The Elmore Leonard Website

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Rwanda - “Strange Setting for Elmore Leonard Book”

Not really.

The Reading Journal: Pagan Babies By Elmore Leonard

I’ve never been to Rwanda where some 800,000 humans were slaughtered by their own people for no reason at all. Like the others, it is a place of unimaginable terror. It is also a strange setting for an Elmore Leonard book. A guy who usually sets his tales in Detroit. Yet Rwanda is exactly where he opens Pagan Babies, and that right in the aftermath of the genocide.

The story focuses on Terry a priest who lived in Rwanda during the time of the genocide who has become tired of seeing the perpetrators of that atrocity not see a trial, and not be punished in anyway. He sets a plan in motion which eventually takes him to more typical Leonard territory, Detroit. There he meets a lady, mixes with the mob and works a con or two.

It is top-form Leonard. The dialogue sparkles, the action is fast, furious and fun. Beyond the fairly brief bits in Rwanda the rest of it is pretty much vintage Leonard too. The man might not change formulas very often, but he’s is so constantly solid in his abilities that it doesn’t matter. It certainly doesn’t here.

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Monday, December 21, 2009

“Justified” Trailer

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Saturday, December 19, 2009

Short run for ‘Maximum Bob’

Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio)
Rich Heldenfels, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

So many people ask me when the Maximum Bob TV Series will be on DVD. To all of you, I’m trying to answers, It isn’t easy. TV critics like Rich get them too. This from his mailbag:

Q: Several summer seasons of replacement series ago, we watched “Maximum Bob.” It starred one of the Bridges brothers. Absolutely hilarious! What ever happened to that show and why wasn’t it ever picked up as a regular series on prime time TV?

A: Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, the series originally aired on ABC in August and September 1998. Beau Bridges starred as “Maximum Bob” Gibbs, a tough judge; the cast also included Liz Vassey and Kiersten Warren. The production team included producer-director Barry Sonnenfeld, who had done well by Leonard with the big-screen adaptation of Get Shorty. If the ratings had been good enough, ABC would have ordered more than the seven original episodes. Unfortunately, the show did not measure up, and was soon gone. But it still pops up on lists of shows canceled too soon.

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

New “Justified” Trailer From Time

‘Justified’ Trailer—Um, Awesome?
By: Chris Jordan

It’s high noon for the bad guys on the upcoming FX series ‘Justified.’

The exclusive new trailer for the series opens with star Timothy Olyphant as lawman Raylan Givens shooting a bad guy at a beachside resort.

“You know we’re not able to shoot people on site anymore,’ says Givens’ commander.

‘He pulled first,’ quips Olyphant’s Givens.

Then Givens finds himself returning to the backwoods of Kentucky, where bad vibes, bullets and even rockets fly. It looks like Givens’ quick-draw style is the only thing that can save this humble town.

Olyphant, perhaps best known for his role as Seth Bullock on HBO’s ‘Deadwood,’ hasn’t let his gun get too cold since ‘Deadwood’s’ demise and, in fact, seems to have a much quicker trigger finger now. Twenty seconds don’t go by without Givens shooting or threatening to shoot someone in the trailer.

Well, sometimes you can only get justice at the end of gun.

Olyphant’s laconic Givens echoes the great Hollywood Western stars of the past, like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Let’s see if they can keep it up for a whole show, much less a series.

Graham Yost (‘Boomtown,’ ‘Speed’) developed ‘Justified,’ which is based on a popular Elmore Leonard character. The novelist is an executive producer. FX has ordered 13 episodes.

‘Justfied’ changed it name from ‘Lawman’ earlier this year to avoid confusion with the reality show ‘Steven Seagal: Lawman,’ which premiered earlier this month on A&E. The series is set to debut in March.

Watch the ‘Justified’ trailer here from Time

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Justified Writing Staff

The eight Justified writers, left to right: Benjamin Cavell, Wendy Calhoun, Graham Yost, Elmore, Fred Golan, Clay Humphrey (standing behind), Gary Lennon and Benjamin Lobato.

The eight writer: Chris Provenzano, left, (with Elmore and Justified producer, Don Kurt.)

You don’t often get to the faces of the writers of TV or movies, except occasionally on an awards show or this website. Above, is the entire writing staff of Justified, who, a couple of weeks ago, all came out to the set of Justified in Santa Clarita, CA to meet Elmore.

Justified, for new visitors, is the FX TV series based on Elmore’s Raylan Given’s novella, “Fire in the Hole.” Timothy Olyphant stars as Raylan Givens.

All the writers have blue wristbands that say, “What Would Elmore Do?”

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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Elmore in History of Elements of Style

Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style by Mark Garvey

“Stylized is a lovingly crafted history that explores Elements’ staying power and takes us from the hallowed halls of academia to the bustling offices of The New Yorker magazine to the dazzling days of old Hollywood—and into the hearts and minds of some of the most respected writers working today.”

Elmore, of course, is all over this book.

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing…at just over one thousand words, makes Strunk and White look like wind-bags. It’s a fun list of brief, slightly idiosyncratic pointers (Number I: “Never open a book with weather”) aimed primarily at fiction writers hoping to bring to their work some of the crackle and punch of Leonard’s own fiction. Leonard says he had a copy of The Elements of Style on his shelf for years and used to consult it occasionally, though he seems now to have misplaced it. No matter; he’s long had Elements’ key points well in hand.

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Wednesday, December 09, 2009

The Westerners by C. Courtney Joyner - Chapter on Elmore

The Westerners: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Writers and Producers

Actors, writers, directors and producers who helped1define the genre offer unique insight about western1movies from the early talkies to the present. Interviewed here are Glenn Ford, Warren Oates, Virginia Mayo, Andrew V. McLaglen, Harry Carey, Jr., Julie Adams, A.C. Lyles, Burt Kennedy, Edward Faulkner, Aldo Sambrell, Jack Elam, Andrew J. Fenady, and Elmore Leonard. Movies they discuss include Red River, The Searchers, 3:10 to Yuma, High Noon, Bend of the River, Rio Bravo, The Wild Bunch, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, among many others.

C. Courtney Joyner is a screenwriter with more than 20 produced films to his credit. He has contributed chapters to a number of books on film history and his articles have appeared in Wildest Westerns, Fangoria and Famous Monsters of Filmland.

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Monday, December 07, 2009

Elmore Visits the Set of “Justified”

While in L.A. to receive the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, Elmore visited the set of Justified, the FX TV series based on his novella, Fire in the Hole scheduled to premiere in March, 2010. Elmore is executive producer of Justified and wanted to meet the producers and writers, and especially Timothy Olyphant, who plays his favorite character-creation, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens.

The set Elmore visited was an apartment court on a busy street in Santa Clarita, about 30 miles north of Los Angeles. The entire writing staff for Justified had come out to meet him. Head writer, Graham Yost, told Elmore that he had given each member of his writing staff a blue wristband with the initials “WWED” – WHAT WOULD ELMORE DO? “It was encouraging to meet the writers, Elmore said. “They get me. They want to pick up my sound in dialog and that’s the key to getting my stuff right.”

After the writers had a chance to talk to Elmore and pick his brain about the show and its direction, Tim Olyphant came over to meet him, asking many questions about Raylan and Elmore’s work in general about which he was quite versed. Elmore said: “Seeing Tim in person confirmed the impression I already had from the Justified pilot. Tim is perfect for the part; his voice, his manner, he’s got Raylan down – the laid back Federal marshal.”

Later, on the Fox lot, Elmore met with John Landgraf, FX Network President, to discuss the show and its direction. “I was very pleased with the level of commitment at FX to making Justified a big success and true to my work,” he said.

FX has two series trailers ready; one, in fact, already aired during a recent Sons of Anarchy episode. These trailers when released wide will generate a lot of buzz and excitement for the show. Producer Sarah Timberman showed me Episode 1, which is the real test of any series, transitioning from pilot to series. Here the writers of Justified had to show their Elmore Leonard savvy. The good news is that Episode 1 maintains the Elmore Leonard sound and attitude, drawing elements from the pilot and the Fire in the Hole novella. I can’t be specific, but there is a fantastic surprise in this episode that will delight hard core Elmore Leonard fans.

I have high hopes for the series and so does Elmore. In fact, he may write another Raylan story; one that could then be incorporated into Justified, perhaps as the opening of the second season. All the writers and producers are excited about this possibility.

In sharp contrast to ABC’s abandonment of the Karen Sisco series, FX is behind Justified fore the long run.

Special thanks to Sarah Timberman, Carl Beverly, Graham Yost; and Michael Dinner for arranging our visit to the set of Justified and for being cool people.

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Thursday, December 03, 2009

PEN Center USA awards fete Elmore Leonard

Los Angeles Times
Carolyn Kellogg

The PEN Center USA literary awards, held Wednesday night at the Beverly Hills Hotel, made for an odd intersection of worlds. Book people are somewhat less glamorous than movie people—more glasses, lower heels, generally less camera-ready—but at this event, they’re cheek and jowl. Two attendees who slipped out a little early found themselves waiting at the valet stand next to Warren Beatty, who just happened to be at the hotel—Hollywood really does go to the Polo Lounge.

The PEN event itself didn’t have quite that star power, but it did have Elmore Leonard, the author of close to 50 novels, on hand to receive PEN’s lifetime achievement award. Leonard, whom friends call Dutch, said he first stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1969—in what might have been a maid’s room—for $28 per night. He was working on adapting one of his books for the screen, and at night would go up Sunset Boulevard to catch the Grateful Dead at the Whiskey A Go-Go. That movie didn’t turn out so well, but later pictures made from his books, did: “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight,” “Jackie Brown,” “Mr. Majestyk.”

Presenting the award to Leonard was his longtime friend, the legendary movie producer Walter Mirisch (“The Magnificent Seven,” “In the Heat of the Night”). In his carefully prepared introduction, Mirisch said Leonard has “an uncanny ear for crooks, cops and babes”; near the end, he turned the page and came up blank. A long, uncomfortable silence stretched as Mirisch checked through his papers, apparently missing the final page of his speech. “To hell with it,” he finally said, smiling, to relieved laughter, and ad-libbed his way through the end.

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Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Elmore Leonard to receive lifetime achievement award from PEN USA Tonight

Elmore will receive PEN USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award tonight at The 19th Annual Literary Awards Festival, known as LitFest. PEN USA is the Los Angeles-based professional writers organization, the division of PEN International representing writers west of the Mississippi.

Elmore’s award will be presented by his good friend, legendary film producer, Walter Mirisch. LitFest prizes go to ten writers for outstanding work in 10 separate genres.

Past recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award include: Ray Bradbury, Woody Allen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Betty Friedan, Larry Gelbart, Vaclav Havel, Walter Mosley, Christopher Isherwood, Neil Simon, Jane Smiley, Robert Towne, Billy Wilder and Gore Vidal.

Tickets, which are discounted for members, are also available to the public, as the event serves as a fundraiser for the nonprofit organization.

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Time Magazine
Posted by James Poniewozik

In Justified, which debuts in March (date TBD), Olyphant plays the lead role of Deputy U.S. Marshal “Raylan Givens.” Givens is a modern-day 19th century-style lawman, enforcing his brand of justice in a way that puts a target on his back with criminals and places him at odds with his bosses in the Marshal service. Justified was developed by Graham Yost (Boomtown, Speed) and is based on the popular character featured in several books and short stories by famed novelist Elmore Leonard. Yost wrote the pilot and will serve as Executive Producer/Showrunner of the series. Leonard is Executive Producer, along with Sarah Timberman (Kidnapped), Carl Beverly (Kidnapped) and Michael Dinner (Karen Sisco), who directed the pilot episode. Produced by Sony Pictures Television and FX Productions. FX has ordered 13 episodes of the series, which is shot in Los Angeles.

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Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Unknown Man #89 - Down and Dirty

The 80s Avon’s paperback cover for the great Unknown Man #89. These old covers stir memories of reading Elmore in the early days….

What cover stirs you?

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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Road Dogs “Never Fails to Thrill”

Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, priced £18.99.

No-one writes crime novels like Hollywood favourite Elmore Leonard, and he has returned with a typical tale of colourful hoodlums on the hunt for another scam.

Leonard – the man behind Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown and the Stephen Soderbergh movie Out Of Sight – digs up some old cons for his new novel, with Out Of Sight ‘s Jack Foley opening Road Dogs back in the slammer.

The prolific bank robber has pretty much given up on freedom and accepted a lifetime behind bars, but that’s until the arrival of new room-mate Cundo Rey, whose crack lawyer gets him out pronto.

While he should be in the Cuban hustler’s debt, Foley subsequently shacks up with Rey’s wife Dawn on his release, and the two contrive to pinch the jive-talking midget millionaire’s assets.

Great dialogue, great characters; 84-year-old Leonard, releasing his 47th novel, never fails to thrill.

9/10 Review by Richard Mulligan

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Friday, November 27, 2009

Tishomingo Blues - Playing All the Angles

Here are a couple of comps I did for the Tishomingo Blues dust jacket. I always fool around with covers.

I tweeted the line “Going to Tishomingo to get my hambone boiled.” That is from the 1926 blues song, Tishomingo Blues by Peg Leg Howell. It is not the same as the 1917 ragtime tune of the same name. Elmore heard the blues version and remembered it. He had a future title. The rest of the verse goes, “Because those Atlanta women let my hambone spoil.”

What a great experience it was researching Tishomingo with Elmore. Then what a great book he wrote. Definitely a classic. Below is the beginning of Janet Maslin’s New York Times Review. They copped the title from the Times essay that appeared the previous summer.

Leaving Out the Parts Readers Skip
By JANET MASLIN

Elmore Leonard’s latest book features a cool operator with a laid-back style, a wry, sneaky observer of human nature. He enjoys inhabiting the world of crime. He’s a smoothly calculating guy who plays all the angles. And if he takes his time getting what he wants, the important thing is that he knows how to get it.

That describes a character named Robert Taylor, the principal conniver in “Tishomingo Blues.” But of course we’re talking about the author, too. Mr. Leonard, sharp as ever, has concocted another deft, funny book about dueling miscreants, and this time he has staged the duel in costume-party style. There are ways to explain where this fits into the wide panorama of his earlier work, and why this book is a particular success. But Mr. Leonard has stated, in a list of suggestions to other writers, that it’s smart to leave out the parts that readers skip.

So back to the party: it’s a large- scale re-enactment of a Civil War battle, staged in the Mississippi Delta region of the title. And it features at least one dealer in mobile homes ? including one called the Vicksburg that “has like slave quarters in back, where you keep your lawn mower” ? dressing up as a Confederate general. This may be a good time to point out that Robert Taylor, who has his own agenda and is well aware of the Vicksburg, is black.

As if playing some kind of fill-in- the-blanks party game, Mr. Leonard has also built this story around a professional diver named Dennis Lenahan. No small part of the fun arises from wondering just what diving will have to do with the Civil War. But the great, solid thing about Mr. Leonard’s books is the certainty that it will fit, sooner or later, whenever he feels like putting the pieces together. And until that happens, he’s got a fine Southern comedy of manners on his hands.

Read the whole article here.

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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Year of the Dog

APP.COM
Leonard’s new thriller keeps readers guessing
By RICK MAKIN • CORRESPONDENT

The prolific Elmore Leonard (more than 40 novels and short-story collections) has come up with a new fast-paced thriller that begins with the two chief protagonists in prison and ends with one of them laid out at a funeral parlor. In between, the surprises never stop coming, for no one is quite what he or she appears to be.

If the ability to make the reader say to himself “Wow, I sure didn’t see that coming” is any indication of writing skill, then Leonard is skillful, indeed.

The protagonists are Jack Foley, America’s most prolific bank robber ever, and Cundo Rey, an artful Cuban whose ticket into the United States was Fidel Castro’s Mariel boatlift, when Cuban jails were emptied and thousands of very bad guys were allowed to sail north.

They meet in a federal lockup on the shores of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, and the first thing Foley notices about Cundo is that he seems to have unlimited assets on the outside and a lot of respect from the tough guys inside. Foley has 30 years to serve after having been at large for a week and being shot by an FBI agent who spent the prior night in Foley’s bed.

Foley is befriended by Cundo, who eventually tells his lawyer to file an appeal and get Foley released. The odds against this appear to be overwhelmingly long, but the lawyer (she’s gorgeous as well as smart) pulls it off. Cundo pays for it.

Cundo’s time left to be served is getting shorter, but when it becomes clear that Foley will be the first one out, Cundo tells Foley that he owns two multimillion-dollar homes across the street from each other in Venice, Calif. He says his almost-wife lives in one, and he wants Foley to occupy the other indefinitely and make sure his girlfriend isn’t being unfaithful. Can you tell where this is going?

Well, the right answer is yes and no, because there’s a lot going on that you won’t anticipate. Just when you think you’ve figured out who is using whom, another surprise emerges.

One especially interesting touch is Leonard’s command of the street argot spoken by Cundo; it seems authentic without being stereotypical, even though the character is an uneducated lowlife.

One caveat: Leonard’s characters, male and female, us the F-word a lot. But if you can get past that, you’ll find “Road Dogs” an interesting exercise.

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Saturday, November 21, 2009

Out West, When Men Were Quiet And Heroic

The New York Times
By JOHN J. O’CONNOR
Published: Friday, January 17, 1997

Before he became an author of best-selling crime novels like ‘‘Get Shorty,’’ Elmore Leonard wrote westerns, developing early on his favorite theme, that ‘‘we don’t control our lives.’’ ‘‘Last Stand at Saber River,’’ one of the best, has now been given a rich and sensitive television production, which can be seen Sunday on TNT. Tom Selleck, who at times seems as attractively embarrassed as Clark Gable used to be about being in the suspicious business of acting, plays Paul Cable, returning in the waning days of the Civil War to his wary family and a world still filled with violence.

Cable volunteered three years earlier, in 1862, to fight on the side of the Confederacy. He returns chastened after a bloodcurdling incident that he doesn’t want to talk about. His wife, Martha (Suzy Amis), is still bitter about his joining up in the first place and leaving her to cope with the rearing of two children and the death of a third. She insists that Cable move the family from Texas back to Arizona Territory (filming was done in New Mexico), only to find that their valley home has been confiscated by two Union-sympathizing brothers (played by real-life brothers, David and Keith Carradine). Lurking ominously on the periphery is Edward Janroe (David Dukes), a seriously disturbed gunrunner who insists the South is winning the war.

This is an old-fashioned western, lean and mean. The landscape is a major character. There are stylistic echoes of the 1929 film ‘‘The Virginian,’’ which starred a new actor named Gary Cooper. The cast of ‘‘Saber River’’ includes Harry Carey Jr., a veteran of such John Ford classics as ‘‘Red River’’ and ‘‘Rio Bravo.’’ There are shootouts, with Martha blowing away more than her share of nasty varmints, and, for a grand finale, there is a hair-raising chase to save a little girl. Mr. Selleck’s taciturn Cable is almost wordlessly eloquent, and Ms. Amis’s Martha is one of the most formidable women you’ll find on a screen nowadays.

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Fall of the Roman Empire: Limited Collector’s Edition

In 1964, Encyclopedia Britannica film producer, William Deneen got permission from Hollywood film producer, Samuel Bronston to use the fabulous sets for The Fall of the Roman Empire to make a series of educational shorts about the Roman Empire. An exact replica of Rome was built near Madrid, Spain for the feature film starring Sophie Loren and Alec Guiness leading an international cast. The three educational shorts produced by Deneen were:

Life in Ancient Rome
Julius Caesar - The Rise of the Roman Empire
Claudius: Boy of Ancient Rome

His writer for these films was Elmore Leonard! This was during a hiatus in Elmore’s writing career when he earned a living doing freelance advertising and wrote a series of Encyclopedia Britannica films for Deneen. Here is an earlier post on Elmore’s EB films.

Educational films are cheesy by nature, but using the incredible sets from Madrid, elevated these three shorts to a different level altogether. They were still badly acted and directed, but they were incredible to look at. As for Elmore’s scripts, they were, well…educational. Get Shorty it ain’t, but it’s an important part of Elmore’s evolution and journey.

If you are a completist and must these films, make sure you get: The Fall of the Roman Empire: Limited Collector’s Edition. Accept no substitute. Otherwise you won’t get Disc 3: “A Collection of Historic Films About Ancient Rome, All Shot on the Film’s Sets!” The regular two-disc deluxe edition does not have the extra disc.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Interview: Keith Hetherington - Austalian Western Writer

Steve M. interviews Keith Hetherington, an Australian western writer who has had an impressive number of books published in Australia and America. Hetherington has written between 600 and 1000 stories, he doesn’t really know. It’s fascinating to read about a guy who can still maintain a writing career in the western genre. Can you imagine Elmore still writing westerns? I’m sure some reading this can.

Apparently Keith gets good writing, western or not.

Steve M. asked:

Which western writers would you recommend?

Which writers would I recommend now? Well, I like Elmore Leonard, both his thrillers and his Westerns - he’s got a style all his own, laconic, tough, knowledgeable.

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Saturday, November 14, 2009

FX’s ‘Lawman’ Now Called ‘Justified’

Hartford Courant
Roger Catlin

Names are important to TV shows.

“A lot of you are aware I tried to retitle it,” producer Bill Lawrence says in a letter to critics accompanying episodes of the retooled “Scrubs,” which he wanted to call something else to better reflect its new casting and direction.

ABC, which is premiering the show Dec. 1, understandably wants to build on the original by keeping the brand the name.

But FX, which is soon to premiere an interesting new drama starring Timothy Olyphant as a modern day U.S. Marshal (as opposed to the sheriff he played on “Deadwood”) under the name “Lawman” has scrapped that name several weeks before the premiere.

The drama, based on a short story by Elmore Leonard and set in Kentucky, is now being called “Justified.”

In one sense, it’s another generic legal term. But FX didn’t change it because it loved the new name as much as it did so it wouldn’t be confused with a reality show from a faded action film star.

“Steven Seagal: Lawman” starts Dec. 2 on A&E, chronicling the actor’s real-life experiences aiding the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana.

“Justified” is at least the third title for the FX series - its first working title was the name of the Leonard short story on which it’s based, “Fire in the Hole.”

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Friday, November 13, 2009

Valdez is Coming: Finally in Finnish

Juri Nummelin reviews Valdez is Coming at pulpetti

Elmore’s best-known western novel, Valdez Is Coming, was just translated for the first time in Finnish (partly due to my suggestion to the publisher). In fact, it was Leonard’s first western translated in Finnish (apart from a short story in Seikkailujen Maailma in the 1950s), which is surprising. Then again, Leonard had only two crime novel translations in the paperback series of the seventies and sixties (both, Mr Majestyk and 52 Pick-Up, are very good and come highly recommended), so there might’ve been some issues with his agent. Leonard’s had a bit of bad luck with Finnish publishers even later on, with publishers changing almost from book to book and the publishers treating him with bad translations and not very good covers and bad marketing. Some of his earlier masterpieces are still left untranslated, so it’s even more fabulous that Valdez Is Coming is now available in Finnish (the Finnish publisher is Bookkari, by the way).

The book is famous also for having been filmed, by Edwin Sherrin in the early seventies, with Burt Lancaster. The film is remarkable for keeping Leonard’s ending intact - in the 2000’s it would’ve been changed into a lengthy gunfight. This ending is more in par with Leonard’s terse prose and the worldview of his characters: do, don’t just tell you’re doing. It’s something deeper than the old advice “show, don’t tell”. Leonard’s style and narration are always about what needs to be done, what’s necessary to do. Thus the emotions of his characters come clear, even though there’s not much talk about them per se.

Valdez Is Coming must be one of the best western novels ever.

A minor bibliographical point: the Finnish edition has the original publishing year as 1970. That was however the year when the book was published in the USA, by Fawcett. The book had come out from the British lending library publisher Robert Hale a year before that, as a hardcover (which seems to be very rare), so the actual first publishing year is 1969.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Elmore Leonard Dishes Up Incredible Stories Again

The Boston Globe
March 24, 2003
By Michael Prager, Globe Staff
When the Women Come Out to Dance

Readers who have followed the long path of Elmore Leonard know that when he was starting out in the 1950s, still with his hand in advertising copywriting, he wrote short stories and Westerns.

In “When the Women Come Out to Dance,” his 39th publication, he comes back to both, though in the case of Westerns, not exclusively. Strictly, that description applies only to “The Tonto Woman,” which tells of a character kidnapped and tattooed by Indians and banished by her husband to an isolated hut when she is returned a dozen years later.

But “Hurrah for Captain Early,” about a black soldier’s return to discrimination after fighting with valor in the Spanish-American War, is also set in the Southwest. And “Tenkiller,” though set in modern-day Oklahoma, has plenty of Wild West bravado.

“Tenkiller” is the longest of the nine tales and one of only two appearing for the first time in this collection. It is the story of Ben Walker, and it is genuine Leonard in miniature: An Okie makes his way in the world, first as a rodeo champ and then as a Hollywood stuntman. He’s not pure - but he’s good - and he’s known both love and tragedy.

A hallmark of Leonard’s recent work has been how he salts his stories with pop culture references, which reached a crescendo in “Get Shorty” and its unfortunate sequel, “Be Cool.” Though he continues the hip parade throughout this collection, he adds another layer: references to the worlds he has previously wrought.

Walker’s story, for example, could be an alternate outcome for Bear, the genial enforcer for a crooked limo-service operator who ultimately befriends Chili Palmer in “Get Shorty.” Bear’s employer is a black man named Bo Catlett; so is the main character in “Hurrah for Captain Early,” as was a cavalryman in “Gunsights,” an early Leonard Western.

Raylan Givens, previously of “Pronto” and “Riding the Rap,” is a key figure in “Fire in the Hole,” in which an old acquaintance reappears as the sort of guy who knows the country’s going to hell and is bound to prevent it no matter how much blood must be shed.

And Karen Sisco, the federal agent in “Out of Sight” (portrayed by Jennifer Lopez in the 1998 movie), returns in “Karen Makes Out,” in which she falls for a bad guy, again.

Leonard explores another kind of literary recycling in “Chickasaw Charlie Hoak,” in which he takes a minor character from “Tishomin go Blues” and makes the story all about him. Guys like Hoak - who is amusingly, annoyingly stuck on the questionable glory attached to having pitched,

once, in the Major Leagues - have long been part of Leonard’s rich fabric. By developing him into a main character, Leonard shows that every time he sits down with pen and pad, he could go down countless paths. That fact is sometimes lost in his incredibly credible stories, which often seem reported rather than created.

The most unexpected treat of the collection is “Hanging Out at the Buena Vista,” a five-page tour de force that is, simultaneously, Leonard most typical and Leonard most unlikely. To the former point, the plot is carried almost entirely by dialogue, with a quote in almost every paragraph. Leonard often speaks of wanting not to intrude on the story, of wanting his characters to do the work, and rarely has the technique been more refined. Of course, it doesn’t prevent Leonard from sharing his sharp observations, such as when the character Vincent opines that “a woman can get away with a good [hairpiece]. But you see a rug on a guy, every hair in place? You can always tell.” And Vincent again, a couple of paragraphs later, on the health of health care workers: “Some are okay, but they all have big butts. You notice that? Hospitals, the same thing. I’ve made a study: The majority of women who work in health care are seriously overweight.”

So what’s different about this one? There are only the two characters, Vincent and Natalie, and neither is a villain. There’s no hint of crime or a checkered past - just two old folks in a trailer park, looking for companionship as they await their end by cancer.

Could it be that even as he revisits old friends and old haunts, Leonard is about to embark on an entirely new path? Almost certainly not, but it does show that Leonard, even well into his 70s, is capable of anything, and of anything new.

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Sunday, November 08, 2009

Out of Sight - Best George Clooney Movie

StlToday.com
Joe Holleman: Life Sherpa

A look at the Best George Clooney films. There could be another one on the list if George decideds to do Road Dogs!

1, Out of Sight (1998)

Jack Foley: A great crime drama about a bank robber who is looking for his last big score, but runs head-on into a nasty group of Detroit hoods wanting in on the action. Hard to beat the combination of Elmore Leonard’s crisp storytelling, Steven Soderbergh’s deft directing and across-the-board strong acting from Clooney, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina and the talented Jennifer Lopez — before she became a diva/celeb.

Read the rest of the story here.
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Thursday, November 05, 2009

52 Pickup Review - Film Noir Pulp Fiction Way Before Tarantino

WiderScreening.Com
Pornhound Goes to the Movies

52-Pick-up is being regularly revisted these days. The film had never achieved the status of Elmore’s big three: Get Shorty, Jackie Brown and Out of Sight, bur Pornhound thinks it’s the best of Elmore’s films: “52 Pick Up was the pinnacle: subsequent big Hollywood hits like Get Shorty were commercialized crap in comparison,” he said.

He wrote:

For the grindhouse-loving, dope-smoking, acid-happy pornhound that I was, 52 Pick-Up was the right stuff, the good shit.

It’s got enough film noir heritage to make it worthy of serious critical analysis, but this was film noir brought to the porn ghetto. Blackmail.

52 Pick-Up is just that: film noir pulp fiction as sleazy as mainstream got in the 1980s. It’s the real deal. Frankenheimer was always morally ambiguous and in 52 Pick-Up he gets to wallow in seediness for the fun of it: villains Chris Glover and Clarence Williams III are radiant lowlifes and Glover relishes the character, making this his finest work. Glover’s portrayal of the blackmailing pornographer is a delight in smarmy amorality, the joy of a smart man turned bad man for the fun of it and surrounding himself in young snatch, his camera (and Frankenheimer’s) partying with naked porn stars.

Read the rest here.

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Tuesday, November 03, 2009

The Legendary Marvin Pontiac

After Elmore got turned on to Marvin Pontiac, he just had to work him into Tishomingo Blues and be part of this running gag. Marvin is all over Tishomingo. In this passage, Robert Taylor gives Dennis a tutorial about this strange man. Thanks to LaCrimAtty for raising Marvin from the dead once again.

Learn more about Marvin Pontiac here and here.

“The harmonica could be Little Walter,” Dennis said, “But I don’t know.”

“Little Walter, shit. Man, that’s Marvin Pontiac and his hit song, “I’m a Doggy.”

“I never heard of him.”

“Shame on you. Marvin’s my man. Marvin Pontiac, part of him came out of Muddy Waters. Another part was stolen from him by Iggy Pop. You know Iggy?”

“Yeah, I see what you mean. Iggy’s ‘I Want to Be Your Dog’ must’ve come from.. . yeah, I’m a Doggy?”

Marvin Pontiac’s voice saying, singing:

I’m a doggy

I stink when I’m wet ‘cause I’m a doggy.

“Some of his music,” Robert said, “he calls Afro-Judaic blues. Marvin always wore white robes and a turban like Erykah Badu’s before she went baldheaded. Had his own ways. Lived by himself . . . . Listen to this. A producer begged him to cut a record? Marvin Pontiac said yeah, all right, he’d do it-if the producer would cut his grass.”

“His lawn?”

“Yeah, his grass, his lawn, the man did it to get Marvin in the studio. That’s what you listening to, The Legendary Marvin Pontiac Greatest Hits. ‘Pancakes’ is on there. ‘Bring Me Rocks’ is on there. It’s the one has the line ‘My penis has a face and it likes to bark at Germans.’ That’s funny ‘cause Marvin Pontiac’s face was never photographed. There shots of him taken I away, you see him in his white robes and turban? But there’s not any up close.”

“He still around?”

“Died in ‘77 in Detroit. Got run over by a bus…

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Monday, November 02, 2009

How to Rob A Bank

Quoted in Hard-Boiled Wonderland

Elmore Leonard tells a story of how he once called a bank to ask them how the money was delivered and taken away, and of course they hung up on him. So he just wrote what seemed like the most logical way for it happen, which apparently turned out to be correct

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Friday, October 30, 2009

Elmore’s High School Profiled in Time

The 1943 Lettermen at U of D High. Can you spot Elmore?

Time
Last One Standing
Amy Sullivan

As part of Time’s Assignment Detroit series, a profile of The Universtiy of Detroit High School.

Detroit’s only Catholic college-prep school is on a mission—to educate young men and save the city

Detroit was once heavily Catholic, dotted with parochial schools in well over 100 parishes that served the Irish and East European immigrants who built the city. Of those, the oldest was the University of Detroit, founded as a Jesuit high school and college in 1877. Elmore Leonard wrote theology papers there before the detective novels that made him famous. The school produced Congressmen, state supreme court justices and a president of CBS.

Then came 1967 and the race riots that lasted five days, took 43 lives and changed the composition of Detroit almost overnight. The trickle of white ethnic Catholics to the suburbs that had started after World War II became a flood. Within seven years, the city’s African-American residents had become a majority. But only 50,000 or so were Catholic, which meant the archdiocese could no longer support the same network of parishes and schools.

Read the Time whole article here.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

“Lawman” Begins Shooting Wednesday in Santa Clarita, California, Premieres in February?

The new FX TV show “Lawman,” about a U.S. marshal, is set in Kentucky. But the series, produced by Sony Pictures Television, will begin shooting on Wednesday—thousands of miles away from the Bluegrass State.

The drama, which stars Timothy Olyphant and is based on the short story by Elmore Leonard, will premiere in February (Not to be confused with A&E’s “Steven Seagal: Lawman,” which premieres in December).

The series could easily have been filmed in Pittsburgh, where the pilot episode was shot. Instead, it has made its home in the L.A. suburb of Santa Clarita, thanks to a $4-million state tax credit the series will receive for the first season under California’s new film incentive program.

“We are extremely grateful that this new program allows us to keep the series here,’’ said Ed Lammi, executive vice president of production for Sony Pictures Television.

“Lawman” is among 36 film and TV productions set to shoot in-state (mostly in the L.A. area) in the fourth quarter of 2009 as a result of California’s new film and TV production incentive. In all, 50 productions have qualified to receive about $100 million in tax credits since the program debuted in July. The state allocated $500 million over a five-year period.

The program offers up to a 20% to 25% tax credit for TV series that relocate to California, new TV series produced for basic cable, movies of the week and feature films that cost less than $75 million.

Although the state incentive has been panned by some critics as too paltry to compete with more generous incentives offered by other states, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday was eager to tout the latest numbers as evidence that the incentive is working. “It’s having an immediate impact,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

Jessica Freude, film commissioner for City of Santa Clarita, wouldn’t disagree. “Lawman” is among a half-dozen TV shows that are based in the city, including HBO’s “Big Love” and CBS’ “NCIS.”

“Television series have been a hallmark of our production here,’’ Freude said. “The fact that we can continue to support and retain these series is incredible. It’s really helping to keep our local economy here.”

—Richard Verrier

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Friday, October 23, 2009

George Higgins: The Teller Of Boston’s Stories (TEXT and AUDIO)

WBUR.org
By DAVID BOERI

BOSTON — As a writer, George V. Higgins had a leg-breaker’s ability to grab you hard and pull you into an alley — a Boston alley, because none of his 26 novels transpired more than an hour or two outside the city. He was all business, his writing was lean, he knew the place and he knew how to tell a story.

Here’s the first line of his first novel, “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”:

Jackie Brown at 26, with no expression on his face, said that he could get some guns.

With that, George Higgins puts you smack up against the unfolding story of his most famous creation, Eddie Coyle, an aging street criminal, a ham-and-egger, running guns to some pals who rob banks.

When Elmore Leonard called “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” the best crime novel ever written, he didn’t know George Higgins hated being called a crime writer.

“He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer,” Leonard said. “He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.”

Read the whole story here.

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The War of the Adverb is On!

davidhewson.com

David Hewson stands up for the adverb. Lest we forget, here’s Elmore’s Rule Number Four:

Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”

David Hewson says:

I like adverbs: there I’ve said it, boldly

A while back I was on a panel at a writing event with a bunch of American colleagues. Someone on the floor came up with what seemed to me a bizarre question. How did we feel about adverbs? Those words that usually, though not always, end in -ly and modify verbs and adjectives? The ones that make people walk slowly or really bright when it comes to mathematics?

Funny one that, I thought. It opened the floodgates. The poor old adverb got kicked from pillar to post. In some quarters of the US, it seems, adverb use is akin to wife-beating or bull-baiting, a nasty old-fashioned habit that should have been laid to rest years ago.

This is my opinion, of course. You’re entitled to differ. The great Elmore Leonard certainly does as he says in this article in the New York Times. He reckons the only allowable verb to be used to carry dialogue is ’say’, and it must never ever be qualified by an adverb under any circumstances.

I’m with him on most of the points he makes. But in truth this is principally a great article for anyone wanting to learn how to write and sound like Elmore Leonard. If you’re trying to define your own voice, ignore so-called rules and find it for yourself.

Read the entire article.

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Monday, October 19, 2009

Road Dogs: “A Lethal Cast on a Collision Course for the Swag”

Crime Stories & Weird Tales
Rafe McGregor

Cundo Rey says Jack Foley is the only white guy in prison he can trust. Foley is the celebrity bank robber from Out of Sight; Cundo, last seen in LaBrava, is a millionaire hustler doing time for first degree. Foley was laid low on a job he should have carried off, and his thirty years aren’t going quick. When he escapes he’s marched back inside by one Karen Sisco - though not, of course, before they catch up. But then Cundo pays a hot attorney to get Foley’s time reduced. Thirty years turn to thirty months and the golden boy drags himself from Karen to see to Cundo’s affairs - as any good Road Dog should. Waiting for Cundo in Venice, California, is his ‘wife’, Dawn Navarro, the seductive psychic from Riding the Rap. Waiting for Foley is Lou Adams, a rogue FBI man and no stranger to a grudge. But with two weeks’ grace till Cundo walks free, Foley has other things on his mind - like getting a bit too friendly with his prison buddy’s wife. Their pillow talk: screwing the real estate man for all that he’s worth. Soon Cundo’s back, with some favours of his own to ask the man whose freedom cost him thirty grand. But who can double - or triple - cross the other players first? With a lovable but lethal cast on a collision course for the swag, Elmore Leonard’s high-octane thrills show no sign of letting up.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Ryan’s Rules

Before Elmore’s Ten Rules of Writing, there were Frank Ryan’s ten rules for success and happiness in armed robbery “written in blue ink on ten different cocktail napkins…”

From Swag:

1. Always be polite on the job, say please and thank you.
2. Never say more than is necessary.
3. Never call your partner by name – unless you use a made-up name.
4. Dress well. Never look suspicious or like a bum.
5. Never use your own car. (Details to come.)
6. Never count the take in the car.
7. Never flash money in a bar or with women.
8. Never go back to an old bar or hangout once you have moved up.
9. Never tell anyone your business. Never tell a junkie even your name.
10. Never associate with people known to be in crime.

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Monday, October 12, 2009

The Bounty Hunters: “A first novel and a good one” - The New York Times

I’m going to bring all the books center stage, the next week, month, year. That’s what it’s all about.

#1 - THE BOUNTY HUNTERS, 1953

David Flynn is a legend in the rugged Arizona Territory—a U.S. cavalry-turned-army scout—and the only man alive who can bring in the fierce Mimbre Apache called Soldado Viejo. But for David Flynn, tracking down an elusive Indian with a price on his head south of the border is a dangerous business…especially when a cunning outlaw and a murderous bounty hunter dog his path. Now Flynn’s riding hard for trouble on a bloody trail of treachery and slaughter in a lawless land where a man’s got to watch his back against friend and enemy, red man and white man alike. And if he’s Flynn—on the deadliest mission of his career—that means a one-way trip into a sultry desert hell…where the hunter is about to become the hunted…and where one man’s struggle for justice has just erupted in the battle of his life…

Reviews:
“A first novel and a good one.” - The New York Times

From Amazon:

By James Drury

It isn’t very often that I get time to read fiction anymore, but when I read a good book I feel a certain responsibility to let people know about it. I’m James Drury, and I’ve played in plenty of Western shows myself. For those of you who don’t know me I portrayed The Virginian on NBC television for many years. So I hope that qualifies me to leave a review on a Western book. Of course I could say the same thing about any Elmore Leonard book I’ve had the pleasure of reading, but the Bounty Hunters was great. It was short and to the point, but Leonard has this way of giving you such a great feel for the country and old West settings it just makes the book pleasant. He excels at making us see what he does in very few words. I have read all of the Western novels of Kirby Jonas on audio, and while I of course think he is my favorite author of Westerns, I have to say I have never read a bad Elmore Leonard book, and The Bounty Hunters is no exception. I don’t know Leonard’s history as far as how he does his research. I know Kirby Jonas lived in southeast Arizona when he was working on his first books, however, and it seems to me that Leonard has done a large amount of work in getting the facts about the Arizona and Mexico country down pat. I guess I’ve gotten into the habit of comparing every Western author not to Louis L’Amour but to Kirby Jonas, and although I would never put Leonard above Jonas I would sure say his books would “do to ride the river,” with Jonas’, so to speak. Give the Bounty Hunters a try. Right now I’m starting into Escape from Five Shadows, and it already holds great promise!

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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Happy Birthday, Elmore!!!

I used all three exclamation points on this one.

Dr Chin, in Djibouti, says:

What Do Numbers Mean?

We agree, it’s the words that count.

Keep ‘em coming.

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Friday, October 09, 2009

Elmore to Appear at Tucson Festival of Books, March 13-14, 2009

Dates set for second edition of the Tucson Festival of Books
By Phil Villarreal

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The Star-sponsored Tucson Festival of Books is turning the page on its inaugural year and looking ahead to the next chapter.

Next year’s fest will take place March 13-14 on the University of Arizona campus, Tucson Festival of Books representatives announced at a news conference Wednesday.

The inaugural festival, which featured more than 400 authors, including J.A. Jance, Elmore Leonard and Neal Shusterman, also took place in mid-March. It drew more than 50,000 attendees, according to festival organizers, who derived the crowd estimate by surveying the university police and people running booths at the festival, according to Frank Farias, director of UA Bookstores and vice president of the Tucson Festival of Books Committee.

Farias said attendance fell short of the goal of 75,000. Committee Co-chair Bill Viner expects more people to attend next year.

“I think word of mouth spread fairly quickly about the festival, and we’re anticipating we’ll have a little broader reach over the coming years,” he said.
The festival pledged to donate $200,000 to local literacy charities, splitting the money among the Literacy for Life Coalition, which formulates plans to improve literacy and distributes funds to organizations that support its goals; Reading Seed, which helps children learn to read; and UA Bookstores, which will distribute the funds to entities that support literacy, including the English department and the University of Arizona Press.

At the news conference, the committee presented representatives from the three organizations with a jumbo-sized check for $200,000, but that was just for show. Viner said the foundation will pay each organization about $66,666 by the end of October.

The festival has been a boon to Tucson’s literary world, said Martha Gilliland, executive director of the Literacy for Life Coalition.

“I do think the Festival of Books is a brilliant concept in that it brings people together to celebrate literature and books, from the high end to children’s, and all genres,” she said. “In turn, it generates resources from improving literacy in those who need it the most and will be a part of Tucson’s future.”

Featured authors for next year’s free Tucson Festival of Books include:
• Frank Beddor
• Terry Brooks
• Carol Goodman
• J.A. Jance
• Alice Hoffman
• Janis Ian
• Elmore Leonard
• Phillip Margolin
• Steve Martini
• David Morrell
• Jon Scieszka
• Nancy Turner
• Luis Alberto Urrea.

To see if your favorite authors will be part of next year’s festival, and sign up there to volunteer and to follow the festival by e-mail newsletters, go to tucsonfestivalofbooks.org
Contact reporter Phil Villarreal at 573-4130 or pvillarreal@azstarnet.com

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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Elmore’s novels are “the last place where people still smoke in bed”

Argus Weekend (South Africa)
Crime fiction star loves her lit with grit

Crime novelist Margie Orford was born in London but grew up in Namibia and South Africa and now lives in Cape Town. Her latest book in her popular Clare Hart series, Daddy’s Girl, was launched this week.

“For months, all I’ve been able to read were endless manuscript revisions of Daddy’s Girl. Reading anything else would induce an acute dose of writer’s envy, so my bedside table was empty. Now the book is done and there is a pile of books next to my bed.

“There are the Elmore Leonards I nicked from my brother. Road Dogs and Comfort to the Enemy. Leonard does good gunfight scenes, everyone knows that, but he also does pretty good sex scenes. It all just kind of happens with easy women who have orgasms quickly and who don’t make a fuss as they slip out of their kimonos. And then they smoke in bed. Hardboiled detective fiction is the last place where people still smoke in bed. It helps with that awkward post-coital literary moment.

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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

How “Sparks” Got Made

The New Yorker
The Book Bench
Notes on books, publishing, and the literary life.

Last week’s announcement that PEN American would give Elmore Leonard a Lifetime Achievement Award reminded me of a fantastic short film I recently watched. It’s an adaptation of one of Leonard’s short stories, “Sparks,” about a bewitching young widow whose expensive mansion in Malibu catches fire and burns to the ground shortly after her husband’s death. A man from the insurance company visits her to suss out whether or not it’s arson. What happens? Well, you’ll have to watch it to find out.

The short was directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (yes, from “3rd Rock from the Sun”), and is included in the latest edition of Wholpin. Above is an old trailer I found on Gordon-Levitt’s website, hitRECord.org. Below, Gordon-Levitt tells Wholpin how he became involved:

Q: Is this your first adaptation? How did you choose Elmore Leonard and how did you approach his estate?
JGL: Oh, I adapt stuff all the time. Perhaps most notably, I adapted a poem by Jacques Prévert called “Chanson des escargots qui vont à l’enterrement.” You can see it on hitRECord.org—but more about that later. A few years ago, I acted in a movie called “Killshot,” an adaption of the Elmore Leonard novel. There I met Megan Freels and Melanie Donkers who were working for John Madden and Richard Gladstein, the film’s director and producer. Megan is Elmore’s granddaughter, so she and Melanie wanted to produce a short-film adaptation of “Sparks.” I was flattered and intrigued when they asked if I wanted to direct it. Within reading the first paragraph of the story, I thought of a friend I’d recently made, Carla Gugino, whom I adored then and do even more now. Why did Megan and Melanie choose this particular Leonard short story? I don’t know; we never much discussed it, bu I think it had a lot to do with the catchy title.

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Friday, October 02, 2009

Elmore’s Audiobooks

He’s never heard one but he knows who to pick to read one of his favorites.

St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Books in your ear

“When I started doing this 13 years ago,” says Dan Zitt, a producer for Random House Audio, “nobody knew what it was.

“I’d tell people I produced audiobooks, and they’d say, ‘Oh, like for the blind?’ ” For years, the release of an audiobook often lagged behind the print version, sometimes for months. That’s changed, Random House Audio publicist Nicole Kuritsky says. “The ideal is to release them together.”

That means audiobooks are often produced on a tight schedule, since they can’t be recorded until the edited version of the book is available.

Zitt, the Random House Audio producer, says the process begins with the producer reading the book and thinking about who should perform it. “I’m the liaison between the author and the process.”

Some authors, like Burroughs, read their own work successfully. Almost always, those works are nonfiction or memoir. “With fiction, it hardly ever works,” Zitt says.

But authors often have good ideas about who should read their work. Zitt says one of the easiest collaborations he has ever had was producing the audiobook of Elmore Leonard’s Pagan Babies. “I read it and I knew almost from the start who I thought should read it. So I called Elmore and told him I had an idea, but I wanted to hear what he thought first.

” ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the whole time I was writing it I was thinking of Steve Buscemi.’ And I said, yes!” Buscemi was hired and turned in a superb performance.

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Elmore Leonard to Receive PEN Lifetime Achievement Award

The New York Times
By Dave Itzkoff

Be prepared for what could be the shortest, punchiest acceptance speech in PEN history: on Wednesday, the literary organization PEN USA said that it would give its Lifetime Achievement Award to Elmore Leonard, the prolific crime fiction novelist. The award will be presented to Mr. Leonard at a ceremony in Beverly Hills on Dec. 2. At that time, the organization will also hand out honors in other categories, including prizes for fiction, given to Kim Barnes, for “A Country Called Home”; creative nonfiction, given to Steve Lopez for “The Soloist”; research nonfiction, awarded to Leslie T. Chang for “Factory Girls”; and screenplay, given to Dustin Lance Black for “Milk.”

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Be Cool interview: Novels Are Nice, But Oh, to Be A Rock Star

The New York Times
March 14, 1999,

Before the really bad movie, when Be Cool was just a good sequel, Elmore talks to Fletcher Roberts about the book that was always intended to be a movie.

CHILI Palmer is up to his old tricks again in Elmore Leonard’s new novel, “Be Cool” (Delacorte Press, 1999). In the prequel, “Get Shorty” (made into a hit movie starring John Travolta), Chili, a small-time loan shark from Brooklyn, becomes a Hollywood producer. “Be Cool” opens with Chili working on an idea for a new movie. His last film, “Get Lost,” was a flop, and Chili thinks he has found a character with potential. She is a young woman named Linda Moon who works for a dating service and sings with a rock band. Chili’s way of developing a script is to create a real situation and then see what happens. He takes over Linda Moon’s career, and along the way to making her a rock star he encounters a cast of colorful characters, from Russian mobsters to gangster rappers to record industry executives. In an interview conducted by Fletcher Roberts, the pop-music editor of Arts and Leisure, Mr. Leonard, 73, discussed his interest in pop music and its role in the novel. Here are excerpts from that conversation.

FLETCHER ROBERTS. Martin Amis says you have perfect pitch. In the opening scene of the book a character describes a band called Road Kill to Chili: “It used to be a hair band. Now they do post-metal funk with a ska kick.” Whether you’re talking about Alanis Morissette or Dick Dale and surf music, you really seem to know pop music. How did you immerse yourself in that world?
ELMORE LEONARD. The first thing my researcher, Gregg Sutter, and I did was visit the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Then on to Los Angeles to talk to record company executives like Guy Oseary of Maverick, Madonna’s label, and record producers like Rick Rubin and Don Was. We sat in on Don and Richie Sambora fine-tuning Richie’s latest CD. We spoke to artists’ managers, the artists themselves, like Aerosmith and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We spent a whole day with record promoters. For two hours straight I listened to a promoter talking on the phone to his guys in the field and radio stations’ program directors.
ROBERTS. Was that conversation the basis for the scene with the fast-talking executive Nick Carr in the book?
LEONARD. It’s not near verbatim, but it’s close. It’s the essence of what I heard, the sound of that kind of hip talk. “You’re my man, bro.” “Give me some spins.” So talking to people in the business, I got everything I thought I’d need. The reference to post-metal with a ska kick I might not have heard quite that way, but it sounded familiar and made enough sense to me.
ROBERTS. Was this a new world for you? I mean, had you ever heard of ska before?
LEONARD. Well, I certainly knew about reggae. I referred to it in a book I wrote in the late 70’s or early 80’s, and ska I related to reggae: that Jamaican kind of a syncopated beat. I heard all kinds of rock-and-roll at home when my five kids were growing up. They range in age from 33 to 48. And I was fascinated by the music in the film of Woodstock. Joe Cocker has been a favorite of mine ever since. I like Steely Dan a lot, some of Led Zeppelin, especially their song called “Black Dog.” I’ve always been aware of Aerosmith and liked their music. I got to meet them in the fall of ‘97 when they were in Detroit, and I asked them if they would like to be in the book. They said sure, so I made up a scene in which the band in the book opens for them at the Forum.
I watched a lot of MTV and VH1 preparing “Be Cool.” I was especially interested in Alanis Morissette, Gwen Stefani of No Doubt and Shirley Manson of Garbage and read pieces about them in Interview, Vibe, Rolling Stone, thinking I might model Linda Moon after one of them, though it didn’t work out that way.
I’ve always been interested in pop music, all the way back to the 30’s when I was a kid and liked the vocalist Mildred Bailey.
ROBERTS. So you’ve been a music fan for a long time?
LEONARD. When I was in high school in the early 40’s, I used to go to the Paradise Theater in downtown Detroit to hear Basie, Earl (Fatha) Hine, Jimmy Lunceford, Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy with Mary Lou Williams on piano.
I was in the Navy during the war. We got back from the Pacific in January 1946, tied up at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, and I headed straight for Oakland, where Stan Kenton was playing that night. I remember standing in front of the stage, looking up at June Christy singing “Buzz Me Baby.” Another favorite of mine was Anita O’Day—Anita and Roy Eldridge doing “Let Me Off Uptown.” My all-time favorite is Count Basie.
ROBERTS. How does the pop music of today compare with that of your youth?
LEONARD. I like a lot of it, but it doesn’t inspire me the way jazz does. I can remember watching Dizzy Gillespie on stage and wanting to go home and write. Readers have even mentioned feeling a definite jazz influence in my writing. I don’t listen to music when I write, but I think I could play the Modern Jazz Quartet in the background or Ahmad Jamal, definitely Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.”
ROBERTS. Did that make it difficult for you to get into rock-and-roll?
LEONARD. No. Because I don’t have to be inspired to appreciate the power of rock, that force coming at you. And I never wore earplugs. But my vibes are more closely associated with jazz: a structured sound you do variations on, improvising, the artist’s personality coming through.
ROBERTS. What prompted you to use the music industry as a setting for “Be Cool”?
LEONARD. At the premiere of “Get Shorty,” an MGM executive asked if I thought I could write a sequel. I said, “I don’t know why not.” But I was already thinking of “Out of Sight” and then wrote “Cuba Libre” as a change of pace, to get out of the hip world for a time. It was my publisher who suggested the music industry, and it sounded like a good idea. The premise: Chili Palmer learns about the business as he puts together an idea for a movie, casting the kinds of people he meets along the way.
ROBERTS. So Chili Palmer creates scripts the same way you write novels?
LEONARD. Exactly. I get to know the characters intimately and let them guide the action, making it up as I go along. I make the point of Chili not wanting to do a sequel as a challenge to me—to try to make “Be Cool” a better story than “Get Shorty.”
ROBERTS. One of the central characters in “Be Cool” is named Linda Moon. You have a character of the same name in your novel “Glitz.” Both are singers. What’s the connection?
LEONARD. The only connection is that I like the name. And I wanted to use it again. I knew I couldn’t use the original Linda Moon because Lorimar owns her as far as movies are concerned. So I have the original Linda Moon give this Linda her name because this one loves the name and the original says, “Well, go ahead and take it. I’m not using it anymore. I’m married to a cop.”
ROBERTS. I believe the music referred to in the book, played by Linda Moon’s band, comes from a band called the Stone Coyotes?
LEONARD. Yes, four songs are from the Stone Coyotes repertory and a new one, “Odessa,” Barbara Keith of the Coyotes wrote especially for the book. After all the time listening to CD’s and watching MTV, one night I saw the Stone Coyotes at the Troubadour in L.A. and knew right away this was the music I wanted for the book: rock with country overtones, a twang, as played by a band from Odessa, Tex. A critic had described the Coyotes’ music as “AC/DC meets Patsy Cline,” and that, I realized, was exactly what I wanted. So I asked if I could use their music, described how I would do it and gave them a couple of my books. Barbara’s husband, Doug Tibbles, the drummer, read one and said to her, “He’s for real.” And that was it.
ROBERTS. Now you’re touring with the Stone Coyotes?
LEONARD. Not really. We got together at the Mint in L.A., the Mercury Lounge in New York and Mama Kin in Boston while I was on a promotional tour for “Be Cool.” I read a passage from the book that referred to the music, stepped aside and the band kicked out.
ROBERTS. What’s this about you wanting to be a rock star for a day.
LEONARD. I would, for about 48 hours. I’d want to do two concerts. I can’t sing, so I’d be Joe Perry. What fascinates me is the crowd reaction. I saw Iggy Pop a couple of times, and I asked him, “What’s it like when everybody’s waving their arms in the air and they’re lighting lighters and they’re climbing up on the stage?” He said: “Oh man, it’s great. I’d like to just kind of hover over them and watch. You know, just look down at them.” His wife was standing there, a Japanese woman, and I asked him, “How’d you meet your wife?’ And he said, “Well, we were playing in Tokyo and I saw her in the audience so I dove out there and got her number.”
ROBERTS. You’re a well-known writer. You must have lots of fans.
LEONARD. I do, but I don’t have groupies. If I did, though, at my age, they would be perfectly safe. I hear from English instructors who use my books in their English Lit courses. And I hear from convicts who want to know if I’ve ever done time. One told me he’s gotten some of the hard-core readers to try me and that I’m gaining in popularity with the heroin users but haven’t made it yet with the crack and cocaine crowd because they’re younger and less educated.
ROBERTS. You’ve said that you wrote “Be Cool” to be a movie. Do you think Mr. Travolta will play Chili again?
LEONARD. I think he’d be nuts if he doesn’t. He is Chili Palmer. I was trying to find out if he’s read the book, bugging my agent who finally said, “Why don’t you call and ask him?” It took a couple of days to locate him. I called and he was out on a boat and couldn’t be reached. But he returned my call a few days later. And I asked him if he had read the book, and he said, “No, I’m not reading anything.” He said: “I’m tired. I just finished ‘Civil Action.’ But I’ll get to it. Don’t worry.” He said, “Oh, by the way, I just bought a 707.” And I said: “Oh, yeah? You did?” So after I got off the phone my wife said: “What were you talking about? All you said to him was ‘Yeah?’ ‘Wow.’ ” I said, “Well, what do you say to a guy who tells you he’s just bought an airliner with a bedroom in it, you know?” Yeah, I wanted to talk about “Be Cool,” but we talked about 707’s.

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Jimmy said, “We’re going to Butterfly World today”

From Pronto. Jimmy Cap and Nicky.

“They got a moth there, great big fucker, that don’t have a mouth.”

“I heard about it.”

“Can’t eat.”

“I mean if Jack’s driving he’ll be with you.”

“You’re driving. I gave Jack the day off.”

Nicky moved across the bedroom toward the pink glow repeating what Jimmy said, that he’d given Jack the day off, but sounding amazed.

“He asked me last week.”

“You could’ve changed your mind.” Nicky was in the doorway to the bathroom now. “What I want to do isn’t way more important? Christ, whack a guy for you? I got the piece”-the Targa, still in his hand-“the perfect time to do it, and you give him the day off instead of me?” Jimmy was shaving now.

“They got an insectarium there with bugs in it you wouldn’t fucking believe. Grasshopper as big as a fucking bird. You know stick bugs, they look like sticks?

They got one must be a foot long. They got these big fucking beetles with horns-”

Nicky shot him in the back of the head. He didn’t say to himself, I’m going to shoot this son of a bitch. He didn’t have to think. He aimed the Targa at the back of Jimmy’s head, saw Jimmy in the mirror holding the razor to his face looking at him and then with the noise didn’t see him as the mirror turned red and shattered, both at the same time.

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

“I’m so fond of Elmore Leonard I brought him along on my honeymoon”

Capital Times (Madison, WI.)
August 4, 1995

LEONARD GOES OFF ON NEW FLORIDA ROMP

BYLINE: BY JULIANNE WHITE

I’m so fond of Elmore Leonard I brought him along on my honeymoon. My brand-new husband was perplexed by the blatant intrusion of a man from my past.

Who is this guy Leonard? he fumed. And so what if his blushing bride had just laid her hands on his latest book? Couldn’t she wait one measly week to dive into it?

What is he, nuts?

Each dawn, I stealthily crept from the marital bed and, clutching ‘‘Riding the Rap,’’ planted myself on the balcony of the Seagull Bay Motel. And though my physical being was quite content on the shores of Lake Superior, my mind had places to go and people to meet.

But I wouldn’t dream of linking arms with anyone but Leonard, master tour guide of the mean streets and mansions, a tale-spinner who revels in showcasing the glitz, gore and underbelly of the damnedest situations, a 70-year-old unassuming grandpa who gets a heck of a kick out of introducing nice Midwestern women like me to the kind of people my mama warned me about.

Sorry, mama, but he’s done it again.

I turned a page of Leonard’s latest effort and in an instant was cruising South Florida, one of his favorite haunts, hanging with the saints and sinners, thugs and lugs, molls and dolls, a cast of the usual, lovable/despicable, unforgettable suspects Leonard has a knack for rounding up.

But after assembling the motley crew, Leonard fades away, letting them speak for themselves, act upon their own goofy/diabolical urges and suffer a host of entertaining/horrifying consequences that hook his readers to the end.

This time it’s poor Chip Ganz, a paunchy, pampered predator, who, in a customary cannabis fog, dreams up a get-rich-quick scheme that makes perfect sense to somebody who’s stoned. Enlisting the muscle and half-baked brain power of two wily ex-cons you’ll hate to love and the feminine wiles of a dreamy-eyed psychic, Ganz snares a hapless hostage, thereby pitting himself against a straight-arrow U.S. marshal who fights his weakness for dreamy eyes.

I meant every word of my marriage vows, honey. But I’ll never be able to resist a romp with Elmore Leonard.

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Friday, September 25, 2009

AUDIO - ABC Radio National Interview with Elmore

Ramona Koval in conversation with Elmore. This interview was first broadcast on 2/9/09. Click here for audio and transcript.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

What About Elmore Leonard’s “Lawman”?

A&E is in production on “Steven Seagal: Lawman,” a new Real-Life series that will chronicle martial arts expert and international film star Steven Seagal’s life in law enforcement, it was announced today by Robert Sharenow, Senior Vice President Non-Fiction & Alternative Programming, A&E Network.

The best reason yet to call Elmore’s show by it’s real name: Fire in the Hole.

permalink The Three Books That Led You To Elmore Leonard

Introducing a new feature for slow blog days: The Three Books That Led You to Elmore Leonard. In three books, summarize the literary path that led you to Elmore Leonard. In a fourth book, select the Elmore Leonard novel that was your point of entry both as a reader and a writer.

I put together the first one which is Elmore’s It doesn’t have his work in the last spot, but it’ll give you an idea of what I’m looking for.

Check this out for length and style:

1. Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls – white space on the page, emphasis on dialogue, spare descriptions, generally lean writing.
2. John Steinbeck – Sweet Thursday – the difference between good writing and “hooptedoodle”.
3. Richard Bissell – A Stretch on the River – how to do natural humor; guys who are funny that don’t know they’re being funny.
4. The Friends of Eddie Coyle – George V. Higgins – how to get into scenes quicker, how dialog can carry a book, how to use obscenities more effectively.

Post your four-pack in the special thread in The Dutch Forum. Include micro descriptions, more like captions of the reasons for your choices. I’ll do the rest.

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Elmore is no Flaubert (Thankfully)

Pains of putting pen to paper; Not all writers are stricken with Flaubertism
National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
BYLINE: Robert Fulford, National Post

Fulford includes Elmore in his discussion of the agonies of writing and the dreaded writer’s block.

Flaubert blamed his troubles on his perfectionist lust for excellence. He made it appear that intense authorial distress is the inevitable partner of good writing. Ever since, generations of authors have believed that what they do is unthinkably arduous. There’s no reason to doubt Flaubert’s agonies, but it seems likely that by describing them he helped insert self-indulgence and self-pity into the emotional toolkits of ambitious scribes.

Mark Twain was blocked for years while writing Huckleberry Finn. Joseph Mitchell, once one of the stars at The New Yorker, had a persistent block that kept him out of print for the last 32 years of his life. (Sometimes he could be heard to sigh, but he never complained.) Joseph Conrad, prolific as he was, sometimes came to a dead halt, unable to scratch even a few words on paper: “It takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. I want to howl and foam at the mouth.”

Even journalists suffer from writer’s block. My own experience with it involved (just as in the legends) much staring endlessly at a blank page. Finally I learned a trick: Don’t begin at the beginning. Instead, start with some other part of what needs to be said, if possible the easiest part. Write that, and you’ve started. It may turn out to be the ending, it may be the middle or it may not even appear in the finished work. No matter. By then the work has begun. The screen is no longer blank.

Still, Elmore Leonard lingers in my mind. “I don’t believe in writer’s block,” he said. “I don’t know what it is.” If he were not one of the great narrative stylists of his time we could dismiss him as an uncaring philistine; as it, his view has to be taken seriously.

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Monday, September 21, 2009

Without Eddie Coyle there’s no Elmore Leonard?

In a Publisher’s Weekly interview, Dennis Lehane had someting to say about The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Elmore.

It’s the game changer because of the authenticity of the dialogue and the sense that this was how the criminal underworld really worked, stripped of all romantic or heroic clichés. Without it, by his own admission, there’s no Elmore Leonard. On a personal level, Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark are two of the biggest influences on my work. So, without The Friends of Eddie Coyle, I don’t get my major influences.

permalink “Boy, You’re on Your Way”

By Peter Leonard

I remember when I was nine years old, going down the stairs to the basement, seeing my dad at his desk, white cinder block wall behind him, concrete floor. He was writing longhand on unlined, 8½ x 11 yellow paper, typewriter on a metal stand next to his chair. Across the room was a red wicker waste basket, balls of yellow paper on the floor around it, scenes that didn’t work, pages that didn’t make it in the basket. In retrospect, it looked like a prison cell but my father didn’t seem conscious of his surroundings, deep in concentration, midway through a western called Hombre that would be made into a movie
starring Paul Newman.

Forty years later I remember visiting my father after work one evening. I was stressed out after presenting a new ad campaign to Volkswagen that got lukewarm reception. Elmore no longer wrote in a cinder block basement. With forty novels and a dozen scripts to his credit, he now worked in the living room of his manor home in Bloomfield Hills, a tiny suburb of Detroit. What struck me was that his desk looked much the same as it had that day when I was nine. Same yellow pad, and half a dozen balls of yellow paper next to the waste basket against the wall, electric typewriter on a metal stand behind the desk. No computer anywhere in sight. Elmore in Levis and sandals and a dark blue Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, talking enthusiastically about the opening scene of his new book called The Hot Kid.

Watching my father, I thought, here’s a guy who really loves what he’s doing, and I didn’t. Earlier that afternoon, during my presentation, the VW ad manager had taken my first campaign board and flung it like a frisbee across the conference room. And I thought that was our best idea.

I don’t know if my observations that day were the final motivator, or if it was my continued disinterest in advertising, but a couple months later I decided to write a novel. I was forty nine. I remember sitting on a couch in the family room, writing the opening scene of a book called Invasion, while two of my kids, Alex and Max, were doing their homework. I read what I had written and thought: this isn’t bad, maybe I can do it.

The last piece of fiction I had written was in 1974. I had taken a creative writing class my senior year in college and really enjoyed it. I never aspired to be a novelist, but after graduating I wrote a six page short story—I can’t remember the title—and mailed it to my father to see what he thought. A few days later I received his three page critique. One line summed up his point of view. “Your characters are like strips of leather drying in the sun. They all look
and sound the same.” That from a writer who never used similes or metaphors.

I had not written another word of fiction in twenty five years. But as I looked back, it had less to do with Elmore’s comments and more to do with getting a job and getting married and raising kids and starting a business. I may also have been intimidated because my father was so good. In fact, I remember having dinner with Senator Don Riegel—he lived in the neighborhood and our daughters were friends. I told Don I was writing a book and he said, “You writing a book is like Michael Jordon’s son trying out for the NBA.”

I said, “Don, thanks for your support.”

He said, “No, I was kidding. I’m sure you’ll make it.’”

It took a year and a half to finish Invasion. I didn’t want Elmore involved in any way, so he suggested sending it to Jackie Farber, his former editor at Delacourt.

He said, “Jackie’s good. She’ll tell you the truth.”

I was excited. I thought it was a good story with good characters. I mailed the three hundred page manuscript to Jackie and called her a week later. I said, “What’d you think?”

“You’ve got a nice facile style,” Jackie said. “But I have one question. Who’s your protagonist?”

I knew who the main character was, but if it wasn’t obvious, I had a problem. I was disappointed, but I could understand what Jackie was saying. I had thirty seven characters, and a murky plot that needed thinning out. I didn’t try to defend the book. I put it aside remembering the prophetic words of Russell Banks:

“Most novelists have a failed attempt or two, books that didn’t work, didn’t make it. Pages in a desk drawer somewhere.”

I didn’t dwell on the failure of my first novel. I had another idea and began writing Quiver, a story about a woman whose husband is killed in a bow hunting accident by her sixteen-year-old son. While the main character, Kate McCall deals with the loss of her husband and her son’s surly guilt, her ex-con, ex-boyfriend comes back in her life and sets into motion a series of events culminating in a life or death confrontation with a gang of killers.

I sent Quiver to my agent, Jeff Posternak at the Wylie Agency. He read it and said, “I guarantee this is going to sell.”

And it did.

I remember when Jeff called with the good news. It was an overcast day in March. I was in my office, looking out the window, trying to think of a headline for an ad. The phone rang and I saw the New York caller ID. I picked it up and said, “hello.”

Jeff said, “I’ve got good news for you. Are you sitting down? You’re going to be published. St. Martin’s has made an offer for two books.”

I can’t tell you how elated I was, finally breaking through after three and a half years. It’s a real kick to hold your first published book in your hands, and then to see it on a shelf in bookstores. I don’t think that’ll ever get old. I called my father and told him.

He said, “Boy, you’re on your way.”

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Saturday, September 19, 2009

A Late Epiphany: Elmore Leonard is an “Extremely Good Writer”

Somebody’s been reading this blog!

Walter Giersbach ‘61

Robert Pinsky, reviewing for The New York Times in May 2009, said Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs “is about the varying degrees of truth and baloney in human relationships. Sometimes the truth or the baloney is lethal. Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, Road Dogs presents interesting questions: Can a grown person change? Specifically, can a man abandon expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real? Or, leaving aside love and friendship, does loyalty exist? We road dogs—trotting along companionably on our way to sniff and woof and boogie-woogie and perhaps knock over an occasional trash barrel together—are we reliable?”

I’ve maintained a list of every book I’ve read since 1973, starting when I realized I was reading an embarrassing amount of pop fiction at the expense of more worthy literary efforts. Not that Robert Ludlum is bad, but it’s genre writing. Finishing my seventh Elmore Leonard opus I realized it was time to get back to Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering or David Liss’s Conspiracy of Paper. Then I had my epiphany: Elmore Leonard was an extremely good writer.

You know Leonard from the films Get Shorty, Stick, Mr. Majestyk, Jackie Brown and 27 others. You just haven’t read him.

The Christian Science Monitor’s James Kaufman (who teaches at the U. of Iowa) wrote in 1983, “It’s taken awhile for people to catch onto Leonard, though Stick finally brought him the scrutiny of the critical establishment…. But like more overnight successes, Leonard had been writing…since 1953.” Newgate Callendar, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1973, stated, “When [Leonard’s] 52 Pickup appeared in 1974, it had some critics talking in terms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald…. But it is really wrong to talk of this writer in terms of Chandler and Macdonald. He has little in common with those two. They are ‘clean’ writers; there is no profanity to speak of in Chandler, and Macdonald has never been an exponent of the verismo school of speech. Leonard is.”

Leonard’s characters are for the most part, good, decent people, but ones who might challenge you to arm wrestle. The writing is spare and lacking in simile or metaphor. His protagonists have interior thoughts and existential questions. What remains when the reader puts down a Leonard work are characters drawn in clean, sharp lines. He is Hemingway, unexpurgated and sitting in a bar or police squad room.

Then you may find Road Dogs and Leonard’s 40 other novels are addictive.

Weblog

THE DUTCH FORUM

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Rwanda - “Strange Setting for Elmore Leonard Book”

Monday, December 21, 2009

“Justified” Trailer

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Short run for ‘Maximum Bob’

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

New “Justified” Trailer From Time

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Justified Writing Staff

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Elmore in History of Elements of Style

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

The Westerners by C. Courtney Joyner - Chapter on Elmore

Monday, December 07, 2009

Elmore Visits the Set of “Justified”

Thursday, December 03, 2009

PEN Center USA awards fete Elmore Leonard

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Elmore Leonard to receive lifetime achievement award from PEN USA Tonight

FX’s Former Lawman Gets Justified

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Unknown Man #89 - Down and Dirty

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Road Dogs “Never Fails to Thrill”

Friday, November 27, 2009

Tishomingo Blues - Playing All the Angles

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Year of the Dog

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Out West, When Men Were Quiet And Heroic

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Fall of the Roman Empire: Limited Collector’s Edition

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Interview: Keith Hetherington - Austalian Western Writer

Saturday, November 14, 2009

FX’s ‘Lawman’ Now Called ‘Justified’

Friday, November 13, 2009

Valdez is Coming: Finally in Finnish

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Elmore Leonard Dishes Up Incredible Stories Again

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Out of Sight - Best George Clooney Movie

Thursday, November 05, 2009

52 Pickup Review - Film Noir Pulp Fiction Way Before Tarantino

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

The Legendary Marvin Pontiac

Monday, November 02, 2009

How to Rob A Bank

Friday, October 30, 2009

Elmore’s High School Profiled in Time

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

“Lawman” Begins Shooting Wednesday in Santa Clarita, California, Premieres in February?

Friday, October 23, 2009

George Higgins: The Teller Of Boston’s Stories (TEXT and AUDIO)

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The War of the Adverb is On!

Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .

Monday, October 19, 2009

Road Dogs: “A Lethal Cast on a Collision Course for the Swag”

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Ryan’s Rules

From Swag:

Monday, October 12, 2009

The Bounty Hunters: “A first novel and a good one” - The New York Times

#1 - THE BOUNTY HUNTERS, 1953

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Happy Birthday, Elmore!!!

Friday, October 09, 2009

Elmore to Appear at Tucson Festival of Books, March 13-14, 2009

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Elmore’s novels are “the last place where people still smoke in bed”

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

How “Sparks” Got Made

Friday, October 02, 2009

Elmore’s Audiobooks

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Elmore Leonard to Receive PEN Lifetime Achievement Award