Why Movies Suck

[Dana King]

(Also posted at One Bite at a Time)

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.

[Dana King]

Unfortunately, that's too often what happens when Leonard's books get made into movies.