A Coyote's In The House
Elmore Leonard's editor used to complain that every time he'd put an animal in one of his crime novels he'd write about it from the animal's point of view:
Like, if there's an alligator in somebody's yard, I would tell you what the alligator's thinking, and my editor was always taking that stuff out. `How can you know what the alligator's thinking?' So my agent said, 'Write a kid's book with animals in it.'
That book is A Coyote's In The House, and the bits here are from a Miami Herald review/Elmore interview by Sue Corbett:
His first attempt focused on a dog who, retired from a film career, spent his days wistfully watching his wild canine cousins race through the hills above his palatial Hollywood home."I wrote three or four pages of that and I was as bored as the dog. Then I realized, I'm writing from the wrong point-of-view. I gotta get a coyote. So I did, and then I said, `Let me run with him for a while and see what happens.'''
Thus sprang Antwan, a wise-cracking, jive-talking coyote who meets Buddy, a German Shepard, when he's rooting through the trash, dining on takeout sushi Buddy's family had thrown out. Buddy, longing for excitement, invites Antwan in -- through the doggy door. Antwan follows, curious about how the other half lives. He sniffs out a plate of peanut butter cookies on the counter and eats all of them.
''Homes, can't you smell?'' Antwan asks Buddy.
"Of course I can smell.''
"You know cookies are sitting here and you don't eat none?''
''We're not allowed cookies,'' Buddy confesses.
There's also a love interest, Miss Betty, a ''show bitch poodle,'' who lives with Buddy and who looks, in Antwan's estimation, ''like a wedding cake with a black nose.'' Buddy and Miss Betty may be best-in-show types, but Antwan stars in this story.
''I've had Antwan in books before,'' Leonard said, referring to a character type he frequently relies on to tell his stories of shysters and shylocks seeking second chances or comebacks -- human animals involved in salacious hustles.
Leonard undoubtedly writes the hippest street slang of any great-grandfather around.
Corbett notes that Elmore got Coyote around to all the major Hollywood animation studios, but they all said it wasn't sappy enough for them, so Elmore's got an animator and screenwriter on the job on his own dime. He sees Albert Brooks doing Buddy, and Chris Rock as Antwan.
More on Elmore here, at ElmoreLeonard.com.
Jeez. Me and ol' Elmore must be on the same page. Consider "El Coyote del Rastro de Mulholland", a short piece I just penned for LA Stories:
http://lastories.com/cgi-bin/board/viewstory.cgi?id=66&category=Fiction
Rodger Jacobs at June 9, 2004 6:52 PM