….for a lot of posts, starting soon, in less than a week, when my nights free up, and I have nothing to do but work and muse, but until then, a grossly-belated moment of silence for Edward Bunker, who passed away on July 19.

(switch into Fluff Mode)

Bunker was a wildly charismatic con man, thief, and heroin addict who spent close to three quarters of his life in prison. At 17, he became the youngest ever inmate at San Quentin. Armed with an 152 IQ, he eventually started writing near-perfect crime fiction, including No Beast So Fierce, the book that Dustin Hoffman obsessed about for years, several of which saw him trying to put the story on the big screen. When Hoffman threw his hands up due to the directorial pressures and studio bickering, the duties were assumed by Ula Grosbard (then husband of female lead Theresa Russell), and the result was 1977’s Straight Time. Hoffman, who plays the lead (and was unjustly soured by the final cut), put in a performance unlike any delivered before or since. This box office flop IS A MUST SEE, especially for fans of great and gritty crime/loser dramas. Straight Time is 70’s noir sublimity with more heart per minute than 99% of the genre.

Bunker also wrote The Animal Factory, which Steve Buscemi turned into a Willem Dafoe/Edward Furlong prison drama of watch-able quality. Bunker’s wrote two other novels, Little Boy Blue and Dog Eat Dog, plus the crucial autobiography, Education of a Felon. Bunker also wrote the screenplay for Runaway Train. A cameo bandit, Bunker pops up in all of his adaptations, as “Skitchy Rivers” in the recent remake of The Longest Yard, and as “Mr. Blue” in Resevoir Dogs. Tarentino, predictably a Bunker fanatic, called No Beast the “greatest crime novel of all time.”

Bunker jumpstarted the career of Danny Trejo, hiring the cartoonishly tough, tat-covered ex-con as a consultant on Runaway Train. The two had previously known each other in the prison context. Like Bunker, Trejo did a lot of consulting work on films, but eventually landed respectable roles in Heat, the El Mariachi trilogy, and Bubble Boy.

Bunker lived out the rest of his free life as a respectable, creative, member of the film and literary world, while remaining largely unknown to most audiences. He was a family man.

Warning: Bunker’s books are not Underbelly 101, like Bukowski and ilk. You need to get that out of your system, anyway. Do yourself a favor: Read all of Bunker’s books. You’ll thank me. You’re welcome in advance.