Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Detroit Free Press
BY JULIE HINDS
FREE PRESS POP CULTURE WRITER

Graham Yost wears his admiration for novelist Elmore Leonard on his sleeve—or very close to it.

The creator and executive producer of the new FX series “Justified,” which is based on a Leonard character, gave his writing staff “WWED”  bracelets early on as a playful reminder to ask themselves “what would Elmore do?”

“I’m wearing mine right now,” says Yost during a phone interview from Los Angeles.

He also shares the tale of the soda-can trophy.  After Leonard visited the show’s writers a few months ago, they kept his Diet 7Up can as a souvenir. The cleaning staff threw the original can away, but writer Fred Golan got another one, emptied it and fastened it to a plate to make a trophy.

“We call it the Elmore,” says Yost. “That goes every day, whenever we think of it, to the person who comes up with the coolest pitch in the room ... the most Elmore-ish pitch.”

BY JULIE HINDS
FREE PRESS POP CULTURE WRITER

Graham Yost wears his admiration for novelist Elmore Leonard on his sleeve—or very close to it.

The creator and executive producer of the new FX series “Justified,” which is based on a Leonard character, gave his writing staff “WWED”  bracelets early on as a playful reminder to ask themselves “what would Elmore do?”

“I’m wearing mine right now,” says Yost during a phone interview from Los Angeles.

He also shares the tale of the soda-can trophy.  After Leonard visited the show’s writers a few months ago, they kept his Diet 7Up can as a souvenir. The cleaning staff threw the original can away, but writer Fred Golan got another one, emptied it and fastened it to a plate to make a trophy.

“We call it the Elmore,” says Yost. “That goes every day, whenever we think of it, to the person who comes up with the coolest pitch in the room ... the most Elmore-ish pitch.”

Debuting Tuesday night on FX, “Justified” stars Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, a character who appears in Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole” (the show’s pilot is based on it) and a few of his novels.

Givens is a deputy U.S. marshal who could be described as a modern version of a Wild West lawman, right down to his cowboy hat. In the first episode, he’s transferred to the region of Kentucky where he grew up, a reassignment that puts him in touch with people from his past, including his ex-wife (Natalie Zea of “Hung”) and a former coal-mining friend gone bad (vividly played by Walton Goggins of “The Shield”).

The creative goal for the show is to stay true to Leonard’s style and present what Yost describes as perhaps the coolest character on TV.

So far, one of the biggest fans of “Justified” is the acclaimed novelist from metro Detroit who inspired the series and who is an executive producer.

“This is the first time I’ve been excited about anything that is a spinoff from a book for TV,” says Leonard, 84, speaking by phone from his Bloomfield Village home.

Although many of Leonard’s novels have become well-regarded movies like “Out of Sight” and “Get Shorty,” adaptations for television like the short-lived “Karen Sisco” haven’t had the same success.

Leonard believes this show is “doing a great job.” He’s so pleased with what he’s seen of “Justified”  that he plans to write more about Raylan Givens.

“I’m writing a narrative of about 50 pages which I’m going to give them to use if they want, or however they want, because I don’t want to interfere with the plots that they have going,” he says.

Yost says he started reading Leonard many years ago with “La Brava” and was captivated by his work’s sense of humor and humanity.

“I just loved the way the dialogue flowed, that it was unexpected and yet felt very real. And that these characters really popped and yet there was not a lot of fuss,” he says. “And then his violence and his action was very exciting, but came in an unexpected way. My most overused word in talking about Elmore and his writing is ‘unexpected,’ which has been a big challenge for us in the show.”

Yost describes FX as the ideal place for a series that seeks to evoke Leonard’s sensibility. The cable network has had major triumphs with gritty dramas like “The Shield” and “Damages” and has pushed the envelope of quirkiness with series like “Rescue Me.”

With “Justified,” the grit is there in the hardscrabble setting and the no-nonsense attitude of Givens, a hero with issues.

“What I liked about him and the way Elmore presented him is that he’s a law enforcement officer, but he’s not a screamer and he’s not a tough guy. He’s very cool, calm and collected, and has a good sense of humor. And there’s something Clint Eastwood about it without the sort of hyper-masculinity,” says Yost.

Olyphant, who had a role on “Damages,” is probably most familiar to TV viewers for his intense portrayal of ultra-serious sheriff Seth Bullock on HBO’s “Deadwood.”
Givens and Bullock are completely different characters, according to Yost, who quips, “We’ll jokingly say that, well, we knew he would look good in a hat.”

Leonard, who hit it off with Olyphant when they met, is impressed with the actor’s performance. “I couldn’t have cast that part any better. ... He sounds like my character, even to just a slight accent, not much, but there it is. And the way he moves and the way he talks, it’s perfect.”

While some FX shows like “Nip/Tuck” have an over-the-top feeling, there is a confident, restrained quality to “Justified.”

“In Elmore’s world, people don’t really yell very much,” says Yost. “There’s a certain civility, even with the bad guys. They’re all smart to a degree.”

Yost says Leonard’s desire to do another Raylan Givens story is “maybe the coolest news that we got all year in the writer’s room.”

For Leonard, it will be a chance to revisit a character that, as he told a Television Critics Association gathering in Pasadena in January,

got his name from a man he met about 20 years ago in Texas when he was giving a talk to a book distribution company.

“He said, ‘Hi, I’m Raylan Givens.’ And I said ... I’m going to use you. I have to use you,” says Leonard, recalling the moment again. “That name is perfect. ... You don’t just stumble on a name like that.”

Leonard says he watches more TV as he gets older. Asked about some recent favorite shows,  he mentions “The Shield” and HBO’s “The Wire.” His wife likes “CSI,” he says, “and I tell her, but it’s not true, that’s not the way they work. They’re not that important.”

After decades of seeing his work adapted for big and small screens, Leonard is philosophical about the process.

“I’m all for it, because you get paid for it,” he says. “That’s the main thing. And when it’s good, there’s nothing better.”

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