Leonard's Page Turners Also Lit Up the Screen

Novelist Elmore Leonard created characters that were violent, frightening and hilarious, often all at the same time.
The larger than life personalities in his books frequently made their way to the big screen. I'm mainly thinking about his gangsters, including Chili Palmer and Ray "Bones" Barboni ("Get Shorty"), and Ordell Robbie ("Jackie Brown") to name but a few.
Leonard, who died this week at the age of 87, started his career writing western novels, and his short story, "3:10 to Yuma," was twice adapted to the screen, most recently in the 2007 film starring Russell Crowe.
Let's look back at Ray Barboni, below, in a classic scene from 1995's "Get Shorty," where Miami gangster Barboni (Dennis Farina, who passed away last month) comes to L.A. and terrorizes film producer Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman).

A B Picture That Profoundly Influenced Martin Scorsese

Whenever I see him in interviews, Martin Scorsese never fails to amaze me with the breadth of his film knowledge.
Click on this link to see a short video in which he talks about a crime movie that had a profound effect on the way he perceived, and later, made films. It's called "Murder By Contract," and you've probably never seen it. Above, you can watch a couple of scenes from the movie.

Tarantino's Twists and Turns Add Up Perfectly

Vincent, left, and Jules settle a score.

Some may quibble with “Pulp Fiction”’s herky jerky storyline. It dodges back and forth from the past to the present without warning. The trouble is, at first it’s challenging to figure out exactly what is happening in the present and what took place in the past.
You have to watch it more than one time before the sequence of events starts to make sense – and it does. There is really no “present” in the film. Each sequence, no matter where it fits into the story, past, present or future, is the only present you have to pay attention to.
The Oscar-winning “Pulp Fiction” screenplay is so skillfully written that you barely notice its complex time shifts. You just surf the narrative wave from beginning to end, and come in for a soft landing at the end of a fairly wild ride – is it just a coincidence that the opening music is Dick Dale’s surf guitar blast, “Miserlou”?

Knocked Off-Balance
Director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino’s non-linear storytelling – he co-wrote the script with Roger Avary – is hardly the artifice some make it out to be. In fact, the darting and weaving storyline serves a purpose, other than keeping the audience slightly off-balance, and the film would not be nearly as effective without it.

Honey Bunny, left, and Pumpkin.

The beginning and ending scenes are part of the same sequence. On an impulse, Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) hold up a diner, but their plan goes awry when they unexpectedly meet up with Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), two mobbed-up hitmen.

Coffee and Handguns
The beginning sequence shows Honey Bunny and Pumpkin, over coffee and breakfast, hatching a plan to rob the diner. They kiss, brandish weapons, then go to work scaring everyone in the joint. Their plan is to clean out the cash register and grab everyone’s wallet without incident.
The scene cuts away to the opening credits, after which we begin meeting the motley cast of characters who inhabit L.A.’s underbelly.
The story plays out, and we're back at the same diner where we started, but Jules and Vincent, as it turns out, are catching some breakfast there, too. The four characters collide, of course, and the result is as anxiety-provoking and hilarious as the rest of the movie.

Ends at the Beginning
When you piece it together, though, the entire diner sequence actually takes place in about the middle of the story. By the time we reach the last scene we don't know how the diner stand-off between robbers and mobsters will end. But we do know what is going to happen after the scene is over, and we have seen everything that led up to it. But why put this out of sequence scene where it is in the film?

Like Kung-Fu Cain.

The answer, I think, is that it firmly establishes both the movie's theme, which is redemption, and the hero of the story, Jules. By the time we reach that fateful scene we learn that Jules has decided to leave his life of crime behind and "walk the earth like Kung-Fu Cain."

The Wrong Choice
Vincent, on the other hand, is going to keep being a mobster, and, because we've already seen the future, we know that he will meet a dark fate due to that unwise decision.
The actual ending, sequentially, is the death of Vincent and the triumph of Butch (Bruce Willis), the corrupt prizefighter who double-crossed the mob. But the film ends with Jules and Vincent, who are about to part ways as crime partners, exiting the diner into the blinding L.A. sun. It’s a new day, and Jules has found redemption. It’s the perfect place for the film to end.

A DIFFERENT WHITEY FROM BOSTON -- Warner Bros., the studio with a storied history of gangster film production, has tapped James Grey ("We Own the Night," "The Yards" and "Little Odessa") to write and direct "White Devil," inspired by the true story of Dorchester (Daw-chest-ah to the locals) native John Willis, who was adopted by a Chinese family and allegedly rose to the top of the Asian mob in Boston. His nickname? You guessed it: White Devil.

It Took Two Directors to Tell the Murder, Inc. Story

Humphrey Bogart as Dist. Atty. Martin Ferguson

"The Enforcer" is one of the lesser appreciated Bogart films, but it deserves more attention than it gets. Granted, it's no "Maltese Falcon." It would be a tall order equaling "Falcon" director John Huston's artistry. But "Enforcer" directors Bretaigne Windust  and Raoul Walsh (uncredited) pull off an impressive feat in keeping the complex story in balance. Walsh directed the suspenseful -- translation: best -- scenes. Windust was primarily a Broadway director, and perhaps needed help putting the action sequences, including story's conclusion, on film.
The story centers around a crusading district attorney -- aren't all district attorneys crusaders in the movies? Bogart ably fills that role, but it's not much of a stretch for the veteran actor. A taut script, bristling dialog and neatly directed scenes keep this thriller on track, no matter how complex the yarn becomes. It's all based on the real-life Murder, Inc., syndicate that provided hitmen for hire.

The film's structure is complex. Flashbacks within flashbacks are liberally sprinkled throughout. They do the job that they're supposed to do, and just when the film veers perilously close to being a gab-fest -- there's no way around using dialog-driven sequences -- Windust and Walsh pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat with credible and unexpected plot twists or just plain bone-crunching action. Check out the scene with Rico (Ted De Corsia) inching his way across a lofty ledge on a building's facade. Windust/Walsh keep the tension excruciatingly high throughout. It takes a while before we finally meet the heavy, Mendoza (Everett Sloane), and when we do, he's spectacularly unassuming -- until finally we see him serve up the product his syndicate delivers for cash.
Zero Mostel also does a fine turn as the nervous hitman who quickly realizes that he chose the wrong profession.

British Invasion: Boorman Uncorks Psychedelic Noir

Angie Dickinson, Lee Marvin and Carroll O'Connor
in 'Point Blank' (1967).

Why is L.A. the location of choice for so many crime films and stories about the dark side of life? Maybe it’s just because the bulk of all film production is done in Hollywood and it’s cheaper to shoot in your own backyard.

But that doesn’t explain why so many of the great crime novels take place in the City of Angels. A writer can set his story anywhere in the world without a thought of budgets, weather or union constrictions.

Clockwise from top left, Lee Marvin,
Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn and John Vernon.

It might be that L.A. is different from most American cities, especially those that were built long before the two World Wars. They project stability and tradition, while L.A. is still considered part of the Wild West — a desert outpost full of transients, dreamers and hucksters. The city is branded as uncontrolled urban sprawl with a casual atmosphere that fosters a variety of lifestyles and eccentricities. In other words, it’s what the rest of the country thinks is wrong with America. Be that as it may, the city might just be the perfect laboratory in which to examine 20^th century mores.

So, it’s no wonder that British director John Boorman begins "Point Blank" in San Francisco and moves it to the City of Angels. San Francisco may be one of the country’s cradles of personal liberty, but it still has the look and feel of a city built on the bedrock of traditional values.

Staged as a sort of brutally real saga that slips into vaguely hallucinatory passages, "Point Blank" is the sort of altered reality you’d expect to see in a 1967 film, but the director is too good to let meaningless psychedelic spectacle overpower the story.

Walker is double-crossed by his ex.

Lee Marvin’s Walker, the career criminal who wants what is rightfully his, is cool and avoids the obnoxious pleased-with-himself vibe that a lesser actor would bring to the part.  He’s down to earth, deadpan, resourceful and unstoppable.

Some conclude that the entire story is merely Walker’s dream. He’s left alone to die after being double crossed, but of course he gets back on his feet and goes after the ones who did him wrong. 

Keenan Wynn plays Yost, the mysterious agent who always seems to appear on the scene whenever the action is about to be pumped up. Throughout the film, he and Walker never make eye contact — could the agent be a mere figment of Walker’s imagination? But stranger events occur when Walker finds his two-timing wife. Check out the scene with the disappearing furniture – and the disappearing corpse. 

Prior to "Point Blank" Boorman directed only black and white television and the film, "Catch Us If You Can" ("Having a Wild Weekend" in the U.K.), starring The Dave Clark Five. He says that he liked shooting "Point Blank," his first color movie, in the dark because it makes the color palette monochromatic. Trivia fans will want to note that, at one point, the action moves to a house with a swimming pool in Hollywood Hills. It’s the same house that the Beatles lived in during their first tour of America.

Bright yellows and golds prevail in Angie's scenes.

Despite his emphasis on darkness, Boorman uses color as an expressive element throughout the film, and carefully controls the range of tones filling each scene. The film begins in washed out grays and blues, progresses to yellows and golds, especially in Angie Dickinson’s scenes, shifts to greens, and as the action heats up toward the end, reds and oranges prevail. Walker, wearing a red-brick colored jacket seems to fade into the walls as the film comes to its conclusion.

You could call Point Blank a revisionist noir, because it’s in color and is not dialog driven. Perhaps the film's (then) modern-day take on the genre might be the missing link between black and white crime dramas of yesteryear and the sun-drenched Technicolor world of neo-noirs such as "Chinatown" and "L.A. Confidential."

Color aside, "Point Blank" is thoroughly character driven. Walker is relentless in his pursuit of the money he’s owed, but his doggedness only grows more intense even when the money becomes unimportant. He’s driven to get to the bottom of the mystery that has been plaguing him. His world is in shambles, but without this maniacal game of cat and mouse he’s initiated there’s nothing left in his life. Once the battle is over, there will be nothing to celebrate, but he continues because he has no other choice.

'Sopranos' was Groundbreaking Television

It's hard to overstate how important "The Sopranos" was to television and to crime fiction. Before "The Sopranos," was there any show that could make such a morally corrupted character as Tony Soprano, if not likeable, understandable and approachable to a broad audience?

For all of his violence and treachery, we always wanted Tony, the New Jersey mob boss, to somehow get by without getting whacked by rivals or arrested. Maybe it was because James Gandolfini was so entertaining to watch that even though we knew Tony was bad, we couldn't bear to lose our ringside seat at one hell of a sideshow.

The show was also of huge importance to HBO, the cable network that brought the program to millions. It was a huge hit whose popularity would be hard to replicate now. It must have taken guts to present a program that portrayed crime in raw, unfiltered terms, and yet allowed the star to be, at times, quite vulnerable. Also, a lot of Italian-American viewers were less than thrilled with the prospects of another program about Italian mobsters.

When news of his death came yesterday, it brought shock and regret. He was only 51, and a fine actor who won a place in our hearts. And we would never see if he could somehow top his performance as Tony in another series -- maybe one that had nothing to do with crime.

Tony tears into Dr. Melfi.

That question will go unanswered, and James Gandolfini will forever be most remembered as Tony Soprano, the troubled mob boss who sought solace in weekly meetings with his therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco).

The Writer's Guild of America recently voted "The Sopranos" as the best written TV show of all times, and with good reason. But it would never have been as good without Gandolfini. He and the writers continually amazed us over the show's 10 year run by creating TV that went far beyond what others achieved. We won't see that again for a long time.

I Should Have Killed You Yesterday

Leonetti: Not a fan of Whitey.

Philip Leonetti, author and former underboss of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City mob, has never been a fan of James "Whitey" Bulger, the Boston crime boss who's cooling his heels in a Massachusetts jail.
Leonetti penned a missive about the former head of the Hub's Irish mob in the Huffington Post. He crossed paths with Whitey years ago and sized him up as a lowlife drug dealer whom he did not want to do business with. Furthermore, he recommended that the Providence R.I.-based Patriarca crime family give Whitey the big sleep.
Leonetti's story is fascinating reading. It was no secret that Whitey and the Italian mob were anything but paisanos, but it's still a bit enlightening to learn the Genovese crime family's low opinion of Bulger. Read all about it here:

Killing the Myth of Whitey Bulger and Why I Suggested Killing Him 30 Years Ago