Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer investigator books made him one of the best-selling novelists of the 20th century (via The Guardian). Fellow scribe Max Allan Collins wrote for The Los Angeles Times that “without [Spillane] and Mike Hammer, there wouldn’t be Unclean Harry, James Bond or even Frank Miller’s ‘Sin City.’ Mickey changed the tough hero forever with his potent mix of sex and violence, and he opened previously prohibited doors that all of popular fiction soon moved through.”
When it concerned cinema adaptations of his work, Spillane had no concern spilling the beans on his opinion of them. His very first novel, 1947’s “I, The Jury,” was become a 3-D movie six years later, and he admitted to Redbook that he was so disappointed and humiliated by it that he blew off the best mid-screening. As he discussed, “Hollywood does not know how to tell a story. The minstrels, the troubadours, utilized to inform their story and then pass the hat. Hollywood is fortunate; they pass the hat initially.”
That didn’t avoid Spillane from continuing to turn out whodunnits, nor did Hollywood stop adapting them. In 1963, Spillane even played Mike Hammer in the movie “The Lady Hunters.” Still, he never ever overcame his contempt for Hollywood, informing The Los Angeles Times, “they listen to their own trade documents, but they don’t listen to individuals in the Middle West, or any place else.”
Source: https://www.looper.com/924455/movies-that-famous-people-walked-out-of/