Elmore Leonard in Hollywood

Q: At least Stick got made. Dustin Hoffman seemed to screw you when it came to LaBrava.

A: When we met for the first time, Hoffman said he liked it a lot. The next time he said he felt that it would play better if his character were in love with a younger woman than the character in the book, who was a 50-year-old movie star--where were you going to get a good-looking 50-year-old woman? A month later I came back with a new set of 50 pages and Dustin said, "I can fall in love with the older woman. I met Anouk Aimee over the weekend. She looks great." Then the phone rings and it's Anouk calling from Paris. He says to me, "Come on, get on the phone, say hello to her." I said, "What am I going to say to Anouk Aimee? That I loved her picture A Man and a Woman 20 years ago?" He said, "Just listen to her voice, it's great." So I got on the phone, "Hi, Anouk." At the end of the meeting he called her number in Paris and we each had to get on and listen to her voice message in French. He dialed it each time for each person who was there. Then, in the middle of our third meeting, he said, "Oh, I forgot, I promised my daughter I'd take her to the movies." And he leaves.

The next day he comes in and says, "God, it was a beautiful day yesterday, what'd you do, go to the park?" The next meeting, Martin Scorsese was there. Now we're pretty close to something. And Dustin said, "No, we want to be absolutely sure of the story." I said, "Well, it's OK for you guys to say that, I'm doing all the work on spec." And Hoffman said, "Don't worry about it, you'll be paid retroactively." My agent thought it was about the funniest thing he'd ever heard. The next meeting was just Scorsese and I. He's a real pro, no bullshit. But he left to do The Color of Money. Then Hal Ashby was brought in by Dustin, and then Dustin quit.

Q: But that wasn't the end of LaBrava, was it?

A: No. They gave the script to Al Pacino. I went to New York and met with Pacino and he asked, "Why am I in love with this woman?" I thought, "Oh my God."

Q: And where is LaBrava today?

A: Universal owns it. Buck Henry has written a script. When I met Norman Mailer he said he wanted to do the movie of LaBrava, but he said, "I would take your script and rewrite it." I said, "Of course you'd do that, that's the first thing anybody would do."

Q: In your Hollywood novel, Get Shorty, you write about actors who get lucky, hit it big and suddenly know everything there is to know about making movies. Who are the schmucks who come to mind?

A: Probably all of them. That would seem to be most actors who, as soon as their price goes up, they're writing new dialogue. Actors don't like to see the writer on the set.

Q: Why did Get Shorty work?

A: My books haven't been easy to shoot because they've been taken too seriously. With Get Shorty the emphasis was on the humor. But the characters played it straight. The way the characters respond to one another has to be taken seriously.

Q: Give me an example of what you're talking about.

A: Bruce Willis sent me a script of my book Bandits, and in it one character says, "Do you know that every 16 seconds in the U.S. a woman is physically abused?" The other guy shakes his head and says, "You wouldn't think that many get out of line." Then the script has this character grin and wink. I explained to Willis that this guy is not being funny--this is his mentality.

Q: Is it true when you were on the set John Travolta was very respectful?

A: Yeah, he called me Mr. Leonard. And I let him.

Q: For how long?

A: Just the first day. He got over that.

Q: Have most of the Get Shorty cast signed on to the sequel, Be Cool?

A: MGM wants to do it, but we're waiting to hear from Travolta. He said he wants to do it but he hasn't read the first 115 pages, which we sent to show the feeling of it. I met with him last summer and there's no question that he wants to do it. I think he'd be nuts not to, because the movie will work. But I haven't made a deal with MGM yet, because I want to finish the book first. I don't want anyone feeling that they can make suggestions. I don't need any suggestions from people I don't know.

Q: Is there any pressure on you to write the sequel a certain way based on how Get Shorty was received?

A: No, not after 45 years. The way I look at it, either it will happen or it won't. If it doesn't, I'll go ahead and write another book. The main thing I learned in the mid-'80s was: don't take it too seriously. Hitchcock said to Ernest Lehman, who was stewing over North by Northwest, "Ernie, it's only a movie."

Q: Will you ever write another screenplay?

A: I'm definitely not going to adapt any more of my books. It's too much work. You're dealing with too many people who haven't left Beverly Hills in 20 years telling you how people in the world talk.

Q: Until recently, did you go out of your way not to see what Hollywood did to your work?

A: I was invited to London, where they were going to put on all the movies that I've been associated with, and I was to get up on the stage and talk about them. I told the guy, "You're crazy. You think I'm going to show up for that?"

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