MovieChat Forums > The Day of the Wolves Discussion > One of Richard Stark's Parker novels mig...

One of Richard Stark's Parker novels might have inspired this...

posted 9 years ago by bcamphome
2 replies | jump to latest

The plot of DAY OF THE WOLVES, in which a robbery team isolates a small town and attempts to rob it clean before outside help can arrive, is quite similar to that of Richard Stark's novel, "The Score," which was published in 1964. It was one of a series of novels devoted to heist expert Parker. Several novels in the series have been turned into movies, with POINT BLANK (1967) and THE OUTFIT (1973) being the best of them. It's not to hard to consider that the writer of DAY OF THE WOLVES read "The Score" and decided to make a movie based on its premise, but changed the characters and details of the robbery enough to avoid a plagiarism claim. Plus, the film had so little of a release that if Stark and his team had ever even heard of it, they would have realized that any lawsuit would bring more publicity to the film and its makers than they deserved.

[–] milesahead1 9 years ago

I was just about to post the same observation. I always felt that The Score would make a terrific film. Mind you, Hollywood seems to struggle to fully develop Stark's novels with the exception of Point Blank and The Outfit (not forgetting the Dortmunder novel adaptation 'The Hot Rock') and I've never understood why producers are so reluctant to call Parker 'Parker'!

[–] The Hoyk 8 years ago

For his own reasons, whenever Donald Westlake sold a Parker book for film adaptation, it was specified in the contract that they could not call the character "Parker." Maybe he didn't want one actor associated with the character, or wanted the films to stand alone and not constitute a series. He once wrote about wrangling with a studio that had adapted one of his Dortmunder books, claiming they owned the character and the rights to use it, which he fought and won, so that seems like the probable reason for Parker name avoidance: if the studio did decide to do a sequel to a Parker adaptation without him, at least it wouldn't *really* be Parker.

It is only now after Westlake's death that film adaptations can use his name, as in PARKER with Jason Statham.