Ellroy’s De-Solve
Ellroy’s De-Solve
I should have asked hard-boiled crime writer James Ellroy (“L.A. Confidential,” “My Dark Places”) the obvious question during his L.A. Film Festival appearance on Monday night at the Italian Cultural Center — what is his view of alleged wiretapper and hard-guy Anthony Pellicano, and particularly Pellicano’s declaration that he’ll never rat out his clients?
Knowing Ellroy as I do (i.e., only slightly), he probably would have called Pellicano a punk and a poseur, but I won’t know for sure until the next time.
Crime-novel author James Ellroy, who’s shaved his moustache and lost a few pounds since the photo was taken five years ago.
The question I did ask was about the fictional plot of The Black Dahlia, Brian De Palma’s noir thriller based on Ellroy’s book of the same name. I was trying to get at the present-day interest among audiences in watching yet another fictional Dahlia tale on top of three or four cheapy TV movies plus Ulu Grosbard’s 1982 True Confessions**.
The Black Dahlia cow been milked too many damn times, and the teats are red and sore.
I’m especially convinced of this due to the fact that the “unsolved” murder of aspiring actress and troubled party girl Elizabeth Short has, to some people’s satisfaction (including my own), been solved.
Ellroy dismissed the “solve” as speculative on Monday night and he may be right, but read this 4.2.03 Washington Post article by William Booth about a book called “Black Dahlia Avenger” by former LAPD detective Steve Hodel, and go over all the disclosures and allegations and apparent facts.
When you’ve done that, convince me that Hodel’s father, a Los Angeles physician namd George Hodel, Jr., who ran a clinic treating venereal diseases (and who died in 1999 after leaving the U.S. and moving to Asia in 1950), doesn’t sound awfully damn guilty.
That’s right…Steve Hodel’s father.
Black Dahlia costars Hilary Swank, Josh Hartnett
L.A. Times writer Larry Harnisch voiced another persuasive theory about a man he believes was the Black Dahlia killer (a surgeon named Walter Bayley) in Vikram Jayanti’s excellent 2001 doc James Ellroy’s Feast of Death. Read Harnisch’s site for the whole kit and kaboodle.
Ellroy wouldn’t discuss Bayley or Hodel on Monday night, I’m guessing, because notions of a solve would obviously drain the DePalma film of whatever allure it may have going in, and that would obviously lessen interest in people wanting to buy Ellroy’s fictional book about the case.
Another angle is the fact that Ellroy’s interest in cops, sex crimes and the seamy underbelly of Los Angeles stems in large part from the strangulation murder of his mother, Jean Ellroy, in 1958, when James was 10.
In the mid ’90s Ellroy published “My Dark Places,” a book about an unsuccessful attempt to solve her killing. The murderer was probably a guy she was seeing on some basis, but no final investigative score ever happened. I have an idea that because Ellroy doesn’t have closure on his mom’s death, he’s not comfortable with wrapping things up on Elizabeth Short.
Universal’s The Black Dahlia, which costars Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhardt, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Kershner and Hilary Swank, is slated for release on 9.15.
Ellroy said on Monday night that he’s watched hours of dailies from DePalma’s film and said he would be doing promotion for it and, like with L.A. Confidential, that he’s fairly happy with the end result.
His favorite element in The Black Dahlia, he said, is Josh Hartnett, who plays a haunted cop named Bucky Bleichert who, along with partner Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), is assigned to look into Short’s (Mia Kirshner) grisly murder. (Her nude body was found in two pieces, sliced at the waist, on south Norton Avenue.)
Ellroy said, “Hartnett reads lines that I wrote with near perfect inflection every time.”
Ellroy is living in Los Angeles now, and that’s good. (I tried offering a link to a video piece about him discussing his return home while dining at one of his favorite haunts, the Pacific Dining Car, but it’s dead.) And he’s a lot slimmer these days than he was four or five years ago, and full of energy and in jolly spirits.
It was lot of fun listening to Ellroy’s well-honed shpiel the other night, although he’s not much of a conversationalist. Zap2it’s Hanh Nguyen has written a pretty good rundown of the highlights. You just need to scroll down a bit.
** True Confessions isn’t out on DVD by the way. What’s up with that?
The script to the Black Dahlia was great — at least the draft I read when Fincher was going to do it. I’ve heard rumors about it later being “Depalmamized”, which scares the crap out of me.
And the Black Dahlia Avenger book is bunk. Enjoyable bunk that hooks you in for a bit, until you realize Hodel is working backward. He came up with a theory about who murdered the BD, then tried to make the evidence look like it supported that theory. Upon close inspection, his case is a huge stretch at best.
Actually, there’s a theory put forth by a journalist named Larry Harnisch in “James Ellroy’s Feast of Death” about who he thinks did the deed, and I find it much more plausible than Hodel’s book. I don’t know why Ellroy (who seems pretty convinced in the documentary) hasn’t propounded it more. Anyway, Harnisch and Ellroy are sitting around the Pacific Dining Car with a bunch of LAPD/LASD detectives and they all seem pretty jazzed by it.
Here’s a link to Harnisch’s website:
http://www.lmharnisch.com/home.html
Sometimes I think that James Ellroy is the best prose stylist in contemporary lit.
Hemingway.
Carver.
Ellroy.
I read American Tabloid cover to cover in a single night on a train ride from New York City to Memphis.
He is one of the reasons I love to read and his persona is pretty damn entertaining as far as lit personas go.
I saw him read at Border’s Westwood in 1996.
He wore a Hawaiian shirt and his hands were bigger than my head.
I asked him whether or not he thought O.J. did it and he said of course he fucking did it bucko.
His article on Robert Blake and the sleazy side of Los Angeles z-list actors should be required reading for every cheekbone who moves here from Mizzou in pursuit of the dream.
There was a rumor that he was going to write a novel about Warren G. Harding and I hope he will after he’s done performing root canal on the memory of Watergate in the final installment of his latest trilogy.
James Ellroy gets Los Angeles better than any other writer.
He understands what a semen-drenched scab this city can be to those who can’t find a prescription for the ointment.
Brian De Palma is a great filmmaker, but I don’t know if he’s the right person for the Black Dahlia.
Russ Meyer would have been better suited to the material.
De Palma is too in control of his craft and there needs to be something slightly chaotic going on within the film to make Ellroy’s words translate faithfully to the screen as Ellroy’s voice is wonderfully demented.
James Woods’ performance in Cop is the best performance of an Ellroy character so far.
Maybe the Coen Brothers can adapt American Tabloid.
“Depalmamized.”
DePalm-erized.
I don’t know.
Body Double could’ve been written by Ellroy.
Ellroy is our greatest living American writer, bar none. The cat is a true genius and a master of the written word.
Sam Raimi was born to bring Tabloid to the screen.
Sometimes I think that James Ellroy is the best prose stylist in contemporary lit.
Hemingway.
Carver.
Ellroy.
I read American Tabloid cover to cover in a single night on a train ride from New York City to Memphis.
He is one of the reasons I love to read and his persona is pretty damn entertaining as far as lit personas go.
I saw him read at Border’s Westwood in 1996.
He wore a Hawaiian shirt and his hands were bigger than my head.
I asked him whether or not he thought O.J. did it and he said of course he fucking did it bucko.
His article on Robert Blake and the sleazy side of Los Angeles z-list actors should be required reading for every cheekbone who moves here from Mizzou in pursuit of the dream.
There was a rumor that he was going to write a novel about Warren G. Harding and I hope he will after he’s done performing root canal on the memory of Watergate in the final installment of his latest trilogy.
James Ellroy gets Los Angeles better than any other writer.
He understands what a semen-drenched scab this city can be to those who can’t find a prescription for the ointment.
Brian De Palma is a great filmmaker, but I don’t know if he’s the right person for the Black Dahlia.
Russ Meyer would have been better suited to the material.
De Palma is too in control of his craft and there needs to be something slightly chaotic going on within the film to make Ellroy’s words translate faithfully to the screen as Ellroy’s voice is wonderfully demented.
James Woods’ performance in Cop is the best performance of an Ellroy character so far.
Maybe the Coen Brothers can adapt American Tabloid.
“Depalmamized.”
DePalm-erized.
I don’t know.
Body Double could’ve been written by Ellroy.
The Coens and Sam Raimi for “Tabloid” ?
I don’t want to step in the sarcasm puddle but… you are being facetious, right?
I’d like to see Soderbergh do it. Or Neil LaButte, if he ever had a hankering to tackle a big, lurid, black-and-white epic. Actually, I’d like to see Russ Meyer’s version, from a script by Paddy Chayevsky, but unfortunately they’re not available.
Shame on you Jeff
The Black Dahila Avenger is garbage from page one.
The Black Dahlia Files are wrong minded crap.
And test audiences HATE Depalma’s film.
Wells to Murphy: How about Larry Harnisch’s theory about Walter Bayley? Is that garbage too?
“Ellroy is our greatest living American writer, bar none.”
Maybe after Russell Banks. Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter…Excellent films too.
De Palma is one of the great cinema geniuses.
It’s an ADAPTATION of Ellroy’s work, (Meaning it’s time we STOPPED speculating about the “truth”), and from what it seems a true one. As great as Confidential was, Curtis Hansen just doesn’t have the balls that De Palma has. Personally, i think the Short murder still carry’s much mystique, and True Confessions doesn’t strike me as the be-all-end-all of Dahlia films (It’s a near-great movie, but what always resonated for me was the relationship between Deniro and Duvall).
I love Ellroy and hope that The Big Nowhere, his best novel, gets the screen treatment it deserves.
De Palma is one of the great cinema geniuses.
It’s an ADAPTATION of Ellroy’s work, (Meaning it’s time we STOPPED speculating about the “truth”), and from what it seems a true one. As great as Confidential was, Curtis Hansen just doesn’t have the balls that De Palma has. Personally, i think the Short murder still carry’s much mystique, and True Confessions doesn’t strike me as the be-all-end-all of Dahlia films (It’s a near-great movie, but what always resonated for me was the relationship between Deniro and Duvall).
I love Ellroy and hope that The Big Nowhere, his best novel, gets the screen treatment it deserves (For that matter, same thing with My Dark Places).
The buzz is DePalma took a great script and “made it his own.”
And by that I mean he ruined it.
I’d suggest the John Gilmore book, “Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder” for some execellent reading about the case and Short’s background.
Aaron ECKHART. When will Wells stop adding in an D to the man’s name so egregiously. He’s been doing it since “Smoking” came out.
Glad to hear L.A. once again plays host to the amazing Ellroy….
And someone should probably point out that, after initially dismissing “Black Dahlia Avenger,” Ellroy changed his mind and wound up actually writing an introduction for a later edition. So you Ellroy lovers/BDA haters have that to reconcile.
I haven’t read either, so as for the “solve,” issue, I don’t have a strong opinion — and certainly not one I have enough facts to defend. I did read some articles a while back that, for me, made a convincing enough case for me that Dr. Hodel was, at least, a pretty good suspect. Can’t remember where, unfortunately….
Wrong. Elllroy initially wrote the intro to the Black Avenger, then changed his mind and doesn’t support the book at all.
Wrong. Elllroy initially wrote the intro to the Black Avenger, then changed his mind and doesn’t support the book at all.
Jeff, did you actually read The Black
Dhalia Avenger, or are you using its reviews as the basis of your opinions (ala the characters in ‘Barcelona’)? The book is a fun read, but it’s crazy in its coincidences-makes-facts ‘detective work’. In Hollywood Elsewhere speak, the book is ‘Pirates’, not ‘Superman Returns’.
As far as I know, Ellroy dismissed the Hodel book, then wrote a forword to the paperback seeming to endorse it, but at the same time said unflattering things about it when interviewed. He pulled a similar game with Harnisch a few years ago. Now he is back to saying the case is unsolved.
As for the Washington Post, they ran a follow-up article trashing the Hodel book a few months later, on 6-29-2003. After the initial PR buzz wore off.
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