Review: The Good Inn, by Black Francis and Josh Frank

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My familiarity with the Pixies' music is shallow at best, and nonexistent when it comes to Black Francis' solo work, so I can't speak to The Good Inn as a work reflective of any lyrical tendencies. In fact, when the characters break into song (as they do occasionally), the tunes I found myself reaching for to make words into music in my head were nursery rhymes. Nonetheless, this is an interesting work, taking on shades of Stoppard and Gilliam in following Solider Boy as he traverses newly-minted fiction, lost fiction, speculative reality, and known reality. Based on what the introduction claims is the first known narrative adult film, now known only from stills and remakes, this tale in screenplay form fleshes out the skin flick by giving the male character a life before he comes on screen, and continues as he tries to move beyond it. It's convoluted and even confusing at times to be sure; I'll admit to backtracking more than once to suss out what was happening; even then, I'm sure it would make more sense on screen, or at least be forced into some sort of visual sense on its way there. I came upon The Good Inn while looking for new graphic novels to read, but while the art is sequential, it's rather too sparse to be a comic book; illustrations appear only every few pages. The art has a casual and expressive line to it, and in places can be absorbing as one tries to map text to image. It would be interesting to see this screenplay produced, even on a very small scale.

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