Jimmy the Kid

on film

If you know how to get a copy of the German film, please e-mail me.

Jimmy the Kid has been filmed twice, in 1982 with Gary Coleman as Jimmy and in a 1999 German version that as far as I know is unavailable on DVD anywhere in the world.  

I caught half of the Gary Coleman film...I would have seen the whole thing, but my friend taped it for me and somehow managed to misprogram his VCR.  Although it follows the novel fairly closely, Westlake's cleverness has been replaced with bad slapstick humor.  It really is a complete piece of garbage (check out Jimmy's black, disco-outfitted entertainer parents doing a country song!  Watching the wonderful Ruth Gordon (of Harold & Maude...go rent it now if you've never seen it) humiliate herself in this was painful.  Other decent character actors fare little better.  The thieves do use Child Heist as a guide, but now it is written by someone named Smith.  No mention is made of the novel's protagonist.

The image to the right seems to indicate that "Jimmy" is a female in the German version.  If so, Jimmy has been played by a black actor in an American film and by a female in a foreign film.  Does this remind you of another Westlake character?

Are the folks to the left reading Child Heist and taking a lesson from Parker?    I'm afraid I don't know.

Check out more pictures of the Dortmunder Gang in the German Jimmy the Kid.

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