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Martin Amis Interview with Elmore in 1998

Elmore Leonard
at the Writers Guild Theatre, Beverly Hills,
January 23, 1998

MARTIN AMIS: We’re welcoming here Elmore Leonard, also known as “Dutch.” And rather less formally, the “Dickens of Detroit. ” It is an apt description, I think, because he is as close as anything you have here in America to a national novelist, a concept that almost seemed to die with Charles Dickens but has here been revived. I was recently in Boston visiting Saul Bellow, and on the shelves of the Nobel laureate, I spied several Elmore Leonards. Saul Bellow has a high, even exalted view of what literature is and does. For him, it creates the “quiet zone” where certain essences can nourish what he calls “our fair souls. ” This kind of literature of the Prousto-Nabokovian variety has recently been assigned the label “minority interest.” There is patently nothing “minority interest” about Elmore Leonard. He is a popular writer in several senses. But Saul Bellow and I agreed that for an absolutely reliable and unstinting infusion of narrative pleasure in a prose miraculously purged of all false qualities, there was no one quite like Elmore Leonard

Read entire interview here.

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Sparks Trailer and Website

Sparks Website

Recent blog item.

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Elmore on Gomorra - “It’s a Beauty”

Elmore and I saw Gomorra last night.  This is an epic Italian film about the Camorra, the organized crime groups in the Naples, Italy area.  The film is based on the bestselling book by Roberto Saviano .  Gomorra is produced by Martin Scorcese, and the film tracks like one of his; with a lot of Antonioni and Brian DePalmi tossed in.  Don’t miss this film when it comes your way.  “It’s a beauty,” Elmore says. I agree.

From the Independent:

Roberto Saviano’s explosive revelations about the Camorra of Naples- a racket he says is bigger than Sicily’s Mafia - have led to death threats and, belatedly, an armed guard.

By Peter Popham reports

Roberto Saviano is in mortal danger. Yesterday he was - very belatedly - granted an armed bodyguard by the district of Naples where he lives. He is in grave danger of being shot, stabbed, blown up, and done away with because he has had the courage and the recklessness to spill a large number of beans about the Camorra, the Mafia of Naples. This sprawling network of criminal gangs, according to him, now dwarfs both the original Mafia of Sicily, the ‘Ndrangheta and southern Italy’s other organised gangs, in numbers, in economic power and in ruthless violence.

Read the rest of the article.

 

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Road Dogs Teaser

The opening of Road Dogs:

They put Foley and the Cuban together in the backseat of the van and took them from the Palm Beach County jail on Gun Club to Glades Correctional, the old redbrick prison at the south end of Lake Okeechobee. Neither one said a word during the ride that took most of an hour, both of them handcuff ed and shackled.

They were returning Jack Foley to do his thirty years after busting out for a week, Foley’s mind on a woman who made intense love to him one night in Detroit, pulled a Sig Sauer .38 the next night, shot him and sent him back to Florida.

The Cuban, a little guy about fifty with dyed hair pulled back in a ponytail, was being transferred to Glades from the state prison at Starke, fi ve years down, two and a half to go of a second- degree murder conviction. The Cuban was thinking about a woman he believed he loved, this woman who could read minds.

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Last Minute Gift Idea

Maximum Bob’s wife Leanne was a Weeki Wachee mermaid until an alligator swam into her act. 

The first time Bob Gibbs saw his wife she was performing sixteen feet beneath the surface of Weeki Wachee Spring, in a mermaid outfit.

He watched her through the glass wall of the underwater theater. Saw her gold lamé tail undulating, saw her long golden hair moving in slow motion,  Leanne smiling, showing her perfect teeth in that clear springwater before taking the tip of the air hose in her mouth, making a delicate feminine gesture of it. - Maximum Bob

Read all about this magical place in Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida’s Oldest Roadside Attractions

“Lu Vickers has written a truly delicious, sparkling history of Florida’s own mermaid city of Weeki Wachee, one of the greatest oldtime roadside attractions. Her prose is bright, sharp and funny; combined with the illustrations brilliantly compiled by Sara Dionne, it makes for a wonderful, vivacious, superbly researched but never dry saga of the regular girls who transformed themselves into swimming goddesses and the tiny hamlet which got so famous even Elvis came to pay court.”

- Diane Roberts, National Public Radio correspondent and author of Dream State”

 

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A Temptation or a Warning?

I always liked the image of an alcohol rehab center across from a brewery.

From Touch:

There he was, all yellow. And the priest appeared
in a green-and-white warmup suit and sneakers. A couple of rays of sunshine in the musty old room, greeting each other by name, Bill Hill warming up, glancing at the windows and asking if that big Stroh’s Beer sign was a temptation or a warning to the patients here. He meant to keep it light and chatty for a few minutes.

“The residents ” Father Vaughan Quinn said, they can look at the sign and think whatever they want, as long as they know they have three choices. Die, end up in a mental hospital, or unit drinking. It’s their decision

 

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Fire in the Hole - Movies or Series?

I read yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter story about an Untitled Elmore Leonard project and assumed it was a TV series based on Raylan Givens and the novella, Fire in the Hole.  But mysterlynch on Crimespree Cinema has doubts;

Reading the article, it sounds like each will a movie, but that is not explicitly stated. A comment on Elmore Leonard’s site suggests that the Givens project might be a series. With Dinner being credited for each, I can’t imagine him tackling two series at once. They may be making a two-hour telefilm, with plans for a series if either takes off. I will try to get some clarification on this.

Since it’s more than likely a cable project, Fire in the Hole, may be a two hour launch for a series; so it would be movie length.  We’ll see.  A bit of trivia about Fire in the Hole.  It was originally published as an e-book original by Contentville Press in 2000.  Here’s a review from back then:

REVIEW BY KELLY KOEPKE
Elmore Leonard has admitted in interviews that he is an old-fashioned kind of writer, the sort that doesn’t use a computer and isn’t connected to the Internet. For 50 years he’s been writing with a pen and hasn’t found a reason to change—until now. His latest effort, an e-novella entitled Fire in the Hole, is classic Leonard, even if the medium is not.

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens journeys back to his roots in an Eastern Kentucky coal-mining town to pursue Boyd Crowder, a white supremacist income tax evader who plans to blow up a Cincinnati IRS building. Crowder likes to shout “fire in the hole,” a coal mining phrase used before exploding a charge, whenever he blows up something.

In true Leonard fashion, Givens and Crowder have a begrudging respect for each other, a holdover from their coal mining days together. Crowder’s sister-in-law, Ava, carrier of a long-burning torch for Givens and a long-barreled rifle, confuses the mix. Throw in several rednecks, more shotguns and a rocket launcher, and the stage is set for a wild ride through Leonardland, where the talk is tough, honor is everything and a promise is a promise. This adrenaline-charged novella is full of sharply honed characters, plot twists and dialogue that only Leonard could have written, demonstrating that he has as much command of this new medium as he does the printed page.

Givens, previously seen in Pronto and Riding the Rap, is the marshal you hope is assigned to protect you. With his creased Stetson and Old West lawman personality, he only draws his gun to shoot (and kill). He’s people smart, but Crowder is too. His people shave their heads and wear swastika tattoos. They also have no love of the law or the government.

In signature Leonard style, the dialogue moves the action rather than the narrative along. And action—delivered in bursts, like the blasts of a gun and with just as much force—is the key to this novella. So strap yourself in, get comfortable and relinquish yourself to the world of Elmore Leonard, novelist, screenwriter and now e-novelist, as he returns to the genre of his roots, 21st century-style.

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Raylan Givens Cable TV Series

The Stetson Open Road

There appears to be movement toward getting a Raylan Given’s TV series on cable.  I’m all for it but they better get Raylan’s hat right this time.  In the TV movie, Pronto, they gave poor James LeGros a George Strait hat that looked like it was ready to take off.  The real Raylan hat is what Elmore calls, “The Dallas Businessman’s Special” - a felt city cowboy hat called the Stetson “Open Road” -  Accept no substitute.

Reported today in The Hollywood Reporter:

Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly

It’s another busy development season for Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly’s Sony-based TV production company, which has set up eight projects from such auspices as Elmore Leonard, Graham Yost, Michael Dinner, Barry Sonnenfeld and Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman.

What is different this year is that most of the projects are set up at cable networks.

Since its 2003 launch, Timberman/Beverly Prods. (formerly 25C) had been focused on developing for the broadcast nets, landing several pilots and a series order from NBC for “Kidnapped.”

Timberman and Beverly tested the cable waters this year with the A&E pilot “Danny Fricke.” Now they’re hooked.

“It has opened the door to explore subject matters that we would’ve never thought of developing for broadcast,” Timberman said. “Wanting to go to cable is often a result of us not wanting the water down characters.”

It also helped that their company is based at Sony TV, a major cable player.

Timberman/Beverly’s cable slate includes an untitled Elmore Leonard drama and “Hit Man” at FX, the drama “Fade to Black” and the comedy “Carry Me” at Showtime and the drama “Between Smith and Jones” at Lifetime. On the broadcast side, the duo has sold the comedy “Holly Gale” and an untitled medical drama to CBS and comedic drama “The Nelsons” to ABC.

—The untitled Elmore Leonard project, penned by Yost and to be directed by Dinner, is based on Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole.” It centers on Kentucky U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and chronicles his cases as well his personal life, including his unfinished business with an ex-wife and his aging father.

“It’s a classic Elmore Leonard story with ironic twists of fate, dimensionalized criminals and a protagonist who is himself an enigma,” Timberman said.

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Complete Fitzgerald Award Videos

Last week, Michael Brown posted his interview with Elmore Leonard at Montgomery College and highlights from the presentation and reading.  Today, Elmore’s entire reading of Killshot (with a George Pelecanos introduction) has been posted. 

Click here for a link to all Montgomery College, 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference videos including the interview, and Susan Cheever’s keynote address.

 

Read More>

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3:10 to Yuma: The Perils of Remaking a Classic

Glenn Ford as the “Luciferean Wade” in Delmer Daves, original 3:10 to Yuma

by Doug Krentzlin, DC Classic Media and Performing Arts Examiner

Why is it, when a classic film is remade, the very qualities that made the original unique are eliminated?

Case in point: the original 1957 version of Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma.” This is a perfect example of what was known as a “psychological western,” which is to say there is more emphasis on emotional conflict than physical action. (The only violence in the original is concentrated in the first and last five minutes of the film, whereas the new version has much more violence and traditional action.)

Cattleman Dan Evans (Van Heflin) agrees to guard captured sociopath outlaw Ben Wade (Glenn Ford) because he desperately needs the reward to save his failing ranch. As they wait in a dingy hotel room for the train to the prison in Yuma, Wade tries to tempt Evans into releasing him before his gang shows up to rescue him and kill his captors.

The biggest surprise of “3:10 to Yuma” is Ford who was cast against type as the Luciferean Wade and rose to the occasion by giving the performance of his career. Frankly, the same goes for Delmer Daves, a mildly talented director who also did his best work here.

Another crucial element to “3:10 to Yuma” is Charles Lawton’s stark black-and-white photography that intensifies the austerity of the outdoor locations and claustrophobia of the hotel room that a third of the film takes place in.

The best thing that can be said for the remake is that, at least, it has renewed interest in the original which remains one of the finest westerns of the 50s.

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