Re: RARA-AVIS: Terrill Lee Lankford Film Maker

From: Terrill Lankford ( lankford2000@earthlink.net)
Date: 23 Feb 2007


-----Original Message-----
>From: Brian Thornton < tieresias@worldnet.att.net>
>Sent: Feb 22, 2007 5:38 PM
>To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: RARA-AVIS: Terrill Lee Lankford Film Maker
>
>Just in case you've been hiding under a rock (as I have, I had to read about this in Hockensmith's Reel Crime column in the new AHMM), our own Terrill Lankford actually directed that first chapter of ECHO PARK he mentioned screening along with (*retch*) Altman's "The Long Goodbye" the other night down there in LA.
>
>Well, I just went and watched it on YouTube:
>
>http://youtube.com/watch?v=-ndCN3uHinE
>
>And let me say this: when the time comes to have a trailer of one of my books filmed, I know whose door I'm gonna go knocking on: that's right, Terrill Lankford's!
>

Very nice of you to say, Brian. Thanks. And thanks for mentioning this. I didn't even know that interview had run in AHMM.

>I thought this was very well-done, and the use of the book-on-CD voice-over at the beginning was particularly effective. Tim Abell's Bosch wasn't the man-mountain I've pictured when reading the novels, but I liked him in the role, and wanted to see more (always a good sign).
>

It's funny that you mention this because we caught a certain amount of flak from people who thought Tim was too BIG to be Bosch, since Bosch had been a tunnel rat in the war.

Others thought he was too young, But he was within a year of Bosch's age in the scene, which takes place in 1993,

I pity the fools who actually finally manage to bring Bosch to the big screen. Everyone has their own vision of who this guy is. (Like everyone has their own image of Marlowe.)

>Lastly, I thought it was pretty funny that Robert Altman was thanked in the end credits. For my money, if they were going to thank dead film-makers, they should have thanked Orson Welles before Altman. That claustrophobic elevator shot there at the end looked a heck of a lot more like something out of JOURNEY INTO FEAR than BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS.
>

Altman was alive when we shot this, but I don't mind being mentioned in the same paragraph with Welles either. (Not that I ever expect that to happen again.)

>(Joking, I know that the Altman thing is tied-in with the whole "Long Goodbye" thing).
>

I'll explain this one, because it seems to be a curiosity to some people.

If not for Altman, Gould, and The Long Goodbye, we would have never sought out that apartment as a workspace, the opening chapter of Echo Park would not exist in the form that it is in (and perhaps the book wouldn't exist either), and that clip would never have been filmed.

Furthermore, if not for TLG, Michael Connelly probably would have never become a novelist.

It was after a viewing of this film that Mike sought out the books of Chandler and they led him on the path to becoming a crime writer. So, whatever you think of The Long Goodbye, if you like Mike's books, you have that movie to thank for their existence.

SOMETHING good came out of that movie after all.

TL

P.S. - If you want to hear Mike tell this story in his own words, check out the clip we shot for The Lincoln Lawyer, which can also be found on youTube, linked directly to our Echo Park page.



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