Donald Westlake’s Ventures in Movies and TV

The Mind of Donald E. Westlake by Levi Stahl takes a look at Westlake’s ventures into screenwriting and the adaptations of his work for movies and television. It’s worth a look.

Did you know Westlake wrote a screenplay adapting Hammet’s Red Harvest? Sadly it was never made.  Neither was Westlake’s James Bond screenplay.  It’s no secret that Lee Marvin played Westlake’s most popular character Parker on the big screen, but did you know…

 

…that Between Point Blank, in 1967, and Parker, in 2013, Parker (usually under other names) was played by Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall, Jim Brown, Mel Gibson, Jason Statham, and, strangest of all, Anna Karina…

I didn’t.