Hi! Long time lurker, first time poster here. I learned something that shocks me so much I had to come out of the shadow and post. I just learned that the lead in Justified, Timothy Olyphant also had played the main character in Hitman and was the main bad guy in Live Free or Die Hard. I consider all of these among my favorites and never once realized this was the same guy. Even now that I found out I still have a hard time making the mental connection. Is this just me?
I haven’t seen the two movies you mentioned, so it’s not a problem for me.
I remember him as Seth Bullock in Deadwood. Raylan is a lot like Seth, except that Raylan has a sense of humor. Seth could never see the humor in any situation. His nickname at TWOP and elsewhere was “Clench”. 
Oh, never had HBO so I never watched deadwood. Heard it was engrossing. I am a fan of action movies, hence the B- “Hitman” in my favs.
Thanks for replying. I probably would not have posted again for a very long time if no one responded.
I first remember him as the drug dealer in Go. But yeah, he’s more like Seth Bullock here. Still a great nuanced performance. Plus it’s got Shane from The Shield, who is also fantastic.
My current favorite show on TV, until Breaking Bad comes back.
Yeah, I can never see him as anyone other than Sheriff Bullock. Now that you mention it, he does always look like he’s keistered about a two-pound bag of quarters and is trying to hold them in.
Jane, Deadwood is great but it can be hard to watch.
Deadwood is well worth the rental. I don’t know that it qualifies as “action”, but there’s plenty of violence – some noisy, some quiet.
Are you liking Justified? I have four episodes queued up to watch, but I hate watching on the computer. My cable company doesn’t carry FX, dammit.
Another actor who shows up and I go “What? He’s in this?” is Garrett Dillahunt. He played two different characters in two seasons of Deadwood – the cockeyed asshole who killed Bill Hickock, and the smooth and slimy serial killer Francis Wolcott. Next time I saw him was as Tommy Lee Jones’ somewhat dim deputy in No Country for Old Men, and now he’s a doofus but lovable dad in Raising Hope. He also played an abusive husband in ER. Dillahunt is awesome.
My favorite of his pre- Justified roles was Kelly the porn producer from the under appreciated The Girl Next Door.
There were a couple of earlier threads about this season’s Justified episodes, but we’ve been slacking the last few weeks. I’m absolutely loving this season. Mags is a great character and I think Boyd Crowder is the best character on TV right now.
Never saw Hitman, but I caught LFoDH on cable a few months back and recognized him right away.
I was impressed at how they managed to get Elmore Leonard wrong on the little screen when they’d so often gotten him wrong on the big screen. If you haven’t read Riding the Rap, the whole series is basically a sequel to that book, and is in many ways a meta-commentary on that story.
There’s no spoiler here, because it’s the set up of the show: Raylan Givens gives Tommy Bucks until sunset to get out of town, or he’ll shoot him. When the time comes, Tommy Bucks draws on Givens, so you can wonder whether Raylan would have actually shot him. But as it happened, the shooting was ruled “justified”. But in the series, they explore, at least for the first few episodes, how people would behave around a guy who had actually pulled a cowboy-ass move like that. All the tough guys in Harlan County can’t help but measure themselves against him.
Even when that theme has sort of played itself out, things play out in a fairly typical Elmore Leonard fashion – with scene after scene of some of the damnedest dialogue and characters in any genre.
Johnny Angel, did you mean to say “I was impressed at how they managed to get Elmore Leonard right on the little screen”?
Um, yes. Damnit. They got him right. It was the best Elmore Leonard production since Hombre.
I agree, and I figured that’s what you meant by the rest of the post.
Justified is my pick for best show on the air these days. I saw just this week that it’s already been picked up for Season Three. It had better be on the Emmy list this year. It had only just arrived last time and got shorted as a result. The writing is the best, bar none, with The Good Wife a close second.
Olyphant and Goggins make the show but there’s not a weak character or actor in the batch. And the dialog is fantastic.
It’s funny how FX and AMC have gotten to the top of the heap with good shows.
Justified is the best show on TV right now, IMHO.
Can’t you just hook up your PC to your TV?
Thanks for pointing out Elmore Leonard, I was not aware the Justified characters are based on one of his books. He seems to be a very prolific writer who I would like to read, can you recommend a particular title for me to start with?
Dilahunt was also in Winter’s Bone (aka The Best Movie of 2010)
I first noticed Olyphant in Go also, and have been following him through Deadwood and now Justified, but I was reading an article on the new Scream movie and didn’t even remember that he was in Scream 2! (which I saw but clearly tried to block from memory, with partial success)
Ooof, that’s tough. My first exposure was in college when I was assigned Labrava. Earlier he wrote some great westerns. Maybe start with 52 Pickup.
If you’re interested in the Raylan Givens character, I believe he appears in Pronto and Riding the Rap. He also appears in a short story collection, called When the Women Come Out to Dance, and his story is available to read online here. I’m mostly familiar with Elmore Leonard’s work from the 90’s, before graduate school reigned in my extraneous reading, but you might try Rum Punch, Cuba Libre, Out of Sight, Get Shorty.
I have not read that one, but I did see the movie.
Holy shit, the scene where Roy Schneider brings the money to the blackmailer and starts beating him with it. Was that in the book?