Charlton Heston.
Then.
Nick Nolte now.
I’m talking about casting the part of Skink, formerly known as Clinton Tyree, the more than half insane Vietnam Vet and one-time governor of Florida turned swamp-dwelling, roadkill-eating recluse and sometime eco-terrorist, hero of a number of Carl Hiaasen’s novels including his latest, Star Island
Skink has become a major landmark in the landscape of Hiaasen’s Florida. He’s as expected and as appropriate a sight as a shot of Biscayne Bay or an airboat skimming the Everglades sawgrass and fits in any novel just as neatly, and if there’s ever a movie made of one of those novels, Skink needs to be played by someone big, strong, charismatic, commanding, with a glint of madness in his eyes even when he’s at his most sane and with frightening sanity about when he’s most mad, plus possessed of an awesome smile and a powerful set of choppers. That’s Heston in his late prime from Major Dundee through Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man. Heston would have been a tad too old when Hiaasen started writing novels, but Nolte is just about the right age, too old to be of romantic interest to the heroine, full of enough youthful vigor and muscle to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out of trouble without losing a step or a breath.
Skink, the wild and wily old man of the Florida Keys, driven mad by his horror and rage at finding himself the last honest man in Florida politics and by his heartbreak at witnessing the rape of the state’s natural beauty and still driven to mad acts of righteous vengeance against the agents of corruption and despoil, is a force of nature, which as Nature’s enforcer, he ought to be. He’d be a helluva a presence on the screen. He’s a helluva presence on the page. The challenge for a director would be to unleash Skink’s energy without letting him take over the movie the way he tends to take over the books, even the ones he makes only the briefest appearances in.
That’s the trouble with Skink, he takes over to the point that he makes me forget whatever else is supposed to be going on in the book. That can be fun, for a page or two, but it gets annoying because I want to read the book at hand not another episode in the serial adventures of a lunatic, not matter how heroic or righteous.
Skink’s appearances often present a case of an author working against himself. When he’s not in a book I miss him but when he shows up I think, “Again? Can’t we go someplace new?” He’s a compelling character, but he is a madman and madmen aren’t defined by their having gone off the rails as the saying goes. They’re defined by being stuck in their tracks. They travel the same routes over and over again. Skink’s role in Star Island
The books tend to blend together and Skink is majorly responsible the blending.
Skink is very active in Star Island. He causes pages of mischief and mayhem. Cars crash, hotel lobbies burn, small, yappy dogs get dognapped and threatened with roasting, brand new washing machines are used for unhygienic purposes (don’t ask), and a damsel in distress gets rescued, although, not the damsel in distress.
But in a few years, when I'm reading the next book in which he appears and chuckling over Skink’s latest adventures and remembering some of his past ones, I'm suspect that once again I'll pull myself up short, trying to recall if it was in Star Island or Sick Puppy
Ann DeLusia is the heroine of Star Island because she’s an aspiring actress, which is to say a presumed aspiring celebrity, and Star Island is about life on the fringes of the world of celebrity. Erin Grant is the heroine of Strip Tease
Both Ann and Erin struggle against people and circumstances intent on corrupting them by reducing them to nothing more than what they do to make money to live on.
This is a general theme of Hiaasen’s, the way life in a world ruled by money threatens and tempts everyone with the buying and selling of their souls. The villains and those tempted souls falling into villainy are those who see all other people as means to their own enrichment. Ann and Erin resist these reductions and insist on being treated and treating other people as if they’re worth something more than what they’re paid or likely to pay off.
Ann is part of the entourage of a very Britney-esque pop diva named Cherry Pye who has all of Britney’s self-destructive habits, plus Lindsay’s, plus Paris’, and none of their brains or talent.
That’s not sarcasm. It’s a straight-forward comparison like stating that a teaspoon contains more than a thimbleful.
Cherry’s lack of talent is manageable through technology. In concert, she lips synchs to digitally enhanced recordings of herself. It’s not clear whether her brainlessness is a result of her enthusiastic experimentations with booze and drugs or if she’s too dumb to predict the outcomes of any of her experiments. Either way, one fuels the other, and she’s often not in a condition to be seen in public, a problem for her parents who live off her celebrity---a celebrity who can’t be seen, that is, who isn’t constantly in the public eye isn’t a celebrity.
That’s where Ann comes in.
Her job is to be seen…as Cherry.
Ann is an actress, but she isn’t hired because she is an actress or to act. She’s hired because at a glance she looks enough like Cherry Pye to pass for her. And that’s all she’s required to do, get seen at a glance. Her job is to be glanced at as she hurries in and out of events Cherry would be attending if she wasn’t otherwise medically, alcoholically, sexually, or therapeutically engaged, and then disappear. Ann doesn’t need to impersonate Cherry. The trick works because everybody else at these events, all the other celebrities and their hangers-on, are too preoccupied with themselves to notice that they never actually spent any time in Cherry’s company. Pictures in the tabloids and video clips on the internet show “Cherry” there, so she must have been there even if they don’t personally remember it.
This means that for purposes of the plot or character development, Ann doesn’t have to be an actress. Her acting skills come in handy when she gets caught up in the situations that make up the plot, but those skills aren’t impressive. She shows no more ability to improvise and pretend than any reasonably intelligent, spunky, sassy heroine forced by circumstances to pull of a quick disguise or lie her way out of trouble. She isn’t defined by being an actress even to the point of wanting to act.
She hasn’t had much of a career to miss. The high point so far has been a role in a tampon commercial. But she never misses the career she might have had or might have liked to have had or would be having if she wasn’t stuck in Florida pretending to be Cherry Pye.
There’s a secondary character, an actor on the brink of a breakthrough because of his role in a movie directed by Quentin Tarantino, but news of his success doesn’t cause Ann to think to herself, Boy, would I like to work with Quentin Tarantino or even, Boy, am I glad I turned down that part in Death Proof.
She has absolutely no ambition and no vanity about her talent or possible lack of talent.
These virtues are what Hiaasen relies on to explain how Ann is able to resist temptations and rise above her antagonists (and also how she wound up working for Cherry Pye. An actress who cared about her career wouldn’t have taken a gig that removed her from Hollywood for months at a stretch in order to be essentially invisible). But these virtues are more negative vices than negations of vice. Ann doesn’t have to work at being good. She doesn’t have to practice diligence, which is the virtue of keeping a grip on yourself and not letting your weaknesses get the better of you. She doesn’t need humility, which isn’t a quality of being without vanity or ego, but the practice of reminding yourself you aren’t all that. Ann is never tempted by fame or money or, for that matter, sex. Her soul is never in peril. Neither, as it turns out, is her body, even when in the clutches of the novel’s less than dastardly but still gun-toting villain. She is under no threat, physical or metaphysical, which makes for an unfortunate lack of suspense.
Ann is protected by what amounts to a Medieval Romance heroine’s level of purity.
This puts her in an old-fashioned place for a novel that’s a satire of contemporary America, that of the lady faire who inspires the knights around her to be better men than they have been or otherwise would be if not for her.
Under her influence, the novel’s chief bad guy, a sleazy paparazzo named Bang Abbott, literally cleans up his act. Moved by her decency, charm, beauty, and relative sanity compared to all the other characters, an unusually cold-hearted hired killer called Chemo not only spares her life, like the huntsman who can’t bring himself to murder Snow White, but becomes her champion, a stand-in for Skink while he’s still working his way towards his return to the forefront of the novel. And, as if touched by an angel, Skink himself begins to take baby steps towards a reconciliation with his former, not insane self.
Ann plays Dulcinea to Skink, whose most famous literary forebear is Don Quixote, the difference between the two mad self-dubbed knights-errant being that the Knight of the Woeful Countenance is mostly a danger to himself---and sheep---while Skink is as deadly and unconquerable as Lancelot, if not quite as pure of heart or well-groomed.
I mentioned that Ann doesn’t really need Skink to rescue her. Skink, on the other hand, does need Ann or at least her inspiration to save him from himself. Which could have been a subplot of Star Island if Hiaasen had let us watch Skink changing by degrees back into Clinton Tyree.
But Hiaasen treats this transformation as something of an after-thought---or as the prelude to another novel---and is content to give us scene after scene of Skink being Skink, which, as I said, works towards blending Star Island backwards into previous books.
Meanwhile, Ann really is Dulcinea. It would have been more interesting if she’d been an Aldonza, the kitchen wench of questionable morals who, in the musical Man of La Mancha, but not in Cervantes’ novel, is inspired by Quixote’s idealism and devotion to think of herself and start demanding to be treated as a Dulcinea.
The real problem with Star Island, though, isn’t the lack of weaknesses in Ann’s moral character but the requirements of her job as Cherry Pye’s stand-in.
When Ann, pretending to be Cherry, shows up at a party or an awards banquet, she goes straight from the red carpet or the rope line into the kitchen to hide-out until it’s time for “Cherry”` to be seen leaving.
So she doesn’t actually enter Cherry’s world of celebrity. She doesn’t even get much of a peek into it. If Ann had to impersonate Cherry, to be her instead just look like her, she would have had to deal with the temptation to become Cherry, that is, to lose herself in borrowed celebrity. If she wasn’t quite as pure as Hiaasen has made her she might have even given in, at least somewhat to the temptation, which would have made her a more interesting and complex character. But what putting her into Cherry’s world would have done was put us into that world too.
Star Island is a satirical novel whose main action takes place outside the milieu and away from the characters it satirizes.
Cherry and her hangers-on are monsters of greed, self-indulgence, and vanity but those types of monsters roam through every industry. They aren’t representatives of their industry, they are its worst excesses personified. Trying to get insights into the star-making machinery that produces celebrities and their obsessive fans through them is like trying to understand the auto industry by studying the driving habits of owners of Hummers.
Hiaasen’s strongest novels are the ones whose plots are inextricably inclined with their settings, like Double Whammy
Even Strip Tease---good book, bad, bad movie---if you can put up with its strippers with hearts of gold fantasies, has a plot that depends on its setting, although in its case the setting is not a place or a situation or an industry but the the circle of acquaintance of a single thoroughly corrupt individual with a penchant for messing up the lives of everybody he comes in contact with, which, given that he’s a United States Congressman, means a lot of people have their lives ruined or the souls warped by his bad behavior. David Dilbeck is something of a natural disaster and the novel is about the devastation he leaves in his wake. He creates as ruinous a moral landscape as Andrew created a physical one and the trouble other people have attempting to pick up the pieces is essentially the plot of both Strip Tease and Stormy Weather.
None of the characters in Star Island, except Cherry Pye, have to be who and what they are for the plot to work. Skink is Skink and, to repeat myself yet again, might as well be wandering around in any of the other novels he wanders around in. Chemo the killer turned babied celebrity baby-sitter could also have wandered in from another one of Hiaasen’s novels, or from one of Tim Dorsey’s, or, minus the weedwacker in place of the hand that was bitten off by a barracuda---I forgot to mention that detail, didn’t I?---from one by Elmore Leonard. And Ann, to repeat myself one more time, seems to have been spirited in from an Arthurian Romance.
All this is adds up to Star Island not needing to be the book it is, which is of course a way of saying that it doesn’t need to be, and that’s a little harsh. It is by Carl Hiaasen, after all, and I don’t think Hiaasen is capable of producing a thoroughly bad back. I haven’t read his children’s novels though. Star Island has its moments. And Cherry Pye and Bang Abbott are amusing characters for whom Hiaasen has an infectious sympathy. A little of each goes a long way, though, and unfortunately Hiaasen isn’t content with that little. It’s entertaining, and I suspect even more entertaining if you haven’t read anything else by Hiaasen or haven’t read anything by him in a while.
But if you haven’t read any of his other novels, I’d suggest starting with something else. Tourist Season, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue
Me, I just started one of the few of Hiaasen’s novels I hadn’t read yet, Nature Girl
So far, no sign of Skink.
________________________
Marian DeGregoiro had been retelling the story herself, to a desk clerk, when the trouble erupted. She’d just gotten to the part where Victor and his fishing buddies set upon the gaffed shark with aluminum ball bats to---in the widow’s words---“finish off the vicious bastard,” when she was overheard by a tall, scruffy man coming off the elevator. He interrupted to express his disgust, and in a harsh tone went on at length about the imminent collapse of world shark populations. Except for his flawless dentition, the man looked like a street person, so Marian DeGregorio somewhat caustically challenged his expertise on the topic of marine ecosystems. At that point he seized her soft-sided suitcase, sprung the locks and set the contents ablaze with a can of paint thinner he’d swiped from the vacation home of D.T. Maltby, his former running mate. As Soon as the Marriott’s fire alarm went off, he snatched Marian DeGreogiro’s dog and fled to the streets, leaving the widow honking and flapping like an addled goose in the smoky lobby.
Skink jogged to the beach and lay down beneath the star and thought about Annie the actress. He had prowled every floor of the hotel, listening at the doors, but he’d made no formal inquiries due to the lateness of the hour and his disordered appearance. Based on Jim Tile’s information, he was certain that Annie was being held in one of the rooms. Later he would try again to find her.
Meanwhile the Maltese was fidgeting and snuffling in his grasp. Skink did not respond solicitously. Occasionally he’d dined on the pets of intolerable people, but he preferred roadkill. Bubba didn’t look particularly tasty and the overgroomed pelt would be useless except as a shammy cloth for the shotgun. Moreover, Skink suspected that barbecuing a purebred would attract unwanted attention even on South Beach.
---from Star Island
I've got another one on the same celebrity theme for you, a mystery with social commentary. It's called Cheating at Solitaire and is the 23rd book in Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian series. Haddam has increasingly taken on culture in her books about the Philadelphia ex-FBI agent (profiler, not gun-toting G-Man), and they've gotten better and better as a result. They started at a pretty high level anyway, so that's good.
Here's my review of an earlier one, Somebody Else's Music, about high school cliques and their effects twenty years down the road.
Posted by: Linkmeister | Friday, December 03, 2010 at 03:24 PM
Lance, although I am a huge Hiaasen fan, I agree that maybe Skink is a little overexposed. He is a very powerful force (Heston was way too small). As a resident of Florida three separate times (Tallahassee, Naples, Gainesville) who first visited Key West as a little kid in 1960, I can really appreciate a hero who speaks and acts out against the overdevelopment and homogenization of Florida. I have read all of Hiaasen's novels, and used his serious columns (see Paradise Screwed) in class, but I agree that the same points can be made with a little less Skink, or maybe a more versatile set of tasks.
I loved Skink's first appearance as a fishing guide, and Skink is a naturalist and environmental hero (joining MacDonald's Travis McGee & Dorsey's Serge Storms) but more variety would be nice. Hiaasen's other heroes--journalists, photographers, etc.-- are fascinating, but they pale as soon as Skink shows up. The children's books don't have (IIRC), and don't need him. And thanks for the shout out to Tim Dorsey, whose Serge is the most enjoyable of serial killers. Everyone he kills deserves to die for despoiling Florida +/or humanity. I won't spoil it for people who have not had the pleasure, but Serge kills the bad guys and girls in the most inventive ways. All I have to do is say Home Depot . . .
Posted by: Tom Durkin | Tuesday, December 07, 2010 at 05:57 AM