” (1994)

[allhailkingrooker51]

Rooker in Fallen Angels - “Fly Paper” (1995)

[micahschweitzer]

[slcvisualresources]

Two dancers, Storyboard P and Ben Vereen, in Kahlil Joseph’s film “Fly Paper,” now at the New Museum.

[yellowballoonx]

[ericrobertnolan]

  Authorizing these books was truly the wisest decision I’ve ever made.

[catskewl]

He had no hat. His hair was wet, plastered to his head.  Little streams of water trickled down from it. His clothes were dripping wet.

He looked surprised at us and ordered: “Get out.”

As we got out he growled at the driver: “Why the hell you got your flag up for if you had fares?”

The driver wasn’t there.  He had hopped out the other side and was scooting away down the street.  McCloor cursed him and poked his gun at me, growling: “Go on, beat it.”

Apparently he hadn’t recognized me.  The light here wasn’t good, and I had a hat on now.  He had seen me for only a few seconds in Wale’s room.

I stepped aside. MacMan moved to the other side.

McCloor took a step backward to keep us from getting him between us and started an angry word.

MacMan threw himself on McCloor’s gun.

I socked McCloor’s jaw with my fist.  I might just as well have hit somebody else for all it seemed to bother him.

He swept me out of his way and pasted MacMan in the mouth.  MacMan fell back until the taxi stopped him, spit out a tooth, and came back for more.

I was trying to climb up McCloor’s left side.

MacMan came in on his right, failed to dodge a chop of the gun, caught it square on top of the noodle, and went down hard.  He stayed down.

I kicked McCloor’s ankle, but couldn’t get his foot from under him.  I rammed my right fist into the small of his back and got a left-handful of wet hair, swinging  on it. He shook his head, dragging me off my feet.

He punched me in the side and I could feel my ribs and guts flattening together like leaves in a book.

I swung my fist against the back of his neck.  That bothered him. He made a rumbling noise down in his chest, crunched my shoulder in his left hand, and chopped at me with the gun in his right.

I kicked him somewhere and punched his neck again.

Down the street, at the Embacadero, a police whistle was blowing.  Men were running up First Street toward us.

McCloor snorted like a locomotive and threw me away from him. I didn’t want to go.  I tried to hang on.  He threw me away from him and ran up the street.

I scrambled up and ran after him, dragging my gun out.

At the first corner he stopped to squirt metal at me - three shots.  I squirted one at him.  None of the four connected.

He disappeared around the corner.  I swung wide around it, to make him miss if he were flattened to the wall waiting for me.

He wasn’t...

Excerpt from, “Fly Paper”, 1929, by Dashiell Hammett in the Big Book of The Continental Op. Gif of  “Act of Violence”, 1949, by The Rageaholic,