The Mise à sac Score: Finding the Lost Parker Movie

Well, I finally watched it. What took me so long? I’ll get to that.

The Score is the fifth of Richard Stark’s Parker novels and universally thought of as one of the series’ very best. I bet some would say that The Score is the best. It’s probably in nearly everyone’s top five, […]

IDW Publishing announces Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition: Last Call

I’m very excited about this. IDW Publishing has just announced Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition: Last Call.

For those of you not familiar with the first Martini Edition, it was released in 2011 and was a massive, and I mean massive slipcased volume containing the first two of Darwyn Cooke’s already-classic comic book […]

Added to the cover gallery: A Portuguese edition of The Score

Rififi (Portugal) (19??)

Title translation: The Cake. VWOP Portuguese-language correspondent Carlos explains: “Bolo” is also used in Portuguese as slang for the pile of money accumulated in the middle of the table in a card game (the betting money). The equivalent of the “pot” in poker games.

Cover text translation: “Twelve assault an […]

Westlake Score: Killtown

NB: A version of this post also appears at Existential Ennui.

This Westlake Score may not be quite as exciting a proposition, or indeed acquisition, as the T. V. Boardman edition of Pity Him Afterwards I blogged about last week (for me anyway; who knows—perhaps it will be for you), but like that […]

Mise à Sac unbagged

 

Mise à Sac (AKA Pillaged, AKA Midnight Raid) is the one and only movie based on The Score, the one and only movie based on a Parker novel I haven’t seen, and, without question even though I haven’t seen it, the best French film based on a Parker novel.

I’ve put countless hours […]

Fourth (fourteenth?) anniversary

Lots of stuff going on in my so-called “real life” at the moment, so this post is late and a bit more perfunctory than last year’s. But I did want to mark the anniversary, even if it is late.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think of the real anniversary of the current VWOP […]

Westlake Score: The Score by Richard Stark (Pocket Books)

NB: A version of this post also appears on Existential Ennui.

Let’s return to the books I bought at the recent London Paperback & Pulp Bookfair, the majority of which were decidedly Donald E. Westlake-shaped—the above one being a case in point. It’s a US first edition/first printing of The Score, […]

More ComicCon stuff from Darwyn Cooke on Parker

The interviewer is kinda corny, but Darwyn is his usual charming self and you get to see footage of him brush-painting the ComicCon exclusive edition of The Score.

It’s less than five minutes if you’re sneaking this in at the office.

Darwyn Cooke on Before Watchmen and Parker at ComicCon, with bonus violence

Some hiatus, huh? Well, just because I’m somewhat limited at the moment doesn’t mean I can’t throw up a quickie every now and again.

In this interview from ComicCon that Matthew pointed out in the comments, Cooke discusses Before Watchmen and then Parker. If you’re not interested in Before Watchmen (I am, but […]

Like having a scorpion in the room: an interview with Darwyn Cooke on Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score

Introduction

Darwyn Cooke does one in-depth interview for each volume in his series of comic book adaptations of Richard Stark’s [pseudonym of Donald Westlake] Parker novels. (Here are the interviews for The Hunter and The Outfit.) For his new one, The Score, he was kind enough to invite The Violent World of Parker to conduct the interview. “I thought it was time I geared whatever big interview I did more towards Don’s [Donald Westlake’s] fans, rather than my own,” he told us.

For better or worse, he got what he asked for. Nick and I managed two conference calls with Darwyn across three countries, three time zones, and two continents.

There are minor spoilers sprinkled throughout, but nothing, I think, that will affect the enjoyment of the reader of either Darwyn’s great adaptation or its source material. (I did remove one major spoiler, although not for this book.)

Thank you for sitting down with us, Darwyn, and thank you for your immense contributions to the violent world of Parker, and to The Violent World of Parker.

Dear reader: Dig in. I think you’ll find it as fascinating as Nick and I did.

Interview

Nick: [Opening after some green room chatter] Speaking of The Score: How was it this time? How did you find it? How did you adapt to it this time out?

Darwyn: There’s sort of a built-in need to find a way to make each one better than the last. That usually adds to stress and anxiety and all sorts of things you can’t control, but the more I work with Parker, the more comfortable it gets. It’s a pretty easy ride now.

I know how I feel about the character and I know how people have reacted to it, so I feel really free just to go ahead with it? And, in every case with Parker I’m just out to please myself. And that happens to be pleasing other people, so that’s great.

I’m never sitting there worrying about what it is I’m doing. It’s just a very comfortable, really gratifying job now.

We’re like old buddies.

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