Post by kungfuzu on May 11, 2023 12:40:06 GMT -8
What follows is not so much a review of a movie and several books as a review of the author James Ellroy, from whose mind these books and movie sprang.
A few weeks back, I once again watched the movie L.A. Confidential I liked it just as much this time as the first time I saw it. While I found Russell Crowe good, I was more impressed with Guy Pierce.
I decided that I wanted to read the book on which the movie was based and went online to check it out from my local lending library. Unfortunately, someone else had the book at that moment, so I perused other books by Ellroy and landed on “The Black Dahlia.”
The Black Dahlia was written in 1987 and used the sensational murder of Elizabeth Short as its basis. The 1946 based story is anchored by two Los Angeles police department. One, Dwight “Bucky” Bleichart and the other, Lee Blanchard. Both are ex-prize fighters. Their stories play off each other as well as various characters who pop in and out of the novel.
The theme around which the story is woven revolves around the discovery of the body of a young woman on the streets of L.A. She has been cut in half. This causes a fair amount of panic in the city and the police are anxious to solve the case.
Upon completing The Black Dahlia I was impressed enough to go back and see it I could find it’s follow up book in Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet. Unfortunately, the library system did not have The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential was still checked out.
I therefore delved into other books by Ellroy and landed on the first book of his Underworld Trilogy American Tabloid. This novel is shaped around two FBI agents in their forties. Kemper Boyd is a handsome, smooth operator who was born to wealth, but saw his father go bust and commit suicide. Ward Littell is an intelligent yet non-descript character who Boyd mentors. Boyd is the player and Littell is the shy intellectual.
A third character Pete Bondurant is an ex-L.A. sheriff’s deputy known to be a ruthless thug. He is about 6’6” and 230lbs with enormous strength.
The story, which takes place from 1958 to 1963, develops the intersections of the mafia, CIA and FBI around politics in the US and Cuba. J. Edgar Hoover is central in this as a master manipulator and puppet master. The book ends on November 22, 1963.
Once I finished “American Tabloid” I rechecked to see if L.A. Confidential was available and bingo, it was. I checked it out and eagerly started reading.
L.A. Confidential takes place in the 1950s, a period of great growth in South California. The two main protagonists are officers Edmund Exley, the brilliant son of a renown former LA police detective, now a multimillionaire builder and Willard (Bud) White, a violent officer who was chained to his bed and watched his father beat his mother to death. Each holds the other in contempt. Exley and White are surrounded by a cast of characters one would only hope to avoid in life.
The story revolves around the entertainment industry, drugs and smut and their intersection with violence, money and power in Los Angeles. Let me interject that the novel is quite different from, and even better than, the movie
I have chosen not to go into much detail about the individual books, because I believe it more important to go into detail about Ellroy’s style and handling of his stories.
The first thing which should be noted is that these books are complex. There are themes within themes, and numerous sub-plots intertwining with each other. Ellroy’s style can slow a reader down. He uses various devices to let his stories unfold. Sometimes he will use normal grammar, punctuation and paragraphs. Sometimes he will slip into dialogue. Sometimes he will leave out words and spit out the words he chooses like a gun, bang, bang, bang. In between all of this, he will drop in “official” documents such as newspaper stories, internal police reports, government documents, etc. The effect is somewhat unique.
If his books are any indication, Ellroy has an even lower opinion of humanity than I do, particularly of those who lust after money and power. One can be sure that Ellroy believes neither in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. There are no heros in his books. Motives are not pure, and often self interested. Actions are often illegal even though taken by law enforcement. Things happen for reasons which the public has no inkling of.
The books I have read are loosely based on events which actually took place, and include characters who lived during the periods in question. Ellroy will sometimes use characters from earlier books in a later volume. This maintains a sort of minimal continuity between the stories.
Ellroy’s books are not for those looking for easy reading or distraction from reality. They are violent, full of profanity and often graphic about sex. These are not books which should be in a school library. But for an adult interested in powerful story telling, I can’t recommend them highly enough. I couldn’t put them down at night and lost much sleep as a result.
All three books are excellent, but LA Confidential and American Tabloid are superior to The Black Dahlia. If I had to choose, I would probably pick American Tabloid as the best of the three. This is because it is the most complex of the three. It is about events which took place on a national, even international, scale and by which I was slightly touched as a child, having grown up in Dallas.
I will now see if I can find “White Jazz” and after that “The Cold Six Thousand.” I am curious to see if Ellroy can maintain his wonderful story telling.
A few weeks back, I once again watched the movie L.A. Confidential I liked it just as much this time as the first time I saw it. While I found Russell Crowe good, I was more impressed with Guy Pierce.
I decided that I wanted to read the book on which the movie was based and went online to check it out from my local lending library. Unfortunately, someone else had the book at that moment, so I perused other books by Ellroy and landed on “The Black Dahlia.”
The Black Dahlia was written in 1987 and used the sensational murder of Elizabeth Short as its basis. The 1946 based story is anchored by two Los Angeles police department. One, Dwight “Bucky” Bleichart and the other, Lee Blanchard. Both are ex-prize fighters. Their stories play off each other as well as various characters who pop in and out of the novel.
The theme around which the story is woven revolves around the discovery of the body of a young woman on the streets of L.A. She has been cut in half. This causes a fair amount of panic in the city and the police are anxious to solve the case.
Upon completing The Black Dahlia I was impressed enough to go back and see it I could find it’s follow up book in Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet. Unfortunately, the library system did not have The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential was still checked out.
I therefore delved into other books by Ellroy and landed on the first book of his Underworld Trilogy American Tabloid. This novel is shaped around two FBI agents in their forties. Kemper Boyd is a handsome, smooth operator who was born to wealth, but saw his father go bust and commit suicide. Ward Littell is an intelligent yet non-descript character who Boyd mentors. Boyd is the player and Littell is the shy intellectual.
A third character Pete Bondurant is an ex-L.A. sheriff’s deputy known to be a ruthless thug. He is about 6’6” and 230lbs with enormous strength.
The story, which takes place from 1958 to 1963, develops the intersections of the mafia, CIA and FBI around politics in the US and Cuba. J. Edgar Hoover is central in this as a master manipulator and puppet master. The book ends on November 22, 1963.
Once I finished “American Tabloid” I rechecked to see if L.A. Confidential was available and bingo, it was. I checked it out and eagerly started reading.
L.A. Confidential takes place in the 1950s, a period of great growth in South California. The two main protagonists are officers Edmund Exley, the brilliant son of a renown former LA police detective, now a multimillionaire builder and Willard (Bud) White, a violent officer who was chained to his bed and watched his father beat his mother to death. Each holds the other in contempt. Exley and White are surrounded by a cast of characters one would only hope to avoid in life.
The story revolves around the entertainment industry, drugs and smut and their intersection with violence, money and power in Los Angeles. Let me interject that the novel is quite different from, and even better than, the movie
I have chosen not to go into much detail about the individual books, because I believe it more important to go into detail about Ellroy’s style and handling of his stories.
The first thing which should be noted is that these books are complex. There are themes within themes, and numerous sub-plots intertwining with each other. Ellroy’s style can slow a reader down. He uses various devices to let his stories unfold. Sometimes he will use normal grammar, punctuation and paragraphs. Sometimes he will slip into dialogue. Sometimes he will leave out words and spit out the words he chooses like a gun, bang, bang, bang. In between all of this, he will drop in “official” documents such as newspaper stories, internal police reports, government documents, etc. The effect is somewhat unique.
If his books are any indication, Ellroy has an even lower opinion of humanity than I do, particularly of those who lust after money and power. One can be sure that Ellroy believes neither in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. There are no heros in his books. Motives are not pure, and often self interested. Actions are often illegal even though taken by law enforcement. Things happen for reasons which the public has no inkling of.
The books I have read are loosely based on events which actually took place, and include characters who lived during the periods in question. Ellroy will sometimes use characters from earlier books in a later volume. This maintains a sort of minimal continuity between the stories.
Ellroy’s books are not for those looking for easy reading or distraction from reality. They are violent, full of profanity and often graphic about sex. These are not books which should be in a school library. But for an adult interested in powerful story telling, I can’t recommend them highly enough. I couldn’t put them down at night and lost much sleep as a result.
All three books are excellent, but LA Confidential and American Tabloid are superior to The Black Dahlia. If I had to choose, I would probably pick American Tabloid as the best of the three. This is because it is the most complex of the three. It is about events which took place on a national, even international, scale and by which I was slightly touched as a child, having grown up in Dallas.
I will now see if I can find “White Jazz” and after that “The Cold Six Thousand.” I am curious to see if Ellroy can maintain his wonderful story telling.
