Written by Gary Deane, ‘Night Editor’Where movies and Elmore Leonard are concerned, all you can do is pray for the best and then expect the worst. Of the thirty-odd crime novels written by Leonard, most have been optioned and gone on to production. Unfortunately, little of Leonard’s ‘voice’ and potency as a writer has managed to find its way to the screen.
That can be said of more than one author but it seems that Leonard’s particular stylistic intonations have been hard ones for film-makers to get a grip on – if they’ve bothered to really try.
Writer/teacher Barry Hannah has called Leonard a ‘dry comic noirist’, an apt-enough description but one likely to kill the pitch before the door closes on the elevator. Hollywood has preferred to take a brain-simple approach to Leonard, seeing in him only what’s most obvious.
This could include a stock of script-ready characters – most often an easy guy with a questionable résumé but the right motives and moves, a righteous woman along the way who’s as cool as he is and often smarter, and a monkey-house of bad guys who force the play or threaten to ruin it.
Around these types Leonard plots like a bandit holding tightly to a schematic that at first has us puzzling over how the characters relate to each other and what they’re up to. Then just as we think we’ve got it figured, bets come off. Leonard belts us in and away we go again, hanging on hard to keep up with the dizzying lift of events.
Admittedly Leonard looks to be film-ready, with his books a bit structured like treatments. However, that notion alone plus millions of big studio bucks apparently buys you a dry cappuccino and a whole pile of movies that stink, ranging from ‘The Big Bounce’ (1969), an ineffectual melodrama to ‘The Big Bounce’ (2004), a crudely-struck ‘crime comedy’.
That two such failures would be been born of same book suggests in fact that Leonard
may not be the smartest choice in a high-concept world and that he isn’t as apparent as he appears to be. This isn’t to say that every film based on a Leonard title has been a waste of time. Just most of them - with almost none able to negotiate Leonard’s tight straddle between mayhem and drollery without overplaying the hand either way.John Frankenheimer’s '52 Pick-Up' (1986), a grim neo-noir adapted from an earlier Leonard book, didn’t even attempt that negotiation, offering a hard-edged reading that backed away from as much as irony. 'Out of Sight' (1998) directed by Steven Soderbergh was moody and romantic and settled a lot for quirky charm. It was good enough on its own terms - although that said, while it wasn’t lame, it was limp.
‘Jackie Brown’, on the other hand, released in 1997 is the real deal and the only film to date that can lay claim to have grabbed Elmore Leonard where he lives and breathes.
Based on Leonard’s book Rum Punch,
it’s the story of an airline stewardess (Pam Grier) who’s picked up by Federal agents at LAX with cash and drugs intended to go to Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson).Knowing Ordell isn’t going believe her even if she doesn’t inform, she decides to set him up – along with his ex-cellmate/ sidekick Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) and Ordell’s stoner girl friend (Bridget Fonda). However, Jackie wants to come out of it better than she came in (which wasn’t all that great) and enlists the help of Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a bail bondsman Ordell hired to get her out following the bust.
The film was directed by flash-master Quentin Tarantino, who took his own turns with the story. The novel’s ‘Jackie Burke’ becomes ‘Jackie Brown’ - no longer a trim blonde 30-ish cougar but an older black fox with ample curves. Tarantino also relocates the story from West Palm Beach to Los Angeles and messes with countless small details.
However, what emerges both as a film and as an iteration of Leonard is golden. With ‘Jackie Brown’, Tarantino wisely cools his jets and foregoes his usual eclecticism and sensationalism in favor of a more linear narrative and carefully drawn and realized characters.
Sadly, it’s most often been an authentic sense of character absent in movies taken from titles on Leonard’s crime list (the westerns have done better). Films such as the popular ‘Get Shorty’ and ‘Be Cool’ egregiously jettisoned Leonard’s smart, nervy characterizations in favor of dumbed-down caricatures.
Tarantino clearly understands and acknowledges the complexity of the characters that inhabit the world of Elmore Leonard and especially that of ‘Jackie Brown’ – like the otherwise straight-shooter Max who’s prepared to dirty himself in order to right a few wrongs for Jackie and realize the possibility of heavenly romance. Or criminals like Ordell, a stone-cold killer who is as fascinating as he is frightening.
He also manages to have all his actors including Forster and Jackson command the screen without showiness - just as Leonard’s characters effortlessly command the page.
On the other hand, Tarantino actually does the author one better by making Jackie more resonant and memorable with the casting of Pam Grier. Grier has appeared in movies since the blaxploitation days (‘Foxy Brown’, ‘Coffy’). However, she’s never been the actress (and the star) she is in ‘Jackie Brown’ as she realizes the poignancy of a middle-aged woman who’s held onto her looks but knows she now has to trade on her brains to get out of her dead-end life.
Apart from racial identity, there’s nothing black and white about these characters or the situations in which they find themselves and/ or act to create – though it also doesn’t hurt to note that questions of identity have been central to Leonard who’s written more authentic female heroines in his crime books than just about anyone else in any genre.
He’s also put race up front since the days of his early westerns and his affinities to popular culture and music long have been those of generations half-or-less his age or less. It’s not hard to see why Tarantino would be preternaturally drawn to Leonard, starting with the director’s own obsession with the artifacts of modern pop and the idioms of genre.
To his credit, Tarantino also avoids any uncomfortable displays of violence in ‘Jackie Brown’, even to the point of taking what there is in the book down a notch. Little is seen and not much dwelt on. When Ordell takes care of his ‘associate’, Beaumont Livingstone (Chris Tucker) whom he suspects of snitching, it’s off at a distance. When Louis suddenly shoots Melanie getting on his case once too many times, she goes down off-screen in another of those superb ‘drop-dead’ moments that Tarantino owns. When Ordell, in turn, kills Louis for shooting Melanie, it all happens inside a vehicle and again, way off. The violence itself (thought not its threat) is almost incidental, similar to how Leonard writes it.
While’ Jackie Brown’ has a shambling, trashy feel to it which doesn’t hold to the book’s tight construction, Tarantino nails the essentials – not only the hustle and flow of the narrative but also Leonard’s brace of smart dialog and talk (one of Leonard’s ‘10 Rules of Writing’ is to leave out the parts that no one ever reads, like exposition or undue description).
Tarantino reportedly has had three other Leonard titles under option to date, none of which he’s followed- through on as director. On the other hand, there are others who appear to think they’re up to the job. ‘Tishomingo Blues’, until recently at least, was in pre-production with Don Cheadle as director, John Mangold currently is filming a remake of ‘3:10 to Yuma’ with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe and ‘Kill Shot’ helmed by John Madden and starring Mickey Rourke and Diane Lane is in post-production.
So let us all pray, especially for ‘Killshot’ a film based on one of Leonard’s toughest stories and with a terrifyingly good cast. By rights, it should be the one for all time.
In the meantime, we have ‘Jackie Brown’ for which we all should kneel and give thanks to Quentin Tarantino. Though he’s always insisted he doesn’t ‘do neo-noir’, he obviously recognized ‘Rum Punch’s story for what it was - not just some screwball, comedic affectation but something real and raw and human that also was funny.
Which is comfort to those who have long been believers in Leonard - recognizing there are some who tend to regard him as a formulist and, for purposes here, not enough a ‘noirist’. This fan’s view is that Leonard long ago transcended formula to create a genre category unto itself, case-hardened pulp noir thrillers graced not only with dark humor but with the conscience and heart of real characters.
‘Jackie Brown’ is that and more.
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