Quentin Tarantino's favorite novelist recounts decades of being jerked around by Hollywood talents like Burt Reynolds and Dustin Hoffman, explains why Get Shorty was the first decent adaptation of one of his novels, and gives thumbs up to the chemistry of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in the new film of his novel Out of Sight.
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We're upstairs at Johnny Depp's Viper Room on Sunset where a crowd of hip, sophisticated people, some loaded, others high on nicotine, have paid $10 each to hear Elmore Leonard read a few pages from Be Cool, his work-in-progress sequel to Get Shorty. At 9 p.m. the curtain opens, and the 73-year-old Michigan novelist stands in front of a microphone. No introductions are needed, and Leonard makes no small talk. The hum of the crowd subsides as the coolest man in the room begins to read the sharp, witty dialogue that has made him such a cult figure.
Leonard's moment in the Hollywood limelight has been a long time coming. He spent more than 30 years flirting around the edges of the movie business, seeing some of his work turned into films even he had to walk out of. Remember Paul Newman in Hombre? Roy Scheider in 52 Pick-Up? Charles Bronson in Mr. Majestyk? Clint Eastwood in Joe Kidd? They--and many others--were all inhabiting characters born in Elmore Leonard's fertile imagination. But only since Get Shorty has Leonard's fiction been adapted with any real finesse. The turning point in Leonard's Hollywood fortunes seems to have come when Quentin Tarantino, then 31, told talk-show host Charlie Rose that Elmore Leonard's novels were his inspiration for True Romance. And indeed, after Pulp Fiction, when Tarantino could pick and choose anything he wanted, he and his producer partner, Lawrence Bender, went straight for Leonard. Jackie Brown, based on Leonard's Rum Punch, was Tarantino's tribute to his hero.
Now there's Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. And suddenly--with projects based on Leonard's fiction all over town--like the four novels Miramax bought for Tarantino (Killshot, Freaky Deaky, Bandits, Forty Lashes Less One), and Maximum Bob, which ABC is turning into a TV series, not to mention Swag, The Switch, City Primeval, Unknown Man No. 89, LaBrava and Cuba Libre, all of which are owned by one entity or another--Hollywood is paying to listen to Elmore Leonard.
So the man who started in the advertising business and wrote short stories about cowboys before going to work each morning, and who has written a dozen screenplays and 34 novels, has finally hit the jackpot in the film as well as the publishing world.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: How much credit do you give to Quentin Tarantino for the interest of Hollywood in your work now?
ELMORE LEONARD: It helped enormously. I don't know him that well. I hung around with him twice on the set of Jackie Brown, and we talked about movies. He knows a lot about my work--he'll refer to things that I haven't really thought of. He wants to write and appear in Killshot as Richie Nix, one of the bad guys, opposite De Niro. And he wants Tony Scott to direct. That's his plan. It almost came about at one time. But they all have companies and they all get involved and that's how it becomes a $50 million picture before you set up the lights.
Q: Did you have anything to say to Tarantino about adapting your work?
A: No, because I figure he knows what he's doing. I was surprised at some of the pictures that he likes, like Blow Out and Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo. He's so aware of what the director is doing even if it's not a very good picture. He called me up a couple of weeks before he went into production with Jackie Brown and said, "I've been afraid to call you for the last year." And I said, "Why? Because you've changed the title and you're starring a black woman in the lead?" And he said, "Yeah." I said, "I think Pam Grier is a good idea." I'm not concerned how close the adaptation is. It's whether it's a good movie or not.
Q: The last few years have certainly changed the financial respect Hollywood has had for you, in addition to everything else. What's the single largest paycheck you've gotten?
A: I sold the screen rights to Out of Sight for $2.5 million.
Q: Have you seen the movie yet?
A: I saw dailies. It looks good to me.
Q: Did you see chemistry between George Clooney, as the bank robber, and Jennifer Lopez, as the federal marshal tracking him?
A: Yeah, looks good to me. I didn't see the bedroom scene, but I saw them in the scene where they're stuck together in the trunk of a car.
Q: Is the book as sexy as they've made the movie?
A: No.
Q: How did it become such a sexy movie then?
A: You put Jennifer Lopez in it, that's going to make it sexy.
Q: George Clooney has yet to catch on as a movie actor. Think he will with this one?
A: He has a natural look and presence that's gonna work. They think he's got a Steve McQueen quality about him. I saw Nicholson in the part first, then I suggested Sean Connery. I didn't think age would matter one bit. But I think it does work with Clooney.
Q: Since you mentioned McQueen, didn't you once write something for him?
A: That was a project called American Flag, about the little guy against the big mining company. I wrote a 20-page outline which McQueen optioned. When I first met him, he'd had an accident riding his dirt bike out in the desert the day before and he slipped his pants down to show me this huge scrape on his hip that he bandaged while we were talking about the movie. He was going with Ali McGraw then, and he wanted her in the picture. But nothing ever happened to it.
Q: Around that time you were also writing for some other tough guys, like Clint Eastwood, who starred in Joe Kidd, which you scripted. Wasn't Mr. Majestyk, which starred Charles Bronson, also originally written for Eastwood?
A: Right. Eastwood asked me for something like Dirty Harry only different. I came up with an idea that evening and called him in Carmel. He said to work it up. So I wrote a 23-page outline and went to see him. But by that time he had acquired High Plains Drifter, so he passed. My agent gave it to producer Walter Mirisch who sold it to United Artists, and they got Charles Bronson involved. That was an original screenplay--I wrote the book after the movie.
Q: You've credited the movies, specifically Westerns, with inspiring you to become a writer. What was it about movies like My Darling Clementine that got to you?
A: My Darling Clementine _interested me because of that black-and-white look of it, the realism. When I was brought out to Hollywood to write a script, what they wanted was _Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and so on. But what I had in mind was My Darling Clementine. That's the difference in the attitude between the studios and me. I'm sure Gunfight at the O.K. Corral made more money. I'm not opposed to that--I've always been a commercial writer. But I don't put heroes in my stories, I put everyday people.
Q: The Western you're best known for is 1967's Hombre, which starred Paul Newman.
A: Once, in a Beverly Hills men's shop, my wife and I saw Paul Newman walk in. We hung around to see what he was going to buy. My wife said, "Go over and tell him that you wrote Hombre." I said, "What if he didn't like it?" We just watched him try on a jacket and then we left.
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.
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?"
Q: Let's talk about what's going on now with some of your books. How about 1978's The Switch?
A: That's the one Diane Keaton was going to be in at Fox. But then Ruthless People came out and they shelved it because they thought it was the same story. I didn't think it was, but that was the end of it. That's the book that Quentin stole from a store when he was a teenager and got caught. The way I tell the story, he subsequently went back to the store and bought the book. Quentin said, "I went back, but I didn't buy the book--I stole it [again]." The three characters who appeared in that book are also in Rum Punch [made into 1997's Jackie Brown], which is why Quentin wanted to buy Rum Punch.
Q: Who's writing the script for Freaky Deaky?
A: Monte Hellman. I think my writing in that one is as good as I can get in a novel.
Q: In Freaky Deaky you have a character say about the '60s, "That whole show back then was a put-on. You gonna tell me we were trying to change the world? We were kicking ass and having fun." Is that how you feel?
A: A lot of it was, no question. The '60s were great, but what amazes me is that now that period doesn't seem to have made any difference. We've kind of come back to what we were before. I didn't think there would ever be any conservative people in the world after the '60s.
Q: Sam Peckinpah wanted to make a movie from your 1980 book City Primeval. You and Peckinpah seemed to many to be a dream team. What happened?
A: I wasn't that happy about Peckinpah as a director. He was abstract, almost philosophical about how he saw the film, which was being called Hang Tough. I was never sure what he was talking about. We didn't share the same sense of humor--his was quite broad, mine is subtle. His idea of humor is: James Caan spends a night with a girl and Robert Duvall doesn't tell him until the next morning in the car driving off somewhere that she's got gonorrhea. He thinks that's the funniest thing in the world and he's howling, got tears in his eyes. I don't think that's so funny.
Q: You've been pretty hard on blacks and on Detroit in some of your books. In City Primeval a character describes Detroit as "one big niggerville with a few whites sprinkled in." Ever get any flak from blacks about what you write?
A: Yeah, I heard from one of the black groups who accused me of being a racist. But I'm sure they hadn't read the book.
Q: Do you consider Detroit basically a lawless frontier?
A: Just in the neighborhoods with the drug dealers shooting each other. No more so than L.A.
Q: You've also been criticized for your sexual attitudes, haven't you?
A: A Detroit Free Press reviewer who's a friend of mine said that my attitude about women was on a par with Mickey Spillane. I started to concentrate a little bit after that on developing the female characters. But you have to remember that the reviewers are writers. Who think they can write. [Laughs]
Q: Whatever happened to the book Hitchcock was once interested in, Unknown Man No. 89?
A: Everyone likes that one, but it still hasn't been made. According to Truffaut, Hitchcock gave up on it, didn't think he could make it work. I was surprised that Universal bought it for him to begin with. It's still at Universal, but they don't own the TV rights. Last year we were making a deal with Peter Guber for TV. I think he has it now.
Q: Your newest book, Cuba Libre, has attracted some hot writers, hasn't it?
A: The Coen brothers just wrote the script for this one. It works. They haven't committed to direct, because they haven't done something like this before. We'll see.
Q: I don't want to get to the end of this interview without asking you something about your battle with the bottle. There were a lot of years where you were pretty heavy into the sauce, weren't there?
A: Yeah. Once after I returned from California I started throwing up blood and went into the emergency hospital. They thought it was some kind of an ulcer condition. They tried to stop the bleeding and they couldn't. The doctor said, "The only other thing it could be is gastritis, but we usually only see that in skid row bums." After the surgery he said, "It's acute gastritis."-I was in the hospital a few days and when I came out I eased back into drinking again.
Q: Didn't that scare you?
A: It scared everybody else, but it didn't scare me, no. Because I didn't feel near death.
Q: Eventually you did quit, though, through Alcoholics Anonymous. How did AA work for you?
A: A change took place after I got in AA. I realized that you have to take this problem and hand it over to a higher power and forget about it. That really changed my outlook. You're not simply abstaining, you're taking on a completely different attitude about yourself. You quit taking yourself so seriously.
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Jim Carrey for the May '98 issue of Movieline.