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Elmore Leonard passed away today, leaving the title of America's greatest living crime fiction writer up dispute. He was 87 years old, with other 40 novels to his name. About half have been turned into films or TV shows. Read just a page of Leonard and it's clear why: He writes scenes like screen treatments. They unfold economically, with a strong sense of physical space. The visual details pop and, most importantly, the dialogue sings. Leonard's known as a king because of his dialogue. It was clean and terse, like speech but cooler.
Here's a moment from Freaky Deaky (which, unfortunately, did not receive a strong movie adaptation):
"She didn't throw me out, I left. I phoned, you weren't home, so I stayed at Jerry's."
"When you needed me most," his dad said. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."
"Actually," Chris said, "you get right down to it, Phyllis's the one does all the talking. She gives me banking facts about different kinds of annuities, fiduciary trusts, institutional liquid asset funds...I'm sitting here trying to stay awake, she's telling me about the exciting world of trust funds."
"I had a feeling," his dad said, "you've given it some thought. You realize life goes on."
"I'm not even sure what attracted me to her in the first place."
His dad said, "You want me to tell you?"
With the right director and screenwriter, Leonard's work made for some of the best crime movies and TV in recent memory. These are the five essentials.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Adapted from: "Three-Ten to Yuma" (1953)
Director: James Mangold
Screenwriters: Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt, and Derek Haas
Stars: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Peter Fonda, and Ben Foster
You aren't going to find many actors in Hollywood more convincingly able to play tough guys than Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Put them together and you've got a combustible, grisly match of wits—have them go toe-to-toe while playing characters originally conceived by the great Elmore Leonard, a man who knew a thing or ten about multifaceted ruffians, and the outcome's about as foolproof as a Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone collaboration.
Specifically, you've got James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma, a taut, cynical western that's the best gunslinger movie made in the last 10 years (yes, even better than True Grit), with Crowe playing the outlaw role and Bale as the do-good lawman hunting him down. Also of note is co-star Ben Foster, whose turn as Crowe's most reckless subordinate is a real scene-stealer. —Matt Barone
Hombre (1967)
Adapted from: Hombre (1961)
Director: Martin Ritt
Screenwriters: Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.
Stars: Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone, Martin Balsam, and Diane Cilento
Much of Leonard's early stories and novels are westerns, and the best adaptation from that period remains Hombre, a Paul Newman-led riff on the stagecoach-heist scenario. Newman plays John Russell, a white man raised by Apaches, who comes into some money when his biological father dies. After collecting his loot, he leaves town on a stagecoach with a motley crew, united in their distaste for Russell, who grew up a "savage."
Leonard's known for his dialogue, but Russell has little; Newman's performance is all coiled physicality and crinkled stares. The story upends western conventions, complicating the typically dismal view of Native Americans vs. western civilization and making for one of the best westerns made in the '60s. —Ross Scarano
Get Shorty (1995)
Adapted from: Get Shorty (1990)
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Screenwriter: Scott Frank
Stars: John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo, Bette Midler, and James Gandolfini
Get Shorty came out during that time when every studio was searching for the next Pulp Fiction. This allowed Leonard's star to rise again. In addition to writing some of his most memorable novels in the '90s, many of those novels were adapted into great films, all inside the same decade.
In Barry Sonnenfeld's adaptation of Shorty, John Travolta stars as a mob leg-breaker named Chili Palmer who'd love to rid himself of his underling position. But with a string of incompetent bosses above him, he's convinced he'll never get out.
Opportunity knocks when Chili travels to Vegas to collect some money from a deadbeat B-movie producer from Hollywood. He pitches the producer a movie idea and quickly finds himself a show biz kid. It's not often that we see members of the mob portrayed as such sad sacks, yet it completely works here, as the casting is pitch perfect (James Gandolfini especially). —Jason Serafino
Jackie Brown (1997)
Adapted from: Rum Punch (1992)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton, and Robert De Niro
Not long after Pulp Fiction, Tarantino and his writing partner Roger Avery acquired the rights to three of Leonard's novels: Rum Punch, Freaky Deaky, and Killshot. After some back-and-forth about which book to run with, Tarantino settled on Rum Punch, and then applied his own coat of paint to the then-five-year-old novel. Wanting to flex his respect for Blaxploitation movies, he made the protagonist a black woman and cast Pam Grier, of Coffy and Foxy Brown, as the lead. Leonard loved the changes, and called Jackie Browne one of the best adaptations of his work.
The result is Tarantino's most under-appreciated movie, a methodically paced love letter to its classic stars, Grier and Robert Forster. Grier plays Jackie, a middle-aged airline stewardess who decides to double-cross the gunrunner she works with (Samuel L. Jackson's scenery-chewing Ordell Robbie). Robert Forster's Max Cherry, a mellow bondsman quietly smitten with Jackie, comes in on the scheme. The tale remains unpredictable without employing the shuffled-card chronology of Pulp Fiction, a testament to Leonard's craftsmanship. —Ross Scarano
Out of Sight (1998)
Adapted from: Out of Sight (1996)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Dennis Farina, Catherine Keener, Steve Zahn, and Albert Brooks
The key to adapting any Elmore Leonard work is capturing the quirkiness and chemistry of his colorful characters. Out of Sight, Steven Soderbergh’s funky, beautifully shot crime comedy about the forbidden love between suave bank robber and prison escapee Jack Foley (George Clooney) and beautiful and tough U.S. Marshal Karen Cisco (Jennifer Lopez), who pursues him, nails the playful, seductive wit of Leonard’s 1996 novel. (Infinity-props go to Soderbergh, who recognized that Clooney and original Karen, Sandra Bullock, lacked “Elmore Leonard energy” and casted J.Lo instead.)
There are only a handful of scenes in the history of cinema that approach the sexiness of ‘90s Clooney and J.Lo as Foley spoons and chats up Cisco in a car trunk during his prison break, the unlikely pair play out a hypothetical strangers meeting in a hotel bar scenario, and then strip for each other in the lone romp they allow themselves. Whatever sex appeal and flirtation you and your boo share, it pales in comparison to this cat-and-mouse love affair.
The repartee pops equally in the classic Leonard crime plot, with a menacing thug (Don Cheadle), a white-collar criminal (Albert Brooks), and Foley's semi-competent partners (Ving Rhames and Steve Zahn) mixing it up in and out of prison in a hunt for uncut diamonds. As barbs and bullets fly, the doomed love comes to its dramatic conclusion, and Elmore Leonard is done complete justice, it turns out Soderbergh was in possession of the stones all along. —Justin Monroe