Elmore Leonard in Hollywood

Q: How often do you and your wife go to the movies?

A: We'll go see three movies, like Titanic, Wag the Dog, Boogie Nights, then we won't go for a few weeks. We'll get videos of the ones we missed. I like the movies. My favorite movie of the last few years is The Last of the Mohicans. It's a terrific love story. Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe never go to bed, but the way they look at each other, and touch each other. And the action, jeez. Just a wonderful story.

Q: Did you see L.A. Confidential?

A: Oh yeah. That was a honey. I didn't read the book, though. It's not the kind of fiction I normally read. James Ellroy has got more energy in his writing probably than anybody going today. I blurbed his Black Dahlia and said that there should be a warning on the book, that this should not be read aloud or you're liable to shatter your wine glasses. I like to talk to Ellroy. We run into each other once every two or three years.

Q: What do you think about the current state of cinema compared to your experiences over the last three decades?

A: I like it more. I don't go out of my way to see the big explosions, but God, they're a lot of fun for the most part. The science fiction I don't care for too much.

Q: Let's go back to your early experiences with Hollywood and how it affected you. Was it the sale of Hombre to the movies for $10,000 in 1967 that enabled you to concentrate on your next novel, The Big Bounce, which your agent, H.N. Swanson, was convinced he could sell?

A: Yeah, my first agent was very ill, so she sent it to Swanie, who called me up and asked, "Did you write this book?" I said, "Of course." He said, "Well, kiddo, I'm going to make you rich." Then he got 84 rejec¬tions--in New York and Hollywood. The editors all said it was a downer. So I rewrote it. And Swanie sold it to the movies for, like, $50,000.

Q: A lot of good that did for Ryan O'Neal's career.

A: He didn't have a career. He came out of TV, Peyton Place. I was once in Trader Vic's with Abby Mann and he noticed Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett and said Ryan wanted to meet me. I said, "[But] he was in The Big Bounce." And Abby said, "He still wants to meet you." So I went over and met him and we blamed it on the director.

Q: After The Big Bounce, you began writing scripts yourself, beginning with The Moonshine War in 1970.

A: When I was going out to Hollywood to write the revisions for The Moonshine War, Swanie said, "How much do you want a week?" I said, I didn't know, so he suggested $2,500.1 said, "Why not $3,500?" He called back in 20 minutes and said, "You're getting $3,500."

Q: Alan Alda, Richard Widmark and Patrick McGoohan starred in The Moonshine War. What did you think of the result?

A: I thought the casting was all wrong. Richard Widmark's accent was terrible. Patrick McGoohan walked over to me the only day I was on the set and said, "What's it like to hear your lines all fucked up?"

Q: You were just getting your feet wet. How have you handled the mangling of so many of your creations?

A: It seems to be the nature of the business. I've never seen a business that's so full of amateurs. And a lot of these people I suspect aren't even that a fond of movies, that's what gets me. To them it's just something to sell. What has this got to do with movies? That's why I took Chandler's advice on working in Hollywood, which was to wear your second-best suit, artistically speaking, and keep your mouth shut. Don't become cynical, because it won't do any good. I always wore my navy blue suit, buttoned up, and said "Please" and "Thank you," and got the first plane home.

Q: There's never been a time when you were seduced by the Hollywood lifestyle?

A: Never. It wasn't seductive at all, it was all work.

Q: But you did choose to do a lot of that work.

A: Donald Westlake wrote me a letter and asked: "Why do you keep hoping to see a good movie made? The books are ours, everything else is virgins thrown in the volcano. Be happy if the check is good."

Q: Why do you keep hoping?

A: I'm optimistic by nature.

Q: You weren't too optimistic with what Burt Reynolds did when he directed and starred in Stick, were you?

A: When Reynolds was on Good Morning America he was told that I didn't think too highly of the movie, and he said, "I don't know what happened to him, I thought he was a beautiful guy and then he turned on me."

Q: Didn't you write him a four-page memo detailing your objections after you'd seen the picture?

A: Yeah, and I never heard from him. After I saw a first cut I told an interviewer that I thought it was awful. It got around and they sent Reynolds back to Florida with new scenes and a couple million dollars to shoot them. Later, Sid Sheinberg called me and said, "We want you to see the new version," and Lew Wasserman said, "God, what an improvement, it's great now." So they fly us out and the limo picks us up and takes us to the studio and we see the picture and it's no better. Now it's got machine guns and scorpions in it.

Q: I've got a friend who asked Reynolds to sign his copy of Stick, and Reynolds wrote: "It could have been a very special film, but Universal and Dutch Leonard himself sold out. It was a sad and bitter film that they finally released. Great writer, not a good man."

A: How could he blame me, for godsakes? He had it rewritten and he directed it!

Q: Did you see him in Boogie Nights?

A: I thought it was a good performance, but I didn't see anything exceptional about it.

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