Thursday, September 06, 2007
Five questions with Elmore Leonard
Detroit Free Press
Five questions with Elmore Leonard
Before Elmore Leonard was the best crime novelist on the planet, he wrote Westerns. That’s because, he says, that’s what sold when he was getting up at 5 every morning in the late 1940s and early ‘50s to spend a couple of hours trying to write fiction for pulp and men’s magazines while spending his days writing auto ads for a Detroit ad agency. Truth be told, Leonard had affection for the purity of Westerns, and they suited his talents for writing action and drop-dead dialogue. He was especially pleased with “3:10 to Yuma,” a yarn about a lawman who is as determined to deliver a famed outlaw to a train that will take him to federal prison as the outlaw’s gang is to prevent the transfer. The story was published in Dime Western magazine in 1953, earning Leonard $90. He made substantially more when the story was sold to the movies and released in 1957, with Glenn Ford as the ruthless killer Wade and Van Heflin as the rule-respecting Dan Evans, whom the movie turned into a rancher. “3:10 to Yuma” has now been remade by director James Mangold with Russell Crowe as the bad guy and Christian Bale as the rancher who takes the job of escorting Wade to the train. Leonard was invited to screen the movie earlier this year and told the Free Press he liked it—before pointing out everything the filmmakers had gotten wrong: “Did you understand that ending?” he asked. “Because I sure didn’t.”
