MOVIE SHELF: COMPARING FILMS TO THEIR LITERARY COUNTERPARTS
Adaptations of Richard Stark's Parker books, PAGE 2
john cribbs (cont'd)
The same question of motivation is what separates Jason Statham in Parker (2013) from Westlake's character. On the surface, the story of Flashfire, the book adapted for the latest film, seems like the set-up for a revenge scenario: Parker pulls a heist with a bunch of guys, his partners steal his share to bankroll an even bigger operation after Parker refuses to take part in it, and he tracks them down to get his money back (he's forced to engage in several small scores to finance his own plan of following his ex-partners down to Florida). But his reason for tracking them down isn't personal, it's pure Parker: they had an agreement, his partners broke the deal and took his cut, Parker's going to get it back from them. Flashfire is the 19th Parker book, and anyone who's read the previous 18 would have no problem accepting the impetus behind Parker's decision to go after these guys. But for Joe Ticketholder, that's just not intimate enough of a reason to make him care about Parker's mission and get behind his brutal way of dealing with the men who made off with his money. So the screenwriter adds an Armani-clad Outfit-like syndicate who stand in Parker's way, writes in a ruthless hitman who even tries to murder Parker's woman and, most notably, takes a sequence from later in the book where a bunch of people (unrelated to the gang who took his money) shoot Parker and leave him for dead on the side of the road and moves it to the beginning of the movie to kickstart the events that lead our guy down to Florida.
This is how Richard Stark adapters deal with getting the audience to sympathize with Parker. It's not enough that he stares down guys with guns, practices ruthless efficiency and carries himself in a way that allures women and subdues men (all qualities Statham's characters have exhibited in several of his movies) - according to Hollywood, he has to have a relatable reason to do the things he does. And since "because that's who he is!" is too noncommittal for the big screen, the script writer usually includes some kind of gross personal injury. The anti-heroes of Point Blank and Payback are severely wounded by their associate - Porter has to have an amateur surgeon remove the bullets where Walker may not have even survived the shooting (#ghosttheory). Yet in The Hunter, Parker isn't even pierced by the bullet: it ricochets off his belt buckle, merely bruising his abdomen and putting him out of commision for a time (he consequently ends up in prison under a false name so he may be honked off about that, but that's not a direct result of his being shot). Point Blank and Payback make getting the money seem like an afterthought to retribution, their Parker figures working through some kind of existential restoration by bringing down the bastards who betrayed him, and the bastard friends of the bastards who betrayed him.
Despite the suggestion of its title, I think Payback: Straight Up (2006) does a better job capturing the Parker character's motivation than Point Blank: he really just wants the money, revenge is a convenient part of the package. Brian Helgeland still doesn't come off as a Parker expert, but by at least replacing moments of Gibson's Porter dishing out some violence against his enemies and removing stuff like the cringe-inducing scene involving a booby-trapped telephone, he corrected a lot of the theatrical release's unforgivable missteps. Parker doesn't waste time shooting suitcases, he doesn't kidnap people (except in Child Heist, the fictional Parker novel in the Dortmunder classic Jimmy the Kid) and the one time he attempted to frame someone for murder (The Jugger) it bit him in the ass hard. He also never gets captured and tortured, and he certainly doesn't make terrible puns about it later. The original version of Payback also marks the first and only time the Parker character narrates his own story (unless of course you include Anna Karina's Paula Nelson musing over the failure of liberalism to the camera), complete with snide asides about how tough marriage is and nice guys finishing last. I like Mel Gibson (as an actor, not so much a noted anti-semite and woman beater), but if he was so worried about his "lovable rascal" persona that he felt he had to fire Helgeland and lighten the film up, I don't know what could have drawn him to the project in the first place.*
In terms of pure quality, Point Blank (1967) is clearly the best of the movies based on the Parker books. But the film is its own entity, almost entirely divorced from the Parker character of the printed page. Which is why I agree that the best casting of Parker isn't Lee Marvin. Although he is as close to Parker in pure toughness as you could ever hope to get, his portrayal of Parker in Point Blank - Walker - doesn't embody the character. He's an open wound, staggering about confused and betrayed, ultimately walking away from the money when he finally scores it in the last scene of the movie. He's practically (and, possibly, literally) a ghost, creeping about in the background, appearing only when it's time for a bad person to die. Marvin played much more "Parker-esque" characters in movies like The Killers and Prime Cut, although even those criminals found themselves swayed by the noble death of a race car driver or plight of a drugged-up sex slave orphan.
For my money, the best Parker movie - that is to say, the one that best captures the attitude and urgency of the books - isn't a Parker movie at all. It's The Driver (1978), written & directed by Walter Hill and released over a decade after Point Blank. Although he's more directly derivative of Alain Delon's silent killer from Le Samourai, Hill's unnamed driver has no sense of humor, no time for amateurs and second-raters, lives a buttoned-down life under the radar and is completely focused on the job - he's as Parker as they come (he don't like guns, but he knows how to use 'em). And like Parker, he finds himself constantly backed into a corner and betrayed by his own partners. Although the character is a flashy driver as opposed to a brutal heister, Hill's script and directorial style is as stripped-down and bareboned as a Stark narrative. The only thing missing from Hill's movie is the detailed preparation for the robbery and change of character perspective that's always so entertaining to read in the Parker books. A predecessor to Parker was Sterling Hayden's resourceful expert heist planner from The Killing (1956), although I can't imagine Parker falling prey to the ol' "broken lock on a suitcase" bit - seems like more of a Dortmunder thing.
As for strict Parker adaptations, Point Blank and The Outfit are clearly miles above every other movie based on a Parker novel that I've seen (I also haven't seen Mise à Sac, and tragically just learned they screened a print at MoMa three weeks ago). Both films take the novels as a starting point and launch into their own areas of brilliance. I might be easier on Hackford's Parker if it weren't for the arrogance of that title. Every previous film, per agreement with (a living) Westlake, did not use the name "Parker" - I always liked that, since the movies were themselves so removed from the character. Instead we got Nelson, Walker, McClain, Macklin, Stone and Porter, their rechristening an acknowledgement of the movie character's distance from yet reflection of the Parker persona. For Hackford & co. to not only name Statham's anti-hero Parker but use it as the film's title - I'm just saying, your movie had better be a pretty dead-on expression of what the Richard Stark novels are all about. And let's just say that "I don't steal from anyone who can't afford it, and I don't hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it," while technically correct, is not a good mission statement for the movie or the character.
As far as drawing specifically from the stories themselves, most of the existing Parker movies tend to directly translate Stark in tiny pieces rather than as a whole. The stadium heist in The Split. The poker game in The Outfit. The part in Parker where Statham responds to the guy who says "They'll get you!" by paraphrasing the excellent Stark line, "So don't sweat it - it's only money, you're insured and they'll get me." Even the furthest from the mark adaptation-wise, Made in U.S.A., includes 2 or 3 scenes lifted directly from The Jugger (mainly the beginning and the penultimate scene).
Given that, the film with the greateast amount of scenes faithful to its source would have to be The Outfit (1973). In the novel, the title criminal syndicate is targeted and several jobs are pulled off by various groups across the country; the movie delivers on the sheer number of spectacular heists even if it's perpetrated by just two guys. The path of Robert Duvall's Maclin remains virtually parallel to that of Parker's in the novel, even if he's pulling overtime by personally robbing Outfit operations that were originally hit by the likes of Wymerpaugh and Salsa. While it's technically payback for the death of his brother, Maclin goes about the business professionally and even compromises a payoff to end his string of capers - of course, in true Parker tradition, they try to kill him instead.
Besides that, Outfit was the first of the original five Parker movies to use the correct title, to transcribe dialogue and even lift entire scenes from the novel, and to tell the story "straight up" without employing such arty filmic techniques as excessive montage (Made in U.S.A.), fractured time-line (Point Blank) or split screen (The Split), thus making it the closest anyone's come to the cinematic equivalent of Westlake's "stark" writing style.
And now some questions for you my friend:
1) What would you say is the best book of the series?
Personally I'm inclined to point to the aforementioned trilogies (the opening Hunter and closing Slayground series), with Man With the Getaway Face and Butcher's Moon being the respective high points of each.** I also love The Sour Lemon Score, which really puts Parker through the grinder (although I'm not nuts about the ending, a common complaint I have about a lot of the books) and admire The Score for its epic-ness (they rob a whole town!) and return of the hilariously-dubbed Parker associate Salsa. And while I don't think the post-Butcher's Moon Parkers are in the same league as the originals, I'd consider Breakout and the final three my favorites of the later books.
As far as most underrated novel, I harbor a fondness for The Jugger: despite there being no heist, I think it has some of the best characterizations of any of the series. I like that everybody in the book fatally misunderstands everyone else's intentions. And I love this line, after a troublesome rival shoots off his mouth: "Parker looked at him for the first time as a dead man." Great ending too, leaving our anti-hero adrift with no identity and no access to thousands of dollars he invested under a blown cover.
2) Which book do you feel is most ripe for adaptation into an awesome and timeless film?
Since we've discussed this at some length already, I'll let you answer this one.
3) Which recurring Parker characters would you like to see in movie form?
Am I wrong to assume we both want to see a spot-on screen portrayal of Handy McKay?
christopher funderburg
I had a feeling we'd be on the same page about Lee Marvin not really delivering a Parker-esque performance, but I don't think it's just his raw, desperate, even pathetic and emotional turn as the stone cold Parker that misses the mark. I think Marvin in general is too much of a natural bully and smart-ass for the role. He's certainly tough enough, but beginning with his start as a character actor and his specialty playing detestable heavies, he has always been quick with a devastating smirk or some other condescending emasculation - your excellent LEE TV series shows his range, from live-wire lunatic to uber-masculine dominator of the weak - his tendency towards wild-eyed self-destruction and viciousness towards the helpless is put to great use in Point Blank, where he wants to kill his ex-wife and ex-partner with a fury that seemingly resurrects him. He's an unkillable monster in that film, but a sad and efficient one. It's a great movie, but Marvin is not Parker and I don't think he ever could be. He'd make a great George Uhl or Liss, one of the reckless, vicious turncoats that Parker has to contend with in the novels, but Marvin's glee in turning the knife is just too much a part of his star persona to mesh with the emotionally level Parker.
I think that Jim Brown actually gives an extremely Parker-esque performance in what's ultimately a crummy movie, The Split (1968). Brown is naturally tough as hell and a total pro. His confidence seems to bleed over from his background as the greatest running back who ever lived: he carries himself like a man who if he needs six yards on third down is absolutely going to get six yards on third down. A big part of the Parker character is that he's a man who you would absolutely not want to fuck with, even if you are the head of a sprawling criminal syndicate. Jim Brown is a man who every Sunday made 275 pound professional bruisers look like weak little babies. Ultimately, that's why I can't precisely share your enthusiasm for The Driver in the context of Parker. It's a great film, but like in most movies in which he appears Ryan O'Neal is a weak link and has frown-y, wet-eyed face that craves a fist. Parker's ineffable hardness matters to the character; his unfuckwith-ability is why most of the series doesn't have standard villains, but instead collects as his adversaries psychopaths who willfully court self-destruction and idiots who don't understand they've gotten in over their head. The big strike against Jim Brown is that he's black and Parker is able to blend into a crowd and calm down hysterical victims in a way that might not be plausible coming from a brooding, ballsy black man - racism exists and even white criminals get treated very differently than black ones. Parker can control any situation he's in and the racial factor is huge wildcard insofar as how it effects a stupid racist moron's reaction - and Parker has a knack for calming down cracker gas station attendants, prideful Southern cops and all manner of pasty yokels.
Let's not lose sight of that word I threw out there: "ballsy." I think that any question of the most faithful Parker adaptation has to deal with the fact that Parker isn't precisely the character he's made out to be by fans in their shorthand descriptions. For example, he's not interested in women while the job is on, but women love him. And then when the job is over, he apparently becomes a sex machine. It's tough to think of Robert Duvall, Peter Coyote or Lee Marvin in those terms. Women in the books are drawn to him and he even meets the aforementioned recurring character Claire while on a job. Again, Jim Brown fits the bill best - his chemistry with super-foxy Diahann Carroll almost saves The Split.*** As the series runs on, Parker's identity as Claire's boyfriend becomes a bigger and bigger factor in the books - she's the one who convinces him to help out the African dissidents in The Black Ice Score and saving her from the vicious hippie weirdos is more or less the whole plot of Deadly Edge. By the time of Comeback, his heist partners are casually asking how she's doing, like they're a package deal. It's tough to fault Parker for making Claire such a big part of its story - her prominence is right there in the Stark books, whether fans want to admit it or not. [Parker even brings her along while he's working in Dirty Money, the last book. Ostensibly it's to help with his cover, but it still seems hugely uncharacteristic, especially when you consider that Claire's identity is basically Parker's entire front that he wouldn't want to jeopardize. -- john]
I understand that she's not introduced until The Rare Coin Score, the 8th book in the series, but even taking that into consideration she's featured in far more of the Parker novels than she isn't. Despite how he's described by fans, what makes Parker such a durable character is how human Westlake has written him - the plausibility factor is what makes the novels age so well and rounding out Parker into a full human helps the series to stay believable. Throughout the series, Parker never loses his deadly edge, but Westlake does choose to take the character in a softer direction than "soulless crime machine" or "mayhem-loving sociopath." Because of the fan response, I was surprised by how much Parker resembles a later novel in the series - it puts some lines in Parker's mouth that he would never say, but those lines don't affect the plot or his behavior. It doesn't get anything wildly wrong, it's just a mediocre film made by a filmmaker who has to struggle to achieve mediocrity.
The new novels Comeback and Backflash don't play on the page exactly like The Hunter or the brutal, nasty The Jugger, so I can't quite fault Hackford's Parker in terms of "faithfulness" for aping the feel of the later books. If somebody made The Jugger into a sociopolitical critique of "the U.S.A." as a concept and retooled the plot to involve murdered journalists and Algerian dissidents, well then I could complain about the novel being thrown out the window. As you mention, John, ironically Godard's Made in U.S.A. (1966) features more lines and scenes taken "as is" from the book than probably any other Parker film. I'll throw in my own irony: Danish model-turned-actress Anna Karina has never been a particularly expressive performer and her natural emotional opacity fits the character quite well. As an actress, Karina is distant and hard to read which fits the character perfectly - and she's totally an erotic screen presence which fits that piece of the puzzle, to boot. I can't imagine two performers farther apart from each other than Karina and Jim Brown, but they both have something of Parker about them.
Just to keep on the Jim Brown thread a bit longer, not only do I think he could've been the greatest Parker,**** I am frustrated to no end that he stars in an adaptation of The Seventh, which is the novel I think would make for the best movie. I agree with you that The Jugger is probably the most impactful of the novels - but it's also totally off-model from the rest of the series insofar as that it's not about a heist, Parker botches everything and there's a huge amount of senseless violence (not gratuitous to the story, but excessive, ineffective and pointless.) Most of the other books in series can be judged along the cleverness and excitement of their heists: robbing an island casino in The Handle, a mining town in The Score and a rock concert in Deadly Edge being probably the most memorable of the bunch and therefore all fine ideas for films. I always appreciated the simplicity of The Man with the Getaway Face's armored car robbery story, but the story seems so slight in the context of the larger series.
* Gibson seemed more comfortable ten years later playing an unapologetically violent character in Edge of Darkness as a Point Blank-type empty soul out for revenge. In the original Edges of Darkness mini-series, Joe Don Baker plays the same back-up supporting man of action he did in The Outfit. (Also, speaking of The Driver: Gibson also plays an unnamed driver in the recent crime movie Get the Gringo.)
** Honorable mention to Plunder Squad, which is satisfying for the fact that Parker actually walks away from 2 or 3 jobs that don't feel right - something I wish he'd do more often - and ties up a loose end from Sour Lemon Score.
*** The re-imagining of the villain from an over-sexed meathead into a creepy James Whitmore torpedoes it. I guess I can understand the producer's desire not to have Diahann Carroll killed with a broadsword by a creepy-peeping college jock, but James Whitmore versus Jim Brown is not a compelling showdown. It rates somewhere between the 2013 Minnesota Vikings versus 2013 New York Giants and shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal versus Alfred Molina in brownface.
**** And to be clear: The Split is barely recognizable as a Parker movie. Only the heist itself - of a stadium while the game is in progress, a heist later ripped of by The Town - bares any resemble to his violent world. The four more or less faithful adaptations are (in order of faithfulness): The Outfit, Payback: Straight Up, Parker and Point Blank.
<<Previous Page 1 2 3 Next Page>>
home about contact us featured writings years in review film productions
All rights reserved The Pink Smoke © 2014