When Eddie Muller — known as the 'Czar of Noir' — was launching his popular "Noir Alley" series with Turner Classic Movies, he told TCM that his approach to discussing films has always been "more Barroom, not Classroom."
"In my cinematic education, I certainly ran into a lot of people who wanted to tell you that they knew exactly what was right and wrong with every movie ever made and everything was over intellectualized," Muller tells Wisconsin Public Radio's "BETA."
"So, I felt, I'm going to be the very knowledgeable enthusiast because I see my job as getting people to watch and enjoy these movies and perhaps providing a little extra context to enrich the experience," he continues. "But my goal is not to convince them of how much I know about this stuff or that there's a right or wrong way to look at or enjoy films."
Now, the Czar is bringing that barroom banter to readers with his book, "Eddie Muller's Noir Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the World of Film Noir" where you can pair up a libation to your favorite noir from "The Maltese Falcon" to "Sunset Boulevard."
Much like the world of noir, Muller has some authority behind the stick. He briefly bartended to make ends meet while starting out and jokes that he has the credentials to prove it.
"I was a bartender in San Francisco, a proud graduate of the Golden Gate Bartending School," Muller recalls. "Believe it or not, I guess I got suckered into that."
Muller writes that his bartending teacher, Mac, required all his GBBS students to "ACE" their final exam. That meant they had to create and pour drinks for Mac and his wife and Mac's handpicked friends with "attitude, conviviality, and efficiency."
Muller has poured that lifelong love of the cocktail scene into "Noir Bar" where in addition to offering up cocktail pairings and creations to 50 noir films, he also shares plenty of tips to turn your home bar into the Blue Dahlia nightclub.
Muller puts his money where his mouth is. During the COVID quarantine presentations of "Noir Alley," viewers got a glimpse of Muller's actual home tiki bar when he shot all his introductions from it. That wasn't a set.
"I have a cocktail lounge, a separate cocktail lounge that I built in my old 1912 garage in back of my house. So, this is something I do all the time," he said.
In fact, Muller states that "Noir Bar" came together in those down times during COVID where he — like much of the world — was enjoying home happy hours a little more frequently.
"It's truly kind of an outgrowth of the whole pandemic. You know, cocktail hour became very important for people during the pandemic," Muller said. "The idea of putting it all together in book form really did grow out of COVID and just the fun of being able to have time to experiment with things."
Muller jokes that writing this book did have some fun side effects too.
"I got to say, when you do a cocktail book, there's a huge advantage in that you get to write all that booze off your taxes as research. So that was pretty useful as well," he said.
Actor Robert Mitchum — who critic Roger Ebert called "the soul of Noir" — is featured a few times in "Noir Bar" and one of Muller's favorite drink/film combo comes from the 1953 film, "Angel Face" which also happens to be a cocktail.
"The Angel Face is an original. It was originally created during Prohibition at the Detroit Athletic Club," Muller said. "So, I adopt that cocktail as the one for that film."
In that entry, Muller also shares the legendary story — shared to him by co-star Jean Simmons — of how "Angel Face" director Otto Preminger made Simmons' experience working on the film "torture."
"At one point, Otto insisted on repeated takes of Mitchum slapping her face, demanding harder hits each time," Muller writes in "Noir Bar." "Finally, Mitchum smacked Preminger across the kisser, asking, 'You mean like that, Otto?'"
These anecdotes and bits of film trivia were important to Muller because what's a good bartender without good stories.
"I mean, making the drink is one thing, but being able to tell you a funny story about the drink or where the drink comes from or where they first discovered the drink, that's equally important," Muller said.
It also makes it so that "Noir Bar" doesn't exclude any teetotalers.
"I also wanted to write a book that if you don't drink, it's still worth having the book and reading the book, even if you're not going to make the cocktails. That was an important part of the approach for me," said Muller.
Muller also uses these entries to offer up his reasoning for certain pairings, a few of which may surprise some people.
Take the Humphrey Bogart Lauren Bacall 1946 film, "The Big Sleep" where even though the film features an opening conversation about mixing Brandy with Champagne that would seem like a no-brainer pairing for this film, Eddie mixes it up a bit.
"I definitely wanted to include ('The Big Sleep'), not just for Bogie and Bacall, but because of Raymond Chandler and how important he is to the genre. Because I like my noir on the page as well as the screen," he said.
So, instead of a Brandy drink, Muller went with Chandler's drink of choice.
"I chose to pair it with a gimlet, which Chandler fans know is the drink that he sort of immortalized in a later novel, 'The Long Goodbye,' where he mentions it, I think, 23 times," Muller said.
One of the cocktails that best demonstrates Eddie's process behind his mixology comes from 1959's "Odds Against Tomorrow" starring and produced by Civil Rights icon, Harry Belafonte, about an indebted Black jazz player and a racist Southern tough having to work together on the film's central heist.
"The whole idea of making cocktails is putting together ingredients that you might be surprised can work in balance," said Muller. "That entire film is about how these cohorts cannot work in balance and that their racial issues sink them in the end."
"So, I wanted to make a cocktail that sort of went against that grain," he continued. "So, I created what I call a 'Johnny and Earl,' which are the names of the two characters. And the Johnny is a Jamaican black rum representing Harry Belafonte's Jamaican roots and Southern Comfort for the Earl Slater character that Robert Ryan plays, and then it needed a little something extra — allspice dram — to kind of smooth things out."
So what movie makes Eddie want to raise a glass? He said that even though all the "Thin Man" movies entice him to pour a few fingers, it's Burt Lancaster's booth and Martini from 1957's "Sweet Smell of Success" that represents paradise to Eddie.
"If you've seen that, you know that's like my idea of heaven is J.J. Hunsecker's booth at 21 Club where he just presides there and has platters of oysters delivered with his martinis," Muller said.
"Noir Bar" is available now from Running Press.