Jacket photo from The Hot Kid

Recommended:

Get Shorty
Stylish complement to the novel, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld with inspired casting of John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, and a bizarre James Gandolfini long before "Sopranos.")
metacritic score: 82
available from Amazon

Elmore Leonard

Master wordslinger going strong

As a long-time fan I went to hear Elmore Leonard speak at my local Barnes & Noble. "The Hot Kid" had just been published, and he read a little and anwered questions about his rules for writing (my favorite: always use "said" for writing dialogue), and the experience (often bad) of making a movie.

He was funny but tired, you could tell, and had probably been on the road too long. Afterwards I waited patiently to get my copy of "The Hot Kid" signed. A helpful B&N staffer was writing down names on Post-Its trying to speed up the process, but her handwriting was a bit florid and my name -- "Stu" -- was a bit hard to read. She passed it ahead to Elmore who set to scribbling in my copy and only when he'd finished did he look up at me with an odd expression. "What kind of name is that?" you could see him thinking. He had written "To Stub." You could tell he wasn't gonna waste a book on me to fix it. He apologized, though, and moved on, while I had a book all the more interesting for his flub.
--s.r.

Watch an interview with Elmore Leonard on Charlie Rose

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