Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Graham Yost - Media Week Interview on “Justified”
permalink“What we’re trying to do week in, week out is an Elmore Leonard show.”- Graham Yost, Media Week interview
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Justified Premiere Photos
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Cynthia Fox blogs about “Justified”
95.5 KLOS Los Angeles
CYNTHIA BLOG
Elmore Leonard’s Cool!
permalinkthose of you who worship Elmore Leonard appreciate his books and the movies and the TV shows based on them because they are hard boiled and real….but with lots of humorous touches….Elmore knows people and he knows how to write complelling crime fiction…because it is rooted in deep research coupled with a keen grasp of human nature ..
Monday, March 08, 2010
Elmore Leonard on New Novel “Djibouti,” Kathryn Bigelow Run-In
Speakeasy
The Wall Street Journal
Michelle Kung
permalinkCount writer Elmore Leonard among the supporters of Kathryn Bigelow’s Best Director Oscar win. While talking about FX’s upcoming series “Justified,” based on his character U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, Leonard mentioned that he sent her a copy of his upcoming pirate novel “Djibouti,” which will be released in October, before he had even seen “The Hurt Locker,” because he was an admirer of her work.
Leonard said that he knows Bigelow “very slightly,” explaining that he randomly met her roughly 23 years ago, when she was promoting her 1987 vampire film “Near Dark.” He recalled her pulling up to his house in a maroon limousine and running into the front room that he was using as an office. She told him she liked his work and the two chatted for about 20 minutes and “then she ran out,” he said. “And that was it.”
He hopes his new tale, which concerns modern-day pirates off the coast of East Africa, is appealing to her. The heroine is a documentary filmmaker who is fascinated by the pirate life, and with her 6-foot-6 assistant Xavier — a seafarer who’s circumnavigated the globe over 50 times — in town, they rent a small boat less than 30 feet long and sail off into the Indian Ocean in search of pirates. But it’s not a genre tale, he said. “I also get into Al Queda and terrorism. It’s just an interesting topic that just as relevant now as when I first started writing it.”
On Justified, Timothy Olyphant returns to his calling: the smoldering lawman with issues.
New York Magazine
A Tall Drink of Still Waters
By Mike Flaherty
Not since John Wayne has an actor made such an impression simply by walking. As the enigmatic sheriff Seth Bullock in HBO’s dank, darkly brilliant neo-Western, Deadwood, Timothy Olyphant’s deliberate, catlike gait—alternately a threat and a seduction—spoke as plainly as his dialogue, and provided a kind of foreplay to his coiled and smoldering sexuality. Bullock, a black-clad white hat, was the avenging angel on the front lines of manifest destiny, a seething yet taciturn agent of nascent civilization—and in the hands of Olyphant, a riveting counterweight to his scenery-chewing foe, Ian McShane’s frontier thug, Al Swearengen.
“It’s a paradox to say that Tim demonstrates his range as an actor in giving what would seem to be a withheld performance,” recalls Deadwood creator David Milch. “I’m not sure which poet talked about ‘thoughts too deep for words,’ but he brings that idea alive.” Milch likens Olyphant to Wayne and Gary Cooper—members of that rarefied club of actors who transcend strong and silent. “Those are the guys that stick around awhile.”
So it feels like something of a make-good to see Olyphant back in a Stetson and packing heat in the new FX series Justified. “He’s a guy who wouldn’t walk into a house unless he’s invited, but he’d give someone 24 hours to get out of town or he’ll kill them,” says Olyphant of his character, Raylan Givens, a modern-day U.S. marshal. He’s as stoic and courtly an enforcer of the law as Bullock, only this time those qualities are starkly and refreshingly retro among the current crop of ironic, motor-mouthed action heroes.
“On a surface level, Timothy absolutely embodies that tall, lean, erect kind of laconic movement of body and voice, a soft-spoken affability,” says FX president John Landgraf, who pitched Olyphant for Justified after hiring him as a recurring character on the second season of Damages. “But it’s the ability to be sort of protean and move from the dark to the light that’s going to make this character wear so well. The exterior stuff gets you in the tent, but it’s the interior stuff that makes the long, arcing journey worthwhile.”
That journey sends Givens, by way of a disciplinary transfer from a chichi Miami post back to his shit-kicking Kentucky hometown (a merciless-yet-fair shooting in the first five minutes of the pilot is the catalyst). There, he’s confronted with drug-running neo-Nazis (fronted by Walton Goggins, of The Shield), as well as the ghosts, alive and dead, of his own past, including his no-account outlaw daddy (Raymond Barry).
Justified was adapted from two short stories and a novel by Elmore Leonard, and so far the author likes what he sees. “I’ve sold two dozen things to Hollywood, and most of them weren’t very good,” he says. “But this works.” He’s particularly smitten with the show’s leading man. “I said, ‘My God, he’s the guy!’ ” says Leonard of his first set visit.
The actor’s wildly peripatetic, fifteen- year-long career has seen him bounce from gonzo indie films (Go) to popcorn actioners (Hitman, The Crazies), from cable drama to the occasional wild-card sitcom appearance (My Name Is Earl) with very mixed results. But the L.A.-based husband and father of three seems to have found another role that capitalizes on his strengths. Olyphant is one of those actors whose magnetism grows as the screen gets smaller, in parts that unspool slowly over time, allowing for ambiguity and flaws. (Strangely, he is least convincing as a purely bad guy.) He recalls how watching Dominic West’s tortured performance as Baltimore cop Jimmy McNulty in The Wire evoked for him the ragged antiheroes of seventies Hollywood. “I was like, ‘That’s your hero? Some guy who’s drunk off his ass, incapable of driving home, and there’s no consequence to it?’ It was so wonderful.”
Olyphant, who is as loose-lipped in real-life as his quick-drawing alter egos are restrained, suggests that FX has replaced HBO as the home for those sorts of roles. (Though he stops short of placing blame on them for Deadwood’s demise, Olyphant notes wryly of HBO: “They were incredibly supportive right up till the point when we all bought homes.”) FX works like an old movie studio, building up stables of stars who move from series to series (Glenn Close, Goggins); it also encourages its leading actors to help develop their characters. As Michael Chiklis was involved in the creation of alter ego Vic Mackey on The Shield and Denis Leary literally writes much of Rescue Me, Olyphant has been working closely with Justified’s executive producer Graham Yost and Leonard himself to shape Raylan Givens. “They don’t listen to his notes because he’s the star,” Landgraf says. “They listen because he’s right a lot of the time—about Raylan and the series as a whole.”
Curiously, just as he’s found more control in his career, he’s also relishing a newfound WTF approach to life—a midlife manifesto, if you will, following a significant birthday. “There’s something about turning 40,” says Olyphant. “Somebody pisses you off at the grocery store and you’re like, ‘You know what? Fuck you, I’m 40! I don’t have to deal with you and your problems.’ I see that as something of a positive.”
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
TIME: Justified brings an old-school western archetype into the 21st century
Time
March 15, 2010 Monday
Lone Gunman
BYLINE: James Poniewozik
It seems like TV networks have been talking about remaking the western for longer than they actually made them. Maybe the genre, which dominated TV drama in the ‘50s and ‘60s, is just too much of its time to thrive in a more gray-hatted era. HBO aired three seasons of Deadwood, a dark and poetic look at the Darwinian life of a mining camp, but that was less a remake than a rebuttal.
TV has taken stabs at making westernish series, however. The excellent but short-lived Firefly, for instance, was essentially a western set in space. And now, with the terrific new drama Justified (which debuts March 16), FX and author Elmore Leonard have taken a crucial figure from westerns—the haunted lone gunslinger—and plopped him in 21st century Kentucky.
The series follows Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), a U.S. Marshal who has been booted from a plum post in Miami after a high-profile shooting garnered unwanted publicity: he beat a mobster to the draw western-style, though at a table at a fancy restaurant. The bureau moves him to Harlan County, Kentucky, where Givens grew up and which he then escaped—running from, among other things, a criminal father who’s now in jail.
Givens’ bags are barely unpacked when he has a run-in with Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), an old coal-mining buddy who has become a white supremacist and bank robber. (The pilot is based on a Leonard story, “Fire in the Hole,” and Givens’ old entanglements at home are a continuing story in later episodes.) As he chases Boyd and his crew, the ghosts of the life he left—his ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea), his old flame and Boyd’s sister-in-law Ava (Joelle Carter), his as-yet-unseen jailed daddy—begin to attach to him.
Givens is a 19th century type—the series was titled Lawman until, of all indignities, a Steven Seagal reality show got to the name first—with a steely bearing, courtly mannerisms and a direct way of talking. Sitting through an inquiry panel investigating his use of deadly force, he interrupts his supervisor’s bureaucratese answer and says cowboy-like, “Let’s just keep it simple, huh? He pulled first. I shot him.”
And he wears a hat, which, as it happens, is beige. That’s appropriate, because we begin to see that Givens’ life and character could easily have gone either way. Olyphant was also in Deadwood, as sheriff Seth Bullock, who shares more than just a badge with Givens. Bullock’s devotion to the law was fierce and brutal, driven by a seething anger over injustices in his childhood.
Olyphant’s Givens is less rigid and more likable, but his sense of duty also comes from a very personal and dark place. There’s a remarkable scene in the pilot in which he uses the threat of his quick draw to talk down a thug with a shotgun pointed at Givens’ head—“Can you rack in a load before I put a hole through you?”—which left me with a thorough man crush on him. But then he bashes the goon’s face against a steering wheel for a bit of back talk, and for a fleeting second, a flash of pure fury glints in his eyes.
You begin to see here why his bosses wonder how quick-draw, hair-trigger Givens manages to have so many “justified” shootings and whether he isn’t acting out some sort of vendetta psychodrama—or a death wish. Nor are they the first to wonder about him. As his ex-wife says after he politely pops by for what’s meant to be a friendly chat (by way of breaking into her house in the middle of the night), “You’re the angriest man I have ever known.” His sartorial quirks mark him not just as a throwback but as a young man who’s prematurely old: like many a western hero, there’s something strong and tired about him at the same time.
Dark streaks aside, Justified is also, as you’d expect from Leonard (and writer Graham Yost, formerly of Boomtown), a funny show, with taut dialogue and a distinct sense of place. Its supporting characters are a riot of wiseass agents, sardonic thieves and big- and small-time hustlers. Its Harlan County is both timeless and of the moment, plagued with meth heads and skinheads and littered with overbuilt developments left over from the housing boom. (The fourth episode moves the action to Los Angeles as Givens chases a fugitive from his past. It’s excellent as well, but the sunny setting changes the tone so much, to the lighter hard-boiledness of Leonard adaptations like Get Shorty, that it almost seems a different series.)
The result is a new-style western that’s both entertaining and as mesmerizing as Givens’ cold-blooded speech to the crook with the scattergun: “I want you to understand. I don’t pull my sidearm unless I’m going to shoot to kill. That’s its purpose, huh? To kill. So that’s how I use it.” Givens is still figuring out his own purpose, and in the compelling character study of Justified, Leonard, Yost and Olyphant have fashioned quite a weapon. I can’t wait to see how they use it.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
The British 10 Rules Get It Right (Size)
The original idea to do an Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing book was mine; an admission more akin to a confession that self-congratulation. Many websites were posting the rules or linking to the original 2001 New York Times article. It finally occurred to me we should publish the Rules in book form to memorialize them and make them accessible to the book buying public.
I wanted to create a little tiny book; beautifully illustrated and in a limited edition. I also figured I’d be self-publishing it.
But the onus and expense of self publishing prompted me to pitch the book to Marjorie Braman, Elmore’s editor at Harper Collins who agreed to publish them as an illustrated volume. Marjorie’s assistant, Peggy Hageman suggested Joe Ciardiello as the illustrator and Joe produced 13 lively illustrations; a couple of which were two page spreads in color. All of them whimsical and right on; in fact, worth the price of the book alone.
The 10 Rules book was sent to China to be published. That didn’t alarm me; the publisher got a good deal with a printer in China, so what?
But when the finished book was shipped back, we were all in shock. The Chinese printed the book on paper that was almost as thick as light cardboard! The illustrations printed beautifully, especially the color ones, which really popped. The cover was nice too; engraved type against a pale yellow cloth with faux leather spine; all beautifully tooled. Then there was a slipcase version, in black, with a bookmark string. The quality was top notch.
But they printed on cardboard, for Christ’s sake! You couldn’t turn the pages without risking a paper cut. It wasn’t easy to read. What happen to the beautiful tiny book? This was a beautiful bloated book.
I expected criticism when Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing came out in late 2007 and was not disappointed. Many people wanted to know how we could put out this pretentious book with the one-inch spine and all those blank pages? Were we trying to hoodwink the book buyer? Shame on Elmore!
Not everybody felt that way, but a sizable minority did.
Then last December, Orion Books UK e-mailed us that they were getting ready to publish the 10 Rules in Britian and sent us their book specs. They were going to make theirs same thickness as the U.S. edition! We told them NO! This book has to be as thin as possible. They said OK. Wow, that was easy.
The result, which I saw for the first time yesterday, is the slim volume I envisioned; less than half the width of the U.S. edition. The size is perfect. The paper is normal stock but the illustrations still look great. Unfortunately, there is no color in the U.K. edition; a difference that is noticeable when you see the U.S. edition.
The British edition has a dust jacket that fits the book a little too loosely which uses the same art but weakly evokes the U.S. edition. But when you take the jacket off, you’re left with a simple bare black cloth cover with the title in silver on the spine. That;s the ticket. That’s the correct look for this now unpretentious edition.
So which one should you buy? Both, of course. The U.S. edition as objet d’art and the U.K. version as your every day primer until it’s yellowed with age. Thank you, Orion.
So now we wait to see what the Italians and French do when they publish the 10 Rules.
10 Rules of Writing
From the Orion Books catalog page:
For aspiring writers and lovers of the written word, this concise guide breaks down the writing process with simplicity and clarity. From adjectives and exclamation points to dialect and what he calls ‘hooptedoodle’, Elmore Leonard explains what to avoid, what to aspire to, and what to do when it sounds like “writing” (rewrite).
Available from Orion Books UK
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Justified Billboard at Cantors
Don’t forget the cole slaw!
permalinkFriday, February 26, 2010
FX Justified Website Is Now Up
The Justified website is now up. Find it here. It’s a very good site. Contents include:
Background on the stars and creators behind the show.
The Pursuit, the more you play the more chances you have to win. Grand prize winner receives a $5,000 bounty and a $500 wardrobe from Stetson.
Watch previews, promos and other exclusive video extras from the premiere season of Justified.
Test your skills with Target Practice and Quick Draw.
Get the latest word from the set, including episode recaps, behind the scenes stories, interviews and more.
Discover some of the most famous outlaws, crimes and criminals in American history.
Take a look at the life and work of Elmore Leonard, America’s preeminent crime novelist.
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Monday, February 22, 2010
Ten rules for writing fiction
The Guardian goes bat-shit crazy on writing rules. Do any of them hold a pencil to Elmore’s?
The Guardian
Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and rewrite again – if all else fails, pray. Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, we asked authors for their personal dos and don’ts
Elmore Leonard
Diana Athill
Margaret Atwood
Roddy Doyle
Helen Dunmore
Geoff Dyer
Anne Enright
Richard Ford
Jonathan Franzen
Esther Freud
Neil Gaiman
David Hare
PD James
AL Kennedy
permalinkHilary Mantel
Michael Moorcock
Michael Morpurgo
Andrew Motion
Joyce Carol Oates
Annie Proulx
Philip Pullman
Ian Rankin
Will Self
Helen Simpson
Zadie Smith
Colm Tóibín
Rose Tremain
Sarah Waters
Jeanette Winterso
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Strand Magazine Gives Elmore Lifetime Achievement Award
The Strand Magazine bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award to Elmore Leonard for his huge body of mystery and crime novels which have been translated into dozens of languages and are regulars on the New York Times best-seller lists. When given news of the award, Leonard said, “It’s an honor to receive this award from The Strand. I’ve been given awards for books that I’ve written, but I’m pleased to be getting an award for all of my work.”
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Jack Back and Leonard on Form
The Sun (England)
BYLINE: NATASHA HARDING
ELMORE LEONARD has created many memorable anti-heroes but laid-back bank robber Jack Foley may be his best.
Foley’s a man so handsome and charming he can talk cashiers into handing over money. He’s never needed to use a gun.
It was the perfect role for George Clooney who played him in the film of Leonard’s novel, Out Of Sight, below.
Now Jack’s back in the belated sequel, Road Dogs (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £18.99), and looking at 30 years in jail.
That is until fellow inmate Cundo Rey comes up with a plan to bribe a lawyer to get him out.
But once out, Foley has trouble finding the cash to pay back the favour and decides he doesn’t want to go back to sticking up banks. And he’s soon involved with Cundo’s girlfriend in a plot to rip off the Cuban hustler’s millions.
What ensues is classic Leonard as thieves fall out over money and women and start double-crossing each other. It’s a welcome return to form for this master of hip, funny dialogue and fast-paced plots.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Justified Campaign Begins
Our own LaCrimAtty just took this picture at Motor and Pico, in front of Twentieth Century Fox studios in Los Angeles.
permalinkPassages from Elmore Leonard’s West
Thanks to Larry D. Sweazy for assembling these quotes. In June, 2009 Elmore was awarded the Owen Wister Lifetime Achievement Award by the Western Writers of America. in the June, 2009 issue of their magazine, Roundup, Larry D. Sweazy wrote a biographical profile of Elmore focusing on the Westerns.
Read or download Larry’s article here.
“Under the thatched roof ramada that ran the length of the agency office, Travisin slouched in a canvas-back chair, his boots propped against one of the support posts. His gaze took in the sunbeaten, gray adobe buildings, all one-story structures, that rimmed the vacant quadrangle. It was a glaring, depressing scene of sun on rock, without a single shade tree or graceful feature to redeem the squat ugliness. There was not a living soul in sight.”
–Trail of the Apache, 1951
For a few minutes he moved the scissors deftly over the brown hair, saying nothing, until he finished trimming. Then he placed the implements on the shelf and studied a row of bottles there.
“Wet it down?”“I suppose.”
“You can use it,” Willet said, shaking a green liquid into his hand. “That sun makes the flowers grow…but your hair isn’t flowers.”
“What about Apaches?” Flynn said.
“What about them?”
“They don’t wear hats. They have better hair than anybody.”
“Sun don’t affect a man that was born in hell,” Willet said, and began rubbing the tonic into Flynn’s scalp.
–The Bounty Hunters, 1953
Charlie Prince stood at the corner of the station house with a pistol in each hand. Then he moved around carefully between the two men and the train.
“Throw it far away, and unhitch your belt,” he said.
“Do what he says,” Kidd said. “They’ve got you.”
The others, six of them, were strung out in the dimness of the platform shed. Grim faced, stubbles of beard, hat brims low. The man nearest Prince spat tobacco lazily.
–Three-Ten to Yuma, 1953
When Mr. Mendez spoke to him you believed it all the more. He stepped closer to John Russell’s roan horse, and I remember the first thing he said. He said, “Hombre.”
Russell didn’t say anything. He just looked at Mr. Mendez, though you couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow of his hat brim.
“Which name today?’ Mr. Mendez said.
“Which do you want?”
–Hombre, 1961
Bob Valdez arrived at the Maricopa pasture about noon. He was riding shotgun on the Hatch and Hodges run from St. David. He swung down from the boot, holding his sawed-off shotgun in the air, as the stage edged past the whiskey wagon.
–Valdez Is Coming, 1970
If the ticket agent brought up the subject that would be different. He could be noncommittal. “You heard the old prison’s closing, huh? Well after thirty-three years I imagine you won’t be too sorry to see it happen.” But the ticket agent didn’t bring up the subject.
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–Forty Lashes Less One, 1972Thursday, February 11, 2010
New Justified Trailer and Behind the Scenes Videos
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Elmore, Peter and Chris Leonard at the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books
For the second year in a row, Elmore and his sons Peter and Chris will appear together on a panel at the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books.
2010 TUCSON FESTIVAL Presented by Arizona Daily Star, The University of Arizona, & Diamond Children’s at University Medical Center
WHERE WORDS & IMAGINATION COME TO LIFE
free to the public, workshops, food, children’s events, book-signings, meet authors, & poetry readings
March 13-14 2010
Uiniversity of Arizona Campus
Tucson’s Second Festival of Books
The Tucson Festival of Books is a free weekend celebration of reading to benefit local literacy organizations. The 2010 Festival will take place on the UA camp;us with more than 400 authors, 150 exhibitors and 24 venues.
Best-selling mystery writers Elmore Leonard (MR. PARADISE, GET SHORTY) and J.A. Jance (the Joanna Brady mystery series and recent release LONG TIME GONE) are among the notable authors. Also scheduled to appear Phil Caputo, whose memoir (A RUMOR OF WAR) was one of the definitive books about the Vietnam War; and Alice Hoffman, whose novel (PRACTICAL MAGIC) which was made into a feature film; and Michael J. Gelb, (WINE DRINKING FOR INSPIRED SPEAKING) who is an inspiring speaking and corporate consultant in addition to a renowned author.
For more event information, or if you’d like to join the Tucson Festical of Books as an author, sponsor, exhibitor or volunteer, visit our website at TucsonFestivalofBooks.org
permalinkSaturday, February 06, 2010
Ask Elmore Leonard - Time Magazine
The Detroit-based writer’s gritty plots and ear for dialogue have made his dozens of crime novels and Westerns into bestsellers: among them, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, 3:10 to Yuma have been made into hit feature films. His 1985 book Glitz became a best-seller and solidified his reputation as one of the best American crime writers. In his latest project, Leonard will executive produce the FX drama Justified, for which he created the character of Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Submit your questions for Elmore Leonard here, then read the interview in an upcoming issue of TIME magazine.
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Thursday, February 04, 2010
“The Elmore Leonard Dialog Award”
At a site called Sweet with Fall and Fish, AJC has a nice rhapsody about Elmore’s work.
You Should Read Elmore Leonard
Delroy Lindo as Bo Catlett in Get Shorty.
“You asking me,” Catlett said, “do I know how to write down words on a piece of paper? That’s what you do, man, you put down one word after the other as it comes in your head. It isn’t like having to learn how to play the piano, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write, didn’t you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words. There people do that for you. Some, I’ve even seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it. So I don’t think it’s too important. You come to the last page you write in ‘Fade out’ and that’s the end, and you’re done.” - Elmore Leonard, Get ShortyMy preferred method of recommendation is quoting an author’s work. As you can see from the paragraph above, Elmore Leonard is funny, real, and spare. He’ll never come up with a line so poetic that hipsters want it tattooed across their shoulders, but if there’s another writer as masterful at revealing character through dialog, I’m taking nominations. Whoever you want to bring forward, it would still be called the Elmore Leonard Dialog Award.
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Saturday, January 30, 2010
Split Images: “Lovers and Killers”
Here’s the very first book review Elmore got in Newsweek, during the period of the early 1980s when the critics discovered him en masse. Walter Clemons was among the first to get what Elmore was doing.
Newsweek
March 22, 1982
Walter Clemons
Split Images. By Elmore Leonard. 282 pages. Arbor House. $12.50.
permalink“The squad-car officer wondered at first if Mr. Daniels was a movie star. He had the features and that kind of sandy brown curly hair some movie stars had and never seemed to comb… People were always seeing movie stars around Palm Beach and Mr. Daniels mentioned George Hamilton twice.” Robbie Daniels, a boyish 41-year-old Detroit multimillionaire, stands outside his Florida mansion explaining how he came home late from the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre and shot a burglar in self-defense.
Robbie is a killer, of course. Elmore Leonard has so many cards up his sleeve that he plays this one faceup near the start, as Robbie nervily talks a big game of murder to stolid Detective Kouza, who cursorily wrote off the first killing as justifiable homicide and now resigns from the force to become Robbie’s chauffeur. Even when we see Robbie at work, lying to his victim as he performs an impeccable murder in an underground parking lot in Detroit, we still don’t know what he’s up to. Kouza, who asks, is given a curt explanation: “Practice.” We are kept off balance throughout this icy, understated thriller. The honest cop who dogs Robbie and Kouza tells odd lies to the woman he loves. Leonard even works a shocking switch on the pluckyheroine-goes-alone-to-dangerous-rendezvous ploy. The book’s single most brilliant scene, a face-off with two ex-con cowboys in a highway Bar-B-Que Pit, is acutely observant of place and contemporary role-playing.
Specificity is Leonard’s strength. The action shifts between sleazy-glamorous Palm Beach and recession-scarred Detroit during the winter and spring of 1981, when the Jean Harris trial and the assassination attempt on President Reagan are topics of conversation. Robbie’s motive for murder, when revealed, is both trivial and sickeningly precise. If you care to get Important about it, “Split Images” says something about machismo, casual violence and uncertain American identity. Since Leonard himself is so expertly unassuming, I would rather just say that this is the most original crime novel I’ve read since Alan Dennis Burke’s “Getting Away With Murder” last year.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Justified Poster
Badass!
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Hombre Means Man, Man
“Ritt directs with a steady hand, and the dialog by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank bears listening to.” - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (4/21/67).
“Take a large portion of Stagecoach, a small chunk of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a dash of Broken Arrow for flavor and Paul Newman to play the leading role…What will you get? You’ll get Hombre…” - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times (3/22/67).
“Paul Newman is excellent as the scorned (but only supposed) Apache…Richard Boone is very powerful, yet admirably restrained as the heavy.” - Variety.
Read about Hombre here:permalink
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Elmore Leonard likes the Colts
Who dat goes to Hollywood:
By Dave Walker, The Times-Picayune
permalinkHollywood—The setting: The Television Critics Association TV Tour, a twice-annual event to which critics from across the continent travel for many nonstop days and nights of question-and-answer with TV people.
The question I asked everybody: So, who do you like in the Super Bowl?
The answering party this time: New Orleans native Elmore Leonard, whose short story “Fire in the Hole” provided the template for the upcoming FX drama “Justified.”
He’s pulling for the Colts.“I’m rooting for Indianapolis, because of Peyton,” he said. “He’s unbelievable.”’
Leonard added that an upcoming novel is set partly in New Orleans, and he hopes to write another one right away set almost entirely there.
“I think I have one relative still in New Orleans,” he said. “Katrina sent ‘em all running.“I want to set another story in New Orleans. Part of my new book, ‘Djibouti,’ is set there. That’s where the documentary filmmaker (protagonist Dara Barr) lives. It begin and ends in New Orleans.
“I want to (set) my next book (in) New Orleans, because it’s too good to miss.”Friday, January 22, 2010
Justified key art at FX.com
The FX website is showing a rotating banner ad on their homepage for Justified, as seen above. It’s pretty cool. They’re finishing up work now on the Justified website. By mid February, the publicity campaign leading up to the March 16 premiere will begin.
permalinkRaylan Givens - “You root for him”
CableFax Daily
TCA Special Sectionpermalink“Justified” (Mar 16 debut) begins life with a fine pedigree. Star Timothy Olyphant is well known as the tough-guy sheriff of HBO’s “Deadwood,” exec prod Graham Yost worked on HBO’s “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” and the pilot is based on an Elmore Leonard short story about a contemporary Kentucky-based deputy U.S. Marshal named Raylan Givens. Clips shown at TCA suggested plenty of violence, including much gun play. While the part allows Olyphant again to don a cowboy hat (as he did as Deadwood’s Seth Bullock) he jokingly downplayed similarities between the series: “[Deadwood] is ending, and this one is beginning.” Yet Givens contrasts with other FX heroes. “He’s a good guy… you root for him,” Yost said. While the pilot is based on a Leonard story, and the author is listed as an exec prod, he won’t write scripts. Subsequent eps will be written based on the way FX’s writers think Leonard would have written them, Leonard says. “I’ll write another [Raylan Givens] short story for sure” and ideas for the series, he said. “If
they use them fine, if not, that’s ok, too.”Tuesday, January 19, 2010
In appreciation of Robert B. Parker - 1932-2010
Christian Science Monitor
By Marjorie Kehe / January 19, 2010Some of us have known Robert B. Parker almost as long as we could read. I remember first picking up a “Spenser” novel in 1979, when I was 21 and had just moved to Boston straight out of college. By the time I put that book down (I remember that I turned the last page while sitting in a North End cafe), I had somehow become a Bostonian.
Parker was a prolific writer who churned out more than 60 books in his lifetime, working in genres including Westerns and young adult novels. But it was as a crafter of detective fiction that Parker will be best and most fondly remembered, and most particularly for his 37 novels starring Spenser, the tough but lovable Boston private detective whose name was spelled like that of the poet.
Spenser was a former boxer. He traveled light and talked tough. But he loved his city, the Red Sox, his girl (psychiatrist Susan Silverman), and his running buddy (Hawk, an equally tough and casually beguiling fellow crime-fighter).
Parker himself started life as an academic. He wrote a PhD thesis on detective fiction and worked as a college professor before he discovered his true vocation as a novelist.
Two more of his books, “Split Image” and “Blue-Eyed Devil,” are scheduled for publication this year. But last year’s release, “The Professional,” will now be the final word on Spenser.
Fittingly perhaps, Parker, who spent so much of his life shaping books, is reported to have died sitting at his desk in his study in Cambridge, Mass.
I called Elmore to tell him that Robert Parker was at a bookstore in downtown Birmingham and asked him if he would come downtown for a little photo op, and he did. This was back in 1983 or 1984. We hung out for a while. Elmore introduced me and said I did his research. Parker fired back: “I do my own research!” Elmore dug Parker the man and his work and so did I. He will be missed.
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FX’s ‘Justified’ shoots for same tone as Elmore Leonard’s ‘Fire in the Hole’
New York Daily News
By Cristina Kinon
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERWhat Would Elmore Do?
That’s what “Justified” creator and executive producer Graham Yost asks himself and his writing team everyday as they build on crime novelist Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole” to create the new FX series starring Timothy Olyphant.
“Justified,” premiering March 16 at 10, features Olyphant as one of Elmore’s most popular characters, Raylan Givens, a deputy U.S. marshal who only shoots to kill. While “Fire in the Hole” was the guideline for the series pilot, it was on Yost’s shoulders to extend Leonard’s vision through the rest of the season.
“That was the thing that was most frightening. Could I hit that same tone?” Yost told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour Sunday. “I think we’re doing a good job.”
Leonard is credited as an executive producer on the series, but he says that’s more of an honorary position.
“I’m game,” Leonard said. “I’m ready to come up with anything they want.”
Yost says the reasons for adapting “Fire in the Hole” as a series include the fact it’s set in Kentucky, a location you don’t see often on TV; Leonard’s sense of character and humor; and the element of unexpected violence.
“I like the entertainment value of the show,” said Yost. “I thought it would be a change of pace for FX a little bit in that, while it’s a violent show, Raylan Givens is a hero. He’s a good guy, and you like him, and you’re rooting for him.”
“I like the fact that [Raylan is] not a yeller,” Yost added. “He just tells it like it is, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Olyphant, whom we last saw in FX’s “Damages” and previously on HBO’s “Deadwood,” doesn’t mind being typecast as the aggressive, brooding type, though he does think Raylan is a significant departure from Seth Bullock of “Deadwood.”
“Both characters wear hats, but after that, they really start to become their own thing,” Olyphant said. “I think that anyone who knows Elmore’s work, there’s a delicateness to it, and a tone to it, that’s just so appealing to me. It’s so fun.”
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Graham Yost on Shooting ‘Justified’ in Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
BYLINE: Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-GazettePASADENA, Calif.—Filming the pilot episode for the upcoming FX series “Justified” in Western Pennsylvania last spring, executive producer Graham Yost came away with a specific memory of Pittsburgh while staying at the Omni William Penn Downtown.
“There were an incredible amount of fireworks going off, it seemed like every night,” Yost said. “They’d echo around all the buildings and I could see them out my [hotel room] window.”
While there were fireworks in Pittsburgh, there was more of a slow burn on the set of the pilot, which was largely filmed outside of Pittsburgh. Timothy Olyphant stars in “Justified” as deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens who is re-assigned to Harlan, Ky., after a broad daylight shooting in Miami that he deems “justified.” Olyphant’s Givens is an old-school hero, a speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick kind of guy.“I like that Raylan doesn’t have to yell,” Yost said.
The show’s setting—Western Pennsylvania plays rural Kentucky in the pilot—appealed to Yost.
“It’s a different place to do a show,” he said.
Filmed under the title “Fire in the Hole,” the name of the Elmore Leonard short story the pilot is based on, the project was briefly known as “Lawman” until A&E came up with the docu-reality show “Steven Seagal Lawman.”
Leonard is an executive producer on “Justified,” something he said is honorary—he’s not working in the writers’ room—but he’s clearly a fan of the program. He plans to write another Givens short story that he said producers of the TV show will be welcome to adapt.
Yost said there are no plans to come back to Pittsburgh for additional filming during season one; maybe in season two if the show is successful. For episodes beyond the pilot, the production crew is doing its best to make areas around Los Angeles resemble Kentucky.
“Frankly, we’ve been waiting for the rain to come and green up Los Angeles,” Yost said. He praised the Pittsburgh crew that worked on the pilot and said he offered some of them jobs to work on the series in Los Angeles but found many were working on movies filming in Western Pennsylvania last year.
For the pilot, “Justified” used Kittanning to play parts of Harlan, and also filmed in Washington, Pa. No specific town in California has been used as Harlan.
“We just use little pieces here and there,” Yost said, “because small towns in California don’t look like small towns in Kentucky.”
permalinkSunday, January 17, 2010
“Justified” Debuts Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Los Angeles Times
Yvonne Villarreal
TCA Press Tour: Timothy Olyphant says ‘Justified’ is a ‘different animal’ from ‘Deadwood’Don’t let the cowboy hats and gunfights fool you: FX’s newest drama “Justified” isn’t a classic western.
In the crime drama, Timothy Olyphant plays Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, a modern-day lawman with a 19th century-style of justice. The role isn’t too much of a stretch for the actor, who portrayed 19th century merchant-turned-sheriff Seth Bullock in HBO’s short-lives series ‘Deadwood.” But this new venture isn’t a carbon copy, Olyphant insists.
“Both characters wear hats, but after that they really start to become their own thing,” Olyphant said. “[‘Deadwood’] is over and this one is just beginning. I think anyone that knows Elmore’s work ... there’s a tone to it that’s just so appealing. It’s a different animal than what ‘Deadwood’ was.”
‘Justified” was developed by Graham Yost (’‘Speed”, “Boomtown”) and is based on the popular character featured in several books and short stories by novelist Elmore Leonard, who serves as an “honorary” executive producer.
“I started reading Elmore Leonard’s stuff back in the early ‘80s with ‘La Brava,’ ” said Yost, who also serves as an executive producer. “The thing that’s always gotten to me about Elmore’s writing ... I loved his sense of character, that things were unpredictable. I thought it would be a change of pace for FX ... Raylan is a hero and he has stuff haunting him and he’s a human being. He’s a good guy and you like him and you’re rooting for him.”
While the base of the character and story comes from Leonard’s work, the challenge comes in making a whole series out of it.
“That was the thing I was most frightened of,” Yost said. “Were we going to be able to deliver? ... We’ve done a good job. We have every available book by Elmore to get the flavor and style and then we started kicking around story ideas.”
The writing team even sports WWED (What Would Elmore Do?) bracelets.
But should they ever run out of ideas, they could just look to the master. Leonard said he planned to write another short story based on the character.
“I don’t want to write for, specifically, what they’re shooting,” Leonard said. “I want to come up with a new idea and give it to them. If they like it, fine. If they don’t, don’t use it.”
The series premieres in March.
permalinkOut of Sight and Jackie Brown Creator Gets Justified
Star Timothy Olyphant and the show’s producer talk about the new FX series.
by Eric Goldman
January 17, 2010 - 3:10 to Yuma, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown - Hollywood has long seen the value in the work of Elmore Leonard, whose clever, witty crime stories are the perfect fodder for film and TV series.Coming soon to FX is Justified, the latest adaption of Leonard’s work. Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Hitman) stars as US Marshall Raylan Givens, a character from Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole,” among other stories. Today at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour, Olyphant discussed the series, along with Leonard himself (who has an executive producer credit) and Executive Producer/Showrunner Graham Yost.
Yost said he’d long been a fan of Leonard’s and immediately took to “Fire in the Hole”, when Sony approached him about series, noting, “I loved it and loved that it was set in Kentucky,” noting few films or TV series are.
The series follows Raylan when he’s essentially forced to move from Miami back to his home in Kentucky – where he quickly re-establishes himself as a very no nonsense, not to be messed with throne in the side of local criminals, including a character played by Walton Goggins (The Shield), Raylan shares some history with.
Click above to see the trailer for Justified
Yost said he loved Leonard’s, “sense of character and that things were unpredictable,” and also noted the sense of humor Leonard brings to dark proceedings. He said there have been times in the writers room when they’ve wondered, “What’s Raylan saying next?,” and then asked, ” What’s Elmore have him say next, because that would be good.”Yost revealed that when he and the writers were starting out, “We got every available book we could get by Elmore and divided them up and started reading them, to get the flavor of the style and the approach.” He showed off his wrist and a bracelet on it that he and all the writers have, which read, “WWED – What would Elmore Do?” Yost smiled and added, “People think we’re in some weird cult, but that’s okay.”
Olyphant noted he too was a huge Leonard fan, and joked that with Justified, he felt, “Finally, someone in Hollywood is going to give Elmore Leonard his shot!” More seriously, Olyphant said that when he was approached about the show, “I was just so excited. I thought, ‘Wow, this could be great.’
It’s been a joy.”Leonard said his title on the show “is more honorary,” but noted, “I saw the pilot and I thought it was great.” And would he be interested in ever writing an episode? Leonard said, “I’m game!” and added, “I’m going to write another [Raylan Givens] short story for sure.”
permalinkJustified is Unveiled to Television Critics Today
Elmore is on a panel at a Television Critics Association press conference this morning in Pasadena for his new FX show, “Justified” with show creator, Graham Yost and series star, Timothy Olyphant (Raylan Givens.)
permalinkFriday, January 15, 2010
Touch - Too Laid Back?
The Movie Hooligan reviews Touch, a 1997 film directed by Paul Schrader, based on Elmore’s novel.
in the wake of Get Shorty, it seemed that Elmore Leonard could FINALLY be adapted, and the Coens worked on a treatment for his Cuba Libre, for example. Yes, he was no longer confined to the neo-noir ghetto of the likes of Donald Westlake and others… Charles Willeford? He was one hot commodity now, and Touch would be the perfect vehicle for his talent.
Or so it was thought. I dunno. Something about it. It needed more action or something. It was too immaculate, too laid back. It’s about this guy with a very powerful gift, and those first hit by the blast wave that would eventually reach a national television audience. Skeet Ulrich plays the guy with the gift, and everyone else pretty much plays someone who would exploit that gift. Who will it be? Will it be the slick huckster preacher Bill Hill played by a Christopher Walken impersonator? Oh, wait, it’s actually Christopher Walken. Or will it be his pretty former assistant played by ... UNDERplayed by Bridget Fonda? Get that girl a mike! Or will it be the obnoxious Tom Arnold? Seriously, though, he did pretty good. I guess you could say the character was perfect for his ‘90s persona; then again, one doesn’t usually equate Tom Arnold with religious orthodoxy. Does Skeet Ulrich himself long for a life of fame and riches? Will his gift disappear once he achieves either? Who’s exploiting who here? Or could it be that God’s exploiting all of us, and frankly being a bit of a showoff by giving one man Christ-ish powers? I kinda like that last answer, since I thought of it myself.
There are various colorful cameos, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Christopher Walken and Anthony Zerbe are reunited after appearing 14 years earlier in The Dead Zone. Lolita Davidovich takes a break from working with hubby Ron Shelton to make an appearance as a former Catholic turned stripper. She and Christopher Walken give Tom Arnold a theological run for his money. I will say that the music was pretty good. I would give a shout-out to Conchata Ferrell, but really, everyone knows Mr. Deeds is the performance she’ll be remembered for.
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The Top Four: You Pick
Here’s another attempt of an ongoing blog-feeder called The Top Four: You Pick. If you want to play, great.
Pick your top four Elmore Leonard titles and explain however briefly why you choose them and what connection, if any, exists when you put them together. In my example, I chose: Classic Titles from The Last Four Decades. You might chose “books in the trunk of the car as Buddy sped away from the prison.”
Everybody has a different take on Elmore’s work. We want to see what you think. Post your choices in The Dutch Forum
permalinkSaturday, January 09, 2010
Hollywood taps Elmore Leonard again
This time it’s for the FX show ‘Justified,’ starring Timothy Olyphant as Leonard’s Kentucky coal miner turned lawman, Raylan Givens.
The Los Angeles Times
By Scott Timberg
It’s just a few blocks from some of Los Angeles’ best regional Mexican food, but thanks to the magic of television, we’re not in Highland Park but Kentucky coal country. Or rather, in a tiny, cramped hardware store, stuffed with bags of powdered stucco, countless screws and what may be every cleaner known to man.
The magic, though, is starting to fray during a tense morning in which a few dozen chilly people have been standing around since 5 a.m. “Do you need a one-hold strap?” snaps director Michael Watkins, an intense, red-faced man with a crown of white hair who is clearly tired of waiting around. “I can get you a ground clamp!”
The cast and crew rubbing their hands together from the cold and wearing headsets, earpieces and North Face jackets have gathered to shoot a drama based on the work of Elmore Leonard, now called “Justified,” after at least one name change.The show is a cops-and-robbers drama to debut on FX in March, with an unusual setting and promising pedigree
Go to latimes.com to read the rest of the story.
Read More>
permalinkRaylan Givens - “He’ll pull his gun if he has to, and when he does, he’s generally lethal with it”
Entertainment Weekly
January 15, 2010 Friday
New Shows
BYLINE: Lynette Rice; Tanner Stransky; Kate Ward; Adam B. Vary; Tim Stack; Dan SniersonJUSTIFIED
FX | MARCH TBA | CRIME DRAMAWHAT IT’S ABOUT
Based on Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole,” this drama follows Stetson-topped deputy U.S. marshal Raylan Givens (Deadwood’s Timothy Olyphant) as he’s reassigned to his native Kentucky, where he confronts some bad guys-and his own personal demons, natch.
WHAT TO EXPECT
The sharpshooting Givens chases down a white supremacist in the pilot, but rassles with plenty of other foes throughout the season, including his outlaw father (Raymond J. Barry) and a fugitive-turned-dentist (Alan Ruck). “Givens is a true-blue hero,” says exec producer Graham Yost (Boomtown). “He’ll pull his gun if he has to, and when he does, he’s generally lethal with it. But he’s not a screaming cop. He’s macho in a quiet way. There’s a little bit of the old spaghetti-Western Clint Eastwood in that.” That’s exactly what attracted Olyphant to the role-not to mention the fact that Leonard is on board as an executive producer. “There’s a wit to it,” Olyphant says. “[With] Elmore’s writing, you kind of feel a little twinkle in his eye.” Yost, who borrowed some of Leonard’s dialogue for the pilot, is confident he can bring Givens’ charm-and fashion sense-to the small screen, thanks to their leading man. “Tim was in Deadwood,” Yost says, “so we knew he could wear the hat.”
-KWToo bad they got the wrong hat. - g
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Friday, January 08, 2010
Out of Sight - “The Foundation for Everything Good Clooney’s Done Since”
From Being Clooney: Not as Easy as It Looks
By Terrence Rafferty
New York Times
When [Clooney] finally found a role in which he looked entirely at ease, it was in a film that was neither a standard-issue piece of studio entertainment nor quite an offbeat indie, but something in between: Steven Soderbergh’s tricky comic caper movie “Out of Sight” (1998), based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, and with all the noirish eccentricity that implies. Mr. Leonard’s skewed world, in which competence, wit and unfussy romance are highly prized — and constantly endangered, because there are always way too many thugs and morons about — turns out to be an environment in which Mr. Clooney (if not his character) can thrive.
His performance is all sly looks and bone-dry readings, held together by a general air of barely contained exasperation at the antics of the fools and knaves who surround him. And although he’s a thief and an escaped convict, he looks with undisguised admiration at the United States marshal who’s trying to bring him to justice: she knows her job, and she’s Jennifer Lopez besides.
His style in “Out of Sight” is too elusive, too stylized — it’s like lowlife Restoration comedy — to serve as a repeatable, bankable star persona, but it’s the foundation, in a way, for everything good he’s done since then, the theme on which he works his small, increasingly subtle variations. The larcenous gulf war soldier he plays in David O. Russell’s inventive “Three Kings” (1999) is a tougher, slightly bitterer version of his “Out of Sight” character, and it fits.
permalinkThursday, January 07, 2010
“The mad, enthralling novels of Elmore Leonard” by Robert Fulford
(Globe and Mail, July 8, 1998)
Elmore Leonard’s endlessly surprising characters are back in the movie theatres this summer, dancing nimbly through one of his cleverest stories, Out of Sight, with George Clooney as a fugitive bank robber and Jennifer Lopez as a federal marshal whose taste in boyfriends is at best eccentric. Though it may sound like a cold-blooded assembly of standard Hollywood elements (sexy, violent, suspenseful romantic comedy), nothing in Out of Sight feels like a formula. The reason is the mind from which this mad, enthralling novel sprang.
As always, Leonard expertly engineered the plot and shaped characters of fascinating perversity. Steven Soderbergh has directed what may well be the most Elmore-ish film ever drawn from one of his books. It catches Leonard’s deadpan comedy, the farce produced inadvertently by people who are entirely in earnest. He once said of his criminal characters, “I just think of them as, for the most part, normal people who get up in the morning and wonder what they’re going to have for breakfast, and they sneeze, and they wonder if they should call their mother, and then they rob a bank.” Of course, they usually get caught, and then wonder what went wrong.
On this sort of material, Leonard has made an astonishing career. At the age of 73 he’s reached a unique status: no other American crime writer has ever been so successful and so admired in his lifetime. Martin Amis mentioned recently in a public discussion that he had spotted several Leonard novels on the shelves of Saul Bellow’s place in Boston. “Bellow and I agreed,” Amis continued, “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.” Leonard has also become a one-man entertainment conglomerate. Of the 34 novels he’s written, a dozen have been best-sellers and 29 have been made into movies or optioned. Next month, ABC starts a TV series based on Maximum Bob, his 1991 novel, with Beau Bridges as the malicious judge who gives everyone convicted in his court the longest jail term the law allows.
In Out of Sight, the reckless confidence of the Lopez character, Karen Sisco, has attracted everyone’s notice. Leonard isn’t famous for heroines but in earlier books you can see rough sketches for Karen emerging. His 1980 novel, City Primeval, has a smart, tough criminal lawyer, Carolyn Wilder, who keeps on her wall a famous remark by Charlotte Whitton, the mayor of Ottawa 40 years ago—“Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” Then there’s Kathy Diaz Baker in Maximum Bob, the tough, pretty, take-no-trash parole officer whose energy pushes the story along. Since writing Out of Sight, Leonard has gone further. When he astonished his admirers last winter with Cuba Libre, a historical novel that takes place in Cuba in 1898, he put Amelia Brown near the centre of the book. At the beginning she’s simply a kept woman, but she has ideas of her own and a manic determination to carry them out.
Long-time Leonard fans love to watch him twist his characters till they become interesting and create the terrifying U-turns in plot that bring his narratives to life. He’s a manipulator and a genre writer as well as an author of high talent. Considering his exalted position, he gives remarkably down-to-earth interviews about his career. He started out writing westerns, he says, because that’s what the market wanted. Then, “The market dried up, and I had to switch to crime.” Amis and Bellow may say there’s no one like him (and they’re right), but he’s never claimed to be entirely original. “I learned by imitating Hemingway….until I realized that I didn’t share his attitude about life. I didn’t take myself or anything as seriously as he did.”
All stories about authors involve breathtaking devotion to craft. Anthony Trollope getting up every morning to write for a few hours before going out to organize the British post office. Gustave Flaubert spending a whole morning just inserting a comma, then in the afternoon taking it out. Character is destiny: that’s what the lives of writers tell us, the same sort of thing you’ll often find inside their books.
In the 1950s Leonard worked in a Detroit advertising agency, writing ads for Chevrolet. That drove him crazy, he’s said, “Because you had to write real cute then. I had a lot of trouble with that. I could do truck ads, but I couldn’t do convertibles at all.” He began getting up at five a.m. to write fiction for two hours before going to the office. “I wrote most of five books that way. I had one rule: I had to start writing before I put the water on for coffee. And I couldn’t pick up a magazine. If I hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be talking.”
There’s something sweetly obsessive (and altogether admirable) about that story, the man denying himself coffee till he got some work done. I find even more charming the simple but hugely ambitious rule of writing that he claims he’s lived by: “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”
permalinkMonday, January 04, 2010
Coming Soon - JUSTIFIED
In a couple of weeks, the producers of Justified, based on Elmore’s novella, “Fire in the Hole,” starring Timothy Olyphant, will show off their new show to television critics. We should know then the exact date that the show will premiere, perhaps as early as late March.
permalinkSaturday, January 02, 2010
“I can’t imagine not having a good book close by”
For “Books Go Everywhere”
The Library Network.permalink
Thanks to my sister, who used to read to me when I was little. I’ve always loved books. Growing up I must have read everything from “Cinderella” and Little Goody Two Shoes” to “Treasure Island and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Next came Raphael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk,” “Scaramouche and the Don Sturdy series of adventures. Pretty soon I was reading Book-of-the-Month Club selections, novels written by contemporary authors. I discovered Ernest Hemingway and decide that, more than anything else, I wanted to be a writer someday. This meant reading not simply for enjoyment but with a special purpose, to learn how to tell stories.
I’m always amazed when I’m in someone’s home and see no evidence of books. Or when someone tells me he never reads novels, doesn’t have time for that. Really? You don’t need a special time or place to read. You can take a book with you wherever you go and find moments to entertain yourself, or to learn about something you’d like to know.
I can’t imagine not having a good book close by, one that I can’t wait to begin.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
New Up in Honey’s Room Paperback from Einaudi
Su Nella Stanza di Honey
Another superb Italian cover from Einaudi. Why don’t American publishers do covers this kick-ass?permalink
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Brilliant-But-Canceled Shows of the ‘00s
Time Magazine
Posted by James Poniewozik
As long as we’re remembering the decade in television, here’s a list of a dozen shows that could have been among the decade’s best, but lasted only a season or two (or less) before being snuffed out.
KAREN SISCO. The short-lived Elmore Leonard adaptation captured the hard-boiled melancholy of the character from Out of Sight.
More...
permalinkMonday, December 28, 2009
Elmore says: “I’m so glad that I chose Westerns…”
”... at that time rather than some writers’ workshop where you’re just writing something experimental or you’re writing something that’s contemporary about your life and you come out with just a pointless short story.”
Gambit Weekly
Leonard’s early writing years take center stage as his Western stories, published by long-dead pulp weeklies and monthlies such as Western Story and Dime Western Magazine, have been collected in one volume for the first time: The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard (William Morrow).
While many of the stories conform to the Western canon (relentless heat, senseless violence, distrust between Indians and whites), they offer ample plot twists and derivations, cinematic storytelling and the author’s trademark sharp dialogue.
OTHER THAN BRIEF FAMILY MIGRATIONS TO OKLAHOMA and Texas during his boyhood, Leonard never spent any time in the American West chronicled in his short stories. He wasn’t even much enamored with cowboys-and-Indians lore beyond a weakness for Hollywood oaters filled with gunfights and Monument Valley vistas. But Leonard did see an opportunity to learn storytelling and make money at the same time, which convinced him to tackle Westerns.
“I wanted to make some money at it while I was learning to write,” he says. “It takes 10 years to find your (writing) voice. If you can be selling while you do that, it’s all the better.”
He began by reading books about Arizona during the late-1800s. For scenery and setting, Leonard subscribed to Arizona Highways, combing the magazine’s lavish pictures and captions for local color. “It told you what that cactus was called that was crawling up the side of the canyon. Otherwise I could be out there and not know a thing about it. That was the beauty of it.”
Thus his Westerns offer snippets of description, enough detail to make the reader believe he is ensconced in the land of saguaros. Pine trees are wedged in close among the bare, rolling hills, Leonard writes. Or, he’s noting the clumps of mesquite and catclaw amid sun-glare that creates shimmering waves of hazy heat.
Lest one get bored with such lengthy examination of source material, blame this reviewer, not the erstwhile Western writer. Leonard, even in the early works on display in this collection, doesn’t abide back-story, lengthy descriptions of weather and setting—or simple good guy-bad guy confrontations.
As with his contemporary crime novels (Get Shorty, Maximum Bob, Freaky Deaky), Leonard’s West is edgy, unpredictable and driven by dialogue. Leonard lets his characters talk and talk and talk and, all the while, pages riffle past in a blur.
“I’m so glad I stayed with a commercial market.”
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Friday, December 25, 2009
Road Dogs in Review AND Merry Christmas
Two Thousand Nine was the Year of the Road Dog. Here’s a repost of excerpts from some of the outstanding reviews of Elmore’s latest hardcover.
Bookmarks Magazine assembled some of the best review quotes about Road Dogs.
The critics, thrilled with Leonard’s latest novel, unanimously praised it as another success in a long line of groundbreaking successes. Leonard’s revolutionary, minimalist style—including his disdain for long descriptions and tedious scene setting—sends the plot racing along on deliciously deadpan dialogue between vivid, engaging characters, a few of whom readers already know and love. Amid the murder andmayhem, Leonard also poses larger questions about the varying degrees of loyalty and treachery in relationships. Readers new to Leonard don’t need to return to the earlier novels to appreciate Road Dogs, but they probably will once they’re hooked. Leonard’s fans will deffnitely share the critics’ hopes that Jack will return for a third performance.
Boston Globe *****
“The fun in the best of his novels—and this is the best in years—stems from the fact that Leonard starts turning the screws on page one and never stops. The dialogue crackles; the supporting characters are crisply drawn; and the story achieves almost instant escape velocity.” STEPHEN KING
Christian Science Monitor *****
“The story glides along and, before you know it, it’s way past your bedtime but Jack Foley is too charming to shut off the lights just now. In lieu of filler, Leonard revs the plot, dials up the banter, and gets out of the way.” ERIK SPANBERG
New York Times *****
“Foley has the brains, Cundo the machismo and Dawn the shamelessness to make this one of Mr. Leonard’s most enjoyably sneaky stories. ... Mr. Leonard, now 83, still writes with high style, great energy, unflappable cool and a jubilant love of the game.” JANET MASLIN
Washington Post ****
“Road Dogs is yet another gem in a career that has endured for more than half a century and given us 42 novels. ... Each [character] ismotivated by some mixture of greed and lust—with a bit of stupidityoften added—and the novel unfolds as a masterpiece of duplicity.” PATRICK ANDERSON
NY Times Book Review ****
“Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, Road Dogs—underlying its material of sex, violence and money, and beyond its cast of cons and thugs and movie stars—presents interesting questions. Can a grown person change? Speci"cally, can a man abandon an expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real?” ROBERT PINSKY
Oregonian ****
“Leonard is a master storyteller. ... Road Dogs evolves from a cheerful and moderately grisly buddy story into a taut study of people striving to manipulate each other without being manipulated in turn.” KATHERINE DUNN
Providence Journal ****
“Here they come again: Elmore Leonard’s larcenous, murderous, plot-spinning, yarn-spouting robbers, ex-cons, bimbos and lawmen in a terrifically funny and quirky novel that delights and shocks as much as it entertains and astounds. ... Leonard writes in such a deliciously deadpan manner that he makes his characters talk about murder and conspiracy the way we might plan a dinner party.” SAM COALE
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Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Rwanda - “Strange Setting for Elmore Leonard Book”
Not really.
The Reading Journal: Pagan Babies By Elmore Leonard
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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.
Monday, December 21, 2009
“Justified” Trailer
permalinkSaturday, 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:
permalinkQ: 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.
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
permalinkTuesday, 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.)
permalinkYou 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?”
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.
permalinkElmore 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.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
The Westerners by C. Courtney Joyner - Chapter on Elmore
The Westerners: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Writers and Producers
permalinkActors, 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.
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.
