"You're like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another"

It was a long day at work -- I keep writing about the nasty weather we have been having -- so when I came home I wanted to relax. Relax and let someone else do the thinking for me.
That's where Daniel Mainwaring comes into the picture.
I watched Jacques Tourneur's "Out of the Past" on DVD tonight. I absolutely adore Tourneur, and his direction of this fabulous film displays the talents he picked up while helming classics such as "Cat People."
Robert Mitchum is also superb as "Jeff Bailey."
However, I think "Out of the Past" actually has something going for it that is even greater than Mitchum's acting and Tourneur's direction.
That's where Daniel Mainwaring comes into the picture.
I would nominate "Out of the Past" as the best-written film I have ever seen.
Great lines abound, so much so that repeated viewings are necessary just to catch them all.
"I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn't know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don't know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end."
Daniel Mainwaring was born in Oakland, Calif. and wrote for a newspaper.
That's where our similarities end.
Mainwaring left our shared birthplace and wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. Then he started writing novels and screenplays.
His novel "Build My Gallows High" became the colossal film noir "Out of the Past." Mainwaring also wrote the screenplay for the original version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
Mainwaring, who died 30 years ago, drank a little too much and got caught up in the blacklist. Not everything he wrote became a bona fide classic, either.
That doesn't matter.
"Out of the Past" boasts classic lines such as this exchange at the roulette wheel...
Jeff Bailey: "That's not the way to win."
Kathie Moffat: "Is there a way to win?"
Jeff Bailey: "There's a way to lose more slowly."
Where does crackling wit come from?
That's where Daniel Mainwaring comes into the picture.