Behnke's Useless Thoughts

                                3 Women  is the 1977 film that all came from a dream that director Robert Altman had one night when his wife was seriously ill. And like most dreams, a rundown of the plot would be arbitrary, since there's none to speak of. Maybe a succinct premise would suffice. Though the movie is titled 3 Women , it mostly revolves around two women, a materialistic bubble-headed rest home nurse named Millie (played by Shelley Duvall) and a strange new employee named Pinkie (played by Sissy Spacek), who Millie takes under her wing. The "third woman" is Willie, the silent, elusive wife of the apartment complex owner (played by Janice Rule), who serves more as symbolic undercurrent. Pinkie has a strange childish obsession with Millie, to the point where the movie implies that Pinkie is stealing her identity. Then there's an accident which causes the two characters to switch identities. ...

                         Before Elmore Leonard became the king of crime noir, he specialized in western stories published in dime-store magazines, primarily because westerns were a hot ticket back in the 1950's. If you read his short story "Three-Ten to Yuma", you can clearly see Leonard's terse, unvarnished style that would become a hallmark of his later work. "Three-Ten to Yuma" tells the story of a lone deputy transporting a notorious gang leader to the train station in Contention City where a prison train to Yuma will arrive at precisely 3:10.  Unfortunately, the deputy has to contend with the gang coming to get their leader back. "Three-Ten to Yuma" is sparse as a desert, more of a Western set piece than a full-blooded story. It brings to mind Hemingway if Hemingway had a sense of humor.                                   ...