John D. MacDonald

I've been reading the Travis McGee books while all the craziness is going on.
It's dang amazing how much foresight MacDonald had in terms of politics, environmentalism, and society at large.
He was making calls in the mid 60s that are torn from today's headlines.

 

In addition to the Travis McGee series,
this book is JDM (not JDV) at his finest.
Provably and demonstrably, though.

Who hasn't spent 20 or 30 years wishing
for just one week with that magical watch?

 

At least once a week.
I've never read that particular book, but I remember and episode of Twilight Zone that had a similar plot.

 

If you had that watch, you could rip off people for gazillions of dollars, bed porn stars and supermodels for decades and then take over the wor ... hey, wait a minute, WTF?

 

Why no Travis McGee movie (s) ?

 

WIKI leaks ...

• MacDonald's novel Soft Touch was the basis for the 1961 movie Man-Trap.
• His 1957 novel The Executioners was filmed during 1962 as Cape Fear featuring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Martin Scorsese directed the 1991 remake of Cape Fear starring Robert DeNiro and Nick Nolte. Because of the success of the films, The Executioners has been republished under the Cape Fear title, even though the novel is set in Florida and does not mention Cape Fear, North Carolina.
• The novel Cry Hard, Cry Fast was adapted as a two-part episode of the television series Run for Your Life during November 1967.
• A 1970 movie adaptation of the novel Darker Than Amber was directed by Robert Clouse from a screenplay by MacDonald and Ed Waters. It featured Rod Taylor as series character Travis McGee.
• The novella Linda was filmed twice for television, in 1973 (with Stella Stevens in the title role) and in 1993 (with Virginia Madsen).
• The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything was adapted for a 1980 TV movie. It resulted in a 1981 sequel, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Dynamite.
• The 1980 TV movie Condominium, based on MacDonald's novel, featured Dan Haggerty and Barbara Eden.
• Sam Elliott played Travis McGee in the TV adaptation of The Empty Copper Sea, titled Travis McGee (1983). It relocated McGee to California, eliminating the Florida locales basic to the novel.
• The 1984 movie A Flash of Green featured Ed Harris. Victor Nuñez, who wrote the screenplay and directed the movie, was nominated for Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival.

 

There were rumors about 10 years ago of Leonardo DiCaprio buying the rights to do a McGee movie, but it never materialized.

 

The one thing about the McGee books that didn't age well is any mention of money.
I'm obviously smart enough to understand inflation, but it's distracting to be reading along and someone be making a big deal about an amount that is essentially pocket change today.
It's kind of funny.

 

I think it was "The Deep Blue Good-By"
Not entirely positive.

 

That would make sense because it was the first book.

What would be better, a direct telling of McGee stories set in the 60s or update them to present day?

 

Thank God for that. Leo as Travis McGee? Ick. Not quite as miscast as Cruise portraying Jack Reacher, but damn close. As the great Julia Reed described McGee in a Garden & Gun essay,

Travis McGee is six foot four inches tall and weighs 205 pounds. He is, according to a character in The Long Lavender Look, “a big tall guy, kind of battered here and there, with a lot of tan and real pale gray eyes.” His home is a houseboat called The Busted Flush, his ride is a 1936 Rolls-Royce converted into a pickup truck and dubbed Miss Agnes, and his best friend is an erudite economist named Meyer. Travis makes his living as a self-described “salvage consultant,” which in extremely loose terms means he recovers other people’s property for a 50 percent fee. Mostly he rescues a lot of dames in distress and rights an even bigger amount of wrongs—but fails in both quests enough to keep him philosophical.

He brakes for raccoons (on the grounds that they are “more affable, intelligent, and tidy than the average meathead that wants them eliminated”), was an environmentalist long before Carl Hiaasen’s characters lamented the loss of the Florida that was, and has a deep-seated sense of honor. In many ways he is a precursor of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, though he has far more possessions and is fond of beverages other than Reacher’s ubiquitous black coffee. Travis’s drink of choice is a double Plymouth gin on the rocks, straight with a twist, but in a pinch he’ll settle for Booth’s.​

I don’t picture Leo playing that role. Not well, anyway. I could see George Clooney or somebody like that playing Travis McGee, but not Leo.

For TV? Update them to the present. I’d love to see HBO or maybe TNT try it in a prestige-series format, say 10 episodes per season.

That Travis McGee movie with Sam Elliott mentioned above was mediocre, by the way. Teenage me, a huge McDonald/McGee fan, was disappointed.

 

I think Alexander Skarsgard would make a good McGee.


I've never gotten into Jack Reacher. I've never read the books, tolerated the first movie, and didn't care for the second.
One of the appeals of McGee is putting yourself into the fantasy of living his life. I wouldn't want to lead Reacher's life.