August Meeting: The Grifters

This month, Cinematext will be reading Jim Thomson’s 1963 pulp novel The Grifters. Roy Dillon is young, good-looking and devastatingly charming. He's also a completely amoral con man. Lily, his mother, works for the mob. Moira Langtry, Roy's mistress, is always looking for the main chance, and so is Carol Roberg, the nurse brought in to look after Roy when a bad choice of mark means he has an unfortunate encounter with a baseball bat and a bad case of internal bleeding. Together they make up a perverse quadrangle of love and greed in a coruscating novel of corruption. On August 23, we’ll be watching the 1990 neo-noir film of the same title directed by Stephen Frears and produced by Martin Scorsese. The film was nominated for four academy awards - including ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ !