By Gary Deane
Hollywood has forever struggled to get Elmore Leonard right -- that is if they’ve bothered to try. Though many of his thirty-odd crime novels have been made into films, much too little of his unique voice as a writer and storyteller has successfully found its way to the screen.
Writer/teacher Barry Hannah has called Leonard, a ‘dry comic nearest’, an apt enough description, but one which would likely kill any screenwriter's elevator pitch even before the door closed. Hollywood has generally taken a brain-dead approach to Leonard, seeing only the obvious in him, including a stock of script-ready characters, such as a cool dude with an iffy history, but also the right motives and moves; a female who's often smarter than he is; and a monkey house of bad guys who find a way to screw up even the best-laid plans. Around these, Leonard holds tight to a plot that has us at first puzzling over how the characters relate to each other and what exactly they’re up to. Then, just as we think we’ve got it figured, all bets are off.
Admittedly, Leonard's novels appear film-ready, his books structured like treatments. However, that plus millions of studio dollars apparently gets you a dry cappuccino and piles of stink like The Big Bounce (1969), a weak-minded melodrama, and then in 2004, a crudely-struck remake billed as a "crime comedy’". That two such failures would have been born of the same book suggests that Leonard would never be the smartest choice in a dumbed-down high-concept world.
That said, not every film based on a Leonard title has been a waste of time -- just most, with few able to negotiate Leonard’s tight straddle between mayhem and drollery, never overplaying his hand either way. Of the better ones, 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 irony. Out of Sight (1998), directed by Steven Soderbergh, was more moody and romantic, settling for a quirky charm. Unfortunately, though the movie wasn’t lame, it ended up limp.
On the other hand, Jackie Brown, released in 1997, was the real deal -- the only adaptation to date that can lay claim to having captured Elmore Leonard where he lived and breathed. Based on Leonard’s book Rum Punch, it tells of an airline stewardess (Pam Grier) who’s picked up by Federal agents at LAX with cash and drugs supposed to be delivered to Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Knowing Ordell isn’t going to believe that she hasn't informed on him, she decides to go ahead and set him up, along with his ex-cellmate/sidekick Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) and Ordell’s stoner girlfriend (Bridget Fonda). Jackie needs to come out of this better than she came in (not 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 Quentin Tarantino, who took his own kind of liberties 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 relocates the story from West Palm Beach to Los Angeles and messes with countless details. However, what emerges is a film and iteration of Leonard that is near-perfect. Tarantino wisely cools his jets and settles for straighter story-telling and slightly more cautiously interesting characters than he usually likes to do.
It’s often been an authentic sense of character that has been absent in movies adapted from Leonard’s crime novels (his westerns have done better). Titles such as the popular ‘Get Shorty’ and ‘Be Cool’ jettisoned Leonard’s smart, nervy characterizations in favor of dumbed-down caricatures. Tarantino clearly better understands the complexity of the folks that inhabit Leonard’s world. In ‘Jackie Brown’ it's straight-shooter Max who’s prepared to dirty himself in order to right a few wrongs for Jackie and perhaps to again find romance. Or criminals like Ordell, a stone killer who's both mesmerizing and terrifying.
Tarantino has his actors command the screen without showiness -- just as Leonard’s characters effortlessly command the page. But 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 managed to get by on her looks and now has to trade on her wits in order 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 - though it’s important to note that questions of identity always were central to Leonard. He put race up front from the time of his early westerns and also wrote more authentic female heroines into his crime books than just about anyone else in any genre. The writer’s affinities to popular culture and music always were those of generations half his age. It’s not hard to see why Tarantino would be preternaturally drawn to Leonard, starting with the director’s own obsession with the idioms of genre and pop artifacts.
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 for getting on his case one 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 (though not its threat) is almost incidental, similar to how Leonard writes it.
While Jackie Brown’ has a shambling 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 sharp dialog (one of Leonard’s ‘10 Rules of Writing’ was to leave out the parts that no one ever reads including exposition or undue description).
Though he’s always insisted he doesn’t 'do neo-noir’, Tarantino 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 was comfort to those who long had been believers in Leonard -- recognizing there were some who tended to regard him as a formulist and, for purposes here, not enough a ‘noirist’. However Leonard from the beginning transcended formula to create a genre category unto itself, case-hardened pulp noir thrillers graced with both dark humor and the heartbeat of real human beings. ‘Jackie Brown’ is all that and more.
Great stuff
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