I tried to write this one straight, a comparative piece on the Donald E Westlake novel and the Peter Yates film from William Goldman's screenplay. It didn't work. The jinx is still going, that fatal curse that sees the eponymous emerald evading the crooks' grasp after every one of the numerous heists. 'The Hot Rock' is a tough one to trap, even in a brief post.
The movie is a close adaptation of the novel, which only veers away to do some streamlining in characterisation and elimination of one of the heists, the six heists that our crooks, led by John Dortmunder, pull in order to obtain the rock for their untrustworthy buyer. Dortmunder, who is a fascinating character of benign criminal genius, goes on to lead his own series of novels after this, but this is the story that made a cult film and the one that will be remembered. 'The Hot Rock' is a comedic caper classic. It's a shame that the movie didn't do better, but it's not exactly a surprise that a high quality film did badly at the box office. It happens all the time, with depressing regularity, and is probably down to the lack of machine guns ang gigantic explosions.
Westlake was up there with the classic authors who could tell all manner of stories without dropping into the verbal gutter to do it. It's a rare gift. Hammett could do it easily too; bring you right down to ground level without spoiling some of the most elegant prose ever seen on the printed page with unnecessarily gratuitous dialogue. You don't need to go to swearing and smut if you can actually write, and Westlake is there on the same level. Abundantly. While the novel may start slowly, it does grab you and refuse to let you go until you hit the end and wonder how you got from a stolen emerald, to a prison break, then a police station raid, then a lunatic asylum with a theme park locomotive, and finally a totally unexpected hustle right out from a safe deposit box. How does a writer pull that off? Ivan Reitman calls it something like the 'falling dominoes of reality', where you can hold an audience to anything as long as you keep the intervening steps of unreality close enough. Westlake is a master of the falling dominoes, and of humorous dialogue that flows naturally from situation and character without messing up the narrative. He also knows to allow time to elapse well, which is another rare gift.
The movie is a great adaptation of a novel, and one that features one of my two all time favourite actors in Robert Redford (the other one is of course Jimmy Stewart), with his frequent screenwriter William Goldman at the peak of his powers. Goldman was a fantastic and thoughtful screenwriter at the time, and Redford one of the actors with the most intelligent and thoughtful screen presences. Combined, they could really do no wrong, whether in this or in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', 'All The President's Men', or 'The Great Waldo Pepper'. Goldman was designed to put words in Redford's mouth, and Redford was designed to read them. Is this getting a bit gushy? Well, it deserves, in both forms. The movie is a very subtle film, except for the bits that feature Zero Mostel, and a great watch. The book is a little gem I had never heard of, with witty dialogue and a great pulse.
Which is the better experience of the book and the film? It's a close call, really it is. They're essentially just different sides of the same coin, as a good adaptation should be. A bad adaptation is usually either the same side of the same coin, or a totally different currency. Is that enough coin analogy? Personally, and with great anticipation for the other Dortmunder books in the series, I would say that the book is the better version, if only because the plot is less neat. Movies tend to make things far too tidy, and that is the only real disadvantage of the movie, but is that disadvantage smoothed out by a Quincy Jones soundtrack? Oh, it's just too close to call. Even now, Zero's crazy eyes are twisting into mental view...
How about this: If you try one of the book or the movie, and like it, then you'll love the other version for being just different enough to be worthwhile. If you don't like the one then don't try the other. That's a deal.
O.
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