For Elmore Leonard’s centennial, writer-director Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, The Queen’s Gambit) reflects on what he learned from Dutch — and what he still carries.
He remembers their first meeting at MGM, a lunch where Leonard “just went down the list of how every one of his movies got fucked up.” Frank was terrified he’d end up on that list. Instead, Get Shorty became a breakthrough — “a masterclass in adaptation,” as Frank calls it — and the start of a creative friendship.
Frank describes how Out of Sight pushed him deeper: how Dutch’s sense of rhythm, confidence, and humor guided every choice. “He told me, ‘If I can’t make the characters talk to one another, I can’t write the book.’ That changed everything for me.”
In one of the video’s best moments, Frank recalls calling Dutch in frustration about how to end Out of Sight. “We hung up, and I suddenly knew what to do — the ending came straight from that call.”
He closes with a tribute:
“Elmore Leonard is his own genre. He changed my life. I even hired my own Gregg Sutter because I wanted a ‘Gregg Sutter’ in my life. You taught me that research isn’t filing facts — it’s hunting for character and truth.”
