Crime and western writer Elmore Leonard, who died today, wrote more than 40 books (not to mention scores of short stories)—dozens of which have been made into movies and TV shows. What's your favorite? Which would you recommend? Which adaptation got Leonard best? Let's chat about our favorite Elmore Leonard book, movie, or adapted work.
[image from Get Shorty]
Everything I've read by him is amazing. I'm particularly fond of Maximum Bob, because that's a great title. Split Images is also pretty amazing, the first I read, doesn't get discussed much. Freaky Deaky, Pagan Babies, the short stories in When the Women Come Out to Dance, one of which I think marks the first appearance of Rayland Givens.
I don't think many adaptations get him very well at all. I like Jackie Brown, I think that gets him, that attention to minutiae, the banality of low-life living, sitting on the couch, waiting in the parking lot. Stuff like that. It's also a great Tarantino film because it's the one film of his where his authorship gets to recede a little and he demonstrates just what an economical and skilled director he is, without as much in the way of the constant oddball referential tics (which I like). I think I read somewhere about how surprised he was with what Tarantino did with it. A) Jackie Brown the character in Rum Punch was a white woman, not Pam Grier, and B) I believe he was quoted as saying he was surprised by how much character Tarantino, and Robert Forster were able to give to Max Cherry. More than he had imbued him with in the novel for sure.
Next to that I'd say Soderbergh's Out of Sight. Nails the same things Tarantino's does, Karen Sisco in a dolphin's jersey having coffee with her dad, the sort of haze she's in.
Get Shorty/Be Cool/The Big Bounce/Justified (yes, sorry, it does) pretty much all suck. Not his fault. I don't think they "get him."
Funny to think that the best movies of both Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh are Elmore adaptations!
