Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 3, 1995 TAG: 9511030012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BERNARD WEINRAUB THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD LENGTH: Long
Elmore Leonard has no such complaints with ``Get Shorty,'' the adaptation of his best-selling take on gangsters struggling to break into the movie business. The movie was generally treated to a love-in by the critics, and has been No. 1 at the box office since its opening Oct. 20.
``Definitely, it's the best adaptation I've had,'' said Leonard, who writes some of the most cinematic novels on any bookshelf. ``The movie caught the tone of the book, the sound of it. I saw the movie and thought, `I didn't know the book was that funny.'''
Leonard credits the movie's success to screenwriter Scott Frank, director Barry Sonnenfeld, and a cast that includes John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina and, in cameos, Bette Midler and Harvey Keitel.
Why the movie of ``Get Shorty'' succeeded where the adaptations of some of his other books did not, the author says, was the filmmakers' decision to treat with deadpan seriousness the small-time mobsters and off-kilter characters who inhabit any Leonard novel. Although most of them have some very funny lines, they do not view themselves as funny people.
``I think my books were treated too theatrically by movies,'' said Leonard, whose ``Stick'' and ``52 Pickup,'' among many others, have been turned into movies. ``I used to think that the only way the books would work was if the movie was almost a documentary, if the lines were delivered in a very flat way, almost the way I hear them. `Get Shorty' is theatrical, but in this case it works.''
Frank, who has written such movies as ``Little Man Tate'' and ``Dead Again,'' and Sonnenfeld, the director of ``The Addams Family'' movies and ``For Love or Money,'' echoed this view, saying that the film's characters were drawn without irony.
``His characters are hysterically funny, but they don't know they're funny,'' Frank said. ``They think they're deadly serious. He never condescends to these people. He loves these people.''
Sonnenfeld said: ``What's funny is that you have these great-looking and intelligent actors saying really dumb things with a totally straight face. As soon as you wink to an audience, as soon as you give the characters an attitude, it's over. We never said we're trying to be funny.''
At one point, Chili Palmer, the movie-struck Miami loan shark played by Travolta, flattens a bruiser who confronts him in a parking lot. Then he brings the thug - who has worked as a stuntman - back to his senses. ``You OK?'' Palmer asks. When the man slowly nods, Palmer says, in all seriousness, ``So how many movies have you been in?''
In the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, Palmer arrives in Los Angeles on mob business and decides that movies are not all that different from his usual line of work. He confronts Harry Zimm, a groveling horror-film producer, played by Hackman with a false dental plate, a B-picture actress (Ms. Russo) and a small-in-stature but large-in-ego star (DeVito). The DeVito character, Martin Weir, is loosely patterned after Dustin Hoffman, whom Leonard once met at lunch. He's also the Shorty of the title.
In all, Leonard has had 26 of his 32 novels optioned by the movies, and 12 have been made. He has also had three of his novels adapted for television. Leonard has written about half the adaptations, but said he did not really enjoy it.
``Screenwriting is work, it's a chore. You're writing for other people and rewriting constantly, while I don't consider novel writing work at all,'' said the author, whose nickname is Dutch, over the phone from his home near Detroit. ``I look forward to it. Right now, it's 4:30 in the afternoon. I'm in the middle of a scene. I think, `Good: I've got an hour and a half to go.' I'm just having a good time sitting here making these people talk and seeing what happens next. I surprise myself all the time.''
On the surface, Frank says, the Leonard novels seem easy to adapt because the dialogue is so colorful. But, he went on, the books are deceptively complex. ``You're given wonderful characters, dialogue and situations, but the problem is the story just takes place by happenstance,'' he said. ``For a movie you have to give structure to that happenstance.''
He wrote several drafts of the adaptation, sending each to Leonard. ``I really tried to preserve the dialogue, which is what he most cares about,'' said Frank. ``Dialogue had to be cut, but I never paraphrased. I was careful not to mess with that dialogue.''
Frank added some scenes to strengthen the structure, removed a subplot and ended the film at a point two-thirds into the book.
He said he tried to avoid the pitfalls of past adaptations of Leonard books, which included focusing entirely on the plot and thus losing the humor and the novelist's off-center point of view.
Successfully adapting a book to the screen means trying to convey the soul of a novel without being intimidated by it, he said.
``Your first instinct is to protect the entire book,'' Frank said. ``But then you end up with a trivialized version of it.''
Leonard said the scenes added to the film that were not in the book hardly bothered him. ``It's different, sure, but Barry and Scott brought this to life,'' he said. ``And I had a good time watching it.''
by CNB