42. Crime of Passion (1957)

Directed by Gerd Oswald
Written by Jo Eisinger
Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, and Raymond Burr

Lately I’ve been joking that, at thirty-four, I’ve started my midlife crisis. The band I was in just after high school had a song called “Dead at 19,” which I didn’t write, and whose narrative escapes me. But I recall it was vague enough to not be about a girl, which most of our songs were, except at the end, when we just sang about being in a band and how awesome and terrible it was. After enduring some stay-in-the-kitchen type misogyny from a police inspector, single newspaper columnist Kathy decides she wants to give domesticity a try. Sterling Hayden will never not be Johnny Guitar. As I write this, “When I Come Around” by Green Day blasts from a minivan heading north on 22nd Street. I haven’t toured with a band in eight years. Maybe those days are over? But there’s musical theater now — more gigs in a year than ever before. Kathy weeps at the prospect of Bill’s stagnant, workaday cop’s life. But he seems cool with it, especially that sweet pension, not just a shitty 401k like I have, which is something only old people worry about. It’s clear Kathy sleeping with Bill’s boss has more to do with her own suburban alienation than anything else. For someone who’s never handled a gun before, she’s an excellent shot. Nine years ago, while I was in Los Angeles to play some shows, my friends and I ran through the streets of Los Feliz, trying to make it to a diner that served alcohol before it closed. No luck. We walked back to the apartment, laughing while we caught our breath. In the kitchen, we made dark & stormies and smoked and talked in that stoned, carefree way about the profundities of youth and friendship. This was the summer before I went back to college for the last time. Two years later — and six years late — my dad watched me get my diploma, relieved the family’s black sheep had, by at least one arbitrary metric, finally grown up.