"The Inside Job of all Inside Jobs," a forlorn satire, torn from the pages of history, by Matt Janovic

It had been a dreary marriage to Mary Todd and a gloomy four years as president. I am feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders once again, but liberation is finally at hand on this lovely spring day of April 14th.
Had I finally enlisted the rebel sympathizer to kill myself just a day after my speech on granting negroes voting rights? I had. It wasn't as easy as that: I had to navigate through channels connected to the Confederate spy-networks that reached into Canada and, miraculously, and all at once, hit gold. It was a direct line to my nemesis, rebel Confederate President Jefferson Davis, partly by way of the nefarious Knights of the Golden Circle. This Booth is a strange character--and actor--and also a member of this peculiar abomination culled from the rituals and symbology of the beneficent Freemasons.

On our meeting yesterday the actor told me that after the speech he had vowed, "That is the last speech he will ever give." Our undisclosed and surreptitious meeting at a tavern outside of the nation's capital was...brusque. I could see the anticipation in his eyes, and I trembled for our nation, as President Jefferson once wrote, for our God is a just one. Richmond had already fallen a little over a week ago on that date. Just three days prior to our meeting at the tavern, the rebel General Lee had surrendered to that drunk, General Grant. What had it all been for? Yes, the slaveholders threw a tantrum over my winning the election, but the Union was and still is a phantasm. Why do I think this shall repeat itself in our history over a century from now over something so ephemeral as the Union? But the preparations for this were difficult and I could share my secret with no one within--or without of--the confines of the White House, certainly not my military or police sentry escorts.

Indeed, this was as baroque a means of avoiding sitting through that wretched, accursed play Our American Cousin, as anyone could imagine, but there were other issues at hand...

You see, Mary had run up an unconscionable and staggering debt--rivaling the cost of the war between the states--at the establishments of a number of prominent Washington dressmakers. Then, there was the dream that my own assassination had transpired and was viewing myself as some faceless spectator, displayed on the presidential catafalque, deceased. I awoke quite happy from such a phantasm as that! Now, this day of days, this morn, I happened upon my new Secretary of State, Mr. McCullough, and even he remarked that "I never saw Mr. Lincoln so cheerful and happy." Indeed I was this morn! He can never know how happy I have been on this day, the happiest of my life.

But, with her usual perspicacity, Mary chimed in, "Saying such things aloud could bring you bad luck." and I ignored it as I usually do. Why is it that everyone in my midst is either drunk or half-mad? Was it I that appointed them? I'm afraid so, and I don't even want to think about my grave error in appointing Schuyler Colfax. My melungeon ancestors are groaning, my heart yearns for the Appalachin, and perhaps, Portugal. Did I really have melungeon ancestors? Our family tree was a little unclear, but who could care but my political enemies and the now vanquished slave-holding contingency? I am still torn over the war between the states. Future generations will either lionize or scorn my legacy, but I feel assured that I will be mythologized as Cicero and Pericles were, and they will be just as wrong out of convenience...

Our plan--that of my assassin and me--comes tonight in Act III, Scene 2 after 10:00PM. A player will utter the line, "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap... ." I have no conception of what "sockdologizing" is, but am very familiar--as my assassin is of the play and its contents--with what a "man-trap" is, hence part of the motive behind my plans for escaping this vale of tears. He knows his part, and his lines, well, and has rehearsed them like any other play.

As I sit here in the final moments before these fateful lines are uttered by the players, when my drunkard police escort Frederick Parker has run off to the tavern with timepiece precision as he has been known to do, and why I chose him, I can only reflect on the humorous possibility that some Southern halfwits in the distant future will run for any exit, for any wild leap of reason, to explain my killing. The irony is inescapable. They will do so to make sense out of an event which has no sense to it because this life has no sense to it. Yet, I feel the strong passion for my fellow man...and the gams of Major Rathbone's lovely fiance, Clara Harris who has also joined us in the presidential box here, tonight at Ford's Theatre. Booth is a strange one, perhaps mad. The South has lost, they have no hope of permanent secession, yet this "man" thinks that he can somehow turn the tide of history. Perhaps he will, but at least I will not have to endure the final act of this accursed play or to face bankruptcy over my wife's addiction to finery.

Mary is wittily saying to me in jest,"What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?"

My timepiece says it is squarely 10:15PM, and I can hear myself saying, "She won't think anything about it," and I hear a sound coming from behind me.

The End

Postscript, 03.19.2013--And those pages torn from history, those pages were ripped from the spine of John Wilkes Booth's diary, disposed of at a military prison outside of the nation's capital, consumed by the smouldering embers of war...

GOP Rep. Joe Wilson, douchebag

WWW--You'd think last night's speech took place on April 10, 1861. Huh? Yes, the moronic big health recipient shot his mouth off last night during president Obama's speech on health care reform as though he was Brigadier General G.T. Beuaregard, shelling Ft. Sumter--only this time, he didn't take four long years of fighting to "apologize."

"You lie," he stammered in crackerese, and it was the come shot heard around the world--or at least in the halls of Congress and the boardrooms of big pharma and the hearts of the insurance robber barons. "Render unto Caesar" never meant going down on him--after all--and Wilson's Caesar salad, his masters, are corporate and plutocratic ones. It really had nothing to do with immigrants getting health coverage at all.

A longtime friend said to me a few months ago something that I take to heart and consider very seriously (I'm paraphrasing him) : "Southerners--in general--are intellectually incapable of functioning in a democracy." I agree with this strongly. My family on my mother's side comes from Kansas and Arkansas--they left for a reason, and the aforementioned was a large part of that reason, or the lack thereof. There was nothing to stay behind for at the end of WWII, and it wasn't just about jobs, it was about a backwards culture that doesn't want to change.

Wilson's inappropriate outburst was a pathetic violation of decorum and I believe strongly that its intent was symbolically racialist, not merely because he's a whore who's owned by the insurance and big health care-related corporations and trusts. I believe Wilson was put-up to what he did by his own party because of the state he's from, a place dear to the heart of sundry evangelicals and the emotionally retarded throughout America since it's where the American Civil War stupidly began, and it was over another lost election, what Marx called a "slaveholder's rebellion." The white-trash South is going to be that red-headed stepchild of America for as long as the air is breathable and before the planet really starts hitting back. But Marx was correct: the Civil War was childish, regressive, and anachronistic.

Indeed it was, and there was nothing noble about it, the Confederacy-be-damned. There's a better word for what the firing on Ft. Sumter and Wilson's outburst constitute (or rather, don't): the childish throwing of a tantrum, a fit by the mentally-challenged. Apparently, South Carolingian didn't find their governor Sanford embarrassing enough, so they elected a whole gaggle of losers from the Fellowship. But wait, it gets better, much better.

Wikipedia has had to put a lock on Wilson's page, similar to what happened with Sen. David Vitter's page when I and others were attempting to add pertinent information to it that was factually correct. I know, unfair, especially when someone's powerful, then it's heretical, a travesty. But, never mind, these pages of the unaccountable powerful have hired gatekeepers (some simply acting on their own) who act like sleeper agents to guard them and block further content that might be deemed (by them) "controversial." Before all that, I never cared for Wikipedia, never respected them, and never will, they're redundant, go use academic sites for information.

Wilson is the poster child of a dysfunctional democracy, but then, so is the entire GOP and most of the Democratic Party. Their constituents? A foregone conclusion, but at least most of the dumbbells out there are going to get a very painful civics lesson. No, Joe Wilson never lies, and he never chopped down that cherry tree, since it never existed anyway. To be sure, the GOP and morons like Wilson are speaking in a coded language predicated not only on plutocratic criminality, but also a regressive race-baiting. In other words, Wilson's going to be "out-niggered" before long, expect the language to coarsen. Racism is flushing itself out behind the facade once again, which is a good thing. It's easier to hit it once it's out in the open, the tipping of the hand, the curse of the terminally stupid.

Tropic Thunder (2008) review

Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder is everything its critics have said it is: it's offensive, it walks a fine line on race...oh yeah, and then there's the "tard scandal" hyped by people looking for something--anything--to protest. It's just incredibly an offensive movie, and that's what makes it great. We should demand to be scandalized, but humorless turds are humorless turds.

Like Yasuzo Masumura's "Giants and Toys" (1958), or Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), Tropic Thunder is social satire at its best and criticizes all war movies.

That doesn't mean it isn't entertaining or too high brow. It isn't, and anyone who inhabits this era in the developed world is going to understand the many social and cultural observations in this film. Audiences will also find it very easy to understand exactly who and what are being criticized (the current incarnation of Hollywood and spoiled movie stars).

But Stiller and co-writers Justin Theroux (who's also the executive producer and a great English actor) and Ethan Cohen make a whole lot of gleefully brutal comments on our mass culture, our peculiar attitudes, and our unquenchable appetite for spectacle and ultraviolence....wrapped in a movie that's supposed to be "antiwar."

Hollywood and movie production companies tend to overstate their sincerity when tackling "issues" like war, poverty, and all the rest. They don't generally tend to care at all, it's a business move. Tropic Thunder makes this case well throughout.

This was pointed-out by Lenny Bruce in the late-1950s and by many other social critics over the years, and it's not a uniquely American viewpoint. Movies are made to make money--a lot of money--and that's about it. The rest is garnish, with a little sincerity here-and-there in some productions. Fine.

Without giving too much away, we're treated to a troubled Hollywood production stuck in Vietnam, making one of those "horrors of war" films we all love to watch to feel better about ourselves, while doing nothing to prevent the phenomena of meaningless conflict. Hollywood isn't the only one playing the insincerity game, after all. But the writers stick with hitting Hollywood over the head, and as a result, they even accuse themselves of hypocrisy. This is a very brave moral and career position to take, and it's likely to add to the film's popularity for the chances it takes.

Too often, Hollywood creates spectacles that claim some higher moral ground, yet simultaneously cater to the bloodlust of audiences in their stylizations of violence (if they get that far). This is something even "Wild Bunch" (1969) director Sam Peckinpah was guilty of at times, though it's debatable whether it was conscious or not in every case.

Tropic Thunder is where entertainment also becomes art, though this could be one of the funniest and most entertaining comedies I've seen since my first viewing of Animal House. You're in for quite a ride if you have a sense of humor about yourself and life.

The three main characters are the spoiled movie stars, played by Stiller, the inimitable Jack Black, and one of the greatest actors of this era, Robert Downey Jr. Stiller's washed-up Tugg Speedman is eerily similar to Sylvester Stallone or even a Vin Diesel, while Black's Jeff Portnoy might be a heroin-addicted Luke Perry mixed with an Eddie Murphy. But it's Downey's Russell Crowe-like Kirk Lazarus who virtually steals the show as an Australian actor who takes "method" acting too far: he gets plastic surgery to look African-American, and he never breaks character. In short, he's a little nuts, as some actors are, and gets on the nerves of a Black cast member who constantly calls him out.

This alone is incredibly edgy for a contemporary movie, offering many possibilities to fall over the side and lose the audience, but Stiller, Theroux and Cohen (and Downey) pull-it-off and achieve a kind of comic ecstasy only seen in Kubrick's Strangelove and few other films in cinema history. There are times when Downey's Lazarus is photographically and phonographically convincing as a Black soldier, and it must be seen and heard to be believed. But there's even more...

Almost entirely unannounced is Tom Cruise's brilliantly comedic performance as the Weinstein-like Les Grossman, a corporate movie executive whose vulgarity and crassness knows no bounds. It goes beyond spouting the word "fuck," and Cruise has once again made the right move in taking-on the role of such an unlikable (yet oddly likable!) character. The Grossman character understands that he's a fucknut and a tyrannical asshole, and all of the inherent comedy of this fact. In a way, he actually "gets" it all--that the movie business is complete bullshit, a game.

That's not to say that the Grossman character isn't evil, but he's really something to watch in Cruise's expert-hands. Tom Cruise almost owns Tropic Thunder and deserves some serious credit for his performance, possibly even that little gold guy. He's Dr. Strangelove and General Buck Turgetson combined, and he's given us a performance that would have done Peter Sellers proud.

The movie-within-a-movie approach is very sound here, especially at the beginning of the film. What we see are some of the realities of a movie production: all the waste, the backbiting, the egos, the compromises forced on directors by spoiled "stars," the tainted motives for making a "message picture," the addictions, the troubled actors, and the nightmare of shooting outside of a soundstage. The comparisons to other troubled war movie productions are going to be obvious to most, like Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and Oliver Stone's "Platoon." There are others, as there was a whole spate of Vietnam war films over the 33 years, many-of-which could be referred to not only as "insincere," but simply bad. The majority of war movies are.

On the "retard" scandal: this is the most overblown part of the release of this film. For the curious, I am acquainted with people who have mentally-impaired children. I wasn't offended by this at all, and the repetition of variations of the word "retarded" simply became funny for its own sake and had little to do with mentally-retarded children or adults. Downey's Kirk Lazarus and Stiller's Tugg Speedman have an exchange over the career-merits of playing the "retarded" over the simply "impaired":

Lazarus: "Full-on retarded--no one ever comes back from that."

Lazarus character mentions a number of films--like "Rainman"--where the characters only appeared to be "retarded," but actually had some other form of impairment. In Rainman, it was autism, and the crazy Lazarus notes that nobody ever won an award from the Motion Picture Academy when they played a "full-on retard," or the "dumbest motherfucker in the world."

Tropic Thunder, then, suggests that what's really offensive is exploiting the impaired to advance one's career and to line one's wallet by making "message" movies about them. The reactions of critics couldn't be more wrong-headed, and should be met with contempt. There are few better antidotes to antidemocratic tendencies cloaked in niceties than unrelenting belittlement and humor. Bravo.

There was no comment being directed towards the mentally-retarded or impaired that was hateful--just the opposite, the attacks were aimed squarely at the hypocrisy of Hollywood in exploiting impaired people for ticket sales, and for actors to win awards. I can say with all honesty that I've never laughed so hard at a scene of dialog in my entire life. There's nothing wrong with referring to someone as "mentally-retarded," it's medically accurate, it's the intent and the tone that count. I leave it at that. Tropic Thunder is a must-see for all the right reasons, and it's what movies are supposed to be. Ben Stiller has topped himself, and so have his collaborators. Good show.

Obama invokes the late, great Wild Bill Hickok as an ancestor

Springfield, Missouri--Obama's claim of descent to James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (where he engaged in a duel, possibly during the Civil War) today is an interesting one.

The Democratic presidential candidate came to this town on the edge of the old West on Wednesday and laid down a challenge for his GOP rival.

"If Sen. McCain wants a debate on taxes in this campaign, I'm ready," Obama said, noting that Hickok is said to have fought a duel here. "I'm ready to duel John McCain on taxes right here, quick draw," Obama said before closing the loop with Hickok.

"The family legend is that he is a distant cousin of mine. I don't know if it's true but I'm going to research it." ("Political Play: Obama claims link to the Wild West," AP, 07.30.2008)

He doesn't need to, a noted genealogist named Chris Child has confirmed it. Never mind that-- 25% of everyone roaming the Wild West was Black (it's true). Obama went to the heart of the matter, to one of the legends, Wild Bill.

And he's correct: he is descended from Wild Bill, a distant cousin. But does he really want to make a comparison? Perhaps. But his challenge of a dueling debate over taxes in Springfield with John McCain doesn't bode well when you look at how Wild Bill ended his days, but people settle their differences in other ways nowadays. Nonetheless, there's an even more intriguing fact about the Hickok family that few will recognize:

Wild Bill Hickok James Butler Hickok in Troy Grove, Illinois on May 27, 1837 to was born William Alonzo Hickok and Polly Butler Hickok. Bill had four brothers and two sisters and his parents were God-fearing Baptists who expected Bill to keep up his chores on the farm and to attend church every Sunday. Bill's parents also operated a station along the Underground Railroad, where they smuggled slaves out of the South. It was during this time that the lean and wiry young man got his first taste of hostile gunfire when he and his father were chased by law officers who suspected them of carrying more than just hay in their wagon. ("Wild Bill Hickok and the dead man's hand," LegendsofAmerica.com)

And so, James Butler Hickok came from very upstanding Americans, from people who saw Black Americans as human beings when few bothered to care. On top of this, they risked their lives, and so did Bill. He was a real man. But then, we should remember that there's that other side of America, where Republicans and sell-out Democrats dwell. It's the domain of the Coward Jack McCall, the world of the back-stabbing scoundrel and the yellow-belly.

Not much is known about McCall except that he was stupid, cock-eyed, a braggart, and a drunk who had once run with some buffalo hunters, possibly in the Wyoming territory. Kind of sounds like the current president, doesn't it? McCall was from Kentucky while Hickok was from Illinois, but both men wrestled with the beast within. Hickok was a lawman with an itchy trigger-finger. We'll never know how many people Hickok killed, and it's positive we never will with McCall either.

But you know a man by his actions, and we only remember McCall because of one of his last ones when he shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back of the head for beating him at cards.

On August 1, 1876 Wild Bill was playing cards in Nuttall and Mann’s No. 10 Saloon when one of the players dropped out and bystander Jack McCall took his place. McCall kept losing and at the end of the evening was broke. Hickok gave him money with which to buy dinner. The next day, on August 2, Hickok returned to the No. 10 and joined in a game of cards. A few hours later Jack McCall entered the bar and stopped a few paces behind Hickok. He pointed his gun at Hickok’s head, pulled the trigger and shouted, “Damn you, take that!” The gunshot instantly killed Wild Bill. McCall ran out of the saloon and attempted to escape on a horse that was tethered nearby, but the saddle had been loosened, and he fell to the ground. McCall ran down the street and hid in a butcher’s shop where he was captured by a large crowd. ("Deadwood History-JackMcCall," AdamsMuseumandHouse.org)

How is this different from John McCain dropping bombs on innocent North Vietnamese civilians over forty-years-ago, then being captured? Can someone like Obama--coming from the Chicago political machine--embody the morality of what was good about James Butler Hickok and America, or will he unleash the spirit of Jack McCall, John Rockefeller Sr., the Vanderbilts, Andrew Carneige, and the Pinkertons on the world as Commander in Chief?

Will he be a backstabbing assassin like the man who murdered his distant cousin, or will he side with the robber barons, the mine owners, and railroad men of our times? The signs aren't good, but one can hope, since that's all we're left with voting within the two party system. Will Obama be the man from Illinois (Lincoln/Hickok) or the malcontent, booze-swilling long-knife from Kentucky (McCall)?

When a candidate evokes the memory of the Old West in America, it's an important event that carries the responsibility of getting the history right. Yes, it makes him look and sound "tough," but does it make him a hero (McCain isn't one either), a man who can enter his home justified? If Senator Obama decides to stand on the side of the law, he's going to have a lot of cleaning-up to do from the last president. This is mandatory. It should be a part and parcel of his own agenda, because no nation can survive lawlessness for very long.

Just 100-years-ago, Pat Garrett was murdered along a lonely road in New Mexico.

He'd been shot in the back of the head and in the chest. Long before we were arguing over which angle JFK was shot from in Dealy Plaza, parties were arguing the same over Pat's murder. They say a big time rancher named W.W. Cox wanted him dead, and that he wasn't alone. Rich "coyotes" smuggling Chinese immigrants across the Mexican-American border might have wanted to bring them through his Bear Canyon ranch. Had they murdered him for money and power? What side of history is Obama on? We already know about John McCain.

"Political Play: Obama claims link to the Wild West," AP, 07.30.2008: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gyXVIfZ2F2CTuuxH3_93vuTP-ywwD928D6QO0

"Wild Bill Hickok and the dead man's hand," LegendsofAmerica.com: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/WE-BillHickok.html

On the Coward Jack McCall:http://www.adamsmuseumandhouse.org/answers/jackmccall.html

"Surprising New Information on Pat Garrett's Death: Details from the Fornoff Report," by Chuck Hornung, WesternOutlaw.com: http://www.westernoutlaw.com/stories/files/NewInfoPatGarrett.pdf

Masters of Horror: The Black Cat DVD (2006) review

"I've read two or three biographies of his, and one of the things that really interested me is that he's a Southerner. A lot of people don't think of him that way. He wasn't even from Baltimore. I mean, there's a football team named after him and he spent some time in Baltimore, but his formative years were spent in Richmond, Virginia, and in England. Richmond, Virginia is where he came from. During his entire literary career, he had to go where the work was, which was Philadelphia and New York. At the time, this was ten years before the Civil War, all that tension between the North and South didn't come out of nowhere." --Jeffrey Combs (UGO.com, 2006?)

I cannot fathom it, but somehow, some way, Stuart Gordon just improves as a director with each film. This is the atypical view of movie making, which usually tells us that a director does their best work when they're in their 30s-40s. It's being trashed here, in what is the best translation-to-screen of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Black Cat" to date.

Gordon and his frequent co-writer Dennis Paoli have given us a wonderful gift: the finest version of a Poe tale, and an illuminating look at the misery that was his life (though tinged with a little joy). Besides his screenwriting work with Gordon, Paoli is a noted Poe scholar, and even star Jeffrey Combs did an enormous amount of research into our greatest writer's peculiar life. This is evident in the use of Poe's favorite song throughout the film, as well as the little details such as his continued wearing of his West Point jacket (its silken-lining worn inside-out--he was expelled from the academy for gambling).

By now, most Americans understand how horrific the 1840s were, largely-thanks to Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York." A good dose of Poe's horror springs from his own specific time-and-place, and his constant displacements weren't uncommon. The vast-majority of Americans were impoverished at this time, slavery was still firmly in-place, the frontier was still young and dangerous, the Indian wars were still raging (with the trail of tears coming during Poe's last years), there was rampant criminality and banditry, rampant corruption, rigged elections, labor violence, unhygienic conditions, an impending war with Mexico, extreme contentions over immigration, and much more. It was a bloody time that echoes our own.

Therefore, it should be unsurprising that horror is popular again, as it would be by the end of Poe's lifetime. America is horror. Contrary to popular belief, Edgar Allan Poe was experiencing reasonable success as a writer at the time of his mysterious disappearance--and reappearance--in Baltimore during October of 1849. He was the only show in town who wrote tales of horror and of the fantastic.

If you've read the short story, you'll know that it's rarely been done well. There are a number of them that literally have nothing to do with the original, and several elements are generally left-out due to how graphic the original short story still is, even today. Edgar J. Ulmer's 1934 version is great, but it's not the same story at all. The same can be said for Lucio Fulci's 1981 film. Roger Corman's take is much closer, but couldn't show us a number of crucial actions (the removal of the cat's eye with a penknife, as well as the protagonist burying an axe in his wife's brain).

The Argento version in "Two Evil Eyes" (1990) has been one of the best until this version. Simply doing the story proud would have been enough, but Gordon and Paoli did-one-better--they fused the facts of Poe's tortured life with the tale itself! This elevates this film to that of a timeless classic, and it's unlikely to be outdone anytime soon, if ever. Coupled with this, cinematographer Jon Joffin's photography is just breathtaking, with a sepia-tone look of an old 19th century tintype. The only tinges of color we see are scant, usually being blood & alcohol, as well as a cat's eye. The effect is dramatic, and the end-result is genuine horror.

Poe's life with Virginia Clemm--his first cousin--was only troubled by their poverty and her tuberculosis, and their love for each other was uninterrupted by her untimely death. She is the muse of "The Raven," and "Annabel Lee," the ghost that would haunt him until the day he died. One could imagine that even in his last moments of delirium, he was thinking of her. Death would not part them, even after Poe remarried and continued to write. The cat in his short story is the guilt and the specter of death (hence, the name "Pluto," the lord of the underworld and death) that haunted he and Virginia throughout their poverty-stricken years together, and she was one of his great champions.

Their love was unconditional, a rarity in this life, but also a part of that romantic "Southern gentility" of the time that would be felled by the Civil War. Poe, after all, was a Southern "gentleman," and part of a fallen aristocracy (like Lovecraft, though he was of Rhode Island extraction) that didn't understand the new industrial order arising in the Northern and Eastern states. He was of a dying feudal order, a pre-capitalist romantic watching his world die. No tears should be shed for the ending of slavery, but other great things were lost in the destruction of the Antebellum South.

This is probably part of why we got such stories of decline and decay from Poe. He was seeing a lot of it during his lifetime, and the beginnings of what he would have rightly seen as a horrible new order in America (you don't have to be a Marxist to dislike bourgeois capitalism). Poe had other problems--mental ones. Jeffrey Combs captures Poe's self-destructive perversity well, and it's going to be a surprise to many how truly Southern his portrayal of the writer's dialect is. But what may come as the greatest surprise is just how tortured his imagination was, and we get some great references to "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Telltale Heart," and more, woven throughout the biographical details and The Black Cat's plot.

Poe had an interesting insight into the minds of killers, and The Black Cat seems very prescient today, considering the link between animal torture that has been found in the biographies of serial killers. Viewers will meet an Edgar Allan Poe that they never knew existed, and hopefully, they will grow to empathize with his difficult life (and those of the living). This isn't one for the squeamish. It's pretty bloody, and filled with madness and obsession--it is Poe in all his glory, and our ongoing American nightmare. Bravo.