The movie puts Travolta back with the major league players like Gene Hackman, another class co-star in 'Get Shorty'.

Quentin Tarantino -- he was named after Burt Reynolds' blacksmith Quint on 'Gunsmoke' -- had a meeting with Travolta while he was writing 'Pulp Fiction'. Hollywood 's latest Wunderkind said:' I didn't exactly write it quite for how John played it. I wrote something a little bit more to the right but when I met John I thought that would be a really different way to go -- but WHAT a way. Then I just got really excited about the possibilities.'

The high-school drop out ( at 14) and self-taught film-maker who went to jail three times because he could not afford to pay traffic tickets is convinced, Now he never stops working. His first thespian outing was as an Elvis impersonator on 'The Golden Girls' but now he's acting in 'Mr Destiny Turns on the Radio' with Nancy Travis and Dylan McDermott' 'DFrom Dusk to Dawn' with George 'E.R.' Clooney and in the romance 'Hands Up.'

Although he plans to direct Leonard's 'Killshot' -- for once in Leonard fiction a female takes command of the action -- later this yer he maintains:'I'm just too lazy to make movie after movie. I will live a normal life.'

Fat chance.

He worked on the script for the nuclear submarine movie 'Crimson Tide' and also as a 'scripted doctor' on some television series. There's also talk of a big screen 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' film (Tarantino is a major fan).

Although he still lives in a modest West Hollywood apartment he admits to having developed a a taste for the good life -- things like $300 caviar and Cristal champagne 'snacks'. He laughs:' Caviar was one of those things where I didn't want to try it and then I had some and "ooh la la." I never understood the allure of champagne and then I had some Cristal in Paris . I got the message.'

By contrast, Elmore Leonard is a nine to five man. Generally each day he sits at his 200-year old desk writing in longhand( he revises on a reconditioned portable typewriter) without a break for lunch at the the home he shares with his second wife Joan. It is fifteen miles outside Detroit but many more away from the streets his characters prowl. He has created a memorable rainbow of tough,evil, sad, sorrowful, sadistic and sometimes sympathetic but best of all just plain psycho-crazy characters.

He looks like an absent-minded professor all the way up to his Kangol cap. But, like his plots, his owlish appearance is deceiving. He provides material for those who want to read fast, often absurdly funny, occasionally violent, sometimes sexy page-turners. The critics put him in hallowed sentences with Dashiel Hammet, Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald and he does not complain about that company. It's just not quite accurate. They wrote mysteries. He writes thrillers.

He talks softly through a wispy beard:' The puzzled has never interested me. I never read mysteries. I'm interested in what antagonists are doing and thinking and how they go about what they do. That's why I've always felt the most interesting parts of a mystery story, the classic mystery, are off stage.

'We don't see the bad guys in action and they interest me more than the good guys. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. It does not conform to the usual way of telling a crime story.

Nevertheless, doing it his way has provided multi-million dollar dividends.But he is not wallowing in his success:' People tell me I can afford a Mercedes but I don't want one. I have no desire to move to Beverly Hills or New York . I don't want a sailboat or a Rolls or to live in some exotic setting. The work is my satisfaction, my fun. I certainly believe in working for money. I believe in that but that isn't the end-all by any means. My satisfaction is not haven written it but actually doing it. As far back as I can remember I have always been a storyteller. I'm happy to sit at a desk and tell a story all day.

'I like the world of violence. I think people who are in the criminal life are interesting. The bad guys interest me.....'

As they do Quentin Tarantino.

It looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship but fasten your seatbelts for much. much more pulp fiction.

<Previous