This is a limited series is executive produced and directed (two episodes) by Patty Jenkins. Jenkins is the director of Wonder Woman (2017), she directed Monster (2003), and also directed episodes of the crime series The Killing. Executive producer and writer of several episodes is Sam Sheridan, husband to Patty Jenkins, he his also the writer of the tv series SEAL Team. It aired on January 28th and continues next Monday on TNT. There are touches of film noir in this mini-series, I analyzed Kiss Me Deadly (1955) for a film studies class, of course have seen Chinatown (1974), and brushed up on the genre so I can make the connections. We get a push-in across the Sparks, Nevada desert into the home of Jimmy Lee (Golden Brooks) who is checking her daughter’s hair for school. Brooks was Ruby Jeffries in Hart of Dixie (2012-2013), she was earlier in two episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, and was also in The Darkest Minds (2018) film. Her daughter says she wants to be normal as we move to a closeup of her face. This is Pat (India Eisley). The actress is known for playing Ashley Juergens in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008-2013), but also starred as Eve in Underworld Awakening (2012) and in the drama Adolescence (2018). We get the date, 1965, as Pat walks with her two friends, Nina (Monique Green) and Tina (Shonique Shandai), to school. They pass Lewis Ferguson (Dabler) who compliments Pat. It seems that he is forward, but there is a certain charm to Lewis.
In class, they pledge allegiance, at lunch, a girl asks to sit with Pat, but another girl says the table is only black girls. This brings up race relations for this time and our own. On a beach, we get surfers making fun of Jay Singletary (Chris Pine) as walks past a fence to a house. Pine of course was Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman, The Finest Hours (2016) was a real life Coast Guard rescue that had Bernie Webber part of it, and he voiced Peter Parker in last year’s . He starts taking pictures of a woman with an older man at a house. They scream at him and the woman starts running after Jay with his camera. She says he will ruin her. Jay says she wanted to be famous. Singletary forms our second narrative thread. His reporter is our way into the crime centered in L.A. In the school parking lot, Lewis smiles at Pat, this gets a black girl angry at her. Nina breaks up a potential fight. Then, they spot a strange man who is watching Pat in a car across the street. Jay is making a call in a phone booth and his boss asks about the pictures. He tells him that his camera is smashed, his boss rages, and Jay smashes the phone. We can see Singletary embodying the deterioration of the central figure that is in film noir.
At a hospital, Pat walks with her mop and bucket, then Lewis catches her and then kisses her. He goes back to sorting towels. Night, they both walk together, Lewis says he is hoping to get a place of his own, and Pat wants to join him. They kiss when a police car illuminates them. An officer questions Pat and she says she is mixed race. The other officer sends Lewis away. Then, Pat runs away. Jay heads over to a bar with Peter Sullivan (Leland Orser) talking to his young reporter about journalism. Jay joins them who wants an assignment. Peter checks and mentions a press conference at the morgue about Janice Brewster. The reporter asks if Jay writers for the L.A. Times and he says he writes for the Examiner. Peter explains that he was a marine in Korea, at 18 he was a reporter for the L.A. Times, but took on a story, Peter adds, “Some stories will eat you alive.” Pat returns home, Jimmy sees her as she sits in a chair drinking and smoking, and her mother says he’s a loser. Jimmy says she’s better than the town. Pat mentions the white man. Jimmy drunkenly says she was supposed to be Lena Horne, a dream dashed because of her daughter. Pat is confused, but her mother leaves her. Later, she resolves to sneak into her mother’s room, Jimmy is sleeping off her drinking, and her daughter takes a box from her closet. There is always a secret in film noir.
In her room, she opens an envelope, and opens a birth certificate of one Fauna Hodel, whose mother was a white woman named Tamar Hodel. Pat repeats the name that will change her life. Morning, Jimmy is ready for work, when her daughter confronts her with name Fauna Hodel. Her mother is offended and wants the birth certificate. Pat screams that she will go to the police. Jimmy admits that her name is Fauna and explains that a woman gave her baby to her in a casino restroom. She was married to a preacher and he left them. It is a stunning performance by Brooks, a mixture of emotions, but the truth comes out. The series is based on Fauna Hodel’s book, One Day She’ll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel (2008). She tells Fauna that her family is rich and she has to keep her name. Jay in a suit rushes over to cut in the line of reporters going into the morgue with his camera. The officer tells him to get his pass and Jay goes to his car to get a medical coat. He wanders into the hospital and pulls out a gurney from an ambulance. At another hospital, the Sisters of Mercy hospital, Fauna is mopping up seeing a family with a newborn baby. She sneaks into the records room and pulls out her file. Fauna is our detective uncovering the secrets that connect her with Jay Singletary.
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I AM THE NIGHT -- “Pilot” -- INDIA EASLEY -- TNT/Clay Enos.
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Jay is checking the toe tags of the bodies covered in sheets in the morgue. A body is rolled in and Jay freezes until the attendant walks away. A touch of humor. He finds the body and pulls off the sheet to see her body taking pictures with camera. Jay hears voices and decides to slide into an empty door. It is closed by someone, he flicks open his lighter to see the body around him, and then starts to laugh. This almost a breaking point, they pull him out, and he is cracking up laughing. It seems like PTSD, the situation has brought up wartime horrors. Handcuffed, his camera is broken, and he is beaten before being thrown into the back of the car. He finds that he has fallen on another beaten prisoner, Lewis. At the hospital, Fauna asks Lewis for some change. She takes it and hides. In the phone booth, she reads from the adoption papers that there is a Dr. George Hodel in Los Angeles. Fauna introduces to him, the voice of Jefferson Mays, herself as Tamar’s daughter. He invites her to see him in Los Angeles and hangs up. Pat is contacted by Sister Sarah (Sheila Shaw) who tells her that her mother died. Her ties to her home seem to be lost so Fauna is compelled to try to find her family in a dark place.
Fauna runs off and heads back to her home. She screams for her momma, then sees her at a neighbor’s car, Fauna goes into the house to pack a suitcase. Jimmy says she wanted Fauna to feel loss. She can’t believe Fauna is leaving to Los Angeles. Fauna is about to board the Greyhound bus and tells Lewis it will only be a week. The bus pulls away and the mysterious man follows her in his car. This of course leads her down a dark path connecting her to Jay Singletary. Jay wakes up in a car, bloody, released by his fellow Marine, Eddie, he shrugs off any charges. The bus stops at a motel and Fauna gets a bottle of pop. She is joined by a stranger in a coat who sees her pull away in the bus. Night, Jay returns to his apartment, he scrambles around for drugs, and then has a belt, ready to hang himself. Then, he gets a phone call from Jimmy who asks him if he wrote about George Hodel. At the bus stop, Fauna calls the house of her grandfather. She calls his house, she finally gets Corinna Hodel (Connie Nielsen) who tells her that he is dangerous. There is a shot of George Hodel at his decadent party. We are drawn into a story that ties into the Black Dahlia mystery. There is a number of films directly dealing with the murder including Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia (2006) based on the James Ellroy novel. We see real life pictures of Fauna Hodel and Jimmi Lee Simpson.
Four Cameras out of Five!
#IAmtheNight,#PattyJenkins, #IndiaEisley, #ChrisPine
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