Retrospective: Elmore Leonard in Film

In an early scene of Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1995 film Get Shorty, Chili Palmer (John Travolta) has his expensive leather coat casually stolen by the well-known Miami wiseguy Ray “Bones” Barboni (Dennis Farina). In the original version of the script, the scene wherein Chili discovers his coat to be missing read very flat and straightforward. He harassed a coat-check clerk about his coat. The dialogue…