This cool flick pays homage to a great American art form: film noir. And what is film noir? It's not a genre. It's a style. It's not necessarily confined to the 1940s and 50s, but has managed to survive in various forms, including Chinatown, the films of Quentin Tarantino, and many of today's TV urban mystery-dramas. Nikki Stiletto includes some of the basic noir elements, such as dark, urban settings, strange and oblique camera angles, shifty characters, shady deals, dramatic (and sometimes jazzy) music underscores, hard-boiled, no-nonsense narration, unapologetic cigarette smoking, and the classic femme fatale. It also includes about 30 pies ... tee hee hee! Yeah, you get the picture.
Nikki Stiletto is a private investigator hired by Slapstick, Inc. to recover a stolen recipe for slapstick cream pies, and follows the trail of evidence to the downtown office of an unidentified man, a regular "film-noir guy" who starts narrating the film. He's been describing her all along, only to see her entering his office unexpectedly. She's also the femme fatale in the story. In a series of flashbacks, she recounts her plan to seduce No-Face Ferrari, but errononeously interprets his weaknesses, as well as trusting a guy named Snake Eyes, and thus ends up in one messy situation after another. It seems no matter what she does, the pies come flying her way!
Make no mistake, Stiletto's a smart woman and a cool chick. She's got the charm, the moves, and a level head. She knows a con when she sees one. But this is film noir. There's always someone else playing the game, who's one step ahead, who's got a racket of his or her own. Nothing is what it seems in the world of film noir ... everyone's got skeletons in the closet, an axe to grind, a secret to hide. These are acts of passion, and anyone can succumb. Ambiguity lurks in the shadows. But that sounds way too serious ... so bring in the slapstick routines, campy monologues, the cream pies, and the chocolate syrup!
The main character was played by model and hair-stylist Ruby. She had the kinda face that stuck out of a late-40s movie poster. Okay, I'll stop with the Marlow-esque metaphors now. But she took the iniative to study the lines, perfect the voice, and style the hair to fit the ideal woman of the period. Well ... ideal if you're Fred McMurray in Double Indemnity, a sappy guy who can't help but get mixed up with a beautiful but dangerous and conniving dame. I'm not sure where this is going. Kinda like the plot to Nikki Stiletto ... full of twists and turns, multiple voice-over narrators, and senseless puzzles -- not to mention baffling continuity details. Not too many actresses can handle a script like this!
The shoot took a little over eight hours. Partly thanks to Ruby's preparation, enthusiasm, and hard work, a shoot could hardly go any easier -- and our productions are not easy to begin with. This was the first time to use a messy substance other than pies -- chocolate syrup. Night exterior scenes were shot in Houston, that endlessly sprawling suburban commercial conglomerate. The film begins in black-and-white, but quickly fades into color (to keep it contemporary). Not far from the interior location, we found a dentish office complex with nice arcades, good lighting, and black, opaque windows all around (cars along I-45 were roaring past so loudly that the volume was decreased to almost nothing).
Stiletto's main theme is an excellent "cool jazz" track, with bluesy, blaring sax, a strolling bass riff, and a haunting xylophone accent -- reminiscent of urban, smoke-filled lounges of the early fifties, and private detectives burning the midnight oil working on a tough case. There are various other strong tracks that help set the tone, such as the opening symphony set to passing headlights and towering buildings, the bed of tension that underlies Nikki's delirious seduction of No-Face Ferrari, and the usual ragtime, vaudeville numbers playing out the messy slapstick scenes.
That private eye business can sure get messy sometimes!
