Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Why Movies Suck

Here's a tidbit from the Trivia page of IMDB's entry for the movie Get Shorty:

MGM didn't want to extensively use Elmore Leonard-inspired dialogue in the film, and pushed Barry Sonnenfeld and Scott Frank to make many passages more generic than the book's, but once John Travolta signed on to the film he successfully pressured the studio to leave Frank's original draft (which had a lot of colorful dialogue) intact for filming.

Yeah, let's smooth the edges off of Elmore Leonard's dialog. There's a good idea.

2 comments:

Chris said...

Good for Travolta for going to bat to save the better dialogue. Which is why that movie was probably a lot of fun, if I recall properly.

Dana King said...

GET SHORTY was about as much as I've had at a movie. Tarantino's JACKIE BROWN may be the best Leonard adaptation, but the chemistry of the actors/characters in GET SHORTY can't be beat.