Many people, this writer included, consider Elmore Leonard one of the greatest living novelists in the English language. While his pulp origins (he started off writing Western short stories in 1951) mean he’s often underrated, very few authors have such command of their prose, plotting and characterization. The writer hasn’t always been well-served by Hollywood however; for every “Out of Sight” or “Jackie Brown,” which undeniably rank among the stone-cold classics of the crime genre, there’s been a “The Big Bounce” or a “Be Cool,” which must rank among the worst.
With one of the finest adaptations of Leonard’s work, the Timothy Olyphant-toplining FX series “Justified” currently on the air and going from strength to strength, now comes news from Cannes that one of his finest novels, 1988’s “Freaky Deaky,” which follows a group of 60s radicals who reunite in the 80s to extort a millionaire, is finally heading to the big screen. It was announced a few years back that Charlie Matthau (the son of Walter) would be writing and directing an adaptation, with Leonard serving as an executive producer, and the project finally seems to moving towards a start in the late summer.
The book’s setting has been moved, following Leonard’s suggestion, to 1974, in order to make the cast a little younger; Leonard tells Deadline that “I figured all you would really need is a bunch of older cars. And nobody wants to see a bunch of old fogies.” So long as this doesn’t result in Zac Efron and Mary-Kate Olsen taking the leads, we’re on board with that.
Quentin Tarantino bought the rights to the book not long after “Reservoir Dogs,” and John Malkovich held them in the last decade, so we’re surprised that Matthau, whose work to date seems a little low-rent, is the one to bring it to cinemas, but with Leonard on board hopefully he’ll surprise us with this one. All we need is for the Coens to finally get around to making “Cuba Libre” (this writer’s personal favorite Leonard novel) and we’ll be happy.
