The Big Bounce — Blog

Elmore Leonard is a hard writer to adapt. There was for a while the idea in Hollywood and elsewhere that all filmmakers had to do to make a successful film out of an Elmore Leonard book was just copy the book, dialogue and all, and you’re gold. The truth is a lot more complicated, though. One reason why Hollywood thought that was because some filmmakers made it look easy in a series of films in the nineties (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out of Sight - which to be fair, are as much the sensibility of the directors as they are Leonard’s). Leonard does write good dialogue, but the trick of turning his work into films is complicated because he didn’t care about a three act structure, and had his own ideas about pacing. That’s not a criticism at all, by the way, just an observation.

I thought of this watching The Big Bounce, which was released in 2004. On the surface it has everything going for it. The director was George Armitage, who’s made a number of good noirish and crime films over the years including Grosse Point Blank and Miami Blues that really try to blend genres and tones in interesting ways. Movies that even when they don’t completely succeed, are interesting. And I’m one of those people who would often rather watch an interesting mess than a perfectly made bland film. (I’ve also always liked Armitage cause he was originally from Hartford and always nice to see Connecticut folk do good). It stars Owen Wilson and Sara Foster, with a supporting cast of Morgan Freeman, Gary Sinise, Charlie Sheen, Bebe Neuwirth, Willie Nelson, Harry Dean Stanton. It’s set in Hawaii, where it was shot, so at the very least the scenery is great.

I kept thinking about the film. Not because it was good. It wasn’t even horrible. It was simply…bland. The movie feels like the edited for TV version of a movie. Where all the sex and violence and profanity and a lot of the subtext and character of the film has been edited out. Because a lot of the charm of Elmore Leonard books is his dialogue and though there are good scenes in the film, for the most part it never feels like Elmore Leonard. It doesn’t feel like much of anything.

The film involves a drifter and small time thief (Wilson) who after getting out of jail on an assault charge, gets hired by a local judge to manage his small beachfront resort. Meanwhile he becomes interested in Foster, who’s the mistress of a local developer, who has a plan to rob her boyfriend. And of course as the plan gets developed, there’s a lot more to it.

Apparently during editing Armitage left the film or got fired, so I hold out hope that there is a good version of this film that exists and that someday we may get to see. Because it’s possible to see bits and pieces of it in the film. Wilson and Foster work well together and there are a lot of scenes where the two play off each other in interesting ways. Those small moments, likely a combination of scripted nuance and improvisation, showing how they’re falling for each other even while they’re deeply wary of each other, being able to read each other all too well, and can’t trust each other. Wilson especially leans into the dialogue, which for both is this mix of laidback lightheartedness with this intensity and hostility. The film needed more of those scenes with the two of them.

Similarly think about the scene where Wilson and Charlie Sheen get into a brief fight and after punching him in the nose, Wilson is telling him not to tilt his head back, and how to wash his shirt to get the blood out while sitting in the grass next to him. Sheen saying his wife will know how to get blood out of the shirt. Again, these little funny moments between characters.

The biggest waste of the film is that they had Willie Nelson and Harry Dean Stanton and did almost nothing with them! Seriously what were people thinking?

There is a scene which is Morgan Freeman, Willie Nelson, and Harry Dean Stanton playing dominos. I would watch two hours of the three of them playing dominos. I truly hope that there’s hours of raw footage of the three just improvising in front of the camera. No hyperbole. I think it would be enthralling and hilarious and entertaining as anything. And yet the scene in the film is a blink and you’ll miss it moment.

Maybe that’s the film’s biggest problem. Leonard is good at taking his time. At letting his characters talk long enough to reveal themselves. At following a meandering plot that’s never less than enthralling. The film is uninterested in such moments. Because a movie like this isn’t about the plot, it’s about the characters, the tone, the dialogue, the humor. It’s about the how of the story more than the story itself. The result is a film that’s fine to watch on TV in the middle of the night, where half awake you can enjoy the scenery and follow the plot with casual interest but not have engage with the material deeply. It’s too bad that the filmmakers felt similarly, and didn’t want to spend time with the material and characters and enjoy the experience.