The Dickens of Detroit has passed.
Read the full article on AICN
Elmore Leonard was not precious in his writing. He was a storyteller and an acute observer of human behavior (particularly the illicit kind), getting his start writing westerns in the '50s, then segueing to crime fiction in the late '60s. His economical narratives and sharp, colorful dialogue seemed a natural match for cinema, and yet, Hollywood being Hollywood, many of the adaptations turned out poorly. Delmer Daves's 3:10 TO YUMA and Budd Boetticher's THE TALL T were early triumphs, and Martin Ritt's HOMBRE was solid, but there was a spell throughout the '70s and '80s where his work was desecrated like so much Jackie Collins. It wasn't until Barry Sonnenfeld's GET SHORTY in 1995 that the full, idiosyncratic flavor of Leonard's mobbed-up yarns were approximated for the big screen. From this point forward, Hollywood got it gloriously right more often than they got blew it: JACKIE BROWN, OUT OF SIGHT, the short-lived ABC series KAREN SISCO and the still-going-strong JUSTIFIED more than atone for botch jobs like BE COOL and FREAKY DEAKY.
Leonard has been such a vital part of the popular culture lately that his passing at the age of eighty-seven feels akin to losing Raymond Chandler right before the publication of THE LONG GOODBYE. Leonard was cooking, damn it. His latest novel, RAYLAN (inspired by the widespread affection for JUSTIFIED), found that old lean-and-mean groove, and sustained itself right to its immensely satisfying conclusion. This wasn't Howard Hawks taking a good-natured curtain call with RIO LOBO; this was a
Finish the article on AICN
No comments:
Post a Comment