8:15 p.m.	The Woman Chaser Robinson Devor (U.S., 1999)

Don Herron has led the Dashiell Hammett Tour in San Francisco since 1977. He met Charles Willeford when he came on the tour in 1984, the same year Miami Blues saw print. Herron wrote the book-length study Willeford (1997) in tribute.

Charles Willeford’s got it in for used-car salesmen. His earliest novel, The High Priest of California, had a salacious salesman who treated women like an optional test drive. A decade later came The Woman Chaser with Richard Hudson, a conniving motor merchant, suddenly disillusioned by his own greed. Patrick Warburton (best known as Elaine’s boyfriend in Seinfeld) gets under the hood of Hudson and comes up oily. In a well-lubricated voice-over, his volatile salesman mopes about making his life meaningful: “One thing! That was all. One little thing.” That “one thing” would be producing a film called The Man Who Got Away, a grim tale of a trucker on a rampage. First-time director Robinson Devor gives us a neon-drenched but damaged version of fifties L.A., replete with tiki bars, cool Caddies, and the strains of Martin Denny. Inside this black-and-blue vision, Hudson pursues his redemptive dream like it’s just another con, and as we all know, filmmaking is never a pretty picture.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Devor, based on the novel by Charles Willeford. Photographed by Kramer Morganthau. With Patrick Warburton, Eugene Roche, Ron Morgan, Emily Newman. (87 mins, B&W/Color, 35mm, From Tarmac Films)