Writer/Director John Mulholland and Producer Richard Zampella in Los Angeles Filming Interviews for Elmore Leonard Documentary

Zampella & Mulholland Wrap West Coast Interviews for Elmore Leonard Documentary

Oct 8, 2015 - LOS ANGELES -- Writer/Director John Mulholland and Producer Richard Zampella have wrapped up a week in Los Angeles, filming West Coast interviews for their upcoming Elmore Leonard documentary. The interviews explore Leonard’s writing and the numerous film adaptations based on his work, such as: Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out Of Sight, and the FX television series, Justified.

Among those interviewed:

Producer/Writer Gregg Sutter, who served as Leonard’s researcher for more than three decades, is editor and contributor to the Library of America’s three-volume Elmore Leonard Anthology.

Graham Yost created and co-wrote Justified, which concluded its six-season run earlier this year. The series was based on Elmore Leonard's short story, Fire in the Hole. Yost wrote the films, Speed, Broken Arrow and Hard Rain, and worked on such HBO series as Band Of Brothers and The Pacific.

Rachel Howzell Hall is author of the critically-acclaimed Detective Elouise Norton novels, Land of Shadows and Skies of Ash (Forge) -- cited by the LA Times as “Books to Read This Summer” in both 2014 and 2015. Hall’s first novel, A Quiet Storm (Scribner), was a Borders’ Original Voices selection.

Wendy Calhoun, currently co-exec producer on Empire, Fox’s hip-hop smash, was a co-producer, story editor and writer for two seasons on Justified. Calhoun was also a writer and producer on the ABC-TV series, Revenge.

Cheryl Dorsey, retired LAPD Sergeant, is author of Black & Blue: The Creation of a Manifesto, which offers an unsparing look at the inner workings of the LAPD regarding its black officers, its female officers, and, most especially, its black female officers. Dorsey has appeared on MSNBC and contributes to The Huffington Post.



Mulholland wrote/directed the NY Times Critics Pick, Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen, which explored the 20 year friendship of Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper. The feature documentary was produced by Richard Zampella at Transmultimedia Entertainment.

For more info visit:

www.dickensofdetroit.com
www.richardzampella.com
www.transmultimedia.com
www.cooperhemingway.com

Graham Yost Interview in Carmel

Screenwriter Graham Yost: Show runner of FX's Justified is interviewed for Elmore Leonard Documentary

CARMEL, CA – 10.1.15: Writer/Director John Mulholland and Producer Richard Zampella travel to Carmel, California to Interview Screenwriter Graham Yost for Elmore Leonard Documentary. Yost wrote the films Speed, Broken Arrow, and Hard Rain and helmed the FX television series Justified for 6 seasons. The series was based on Elmore Leonard's short story "Fire in the Hole".

Read more about: Elmore Leonard: The Dickens of Detroit

Mulholland & Zampella Elmore Leonard Documentary Interviews

Wendy Calhoun, Co-Executive Producer of Fox's Empire Interviewed by John Mulholland

Cheryl Dorsey, Author of Black & Blue: The Creation of a Manifesto is Interviewed on Elmore Leonard

John Mulholland and Richard Zampella continue conducting on camera interviews this week in Los Angeles for the upcoming documentary on author Elmore Leonard. The interviews will explore the numerous film adaptations/screenplays of Elmore Leonard novels and short stories. Mulholland is exploring the impact that Leonard's work has on current day screenwriters with his lean, terse minimalist writing style.

[Top] Wendy Calhoun is interviewed for Elmore Leonard Documentary. Wendy was a co-producer and writer for Elmore Leonard adapted FX television series Justified. She was the Executive Story Editor for the first season and wrote the episode "Blind Spot". For the second season she wrote the episode "For Blood Or Money". Prior to Justified she had worked as a writer and producer on Revenge. Currently, Wendy serves as co-executive producer of creator Lee Daniels television series “Empire” –Fox’s new hip-hop family drama.

[Bottom] Cheryl Dorsey is author of Black & Blue: The Creation of a Manifesto which takes a hard look at the inner workings of the LAPD—especially regarding its black officers, its women officers, and most especially its black women officers. She is interviewed by Writer/Director John Mulholland for the documentary Elmore Leonard: The Dickens of Detroit in Los Angeles on 9.28.15

John Mulholland & Richard Zampella Filming Documentary in Detroit

PR Log - Aug. 13, 2015 - DETROIT -- Writer/Director John Mulholland and Producer Richard Zampella are in Detroit, Michigan this week, filming Interviews for the upcoming Transmultimedia Entertainment documentary, Elmore Leonard: The Dickens of Detroit. The documentary explores Elmore Leonard’s life, his works and his place in the American literary pantheon. When Elmore Leonard died on August 20, 2013 at age 87, he left behind more than 40 novels and dozens  of short stories. By almost universal consent, he is the finest American crime writer in the 20th Century . Many critics argue that, if anything, the reference to genre slights his contributions. Martin Amis described him as “a literary genius,” and “the nearest America has to a national writer.”



Throughout the fifties, Elmore Leonard was an obscurity, toiling in a dying genre – the western – putting down first drafts on yellow notepads from five to seven in the morning, before laboring all day on the Chevrolet truck account at Campbell Ewald, a Detroit ad agency. By the 1970s, Leonard had turned to crime fiction -- set usually in Detroit or South Florida -- and the men and women who commit the crimes. And then, in 1985, featured on the cover of Newsweek, Elmore Leonard became the proverbial overnight sensation and an NY Times best-selling author. Leonard became a household name, profiled in GQ, Rolling Stone and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Praised by authors and critics, Time Magazine dubbed him “The Dickens of Detroit.”

When he died in 2013, at age 87, he was still writing, still a NY Times best-selling author. Chances are you knew him, even if you didn’t know his name, by such film titles as: Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out Of Sight, or the TV series, Justified. As Elmore Leonard once said, “I’ve always seen my books as movies.”

John Mulholland (Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen) has been immersed in everything Elmore Leonard for a year, his writing – novels, short stories, screenplays, and films based on his work --  and much of what has been written about him over the decades. He is in the process of interviewing Leonard’s family and closest friends, along with a rich assortment of women and men who worked with Leonard or who have written about and studied Leonard.





Richard Zampella is a documentary film producer who has created content for Warner Home Video and Paramount Pictures. Among his production credits are producer of Sergeant York of God and Country, narrated by Liam Neeson. Inside High Noon narrated by Frank Langella and Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen narrated by Sam Waterston. The later was chosen by the New York Times as a Critics’ Pic in October of 2013.

Visit The Dickens of Detroit Website

Elmore Leonard: The Dickens of Detroit Now in Production

Elmore Leonard’s life, his works, his place in the American literary pantheon, is the subject of this new documentary from Writer/Director John Mulholland and Producer Richard Zampella at Transmultimedia Entertainment. Central to the film, adding depth and resonance, is more than half-an-hour of never-before-seen interview footage with Leonard in which he analyzes and discusses how he started, why he wrote what he did, how he arrived at his lean, terse minimalist trademark.

Elmore Leonard: The Dickens of Detroit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4332600/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_1

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