With the obvious exception ofPulp Fiction, no 1990s property starringJohn Travoltahas aged half as well asGet Shorty. Sure, sure,Broken Arrowis still a blast if you don’t pay attention to all the…talking, and the same goes forFace/Off.She’s So Lovelyis also pretty good, though it’s hard to not imagine how the film, based onJohn Cassavetes' last script, would have looked with the independent-film icon behind the camera.Get Shorty, however, stands on its own merits as a great, swiftly paced comedic take on the odd mechanics of Hollywood and its kin in the world of crime. It’s one ofBarry Sonnenfeld’s best films, maybe even the best, adapted from a very goodElmore Leonardnovel, and stacked with a cast that includesGene Hackman,Delroy Lindo,Rene Russo,Danny DeVito, and the lateJames GandolfiniandDennis Farina.
It’s enduring, if not exactly classic reputation is likely what has caused EPIX to order 10 episodes of a proposed TV series based on the film and Leonard’s novel,as Deadline reports. The show is headed up byDavey Holmes, an executive producer on the surprisingly long-running American remake ofShameless, which starsWilliam H. MacyandEmmy Rossum. There has yet to be any word as to who has been cast or contacted about taking on the role of Chili Palmer, the lone shark that heads out to L.A. and becomes a producer at the center of the story, but a right-off-the-bat season order says quite a bit about EPIX’s confidence in the project.
To be honest, there’s quite a lot of ground to cover and material to explore in Leonard’s novel, as well as in his sequel,Be Cool, though the film adaptation of that book was frankly horrible. Few stories have so jovially celebrated and criticized the more criminal aspects of the movie business, considering the corruptive power and necessity of money in both industries. If the show can tap into those ideas, and expand on them from Sonnenfeld’s initial conceptions,Get Shortycould be as slyly meditative and darkly funny as FX’s sensationalFargoadaptation.
