Gregg Sutter - 23 November 2006 09:17 AM

Freaky Deaky (an announcement is imminent)

Okay, first you drop a tease about Swag and now Freaky Deaky? Really, I don’t care that much because I don’t even go to the movies much anymore, they almost always disappoint - and Freaky Deaky needed to be “adjusted?” Man, what does that mean?

So much of Freaky Deaky is already the movie. If someone shoots that scene between Chris and the psychologist just as it’s written, or the opening exactly as it’s laid out.

But they won’t, will they?

Damn.

Yes, the change of locale is one of the things that really bothers me about the films.  I grew up in Michigan, and have spent a lot of time in South Florida.  My familiarity with the places is one of the things that makes Elmore Leonard’s books interesting to me.  The Big Bounce in particular was set in my stomping grounds.  I lived in the thumb where migrant workers from Mexico picked cucumbers (our high school was next to a big Vlasic plant), we went to be beach at Lake Huron many times.  I knew people like Billy Ruiz and Bob Jr.  To rip that out of there and put it in California or Hawaii was a damn sacrilege.

well, EL, himself has changed the locales on his books and movies. He wrote the screenplay for Mr. Majestyk and set it in Colorado.  But when he later wrote the book—can we call it a novelization?—he set it in Arizona. Why? Maybe he was familiar with the terrain used in the final sequences or maybe it was an attempt to reflect U.S. melon production—Colorado doesn’t produce that much melons. California, Texas and Arizona are the leading melon production states. Curious about that oddity.

He wrote the screenplay for Mr. Majestyk and set it in Colorado.  But when he later wrote the book—can we call it a novelization?—he set it in Arizona. Why?

It had more to do with his familiarity with Arizona which was the setting for most of his westerns.

glitz was a HBO movie i think…it had some flavor of the book fairly well done…jimmy smits did a good job i thought…and the character for teddy magik came close to what i envisioned ...

anyone else like this one??

wolf

Have to keep an eye out for that one.  HBO makes decent flicks.

I started reading Elmore Leonard’s books while in Brazil in 2000.  I had an assignment that had me living and working in Campinas, which is a large city but not one frequented by tourists so it was difficult to find English language material to read.  I had taken Cuba Libre, my first Elmore Leonard book, to read on the plane on the way down there.  I enjoyed it so much that I started giving assignments to my colleagues to buy other books for me in the states and bring them down when they came.  In the midst of this, one of the cable TV channels in the hotel, which would show foreign films with Portuguese subtitles, had Showtime’s “Elmore Leonard’s Gold Coast” on.  I thought it was a pretty good film at the time, but I may have been desparate for entertainment.  I have looked for it in the states, but have never seen it on TV.  It appears to have been released on VHS at some point but never on DVD.

There is a great article in the Sunday LOS ANGELES TIMES about Scott Frank.  He wrote the screenplay for GET SHORTY and OUT OF SIGHT—two of the greatest adaptions of Mr. Leonard’s novels.  He also contributed to the KAREN SISCO show.  He has directed his first movie, THE LOOKOUT.  It will be released later this year.

They give him a lot of kudos for those adaptions.

Of course, they mention how most Elmore Leonard adaptions are disaters such as BE COOL.  The also mention the reshoots for KILLSHOT.

Has anyone seen the Showtime adaption of PRONTO?  The article says it is good.

Gregg just had a nice blog about this!!!!

Mr. Majestyk
A Colorado melon grower (Charles Bronson) offends a mob hit man (Al Lettieri), starting a war that’s bad for business.
Starring: Charles Bronson, Al Lettieri, Linda Cristal     |  Directed By: Richard Fleischer
104min., Rated PG

August 3, 2009 at 8:00 PM eastern - 7:00 PM central - 6:00 PM mountain - 5:00 pm western
This TV:  Channel 5.2 in Los Angeles

This TV network is an American television network made up of over 55 affiliates.  Follow this link to view them:  ThisTV has Bronson!

This TV (also referred to as “This TV Network” or just “this” in on-air promotions) is a general entertainment television network designed for digital television subchannels. Turn off your cable or satellite.  If you have a internal or external digital converter, you can get it. 

This TV’s program schedule relies on the extensive library of films and TV programming currently owned by MGM and subsidiary United Artists (notably excluding the pre-1986 MGM film/TV library, whose rights are currently held by Turner Entertainment and Time Warner). Though such vintage series as The Patty Duke Show and The Outer Limits are featured, the network’s lineup places a greater emphasis on movies, including prime-time double features every night. The film roster does not concentrate on films from any specific era, meaning films from the Depression era to contemporary times are featured.  There are no plans for any original programming on the network, although the use of on-air presenters had been considered for This TV’s movie broadcasts.  The station’s continuity announcer is Milwaukee radio personality and Miller Park PA system announcer Robb Edwards.

This TV also features a daily block of childrens’ programming called Cookie Jar Toons (including shows that meet the E/I content requirements) that is handled by Toronto-based Cookie Jar Entertainment.

docdoowop - 18 October 2006 03:19 PM

Western:  Hombre

Crime:  Get Shorty

Yeah, what he said.

The edge for overall best outside genre boundaries:

Hombre

.

How many times I watched this moving without realizing - or knowing Mr. L’s work - its source, and thought, this is a different kind of Western flick. Where people act like people without the exaggerations. Where motivations are human and not dramatic. And Jessie, a truly realistic Western female character, an Oscar-worthy performance by Diane Cilento, still takes my breath away - what a woman. The way she shamed John Russell into being a human being, man.

And what an hombre, John Russell: “We all die. It’s just a question of when.”

Not just a great Leonard adaptation - but a great film.

nolen - 20 October 2006 01:35 PM

Yeah .. he definitely had the wrong hat which was sad considering all the discussion about it in the book (and in that Givens short story in When the Women Come Out to Dance).
Another interesting film/book comparison is Mr. Majestyk—as I understand it Leonard wrote the screenplay, then the book. What was so odd about the film was that they tried to turn Majestyk into Billy Jack. Once the book came out, you could better see the dimensions in the character ... way more than the film.
I understand Majestyk was originally written for Clint Eastwood. When you see it, you really wish he had taken the part (though R.I.P. Charles Bronson)

Another one of those moments, watching this film, knowing something different, the people more realistic than a standard B movie, and not having read Mr. L at that point in my life. I went to see this ‘cause of Bronson. He did a good job. And the movie held up until the end, the shootout. Just like with Joe Kidd, that train going into the saloon, what were they thinking. Still, both are good movies, hold up well. I watch ‘em both occasionally (always wincing at the train), more for the characters than the action.

wolf - 07 January 2007 12:02 AM

glitz was a HBO movie i think…it had some flavor of the book fairly well done…jimmy smits did a good job i thought…and the character for teddy magik came close to what i envisioned ...

anyone else like this one??

wolf

That the one with Markie Post? Oh no, it was like the train in Joe Kidd, every time she had a scene, I groaned. And Smits just seemed…too flimsy, his posture, I think.

But seems all TV-flims lack something compared to features. Don’t know why. Just is. One of them things like why gravity makes things spin what we call clockwise.

JohnMcFetridge - 22 November 2006 04:07 PM

Gregg Sutter - 22 November 2006 03:54 PM

But something may be happening with Swag

Yeah, the Detroit 70’s stuff would be fantastic - and not updated. There’s a British cop show out now called Life on Mars about a present day cop back in time to the 70’s (or maybe he’s in a coma and it’s a dream…) and someone has bought the US rights, I forget who.

Too bad it’ll never happen, because a Detroit crime show in the 70’s on HBO would be fantastic. The material’s all there, that’s for sure.

Life on Mars came and went on US television last season. Watched it once. Too 70s for me. I lived through the 70s, didn’t like much while I was there and have no melancholy urge to revisit the period - ever!

But, locale, time period, can be as much a character to a work as a human one. Still, we’re talking cops and robbers, here. More specifically, the human experience, our motivations…our seeming stupid reasons for doing things to make money—or make our mundane existence important.

Where you put that, the human experience, is really irrelevant if it’s examined properly. It’s why Shakespeare’s characters and words hold up 300+ years later.

I never read Mr. L and think what year it was written or that much about its setting. Even his Westerns seem timeless. While I appreciate the historical quality ofCuba Libre and The Hot Kid and others, it’s his words, his writing style, those characters - what great women - that keeps me reading them over and over.

And no matter how bad the film, the source cannot be tarnished.

And no matter how bad the film, the source cannot be tarnished.

Stick and Chili both had to be retired because of bad movies.

Gregg Sutter - 01 August 2009 02:27 PM

And no matter how bad the film, the source cannot be tarnished.

Stick and Chili both had to be retired because of bad movies.

Because of rights, or Mr. L is that embarrassed by the film? I choose to ignore the films and go back to the books - and I wouldn’t be disappointed to run into Stickley again.

Really, though, not to be too critical, but Be Cool was a wane sequel as a novel. Trying to hard to be a sequel and not a stand-alone work? I reread it after the movie disappointed, thinking, that’s what happens when you play games with Hollywood.