Get Shorty...or get EPIX and watch one of the best shows on television

Season three of "Get Shorty" has dropped and I highly recommend

Loosely based on the Elmore Leonard novel this show is the shit. It's about a couple of hit men who steal a movie script from one of the people they kill and start to produce movies with drug cartel money It is hilarious and it stars Ray Romano in a surprisingly well acted turn as a sleazy movie director. Irish comedian Chris O'Dowd is great as the protagonist and you have to see how he worms his way through the miasma that is Hollywierd.

It is on EPIX which might be on your cable package. I am watching it on the Firestick which is one of the best investments I ever made since I cut the cord and don't have cable anymore.

Check it out. Highly recommended.

From Page to Screen Part Two

It is unusual to see a faithful adaptation of one of your favorite books. The director and the producers get involved and they always want to “improve” it in some way that makes you hate the movie. The fact of the matter is that pulp or genre fiction usually adapts well. The types of directors and actors drawn to it just like to tell a good story. They are not all up in their artsy fartsy heads about it.

Two of the best book to screen adaptions that I have seen came from the works of one of my favorite authors and role models Elmore Leonard. “Get Shorty” was an almost perfect rendition of his novel. Of course “Justified” was a sublime manifestation of his Raylan Givens stories. Elmore Leonard and his son worked very closely with the production and actually wrote several episodes. In fact one of his last books contained a couple of stories about Marshal Givens that actually used new characters that originated from the TV series. That is quite unusual. You know. That TV writers influence the author of the original work. Talent will out.

I was very disappointed in the various video interpretation of Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” novels. The original TV series with Robert Ulrich was a good effort but really missed the boat. The various TV movies really sucked. Joe Mantegna is not any reasonable embodiment of the protagonist in those novels.

The series of Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck were excellent if a little dreary. I think they thought film noir means depressed or something. Still it was a worthy effort and they should get kudos. It is the only filming of Parkers work that is worth a shit.

Elmore Leonard 1925 - 2013

Ace posted a link to an article on writing by Elmore Leonard.

(This is a nice article about him from the Guardian)

Elmore Leonard was elderly and passed away and I know nothing about him other than that he wrote "Fire in the Hole" which I've never read but was turned into the first season of the television show "Justified" which I liked a whole lot. After that show came out I noticed his name quite a bit but I still hadn't read anything that he'd written.

  Until I read this.

Get Elmore

Elmore Leonard has died of a stroke at the age of 87. I have only read one of his novels, Get Shorty, and listened to one on CD, The Switch. A favorite scene from The Switch, which I think typifies his writing style, tells of one guy waiting in the car for his friend. On the way back to the car, the friend finds a golf club. When he gets back to the car, he considers making a quip using the club, but thinks better of it because he knows his friend is expecting him to. So he just throws the club into the back seat instead.

He wrote westerns, crime novels, and the short story, Three-Ten to Yuma, which was twice make into film.  Leonard was known for his compact writing style, as this Onion obituary notes, via MadisonMan, via Althouse.

Added: Icepick finds writing tips by Leonard.