Episode Details

Jesse, Scott Danielson, Maissa Bessada, and Misha Burnett talk about Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
everybody knows their places, the 2nd Dortmuner novel, Bank Shot, the movie adaptation, DNFed that thing, it existed on dvd, just to confirm, be completist, artificial eyebrows, a record for biggest eyebrows, stunt eyebrows, very cartoonish, the broad characterization, pretty close, the money is on fire, the vocab word that best applies to Dortmunder is hapless, luckless, hap means luck, what happend, Maissa?, I’m feeling really happy, luck’s been with with me today, happenstance, how did it fall out?, what went wrong?, character and cartoonish, Herman X, we’re looking at his menu, a negroni, black beans, everything added to the menu is black, how black is he? even his drink is black, just so funny, movies out of Westlake stories, I’m a movie maker, make a great book into a good movie, it almost never works, what killed the movie?, they didn’t follow the book, starts with him in prison, something ridiculous, Upjohn Ballantine, a Dukes of Hazard kind of a way, where you buy the name of the book, they did pass a bank that was in a trailer, the temporary bank was in a trailer, the acting was horrible, melodramatic, one of the actors was Boss Hogg, the fake lawyer that came in to visit, Karp, he’s in one of the James Bond movies, that boy’s out there doing it again, it’s like a movie, this would make a terrific movie, why deviate, this is dead on, the scriptwriter complains about the movie, the film failed due to the direction, never truely done justice to Westlake, slightly tilted, a charming idea, stealing the whole building, into a farce, a marvellous stage director, simply wasn’t deft, ruined what I thought was a good piece, bitterly disappointed, it doesn’t translate, it’s so careful, it seems to flow super easy, everything is funny and fun, and endless mistake, you can’t quite do it, it is the way it is told, a lot more cops, great stuff, up on a hill, mobile headquarters, too much coffee and danishes, want some?, aiming to do what is done in the book, it doesn’t translate to film that well, Brer Rabbit, the Uncle Remus stories, these are cartoons, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, talking animals betraying each other, a pixar style movie, it works best as a book, Shakespeare is not a novel, when you see Shakespeare performed, you can’t mess with it too much, performed on stage is where it is, location shooting, Westlake lives in the text, he doesn’t live in the plot, his character direction that’s the fun part, betting on cards, two sixes, the whole thing’s moving, too long as a movie, the movie adaptation of A Travesty, A Slight Case Of Murder (1999), a cat just knocked over a bunch of things, James Cromwell, accidentally murders his girlfriend, blackmails him, told first person, breaks the fourth wall, points his funny face towards the camera, a comic murderer, pack in all the plot, knock over a bank, why the book is good, how deftly he handles it, The Blonde Lieutenant, the reason Dortmunder is called Dortmunder, worked as a “snow top”, white helmeted Air Force police, he’s filling in the little details there, a blog, the car crash, smutty books in the back, those were all Donald Westlake, the etext, dig around, the complete dot txt, you jammed on your, Kelp, the Pinto, a row of stores on the right, an alley between the two of them, the storage area, full of paperback books, one was called Passion Doll, Man Hungry, Strange Affair, Off Limits, Call Me Sinner, Apprentice Virgin, his topcoat flapped, you were talking about the cops, why don’t you bums get off the road, what you’re gonna get is cops, every character in this