Is Daniel Handler a Pyromaniac?

One could be forgiven for thinking so. In the 13 volume A Series of Unfortunate Events ( a masterpiece), everyone sets fires. The bad guys set fires, the good guys set fires, adults set fires, children set fires, people die in fires, buildings are destroyed in fires, secrets are lost in fires. This roman fleuve is actually a roman feu; it's one long conflagration. And there is something distinctly creepy about this obsession, especially for a "children's book." Even as a huge Handler admirer, I can't deny that baby Sunny Baudelaire's line "Burn down hotel," at the climax of The Penultimate Peril, is one of the most unsettling moments I have ever encountered in literature. Talk about transgressive! Jean Genet could take lessons from Handler in that.

The fire motif comes roaring up again in Handler's screenplay for Kill the Poor, directed by Alan Taylor and based on a novel by Joel Rose. This tale of the strange denizens of an apartment building on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early Eighties is constructed around a mysterious fire, which the narrative circles, and circles, and circles some more. I wouldn't call it a particularly successful film, but it's definitely got fire and then some. If I was interviewing Daniel Handler, this would be the first question I'd ask: "What is with all the fire, dude?" Although maybe I don't really want to know.

Kill the Poor has a strong central performance by David Krumholtz that helps hold the movie together; without him it would probably seem really ramshackle. The story does beg the question of why he wants to live in this stupid building with his wife and newborn; the movie could be viewed as a sly argument for everyone moving to New Jersey, already. The building is physically dangerous, the residents are all dislikable and, to varying degrees, nuts, and the neighborhood is supposedly overrun by junkies (although we barely see them -- as many have noted, this is a de-populated movie with very empty streets). Ah, but it's New York! This is one of those Gotham-centric Sweet Mysteries of New York stories that those of us beyond the Hudson may ever have a hard time grasping. I was raised in New Jersey, and I know. New Yorkers can be completely irrational on the subject of their city: it's not affection, it's some mystical trip.

Director Alan Taylor comes by way of quality television (Oz, Homicide, The West Wing, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Carnivale, Rome, Big Love, Lost, Sex and the City -- he's done 'em all). This project may have been one of those that was years in the filming because of budget issues (it has that feel to it); it was certainly years in the releasing -- it was theatrically released in 2006 but had to have been mostly filmed by 2002, because one of the stars, Cliff Gorman as Krumholtz's uncle, died that year.

POSTSCRIPT: I haven't read any of Handler's adult novels -- The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Adverbs -- yet, although I intend to. I did see another film for which he wrote the screenplay, Rick, and liked it quite a bit. The story is a loose modern adaptation of Verdi's Rigoletto set in the business world, with Bill Pullman in a pull-out-all-the-stops performance as a toadying executive. Sandra Oh as a job applicant gets to deliver a curse against him that is one of the great imprecations on film.