The 'Dickens Of Detroit': ‘Justified’ Producers Developing Elmore Leonard Detroit Novels As TV Series

Elmore Leonard is one of my favorite writers, so I was pleased to read Nellie Andreeva's report at Deadline.com on the TV producers of Justified, which was based on an Elmore Leonard short story, who are planning to produce another TV series based on Elmore Leonard’s Detroit novels.

Justified executive producers Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman are returning to the works of Elmore Leonard, optioning three of the late author’s praised Detroit novels as the basis for a new TV series targeted for cable and streaming networks.

Via their Timberman-Beverly production company, which is based at CBS TV Studios, the duo has optioned Unknown Man #89, Pagan Babies and Mr. Paradise and is actively exploring other Detroit novels by Leonard as well.

Written by Tod “Kip” Williams (Door in the Floor), the series adaptation is envisioned as focusing on one novel each season, with characters occasionally appearing in multiple seasons as they often did in Leonard’s novels. Additionally, novels may spawn related, but narratively original seasons, based on featured or tangential characters and storylines in the original books.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://deadline.com/2017/08/justified-producers-developing-detroit-series-elmore-leonard-novels-carl-beverly-sarah-timberman-1202157805/

Note: I enjoyed Justified and I thought they did justice to Elmore Leonard. I’m looking forward to watching the new series, only I wish they had also optioned City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, which is one of my favorite Leonard crime novels.  

On This Day In History Best-Selling Crime Writer Elmore Leonard Died

As History.com notes, on this day in 2013 Elmore Leonard, the author of  City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, 52 Pick Up, La Brava, Get Shorty, and other crime classics, died

On this day in 2013, the prolific, best-selling author Elmore Leonard, whose crime novels include “Get Shorty,” “Rum Punch” and “Out of Sight,” dies at age 87 in Bloomfield Village, Michigan. Known for his pitch-perfect dialogue, sparse prose and offbeat characters, Leonard penned dozens of novels and short stories, a number of which were adapted for film and TV.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/best-selling-crime-writer-elmore-leonard-dies?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2017-0820-08202017&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=228940129&kx_EmailCampaignID=14258&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2017-0820-08202017&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa 

Elmore Leonard was one of my favorite writers. You can also read my Crime Beat column on him via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/05/return-to-elmoreland-elmore-leonards.html 

Ole 'Dutch' Would Have Approved: The 'Justified' Finale And Producer Graham Yost on Who Survived — and Those Elmore Leonard Tributes

My wife and I enjoyed watching the finale of the TV series Justified tonight.

We've been watching Justified for the entire six seasons and we felt that the ending was done very well and in keeping with the unique style of the late great crime writer, Elmore "Dutch" Leonard.

Marisa Roffman at the Hollywood Reporter interviewed Graham Yost, the TV series producer, about the ending and the tributes to Elmore Leonard.

You can read the interview via the below link:

[Warning: This post contains spoilers from Justified's series finale.]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/justified-finale-graham-yost-raylan-788476

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Elmore Leonard via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/05/return-to-elmoreland-elmore-leonards.html

Justifying Rayland: The Importance Of The Elmore Leonard Character

 

Dave Odegard at wordandfilm.com offers a piece on Elmore Leonard's character Rayland Givens, as portrayed by actor Timothy Olyphant in the TV series Justified.

There's a great scene about two-thirds of the way through a recent episode of the current and final season of "Justified."

In it, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, skillfully played as always by Timothy Olyphant, has just pulled up to a house where his series-long nemesis (and occasional ally) Appalachian outlaw Boyd Crowder, equally deftly portrayed by Walton Goggins, is staying. Crowder rushes out to meet Givens and the two quickly begin a verbal sparring match (fueled mainly by Crowder's desire to keep Givens from finding a wanted fugitive hiding inside) in which Givens reveals that the only thing keeping him from moving on to live with his ex-wife and baby in Florida is his vow to finally bring Crowder down.

"This is one of them classic stories where the hero gets his man and he rides off into the sunset," Givens says.

"Or maybe it's like that other classic, where a guy chases a whale to the ends of the earth only to drown for his trouble," Crowder shoots back.

After a pause, Givens smiles and declares: "I gotta admit, there's a small part of me that's going to miss this when it's over."

It's a fantastic moment in a cable series full of fantastic moments. For the past five years, "Justified" on F/X has been offering a guaranteed reoccurring dose of satisfaction for those in need of smart television crime-drama - with a neo-Western twist of course.

It's also become the premier entry in Elmore Leonard's pop-culture footprint, which is no small feat when you realize he wrote more than forty novels and there are more than two dozen screen versions of his work. And it's really surprising when you notice just how slight Raylan Givens originally was in the library of Leonard's work.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.wordandfilm.com/2015/04/justifying-raylan-the-importance-elmore-leonard-character/

'Justified' Creator Aims To Stay True To The Late Writer Elmore Leonard

Terry Gross at NPR's Fresh Air interviewed Graham Yost, the producer of TV's Justified, the crime show based on the late great crime writer Elmore Leonard's novella, Fire in the Hole.

The FX series Justified, which is in its sixth and final season, is based on the novella Fire in the Hole by Elmore Leonard. Leonard was an executive producer of the series until his death in 2013. The show's creator and showrunner, Graham Yost, says he has made it his mission to stay as true as he can to Leonard's vision and storytelling style.

"Ultimately I look at this show as Elmore Leonard's show, and we're all in service of him and his view and his way of writing and creating these characters," Yost tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "So whatever feels like it works within that world is something we're open to."

Set in Harlan County, Ky., which is coal mining country, the story revolves around two men who have known each other since they were in the mines together as teens: Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, and Boyd Crowder, played by Walton Goggins. Raylan is now a deputy U.S. marshal and Boyd is an outlaw whose criminal activities include robbing banks. Raylan wants to move to Florida to reconnect with his ex-wife and their 5-month-old child, but first he wants to bring Boyd down, which means catching him when he pulls off his next heist.

The show is violent, but Yost says he and the writers have to walk a line to keep the network happy.

"Elmore's world is a violent world," he says. "In the best Elmore scenes, you think that something is either going to take a hard turn into romance and some kind of liaison, or it's going to take it the other way and go into violence. There's often something oddly humorous about the violence in Elmore's movies and in his books."

You can read the rest of the piece and listen to NPR's audio clip via the below link:

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/26/395534419/justified-creator-aims-to-stay-true-to-the-late-writer-elmore-leonard

Note: You can also read my Crime Beat column on Elmore Leonard, one of my favorite writers, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/05/return-to-elmoreland-elmore-leonards.html

Rayland's Last Stand: After The Sixth Season Of 'Justified' Debuts This January, It’s A Wrap For One Of Our Favorite TV Lawmen.

Joe Leydon at Cowboys & Indians magazine offers a piece on the late great crime writer Elmore Leonard's popular character Deputy U.S. Marshal Rayland Givens.

From the very start — to be precise, the first scene of the first episode — Justified promised to be a different sort of prime time crime drama.  

Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens — smooth as silk, bold as brass — strolls onto the swimming pool deck of a swanky Miami hotel, takes his seat opposite a cocky mobster, and reminds the miscreant of a warning he issued the previous day: “You don’t get out of town in 24 hours, I’m gonna shoot you on sight.” The mobster proceeds to make two serious mistakes. First, he brushes aside Raylan’s threat. Then he tries to pull a gun. Raylan responds by shooting — once, twice, three times — leaving the mobster very seriously dead.

Even if Raylan hadn’t been wearing a cowboy hat and Lucchese boots — and even if audiences hadn’t already seen Timothy Olyphant, the actor perfectly cast as the deputy marshal, play a similarly lethal character in HBO’s Deadwood — the scene would have crackled with the potent intensity of a Wild West showdown. And that’s exactly what the series producers intended, to alert viewers right from the get-go that Justified was going to be a contemporary spin on the classic western, with a straight-shooting, wisecracking lawman as the steely-eyed hero of the FX network series. 

Raylan Givens first appeared in two novels and a short story by the late Elmore Leonard, the celebrated crime fiction author who started out as a writer of westerns. While reconstituting the character for a weekly TV series, producer Graham Yost and his writing staff drew heavily on Leonard’s literature, and then added some embellishments of their own. In the world according to Justified, Raylan is a self-assured maverick who grew up in the hill country of eastern Kentucky. He turned his back on his roots and his criminally inclined father to pursue a career with the U.S. Marshals Service. But when his chronic use of deadly force — and his occasional issuing of death threats — displeased his superiors once too often, Raylan was reassigned to Lexington, Kentucky, in a district that includes his hometown of Harlan. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.cowboysindians.com/Cowboys-Indians/January-2015/Raylands-Last-Stand/

"Justified" Rides Toward Its Last Roundup

Oriana Schwindt at TV Guide offers a piece on the final season of one of my favorite TV series, Justified.

The sun is quickly setting on Justified.

As the contemporary Western's cast and crew shoot a scene for the show's penultimate season, the light is going, even though it's only 4:15pm. But in the mountains of California's Angeles National Forest — which are standing in for the deep, dark hills of Kentucky, the show's setting — the sun rises late and sets early.

The crew is set up in front of Audrey's, the bar and brothel that's seen plenty of action — of all kinds — throughout the show's five seasons. The aboveground pool shot up by Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olphant) in the Season 5 premiere sits near one of the trailers as director Michael Dinner tries to salvage the shot, one in which Raylan tells a DEA agent (guest star Eric Roberts) to "f--- off," as Olyphant puts it.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Justified-On-Set-1077863.aspx

Being Cool: Recalling Elmore Leonard, A Master Of Crime Fiction

John O'Rourke at Boston University's Bu Today offers an interview with Charles J. Rzepka, the author of Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard.  

When novelist Elmore Leonard died in August at 87, he was hailed by the New York Times as “a modern master of American genre writing” and by the Washington Post as “a masterly crime novelist.” He left behind an unforgettable gallery of drug dealers, grifters, hookers, con artists, and crooks.

... Leonard was one of those rare crime novelists who enjoyed both mass-market popularity (his books have sold in the tens of millions) and critical plaudits. Many of his works were adapted into Hollywood films, including Get Shorty, with John Travolta, Hombre, starring Paul Newman, 3:10 to Yuma (two versions), and Jackie Brown, directed by Quentin Tarantino. His short story Fire in the Hole inspired the Emmy-winning television series Justified on FX. Leonard also received some of the literary world’s top honors, among them an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a National Book Award, given last year for his “distinguished contribution” to American literature.

Few people are as versed in Elmore Leonard’s world as Charles Rzepka, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of English. In his new book, Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Rzepka writes about Leonard’s distinct writing style, “immediately recognizable for its voice and rhythm,” his keen ear for dialogue, and what made his characters so cool.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/recalling-a-master-of-crime-fiction/

Friends And Family Pay Tribute To Elmore Leonard At His Funeral

The Hollywood Reporter offers a piece on Elmore Leonard's funeral.

BIRMINGHAM, Mich. (AP) — Friends, family and fans remembered award-winning crime novelist Elmore Leonard during a funeral service in suburban Detroit that was equal parts laughter and tears.

our editor recommends

 

Son Christopher Leonard joked about the "biting sarcasm" that his father had genetically bestowed upon his kids and grandkids.

Author, sports writer and friend Mike Lupica said Leonard himself would have appreciated the tone of Saturday's Mass at Holy Name Church in Birmingham.

The 87-year-old Leonard died Tuesday in his Bloomfield Township home from complications from a stroke.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/elmore-leonard-funeral-friends-family-613918

You can also read Deadline Detroit's account of Elmore Leonard's funeral, which notes that Leonard was a Navy veteran, via the below link:

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/6155/elmore_leonard_recalled_with_tears_and_laughter_at_funeral#.UhofiUJvKM8
  

Note: I've reading Elmore Leonard for many years and I reread his great crime novels every couple of years. With the news of his death, I pulled Split Images from my library and I'm now rereading Elmore Leonard's cool crime thriller.

Elmore Leonard Earned His Spurs Writing Westerns

Elmore Leonard was praised and remembered as a writer of westerns by Joe Leyden at Cowboys & Indians.

Although he’s best known these days for his quirky crime fiction, author Elmore Leonard — who passed away Tuesday in Detroit at age 87 — began his writing career as a prolific author of western novels and short stories.

“Most of my early stuff was for the pulps,” he told Cowboys & Indians in a 2007 interview. “All throughout the ‘50s, when they were hot. I wrote 3:10 to Yuma in 1953, when I was 27. I got $90 for it -– two cents a word for a 4,500-word story in Dime Western magazine.
“And let me tell you: In the ‘50s, that wasn’t too bad.”

Justified, the popular FX Network series based on stories and novels by Leonard, often has been referred to as a modern-day western. Executive producers Graham Yost and Michael Dinner — long-time admirers of Leonard’s work — take that description as both a welcome compliment and a fair appraisal.

“If you consider that Elmore started out in westerns — and then, as he puts it, when his stories weren’t selling as much, he moved onto more straightforward crime fiction in the early ‘70s — it’s only natural that our show would have a western flavor,” Yost says. Adds Dinner: “In a way, you’ve got a weird melding of crime thriller and character piece with the feel of a western. It’s not just about the hat on [Raylan Givens, the US marshal played by Timothy Olyphant]. It’s about the rhythms of the piece, and the tone of the piece.”

Leonard’s novels and stories also have served as source material for several more traditional western features and TV movies. Back in 2007, however, he expressed profoundly mixed feelings about director James Mangold’s adaptation of 3:10 to Yuma — starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale — which had previously been filmed in 1957. (“I sure wonder why Christian Bale gets kicked around so much,” he quipped after a preview screening. “I don’t know why he wanted to do the film.”).

To read more about Elmore Leonard's westerns you can go to the lnk below:

http://www.cowboysindians.com/Blog/August-2013/Elmore-Leonard-Earned-His-Spurs-By-Writing-Westerns/

Note: It seems to me that the divide between westerns and crime is not that wide.

Elmore Leonard's 3:10 to Yuma, like most westerns, is about lawmen and outlaws. The only difference between most westerns and crime fiction is the western backdrop.  

Another Look Back At Elmore Leonard: Crime Paid This Writer, In Dollars And Honors

Elmore Leonard is one of my favorite writers and I was sorry to learn of his death week.

Frank Wilson, my friend and former editor, wrote a good piece on Elmore Leonard last year for the  Philadelphia Inquirer.

'If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

That, says Elmore Leonard, is the rule that sums up his famous "Ten Rules of Writing," a sort of manifesto in miniature on behalf of the plain style (sample: "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip").

Leonard has written 45 novels, starting with The Bounty Hunters in 1953. About half of them have made it to the New York Times' best-seller list, including his latest, Raylan. Seventeen have been made into films, sometimes more than once, most notably 3:10 to Yuma (two versions), Hombre, 52 Pick-up (two versions), and Get Shorty. Quentin Tarantino's third film, Jackie Brown, was based on Leonard's Rum Punch. Then there's the TV series Justified.
 

So even people who don't read much are likely to be familiar with Leonard's work.

Commercial success as a writer only rarely translates into literary respect, and usually only too late for the writer to enjoy it. But Leonard has garnered some highfalutin fans over the years. Saul Bellow was one. And so is Martin Amis, who calls Leonard's prose "far more stylish" than Raymond Chandler's and says that Leonard is "incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence." In fact, Amis will be the presenter on Wednesday night when Leonard receives the National Book Foundation's 2012 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://articles.philly.com/2012-11-11/news/35050729_1_raylan-elmore-leonard-hombre 

The Great Crime Writer Elmore Leonard Dies

Foxnews.com reports that Elmore Leonard, one of my favorite writers, has died. He was 87.

Famed Hollywood writer Elmore Leonard died on Tuesday after suffering a stroke on July 29. He was 87.

Best known for “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight” and most-recently the FX series “Justified,” Leonard was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, his researcher, Gregg Sutter, told FOX411. 
"The post I dreaded to write, and you dreaded to read. Elmore passed away at 7:15 this morning from complications from his stroke. He was at home surrounded by his loving family. More to follow," Sutter posted on Facebook. 

Leonard, winner of an honorary National Book Award in 2012, first rose to fame with the release of his Western-themed novels. His works The “Tall T” and “3:10 to Yuma” were adapted into films. Among Leonard's best-known books turned into movies are “Hombre” and "Rum Punch," which was filmed as "Jackie Brown." His short stories were also turned into several films.

His millions of fans, from bellhops to Saul Bellow, made all his books since "Glitz" (1985) best-sellers.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/08/20/elmore-leonard-dies-three-weeks-after-stroke/

Elmore Leonard: Crime Paid This Writer, In Dollars And Honors

My friend and former editor Frank Wilson wrote an interesting piece on Elmore Leonard, one of my favorite writers, in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

'If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
 

That, says Elmore Leonard, is the rule that sums up his famous "Ten Rules of Writing," a sort of manifesto in miniature on behalf of the plain style (sample: "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip").

Leonard has written 45 novels, starting with The Bounty Hunters in 1953. About half of them have made it to the New York Times' best-seller list, including his latest, Raylan. Seventeen have been made into films, sometimes more than once, most notably 3:10 to Yuma (two versions), Hombre, 52 Pick-up (two versions), and Get Shorty. Quentin Tarantino's third film, Jackie Brown, was based on Leonard's Rum Punch. Then there's the TV series Justified.

So even people who don't read much are likely to be familiar with Leonard's work.

Commercial success as a writer only rarely translates into literary respect, and usually only too late for the writer to enjoy it. But Leonard has garnered some highfalutin fans over the years. Saul Bellow was one. And so is Martin Amis, who calls Leonard's prose "far more stylish" than Raymond Chandler's and says that Leonard is "incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence." In fact, Amis will be the presenter on Wednesday night when Leonard receives the National Book Foundation's 2012 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20121111_Crime_paid_this_writer__in_dollars_and_honors.html

A Q & A With Crime Writer Elmore Leonard

Megan Abbott interviewed crime writer Elmore Leonard for the LA Times magazine.

With Justified, the FX series based on his short story “Fire in the Hole”—and featuring U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, introduced in 1993’s Pronto—Leonard finally has a singer worthy of his hardboiled song. Set in the hollows of Kentucky, the show centers on Givens (Timothy Olyphant) as he wrestles with drug rings, coal-mine feuds and his own itchy trigger finger.

The new novel Raylan, his 45th, emerges as a gift to fans of Leonard’s fiction and the show, the supremely cool eponymous hero navigating a menagerie of lowlifes (where, in classic style, the organ thieves have a slight moral advantage over the coal-company executives). The author happily settled in to discuss his storied career, Tinseltown and the mysteries of inspiration.

You can read the rest of the Q & A via the below link:

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2012/03/qla-elmore-leonard.html

Blue Dreams: Elmore Leonard's U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens Character To Appear In His Next Novel

Neal Rubin's column at the Detroit News offers the news that fans of crime writer Elmore Leonard's character U.S. deputy marshal Raylan Givens will see much more of him in the future.

Justified, the FX series based on an Elmore Leonard novella, was renewed this week for a fourth season. That's a good thing on several levels, Leonard says, starting with the fact that he just plain likes the character, federal marshal Raylan Givens.

Leonard, 86, appreciates Givens so much that he'll star again in his next novel, which is called Blue Dreams and was 15 pages along as of Wednesday. That's after appearing in the novella "Fire in the Hole," plus several earlier books and Leonard's current bestseller, Raylan: A Novel (William Morrow, $26.99).

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120308/OPINION03/203080376/Elmore-Leonard-s-Justified-character-appears-steadily-TV-books?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CEntertainment%7Cp

The above photo show Elmore Leonard in the center between Justified producer Graham Yost and actor Timothy Olyphant.

An Interview With Timothy Olyphant

I watched and enjoyed the first episode of Justified, season two, this week.

I believe the TV program truly captures crime writer Elmore Leonard's original and quirky characters.

Timothy Olyphant, who stars as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, is interviewed by Collider.com.

You can read the interview via the below link:

http://collider.com/timothy-olyphant-interview-justified-season-2/75640/