Friday, May 09, 2008
A Blasphemous Review
I find posts like this hard to resist. Elmore getting the youth vote. Here’s a post by Dr Royce Clemens, Age 25 from Council Bluffs, Iowa. That personal description according to his myspace page.
Elmore Leonard is God.
I’ve been saying it for years, but now I finally have definitive proof. It comes two pages into his latest, called Up In Honey’s Room (now in paperback). It’s a fart joke that actually gets a laugh. Think about that. If you can pull off a fart joke without actually hearing the fart or having someone in front of you tell you about it? You are possessed by divinity.
Leonard is, beyond the shadow of any conceivable doubt, the best crime writer the world has ever seen. This is not hyperbole, but rather critical consensus. But it falls into my own personal opinion that Leonard is one of the four best novelists alive today (the other three being Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy). Yeah, he writes about cops, robbers, and people on the low end of the spectrum, but so did Dickens and Dostoevsky. He possesses such uncanny insight into the way people think, act, see themselves, deceive others, lie themselves into trouble, shoot their way out, and (most importantly) talk, that it would make most so-called “literary” authors drool all over themselves in envy. That he’s so accessible anyone can read him is an asset, not a liability.
He’s been writing for over fifty years and he’s never written a bad book. He hasn’t even wasted a word. I know, because I’ve looked
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Thursday, May 08, 2008
Elmore - From Adjective to Plot Point
Kirkus Reviews
Blackman’s Coffin
A disabled Iraqi war vet finds new meaning in life as a private detective.
Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman wakes up in Walter Reed Veterans Hospital with a chip on his shoulder and a Marine Corps veteran named Tikima Robertson challenging him to speed up his recovery. Since losing her hand in Iraq, Tikima has made it a personal mission to rouse wounded vets from their despair. Blackman, who’s lost both his leg and his parents, is an ideal candidate. After softening him up with a novel by Elmore Leonard (whom she has correctly tabbed as one of his favorite authors) and examining his background, Tikima suggests he contact her employer, Armitage Security Services, for a job. When he calls two weeks later, he learns that Tikima has been murdered. Her sister Nakayla brings an Elmore Leonard book Tikima left for Blackman. Inside the dust jacket is a journal from 1919 written by Henderson Youngblood, a boy whose life was saved by a black man named Elijah Robertson. When Elijah, who was Tikima and Nakayla’s great-great-grandfather, was murdered, it was Elijah’s mortician father who tended the body. Blackman’s first case involves solving these connected murders, one painfully recent and the other a century old.
In the struggling Sam Blackman, de Castrique (Final Undertaking, 2007, etc.) has created a compelling hero whose flinty first-person narrative nicely complements Henderson’s earnest, measured and equally involving account.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
The Tonto Woman: “Solemn Story of Redemption”
The Tonto Woman is the most recent film adapted from Elmore’s work. It was nominated for an Academy Award this year. Rick DeMott reviews the short film at Amazon and iTunes.
Based on an Elmore Leonard story, this Oscar-nominated British short tells a solemn story of redemption. Ruben Vega (Francesco Quinn, TV’s INTO THE WEST) is a horse thief who has come to rethink his thieving and whoring ways. When he discovers a pretty woman named Sarah (Charlotte Asprey, TV’s ELIZABETH I) living alone in a shack in the desert, he becomes captivated with her story. Eleven years prior, she was kidnapped by Indians, tattooed on her chin and forced to live like a squaw. When her husband finally finds her, he is ashamed of her condition and hides her away from polite society. Ruben makes it his mission to bring Sarah out of her isolation and take back her life.
The film has a meandering tone that isn’t uncommon to the Western genre, but robs the film narrative thrust. From the direction to the acting, the short goes for a simmering dramatic effect, which at times feels more theatrical than cinematic. The actors move like their striking a pose, not conjuring a performance. Moreover, despite its slow pacing, the story seems to make emotional leaps that ring false. I can’t comment on whether sections where cut from the original story, but director Daniel Barber and screenwriter Joe Shrapnel never make us believe in the relationship between Ruben and Sarah. She goes from guarded and removed to trusting and vulnerable too quickly.
Barber, with cinematographer Ben Davis and production designer Johnny Green, paints a cinematic landscape that is beautiful. This look, the pacing and the muted performances all come together to create a nice somber tone, which is right for the material, but also distances us from the characters. As a result, the movie techniques get in the way of the story. All this said the film isn’t a complete failure by any means. With all its problems, it held my interest, especially from its wonderful photography. Barber plays one note well for 35 minutes, but it leaves us wanting to hear the rest of the song.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
QUIVER - By Peter Leonard - On Sale, May 13, 2008
Elmore’s son, Peter Leonard has his debut novel, Quiver, coming out in a week. Elmore is very proud of Peter and wanted to let you all know about his book.
Read an interview Elmore did with Peter last October.
Elmore will be appearing with Peter for two signings in Ann Arbor and Detroit. Details here.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
“So Often Adapted…So Badly Served”
I somehow missed this post in March by Woody Haut on Adapting Elmore.
Though Elmore Leonard’s fiction now carries a literary seal of approval, films adapted from his street-level crime novels have, until recently, seldom exceeded the mediocre. As his novels- produced at nearly one a year for some forty years- have become more anodyne, his screen adaptations have become, on the whole, more watchable. Not that Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Jackie Brown are without blemishes. In fact, they might not be any more noteworthy than 3:10 to Yuma, Valdez is Coming, The Tall T and Hombre, adapted from Leonard’s stories when the latter was primarily a writer of westerns.
Yet there have been few writers who have been so often adapted, but so badly served. In a 1997 interview, Leonard recalls seeing the The Big Bounce (1969), adapted from his first crime novel: “About fifteen minutes into it, the woman sitting in front of me turned to her husband and said, ‘This is the worst picture I ever saw.’ And I agreed with her and all three of us got up and left.” However, that film’s 2004 remake is barely any better. Made by George Armitage, the director of one of Leonard’s favourite films, Grosse Point Blank, the remake looks like a cross between a Hawaiian tourist board travelogue and Leonard dumbed-down for the sake of a consumer-oriented audience.
Read the rest of the post here.
Haut is the author of Neon Noir - Contemporary American Crime Fiction.
Haut investigates the dark side of America through the work of writers such as James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, James Sallis, George P. Pelecanos, Charles Willeford, Jerome Charyn, Sara Paretsky, Vicki Hendricks, KC Constantine, George V Higgins and James Crumley.
Friday, May 02, 2008
The Tall T - “Bloody Cowboy Showdown”
The Brits and French always seem to get Elmore, and the true measure of his influence.
The Times (London)
BYLINE: Stephen Dalton
The Tall T (1957) Channel 4, 12.55pm
One of a series of well-regarded low-budget westerns that the director Budd Boetticher made with Randolph Scott, The Tall T is a bleak yet engrossing thriller based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. Scott plays a rancher caught in the crossfire between Richard Boone’s psychologically conflicted outlaw, John Hubbard’s cowardly landowner and his new bride (Maureen O’Sullivan).
Unusually harsh and brutal for its era, this bloody cowboy showdown is seen by some movie connoisseurs as a precursor to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. (78min)
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Grand Theft Elmore
Grand Theft Auto IV is out and a huge hit. For those of you living in another century, Grand Theft Auto IV in the words of reviewer Seth Schiesel is “a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun.” Translation: the just released, best selling game for Playstation3 and xBox.
In The New York Times review of it, Seth mentions Elmore:
Breathing life into Niko and the other characters is a pungent script by Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries that reveals a mastery of street patois to rival Elmore Leonard’s.
Have they ever seen Elmore’s video game? I think not. Stay tuned.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Up in Honey’s Room - In Paperback Today!
An excerpt from Chapter One of Up in Honey’s Room. Available today in paperback.
Honey phoned her sister-in-law Muriel, still living in Harlan County, Kentucky, to tell her she’d left Walter Schoen, calling him Valter, and was on her way to being Honey Deal again. She said to Muriel, “I honestly thought I could turn him around, but the man still acts like a Nazi. I couldn’t budge him.”
“You walked out,” Muriel said, “just like that?”
“I valked out,” Honey said. “I’m free as a bird. You know what else? I won’t have to do my roots every two weeks. Dumb me, I spent a whole year wanting him to think I’m a natural blonde.”
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Friday, April 25, 2008
Elmore to Receive 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award
The selection panel of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference has unanimously recommended that Elmore Leonard be awarded he 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for Achievement in American Literature at the 2008 conference, scheduled for October 25, 2008 in Rockville, Maryland.
Past recipients of the award are
1996: William Styron
1997: John Barth
1998: Joyce Carol Oates
1999: E. L. Doctorow
2000: Norman Mailer
2001: Ernest J. Gaines
2002: John Updike
2003: Edward Albee
2004: Grace Paley
2005: Pat Conroy
2006: Jane Smiley
2007: William Kennedy
John Moser, President of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary
Conference said in his letter to Elmore, “You certainly
deserve the honor of the award. It is really long
overdue.”
The selection panel is composed of literary critics,
academics, writers, civic leaders and the Conference Board
of Directors. Elmore will accept the award, say a few
words about Fitzgerald and read from his own work. He has
also been invited to teach a Master’s Class.
Elmore will accept the award in person.
F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
“Leonard Never Uses a Word Where He Doesn’t Have To”
This piece accompanied the Times feature, ”“The 50 Greatest Crime Writers.” Elmore was number five. He beat out Arthur Conan Doyle but not Raymond Chandler. Coincidentally, the first four were British.
The Times of London
John Sutherland admires the longevity of the Dickens of Detroit
One of the great pleasures of pulp fiction is jogging along with an author over decades - as you both grow older. When did I first come across Elmore Leonard? Unknowingly as a 20-year-old (he was 30ish) when I saw the movies The Tall-T (starring lantern-jawed Randolph Scott) and 3:10 to Yuma (starring furrow browed Van Heflin).
Both are based on Leonard short stories and are classics of the “psychological western"ua genre that was big in the 1950s. I didn’t read the small print on the credits, any more than on the Paul Newman-starring Hombre. If he had his thumbprint on just those three films Leonard would deserve an honoured niche in male-action narrative.
The first Leonard novels I read were the mid-1980s La Brava and Stick, two laconic Floridean thrillers that made Miami Vice (big at the time) look paltry. Since then, I’ve been brand-loyal, saving the titles up for long-haul flights. So prolific is “Dutch” (as fans call him), that one rarely has to fly without his company. With three unread Leonards, I’d even take on T5.
If I had to categorise, I’d put his Detroit novels top (e.g. Fifty-two Pickup, another great movie, starring Roy Scheider), then the Florida novels, and last the Hollywood stuff (e.g. Get Shorty, his revenge novel on Dustin Hoffman). But Leonard has cast his scenery as far afield as Rwanda (Pagan Babies). His oddest production is Touch - an allegory about his alcoholism, and recovery from it. Latterly, he has returned to the era of his childhood, the Depression- hit 1930s (see The Hot Kid).
Like Hemingway, Leonard never uses a word where he doesn’t have to. And not even then, sometimes.
He’s still writing, which is wonderful.
They call him the Dickens of Detroit. He’s that and more.
One to read: Fifty-two Pickup (1974)
John Sutherland is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.
In 2004 his book Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Award and in 2005 he was Chair of Judges for the Booker Prize. Last year he published a memoir, The Boy Who Loved Books, and a study of bestsellers
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Leather Bound Leonards
Bet you haven’t seen these editions at your local bookstore.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Honey in Paperback Soon
Sweet Honey Deal’s not sure what compelled her to marry Walter Schoen, possibly the most boring man on Earth. So she quickly rectified the situation by leaving the dour German-born butcher to start a new life. A good thing, too, now that America’s at war with Adolf Hitler and Walter’s loyalty to his adopted country was always questionable. Even better, now U.S. Marshal Carl Webster wants to come up to Honey’s room for an official “chat” . . . and for something more intimate, if Honey has anything to say about it.
The feds’ legendary “Hot Kid,” Carl’s hunting two German POWs who escaped from an Oklahoma internment camp. Maybe Honey’s estranged hubby knows something. Maybe Honey knows something. Maybe Carl can stay faithful to his wife. Or maybe they’re all about to get tangled up—along with a sultry Ukrainian spy and her transvestite manservant—in a nutty assassination plot that can’t possibly succeed .
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Good, The Bad and the Really Ugly
MARTY MCKEE writes on his blog, Johnny Larue’s Crane Shot about one of the reasons Elmore stopped writing screenplays.
HIGH NOON, PART II: THE RETURN OF WILL KANE. I can’t imagine a more ludicrous title or concept than this. Admit it—at first glance, you’d assume this was an SCTV parody with Joe Flaherty as Gary Cooper, wouldn’t ya? ("Yup.") Then you notice that it was written by Elmore Leonard, which piques your interest a little bit. And once you start to get into it, you realize that it really isn’t too bad. In fact, HIGH NOON, PART II, which aired on CBS in the fall of 1980, would likely play much better under any other title, because as good as it is, it of course doesn’t measure up to the 1952 classic.
More than a year after killing Frank Miller and leaving Hadleyville with his wife Amy (Katherine Cannon stepping into Grace Kelly’s dainty shoes), former marshal Kane (Lee Majors) returns to buy some horses and settle down. His dreams of a simple future are shattered, however, when his horses are unnecessarily killed during a gun battle between a posse led by arrogant new marshal Ward (Pernell Roberts) and the roguish but basically decent Ben Irons (David Carradine), who has a $5000 bounty on his head. Kane knows Irons is innocent of the murder charge against him, but Ward, who delights in cruelly mistreating everyone, including his deputies Darold (Michael Pataki) and Alonzo (J.A. Preston), insists on hunting Irons anyway, ordering his men to shoot to kill on sight. As we know from the Cooper film, Kane can’t bear to let an injustice pass, and his decision to bring Irons in himself to stand trial makes him an enemy of the gun-happy Ward.
Let’s get it out of the way—no, Majors (in between THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE FALL GUY) is no Cooper, but he isn’t bad either. In fact, his casting as a durable, righteous western hero is spot-on, and he’s an excellent foil for both the wry Carradine (THE LONG RIDERS had already come out) and the bigoted sadist Roberts. Nicely photographed in Old Tucson by Harry May (FRIENDLY FIRE), HIGH NOON, PART II benefits from its rousing score, which is reminiscent of Ennio Morricone (who composed the theme to Majors’ earlier western series THE MEN FROM SHILOH). Since no music credit is given, and some of the score sounds familiar, I’ve concluded that CBS or producer Edward J. Montagne (MCHALE’S NAVY) oddly decided to use library tracks. An unusual decision for a TV-movie of that era, but an effective one. Carradine later appeared three times with Majors on THE FALL GUY (once memorably with his father John and brothers Keith and Robert), while Roberts guest-starred on Lee’s series THE BIG VALLEY and THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Elmore and Martin Amis on Charlie Rose in 1997
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Hot Kid Covers - Erotic and Noir
A couple of radically different takes on The Hot Kid, from Denmark and Japan, erotic and noir.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Elmore at Wayne State
Elmore and I cruised down to Detroit on Wednesday to Wayne State University for an informal talk with writing students and friends of M. L. Liebler, (pictured below with Elmore.) Liebler is described at his website as “nationally and internationally known and widely traveled populist poet, performance poet, workshop facilitator and arts activist.” Check out his site.
On the reading list of one of his classes is Elmore’s City Primeval. Liebler’s students had the rare opportunity to ask questions of the author of that book, who regaled them for almost two hours with his rules, funny letters, favorite writers and tales of Hollywood.
Looking out at the faces of the audiences, I wondered if they realized just how special it was that Elmore Leonard was in the house. It might take a while to sink in, but I’m sure that M. L. will remind them.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Elmore and the Law: Be Brief
Lawyers USA
Commentary: Writing the reader skips
BYLINE: Judge Mark P. Painter
Why write anything that the reader will almost surely skip? We shouldn’t, but we do.
Judges and lawyers write long paragraphs. A long paragraph of text is daunting - if readers don’t see the end of the paragraph, or if they see it and it goes on forever -they will probably skip it and go onto the next one.
But we’ve been writing long paragraphs for a long time. When he was Chief Justice, William Howard Taft composed a paragraph that went on for ten (printed!) pages. One look at that and I would skip the whole case.
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Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Booze Movies - The Moonshine War
Garv has posted Booze Movies: The 100 Proof Film Guide including Elmore Leonard’s 1970 film, The Moonshine War
Garv’s mission statement:
I like to drink. I like to watch movies. I like to watch movies about drinking. I like to write about the movies I’ve watched, but only if I’ve had a drink first.
Elmore wrote the screenplay for The Moonshine War from his novel. On the set, Patrick McGoohan came up to him as said “What’s it like standing there hearing your words all fucked up.”
The Moonshine War has not been officially released on DVD, but you can get a copy nonetheless from Yammering Magpie Video.
Here’s Garv’s review of The Moonshine War:
It seems that there is an unwritten rule that moonshine movies are nearly always disappointing. Although the setting promises plenty of pie-eyed folksy fun, the characters tend to spend more time talking about whiskey than actually drinking it. The Moonshine War is, alas, no exception. Despite the promise of an Elmore Leonard script, from one of the author’s own novels, the picture is a pretty flat brew.
Patrick “The Prisoner” McGoohan stars as Frank Long, a crooked Prohibition agent who goes sniffing after a large stash of moonshine that his hillbilly army buddy, Son Martin (Alan Alda), put away to sell after Repeal. Long isn’t interested in arresting Son Martin and his firewater-brewing neighbors. He wants to trick Martin out of the stuff in order to sell it himself. When Martin fails to fall for Long’s tricks, the Prohibition agent elicits the help of a deranged dentist (Richard Widmark) and his psychotic sidekick (Lee Hazlewood) to provide a little muscle. Unfortunately, Long’s recruits have their own plans for the whiskey--plans that threaten to leave Long high and dry.
Elmore Leonard’s script contains some intriguingly lurid touches and some unusual, multifaceted characters. In more competent hands, The Moonshine War could have been a bizarre little psychodrama, dripping with filth, alcohol, and dark comedy. Unfortunately, Richard Quine’s direction is casual to the point of being drowsy. He showed more visual flair in the Columbo episodes that he produced around the same time.
The story is also undone through careless casting. Both McGoohan and Alda are talented, likable actors; but neither is capable of producing a credible Southern accident. McGoohan compensates by croaking most of his dialogue, while Alda’s drawl fluctuates from nonexistent to cartoonish. Most of the rest of the actors sleepwalk through their performances; but thankfully, Richard Widmark and Lee Hazlewood bring some welcome zest to the film with their spirited portrayals of a couple of laid-back psychotics.
All in all, The Moonshine War is a missed opportunity. With the elements available, it could have been the Touch of Evil of moonshine movies. Unfortunately, the finished film is simply mediocre drive-in fair--the kind of flick with just enough explosions and lewd content with which to cobble together a good trailer.
USA/100m./Dir: Richard Quine/Wr: Elmore Leonard/Cast: Patrick McGoohan (Frank Long), Alan Alda (John W. “Son” Martin), Richard Widmark (Dr. Emmett Taulbee), Lee Hazlewood (Dual Metters), Melodie Johnson (Lizann Simpson), Will Geer (Sheriff Baylor), Joe Williams (Aaron)
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Maximum Leonard - Sampler Cover
Friday, April 04, 2008
Australian News Interview with Elmore
Criminal pleasures
The Dickens of Detroit, Elmore Leonard crafts his characters from shady materials such as self-interest, bad habits and bad luck, writes Mark Mordue in the Australian News.
Leonard doesn’t strike you as a literary superstar. But that’s what he is: the living master of the crime writing genre, as everyone from Tarantino to fellow authors Martin Amis and George Pelecanos have acknowledged.
Apart from their popularity on the lending lists of US prison libraries (and bestseller lists generally), Leonard’s books were selected for the 2006 Hip-Hop Literacy campaign to encourage reading in high schools and colleges across the US: all of which indicates he’s still pretty switched on to the street on for an old white guy.
I’m expecting him to be hard-boiled. Instead he just rolls along, exhibiting a generous propensity for conversation of almost any kind, although with the distinctly laconic aftertaste of the trademark humour of his writing, which is equal parts underdog and deadpan bullseye.
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Thursday, April 03, 2008
Elmore’s Hurst Shifter Ads
I’m going back and collecting the ads that Elmore wrote for George Hurst between 1962 and 1965. These ads appeared in Hot Rod, Motor Trend and other lesser magazines like Super Stock and Drag Illustrated. He and his partner Bob Rogers (sic) would think up an ad at lunch and then have the photo shot, sometimes that night. George Hurst would come into Detroit once a month and approve the ad.
I’m going to have a section of the site devoted to these ads when I get them together. You can really hear Elmore’s sound in these ads, through the technical jargon and sales pitch.
Here is one called “Hurst Country from Hot Rod magazine, November, 1964. Check out the guy’s hat. Looks a lot like the way Elmore describes Raylan Given’s hat in Pronto and Riding the Rap, doesn’t it?
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
George Pelecanos - Leonard to Film
I don’t know how I missed this.
George Pelecanos wrote a piece on Elmore films that first appeared in Sight and Sound magazine in April, 2005. He was asked to write about his favorite adaptations. He focused on eight: 3:10 to Yuma, Valdez is Coming, Mr. Majestyk, 52 Pick-Up, Get Shorty, Jackie Brown and Out of Sight. The article, Leonard in Film is now on George’s site.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
“You Keep Talking and I’m Going To Take Your Head Off”
Don’t mess with Majestyk! Classic scene from Elmore’s Mr. Majestyk, for which he wrote the screenplay and the novelization. Charles Bronson shows how to do violence righteously without breaking a sweat.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Elmore’s Other Films
One of the “lost” periods in Elmore’s career is from 1960-1965 when he did not write novels or short stories but, owing to his growing family, focused on a series of independent projects in advertising and film. In 1960, even before he left the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency, he began writing short films for Detroit writer, producers and camermanWilliam F. Deneen.
The first was a Franciscan recruitment film called The Man Who Has Everything for the Pontifical Institute of Missionary Exchange (PIME) (also known as the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions.) Deneen had made a film in the Amazon area and brought to Detroit a Franciscan friar named Juvenal, who was the star of The Man Who Has Everything. Juvenal, of course, was the model for the character of the same name in Elmore’s novel, Touch, which actually was originally titled, The Juvenal Touch. A bit more trivia, two of Elmore’s children, Peter and Jane appeared in a scene in the film.
Following that film, Elmore wrote a dozen films for Deneen who. in 1965 accepted the position of Vice President in charge of Production at Encyclopedia Britannica Films.
Elmore recalled the process: “First I’d meet with an expert, an instructor or professor. We’d met in a bar in Chicago. He’d tell me what books to read. I was paid $1000 for a 30 page script”
Below is a list of Elmore’s Encyclopedia Brittanica films.
The French and Indian War: Seven Years War in America (1962)
Settlers of the Old Northwest Territory (1962)
Settlement of the Mississippi Valley (1962)
Frontier Boy (1962)
Julius Caesar - The Rise of the Roman Empire (1964)
Life in Ancient Rome (1964)*
Claudius - Boy of Ancient Rome (1964)
Puerto Rico: Its Past --- Present and Promise (1965)Not Dated
Spain in the New World*
France in the New World*
The Danube Valley
Boy of Spain
I’m still working on the list. The asterisks denote titles that we are not 100% on, but pretty sure.
Yet more trivial: Julius Caesar was shot on the 55 acre set used for the movie spectacle, The Fall of the Roman Empire. Elmore and family visited the set.
Naturally, I am looking for all of these films, with the hopes of bringing clips to the site.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Gunsights - Hybrid Western
In the late 70s, in the midst of Elmore’s fertile Detroit Period, the editor of Bantam asked him to write a western. The result was Gunsights. It is the combination of his later Westerns, like Valdez is Coming and Hombre with the, dialogue driven style of the Detroit crime period. And, of course, great characters.
Here are descriptions of the main characters.
Brendan Early, in his hip-cocked cavalry pose. First Lieutenant of the 110th at Huachuca but wearing civilian dress, a very tight-fitting light-colored suit of clothes; bare-headed to show his brown wavy hair; a silky-looking kerchief at his throat; a matched pair of Smith and Wesson .44 Russians, butt-forward in Army holsters, each with the flap cut off; cavalry boots wiped clean for the pose; Brendan holding his Spencer carbine like a walking cane, palm resting on the upraised barrel. He seems to be trying to look down his nose like an Eastern dandy while suppressing a grin that shows clearly in his eyes.
In contrast:
Dana Moon with his dark, drooping mustache that makes him appear sad; hat brim straight and low over his eyes, a bulge in his bony countenance indicating the ever-present plug of tobacco; dark suit of clothes and a polka-dot neckerchief. Dana’s .44 Colts revolver is in a shoulder rig, a glint of it showing. He grips a Big-fifty Sharps in one hand, a sawed-off 12-gauge Greener in the other. All those guns for a man who looks so mild, so solemn.
Between the two:
Half a head shorter is a one-eyed Mimbreño Apache named Loco. What a funny-looking little man, huh? Black eyepatch, black stringy hair hanging from the bandana covering his head, he looks like a pirate of some kind, wearing an old dirty suitcoat and a loincloth. But don’t laugh at him. Loco has killed many people and went to Washington to meet Grover Cleveland when times were better.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Jackie Brown - Quentin Tarantino’s Masterwork?
From Welcome To L.A.
Larry Aydlett
Some Random Thoughts on Q.T.
I think his masterwork, so far, is “Jackie Brown,” a genre film with deep reservoirs of feeling (with much of that due to Elmore Leonard’s novel). But Tarantino gives the screenplay new layers of expression, much as the Coens did with Cormac McCarthy. In between all the f-bombs and flashbacks, “Jackie Brown” is a rich exploration of two middle-aged realists, Pam Grier’s Jackie Brown and Robert Forster’s soulful Max Cherry. When I think of the film, I don’t think of Tarantino’s trademark bombast or the twisty drugs-guns-money plot. I think of quiet moments like Max explaining to Jackie how he got a toupee because it made him feel better about himself. Or the way he walks throught the mall carrying that Delfonics tape. Or that final shrug of his shoulders when the most fabulous woman he could ever hope to meet kisses him on the lips and walks out his door and heads across 110th Street and out of his life forever. In many ways, “Jackie Brown” is a much more reflective and mature film than many of the “character-driven” indies that get such raves among critics and bloggers.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Introducing Mr. Walter Mirisch…"One of the Good Guys”
Here’s Elmore’s introduction to I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, the memoir written by his friend Walter Mirisch., a truly legendary producer and filmmaker.
When you have produced close to a hundred motion pictures since 1947, you’re allowed a series of Bomba the Jungle Boy movies during the early years-—Bomba, in a jungle created on a sound stage, gazing out at African wildlife footage Walter was able to get his hands on. By the time he was 29, Walter was running production at Monogram-Allied Artists, coming out with second-bill, low-budget pictures, one after another that could be shot in eight days for less than a hundred thousand.
The story Walter chose as the first one he’d produce himself was a short story by Cornell Woolrich called
Cocaine. Monogram Pictures said, “Are you kidding?Cocaine?” The title was the first thing Walter lost to the Breen Office, our morals watchdog at the time. Next came all references to drugs and the impact of the picture was gone. Walter called it Fall Guy.
He made Flight to Mars and another three dozen pictures for Monogram, Bomba showing up now and again—-but wait a minute. Walter also produced Wichita, a Joel McCrea western that won a Golden Globe in ’55. The next year he supervised production of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Walter was getting ready to make first–run movies with stars.
He had gone to work in Hollywood with a degree in History from the University of Wisconsin and a masters in Business from Harvard. The combination couldn’t have worked better. History opened Walter’s eyes to a wide scope of film possibilities, while the Business degree gave him the clout to make solid deals with studios, to produce stories that he liked brought to the screen.
I dedicated my Hollywood novel, Get Shorty, to Walter with the inscription, “To Walter Mirisch, one of the good guys.”
To me, the bad guys in the business were the ones who optioned my books, had the stories rewritten, and allowed actors to roam through the plot making up their own lines. Finally, when I was given the chance to write a script, a studio exec said to me, “All you’ve done is adapt your book, scene for scene.” I said, “Yes?” He said, “You don’t have
to be a screenwriter to do that.”Well, Walter believed I could write movies.
Read More>
Friday, March 21, 2008
Out of Sight - “Quintessential Noir of the Nineties”
from The Narrow Margin
Posted by William Boyle
Adaptations
A survey a friend recently sent out got me thinking more about great film adaptations of great books. There have been plenty of mediocre-to-good books turned into great movies (Carrie, The Hustler, The Graduate, and Cool Hand Luke come to mind) and there have been many great books turned into bad movies (The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises), but I’ve been trying hard to remember the best adaptations I’ve seen of truly great books.
Out of Sight: I’m not a big fan of Steven Soderbergh (I think Traffic is one of the most overrated films of the past twenty years), but this is a masterpiece. One of my favorite Elmore Leonard books—and I have many—turned into one of the quintessential noirs of the Nineties.
“No Inclination to Read Anything Written by Anyone Else Ever Again”
Detroiter Joe Boland, whose first published story appears in Detroit Noir (Akashic Books Nov 2007) blogs this, on which we all can agree:
You’re feeling at a loss, can’t pin down why, then it hits you: It’s been more than a year since you read any Elmore Leonard.
What happens next is, you’re on your second or third Elmore Leonard novel in a row, with a stack growing at your elbow, and no inclination to read anything written by anyone else ever again.
This go-round started with City Primeval: High Noon In Detroit (1980), which reads something like a landlocked version of Charles Willeford’s Miami Blues (1984). The book has two endings. The first made me laugh, and then made my skin crawl. The second ending is initially more pleasing; tidier...but just you wait a day or two, and it’ll catch up to ya.
Next: Pronto (1993) is from the stretch of books (beginning with Get Shorty) that had lazy critics touting Leonard as a writer of comic novels. (Funny yes, comic no.) I’m near the end of this book now, and I think it works better than, say, Get Shorty or Maximum Bob, thanks to its great straight man U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens. Also: the very best joke in the book is a plot point that no one mentions. Not even the author. Now that’s funny.
Sitting at my elbow, God help me: Glitz (1985), Stick (1983 – Swag, wherein the character of Stick was introduced, is one of my favorites) and Valdez Is Coming (1970).
I hope that I’ll get caught up in March Madness, though, and save some Elmore Leonard for another time.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
ROAD DOGS
Cundo Rey says Jack Foley is the only white guy in prison he can talk to, Foley a celebrity, the most famous low-key bank robber in America. Cundo even pays a hot young female lawyer 30 grand to get Foley’s sentence down from 30 years to 30 months, and Foley is released two weeks ahead of Cundo.
On the scene is FBI special agent Lou Adams, who takes time off to watch Foley, convinced he won’t be able to resist robbing another bank.
Waiting for Cundo Rey in Venice, California is Dawn Navarro, a professional psychic who can actually read minds, though Dawn has her own aspirations: can’t wait for Cundo’s release so she can get at his wealth.
While he’s in stir Cundo has his money-man Little Jimmy watching over Dawn. Little Jimmy’s gay, so Cundo trusts him.
But when Foley is released from the Florida prison two weeks ahead of Cundo, why does Cundo pay Foley’s way to Venice, Dawn’s home, where she’s waiting seven years for Cundo’s release? Why give Foley this chance to betray him when he’s positive Dawn is fooling around? “Not being his little saint.”
In less than an hour Dawn has Foley in bed. They have found each other and talk about taking Cundo for all he’s worth. Foley is sure Cundo plans to use him on a job and Dawn confirms it. “He’s got a thirty-thousand dollar stake in you. You know you can’t trust him.”
But what’s her plan?
When it happens it turns the plot upside-down.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Elmore’s Rules - “Smart, Generous, Thought-Provoking Piece of Work”
Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing
Reviewed by Paul Kane
In a recent interview for this site, Donald Westlake says of Elmore Leonard that he is “the only currently working writer I will almost invariably read”; and no wonder, the man writes damn fine crime novels. This book is a distillation of Leonard’s writing method and it consists – as he writes - of “rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story” (page 3). He lists the ten rules, expands on them briefly and gives a rationale if one seems needed. They are not intended to be prescriptive, as say S.S. Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” were, and anyway these rules relate to all kinds of fiction, and are not limited to any particular genre. They are probably best seen as tips or maybe as descriptions of Leonard’s own practice as a writer. Together, they make up quite an unusual primer on how to write popular fiction.
One attractive feature of the book is that Leonard provides exceptions or counterfactuals to many of his rules. So we are given Rule No.9 DON’T GO INTO GREAT DETAIL DESCRIBING PLACES AND THINGS, but then later told: “Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison” (page 55). Perhaps Leonard’s insouciance in this regard is his version of George Orwell’s sixth rule in the essay, “Politics and the English Language”; or maybe the real rule underlying the ten presented here should be: WRITE TO YOUR STRENGTHS. And one can think of exceptions to other rules as well, even where none is forthcoming. If, for example, Rule No.7 USE REGIONAL DIALECT, PATOIS, SPARINGLY was abided to religiously then neither Living by Henry Green nor One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding by Robert Gover, two superb novels that depend greatly on dialect and idiom, would have been written.
After completing the book, it might occur to you to ask: does Leonard always abide by his own rules? Perhaps the easiest rule to test is Rule No.4 NEVER USE AN ADVERB TO MODIFY THE VERB “SAID” (when writing dialogue); this is “a mortal sin”, according to Leonard: “The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.” After much rummaging in a stack of Leonard novels, I could come up with only one example where this rule was breached. This is from Cat Chaser, the opening page of chapter 7:
Mary said, pleasantly enough, “How did it go?”Even here, though, you might argue that the adverb occurs within a clause, and so doesn’t modify “said” directly. So maybe Leonard gets away with this one.
Perhaps the main virtue of the book is that it forces you to confront the question: what sort of writer are you? Or: what kind of writer do you want to be? Do you want to enchant like Robert Louis Stevenson or intrude like Laurence Sterne? As Leonard says, these rules enable him to “remain invisible”, but if (as he goes on to say, again on page 3) “invisibility is not what you are after … you can skip the rules. Still, you might want to look them over.” In POMO fiction, the fashion is to meddle. And invisibility was never Sterne’s strong suit; or Fielding’s, come to that.
Overall, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing is a smart, generous, thought-provoking piece of work and is chockful of all of this writer’s insouciant integrity - but don’t come to it expecting to be spoon-fed. One would have liked more, for at a mere 89 pages in all, the book is somewhat slight. It is beautifully produced, mind, with the pages being of a heavy white card. Finally, Joe Ciardiello’s illustrations have great charm and splendidly complement Leonard’s writing.
Paul Kane lives and works in Manchester, England. He welcomes responses to his reviews and you can reach him at ludic@europe.com
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Walter Mirisch’s Memoir - Foreword by Elmore Leonard
Walter Mirisch, legendary Hollywood producer and Elmore’s good friend has just published his memoir, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History. Elmore has written one of two forewords for the book.
Of Elmore’s works, Walter produced Mr. Majestyk and a TV movie, Desperado.
Walter will be appearing this Thursday night, March 20th at Book Soup in West Hollywood at 7PM.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Remembering Jackie Brown
Thursday, March 13, 2008
In Bruges - “A Great Storyteller Being Born”
From The Cord Weekly
by Mike Lippert
In Bruges is the writing and directorial debut of Martin McDonagh and it’s a film that will inevitably, if maybe unfairly, be referred to as Tarantino-esque, as if all contemporary crime films are to be weighed under the scrutiny of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.
Of course, many Tarantino jockeys maybe don’t realize that Tarantino himself owes everything he knows about dialogue to America’s most singular crime novelist, Elmore Leonard.
Alas, In Bruges plays like an adaptation of the best book Leonard never wrote: it’s funny, sexy, quick-witted, violent, has a keen ear for the small nuances in the way people converse and, most of all, allows us access to one of the most forbidden of emotions in the crime movie repertoire: genuine remorse. To watch it is to get the sense of a great storyteller being born.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The Search for “Moment of Vengeance”
A year before 3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T appeared on the big screen, an Elmore Leonard short story showed up on the small one.
Moment of Vengeance, was Elmore’s sole Saturday Evening Post story, published in the April 21, 1956 issue. Barely five months later is was the basis for a thirty minute episode of Schlitz Playhouse, airing on CBS-TV on Friday, September 28, 1956 at 9:30 p.m. Moment of Vengeance kicked off the sixth season of Schlitz Playhouse.
I tracked down the script at The Library of Congress and learned that CBS Entertainment has the rights. So far no word on whether a kinescope recording of the episode exists. A kinescope is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor. It was expensive and not routinely done.
In the meantime, here is the Variety review of the show from October 3, 1956. (Special thanks to The Library of Congress.)
The offbeat twists, of this psychological western makes it an interesting effort, although touches of hokum and a static, overtalky quality combine to mar the total effect.
The Lowell Barrington teleplay, from an Elmore Leonard story, deals with the efforts of Gene Nelson to win back his bride from her overbearing, autocratic father, Ward Bond. Bond has shanghaied the girl, Angie Dickinson, from Nelson’s homestead at the point of a gun and wrecked the joint, because the couple had the temerity to marry without his permission. However, after a prolonged session of psychological warfare against Bond, he’s forced to capitulate and give the couple his blessing.
In the starring roles, Nelson struggles to overcome a basic miscasting, which makes his cowhand too lightweight for easy belief, and that he succeeds in part is a tribute to a valiant try. Bond enacts the cow baron paterfamilias with heavy, broad srokes. Miss Dickinson impresses as a real acting find, plus being a looker. In lesser roles, Myron Healey makes a straightforward heavy as Bond’s foreman, while Alex Montoya does a polished job as a philosophical Mexican cowhand.
Alvin Ganzer’s direction tends to bog down in the lengthy discussions of opposing viewpoints, but manages to make the action passages eloquent. Kove.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Elmore Leonard’s ‘Piece de resistance’
I wandered into Amazon UK and found this review of SWAG. This poster captured the same excitement I felt when I first read the book.
Note the British title: Swag: The Early Life and Crimes of Ernest Stickley
Elmore Leonard’s ‘Piece de resistance’, 12 Jan 2002
By p@sharpe88.freeserve.co.uk (Kingston, Surrey, UK)
OK, so on the face of it, this appears to be nothing more than another trashy slice of ‘70’s ‘Pulp Fiction’, but start reading it, and… MAN!… What you’ve actually got is 229 pages of the paciest, coolest, most readable crime writing ever to flow from the pen of Mr Crime Fiction himself, the one and only Elmore Leonard.
SWAG follows the highly dubious exploits of Frank and Earnest, a couple of low-lifes out to get rich quick, introducing us to a world where afternoons are spent in summertime Detroit bars, people drive ‘75 Thunderbirds and real men pack powerful hand guns.
As long as they abide by their self-made ‘Ten Golden Rules For Successful Armed Robbery’, how can anything possibly go wrong?…Written in 1976, this novel positively drips with the feel of that coolest of cool decades. And in true Elmore Leonard style, very little actually happens in the first half of the book, but guess what? It doesn’t matter! The writing is of such a high standard, cut to the bone, stripped right down to it’s essential parts, that your eyes fairly tear down the page eagerly absorbing this wonderful lesson in dialogue creation. Every budding author should read this novel as an example of how to achieve maximum impact with the minimum of words!
A mini modern masterpiece - I think it’s the only book I’ve ever read three times! Buy it, read it and lend it to everyone you know! (Well, maybe not your mum...)
Friday, March 07, 2008
At The Movies Compilation on YouTube
I just posted on YouTube, a video called Elmore Leonard’s At the Movies Compilation that Elmore’s agent, Michael Siegel and I produced with the help of Axel Hubert, a very talented editor. This video was made to celebrate Elmore’s 75th Birthday and was shown at a Variety event at the Telluride Film Festival in September, 2000.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Touch on DVD
A young person with the power to heal in his hands becomes the prize in a tug-of-war between a sleazy con artist, a fanatical evangelist, and the American mass media in director/scripter Paul Schrader’s wicked satirical comedy, based on Elmore Leonard’s novel. Skeet Ulrich, Bridget Fonda, Christopher Walken, Tom Arnold, and Janeane Garofalo star. 98 min. Widescreen; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital Surround, French Dolby Digital Surround; Subtitles: English, Spanish.
EntertainmentToday.Net
DVD - Reviews
Written by MIKE RESTAINO
Thursday, March 06, 200
Touch was made in the frenzy surrounding Jackie Brown and Get Shorty, when Elmore Leonard novels were selling to Hollywood studios like hotcakes. But even with director Paul Schrader’s inquisitive eye behind the camera here, Touch simply fails. Skeet Ulrich may have found success as a leading man on Jericho, but as a main character in this crime/romance, his presence leaves much to be desired. And it’s a testament to just how bad the movie is that performances by the usually-dependable Bridget Fonda and Christopher Walken are all but entirely wasted.
Elmore’s Rules Get “Little Gears Turning”
Not crazy about rebus calling Elmore,"some genre writer” but this is a very gratifying account of how Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing has made an impact with a father and his daughter.
So yesterday I was at the library and happened to see this book on the craft of writing by some genre writer named Elmore Leonard. Yes, yes, I know who he is. I also know that he can write. Leonard writes with precision and clarity and he can make dialog crack so hard you’ll give yourself whiplash if you aren’t careful. How good is he? He can take all the things Gardner is trying to communicate in his book and say it in 1/1000th the number of words. His book, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, was exactly the tonic I needed this week. I didn’t need any more explanation of character arcs, or analysis on POV, I needed someone who assumes he’s talking to a fellow human being, writer to writer, with short little reminders about what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Turns out this book was originally an essay. Published almost 7 years ago. Where the hell have I been that I didn’t know about this before now? A quick search among the Tubes and Wires of the Internet revealed many who have reposted his list. I’m not going to do that. If you’d like to check it out, here is the original post.
So that’s it for this month, that’s my book on the craft of writing. I read it out loud to my 11 year old on our way to her basketball practice last night and she thought it all made perfect sense. I could see she was amused by the references, even though she has yet to read Steinbeck or Hemingway or Atwood, and I could even see little gears turning in her head concerning her own writing. I still think Strunk & White’s Elements of Style and Darrell Huff’s How To Lie With Statistics are two books every high school student should be given on their first day, to own (I assume everyone also has a copy of the U.S. Constitution), but if Leonard’s essay were included as supplementary material I wouldn’t be upset.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Robert B. Parker Visits Birmingham
I called Elmore to tell him that Robert Parker was at a bookstore in downtown Birmingham and asked him if he would come downtown for a little photo op, and he did. This was back in 1983 or 1984. We hung out for a while. Elmore introduced me and said I did his research. Parker fired back: “I do my own research!”
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Is This The Worst Elmore Leonard Cover?
I think so. Penguin’s art department went through a misguided period, to say the least.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
In Plain Sight - An “Original” Series
Despite the infinity of media, there appears to only be a few ideas in the world and a good number of them apparently belong to Elmore. At least the guys at USA Network read Elmore Leonard, or, if they can’t read, maybe they just looked at old Karen Sisco episodes which they syndicated four years ago. Or maybe it’s all just a coincidence. Let’s see, we have a series called In Plain Sight, as opposed to Out of Sight, with a female US Marshal in aviator glasses, shades of Karen Sisco, with a colleague with a first name of Marshall, like her dad, Marshal Sisco, working in the Witness Protection Program, like Killshot. How long before The Blackbird shows up?
Oh, but you say, the new Karen Sisco is a blonde! You’re right, there is a difference.
ABOUT IN PLAIN SIGHT
In Plain Sight is an hour-long drama that revolves around Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack), a tough, sexy US Marshal who works for the Federal Witness Protection Program. While many of the witnesses under her care are high-maintenance career criminals, some are just innocent people who had the misfortune of witnessing a crime or falling victim to one.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Professional “Required Reading”
W.C. Heinz, 93; sportswriter, novelist
By Mary Rourke, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Most fans consider his feature articles and his first novel, “The Professional” (1958), required reading. In the novel, he follows a middleweight prizefighter through training. The story grew out of years spent ringside at Stillman’s Gym on 8th Avenue in Manhattan. Ernest Hemingway and Elmore Leonard both sent Heinz fan mail after they read the book. Hemingway called it “the only good novel about a fighter I’ve ever read and an excellent first novel in its own right.”
For Leonard, it became a model. “I was studying writing closely in the ‘50s, and I learned a lot from Heinz,” Leonard recently told The Times. He followed Heinz’s magazine profiles. “Heinz got so much dialogue into his writing. He could get sports guys to talk, and he’d get their attitude right.”
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
W. C. (Bill) Heinz dies at 93 - A Writer Who Influenced Elmore and Became His Friend
Elmore read Heinz’s masterwork, The Professional when it came out in 1958 and wrote a rare fan letter. Read Elmore’s foreword to a 2001 trade paperback of The Professional here.
BYLINE: By WILSON RING, Associated Press Writer
W.C. “Bill” Heinz, who witnessed the Normandy invasion on D-Day, covered some of the greatest sports moments of his time and helped write the book “MASH,” died Wednesday. He was 93.
Heinz, a graduate of Middlebury College, is credited with helping create a “you-are-there” style of reporting that influenced a generation of journalists.
“It was one of the thrills of my life that I got to know him in his later years,” said New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica. “To my mind, he was the greatest living World War II newspaper correspondent and the greatest living sports writer. He was an amazing figure.”
Longtime New York columnist Jimmy Breslin said Heinz’s piece about a New York boxer called “The Brownsville Bum,” originally published in 1951, was “probably the best piece I read in 50 years.”
Born Wilfred Charles Heinz on Jan. 11, 1915 in Mount Vernon, N.Y., he attended Middlebury College and after graduation in 1937 went to work as a copy boy at the New York Sun.
He got his break after writing a feature story about women who rode the subway into Manhattan every night to clean the offices of New York’s rich and powerful.
“I so much wanted to be a newspaper man,” he said during a 2002 interview with the Associated Press.
During the war, he was chosen by the Sun to be a war correspondent and covered the invasion of Normandy from a battleship. He stayed with the troops until the end of the war.
After the war, he was given a column at the Sun called “The Sports Scene.”
“He was a brilliant, incisive war correspondent,” said Joe Goldstein, a veteran New York publicist.
In 1948, Heinz was at Yankee Stadium for a reunion of the 1923 New York Yankees that turned out to be Babe Ruth’s farewell, two months before dying of throat cancer.
“The Babe started to undress,” he wrote. “His friends helped him. They hung up his clothes and helped him into the parts of his uniform. When he had them on he sat down again to put on his spiked shoes, and when he did this the photographers who had followed him moved in. They took pictures of him in uniform putting on his shoes, for this would be the last time.”
Of Heinz’ 1958 boxing novel, “The Professional,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote: “The only good novel about a fighter I’ve ever read, and an excellent first novel in its own right.”
Heinz also helped legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi write the book “Run to Daylight,” which was later made into a movie, and wrote about boxing, horse racing and other sports after leaving daily journalism in 1950 when the Sun folded.
In the mid-1960s, Heinz worked with Maine physician H. Richard Hornberger and helped prepare for publication the book MASH, which was published under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. The book spawned the hit 1971 movie and television series.
In his later years, sports reporters visited Heinz at his Bennington home to hear his recollections. He was featured in Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Vanity Fair, on ESPN, in newspapers and in other magazines.
In 2001, Heinz was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, and in 2004 to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
In the Associated Press interview, Heinz said writing about athletes brought him closer to the heroes he yearned to emulate.
“If I could be around them, some of the glory might rub off,” he said.
“Games mean so damn much,” Heinz said. “We need these releases. It’s not sacrilegious after 9/11 for a release and maybe abate some of the tension.”
He had been in declining health for several years and died at the assisted living facility where he’d lived since 2002, said his daughter, Gayl Heinz, of Amesbury, Mass.
Heinz’s wife, Elizabeth Bartlett Bailey, died in 2002. His death came 44 years to the day after the death of a daughter, Barbara Bailey Heinz, said Gayl Heinz. He is survived by Gayl Bailey Heinz, her husband, Gerald Pantalone, and one grandchild.
No services are planned, although a memorial service could be held at some future date, Gayl Heinz said.