@Dudley Smith

[Jaybird]

James Ellroy fan?

[il ragno]

It's a grand username.

Ellroy btw is going to be a Guest Programmer on TCM this month, Nov 13th. He'll be introducing 50s b-noirs Stakeout on Dope Street, Murder by Contract, The Lineup and Armored Car Robbery .

Also, later tonight - a must-see tuff-guy double-dip.....Michael Caine in the original, and totally bad-ass, Get Carter (1971) at 2am EST, followed by Lee Marvin's equally iconic Point Blank (1967) at 4.

[DudleySmith]

James Ellroy fan?

Yes. I think he writes the kind of stories that Dashiel Hammet and his contemporaries would have liked to have written had they not had the oppressive censorship and Red Scare atmosphere to hold them back. I liked Hammett's Continental Op series better than his other books, even though the others are better written. I like the old pulps for a number of reasons.

[DudleySmith]

It's a grand username.

It's a grand character Elroy has there, a homocidal, psychopathic Irish cop on his way up the career ladder. I'm reading The Big Nowhere right now, found it at a garage sale. It's the only one I haven't read yet, and I'm near the end. Buzz Meeks and Considine are closing in ole Dudley and the psycho homo killer, Mickey Cohen is gunning for Meeks; they are out to kill Dudley, since they know the brass will cover for him, and it's gotten personal ...

Now I have to go back and reread LA Confidential and White Jazz again, since I think this book is a prequel to those, but I don't recall much, since it's been a few years. Buzz Meeks is found under a house dead in LA Confidential, IIRC.

Ellroy btw is going to be a Guest Programmer on TCM this month, Nov 13th. He'll be introducing 50s b-noirs Stakeout on Dope Street, Murder by Contract, The Lineup and Armored Car Robbery .

Sounds like great stuff, but I don't get TCM, so now I'm sad ... They should be on DVD, though.

Also, later tonight - a must-see tuff-guy double-dip.....Michael Caine in the original, and totally bad-ass, Get Carter (1971) at 2am EST, followed by Lee Marvin's equally iconic Point Blank (1967) at 4.

Both excellent movies, especially Point Blank. Marvin should have been cast in more noir movies; he has just the right screen persona and skills, even with bad screenwriting. He certainly carried Straw Dogs off, and I think the story line was pretty sorry crap in that flick.

[Jaybird]

It's been a few years since I've read L.A. Confidential, but I believe it was someone else that Bud found under the house. In the movie it was Buzz Meeks for sure. I think they combined a couple of the literary characters for the theatrical release. Of course, I could be completely wrong.

[DudleySmith]

Yes, I could be conflating the two, the movie and the book. Buzz is 44 in TBN, which takes place in 1950, which is another thing I need to do, rent the movie and watch it again. I really liked it, too, even though it didn't really stay true to the book.

[Jaybird]

L.A. Confidential the movie was my introduction to Ellroy. It's been one of my top two favorite films since high skrewl. In fact, I had no idea it was a book until some friends were talking about favorite movies and this chick gave me her copy of the book. What I like best about the movie is that it didn't include the whole Disney/serial killer plot. Serial killers don't really seem like Ellroy's style.

[Winston]

If you've read White Jazz, then you've read the death of Buzz Meeks. The Meeks character in the LA Confidential movie has little in common with the book version.

[Winston]

What I like best about the movie is that it didn't include the whole Disney/serial killer plot. Serial killers don't really seem like Ellroy's style.
The Wolverine kid in Big Nowhere was a serial killer.

My favourite character from the books is probably Mickey Cohen. I'd like to see (or read) more of him, although perhaps he's better as a secondary character.

[DudleySmith]

If you've read White Jazz, then you've read the death of Buzz Meeks. The Meeks character in the LA Confidential movie has little in common with the book version.

I read them 'out of sequence', so I no longer have even a wrong idea, at this point, but now that you mention this, it seems right.

Edited to add Russell Crowe was too young to play Meeks in the movie, which is also a deviation form the book, I believe.

[DudleySmith]

The Wolverine kid in Big Nowhere was a serial killer.

My favourite character from the books is probably Mickey Cohen. I'd like to see (or read) more of him, although perhaps he's better as a secondary character.

Yes, I like books that are kind of linked by recurring characters. Mickey IMHO is better as a secondary atmospheric player, though I wouldn't mind if Elroy wrote a gangster novel with him as the central player.

[Winston]

I read them 'out of sequence', so I no longer have even a wrong idea, at this point, but now that you mention this, it seems right.

Edited to add Russell Crowe was too young to play Meeks in the movie, which is also a deviation form the book, I believe.

Russell Crowe didn't play Meeks. :)

I've read them all twice, and in order, and I still get mixed up after a while.

[Jaybird]

Buzz, Bud. Yeah it gets confusing.

My favorite character was Jack Vincennes.

[DudleySmith]

I've read them all twice, and in order, and I still get mixed up after a while.

I don't even know what order they were released in. Do you remember? I'm goin g to have to go back and read the others, now that I'm thoroughly screwed up on this..

My favorite character was Jack Vincennes.

The book Jack, movie Jack, or both? I think Kevin Spacey did a great job in the movie role.

[Winston]

I don't even know what order they were released in. Do you remember? I'm goin g to have to go back and read the others, now that I'm thoroughly screwed up on this..


Black Dahlia, Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz.

[DudleySmith]

Thank you. I can get Black Dahlia, but I'll have to scour the used book stores for the last two, since I have no idea where I stored them, or even if I donated them or gave them away. I get to spend the day going through boxes out in the storerooms tomorrow ...

[PseudoCop]

Both excellent movies, especially Point Blank. Marvin should have been cast in more noir movies; he has just the right screen persona and skills, even with bad screenwriting. He certainly carried Straw Dogs off, and I think the story line was pretty sorry crap in that flick.
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Lee Marvin wasn't in Straw Dogs.

[il ragno]

PROBLEMS W/ LA CONFIDENTIAL MOVIE:

* either not long enough, or needed more subplots cut; too many climaxes in the last 15 mins

* they killed off Dudley (of course).

* Bud White isn't nearly as massive and intimidating and violently menacing as he needs to be

* the Exley character suffers tremendously with the loss of the Preston Exley/Ray Dieterling subplot; he just turns into Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter when he's supposed to be a stand-in for JFK transferred to the LAPD.

Obviously I read the book first. Still, I thought the movie did a bang-up job of compressing a bunch of it into 2 1/4 hours. As a Sopranos-like HBO minseries running 10 or 12 hours instead, though, it would've been twice as good.

Also. Presented as a tall, courtly, thin old guy, they totally missed the core of the Dudley character. As a matter of fact, what makes Ellroy's LA Quartet as good as it is - its unapologetic admiration of big, brawny, steak-eating, barrel-chested, psychopathically sadistic and cheerfully corrupt men doing what they love, which is enforcing order and skimming off the top - is always lost in the movie versions, where the current Hollywood ethos of Cute Boys With Six Packs is what's supposed to pass for Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett, and where every Ellroy character turns out to just want to be "a good cop" - instead of rich or laid or firmly in charge. These quasi-females: the Spaceys and Guy Pearces and James Cromwells - are all wrong for Ellroyworld, where Dudley Smith is supposed to be played by Brian Dennehy; likewise Vince Vaughan as Vincennes, and Campbell Scott as Exley. Assuming they up the psycho quotient in his character, Crowe would make a servicable Bud, though still an undersized one.

At least they got Pierce Patchett down to a tee in David Straithairn...now that was inspired casting!

[Jaybird]

Thank you. I can get Black Dahlia, but I'll have to scour the used book stores for the last two, since I have no idea where I stored them, or even if I donated them or gave them away. I get to spend the day going through boxes out in the storerooms tomorrow ...
I made a score at the used book store by my house. Apparently some lymie sold off his Ellroy collection and I picked up a bunch of UK editions. They're nicely made and have bigger print than the American copies I have.

Also, I would go and read My Dark Places before reading the novels again. You can see a lot of himself and his mother in some of his fictional characters.

[DudleySmith]

Lee Marvin wasn't in Straw Dogs.

Ah, well, I have a lousy memory.

The Peckinpaw movie where he plays a Chicago 'mob enforcer' and goes out to Kansas to twist 'Marianne's' arm, played by Gene Hackman, as the local meatpacking tycoon who runs gambling rackets and auctions off teenage sex slaves in his barn. Lee rescues Sissy Spacek and liberates the orphanage Hackman gets his 'stock' from. The supporting cast was chosen pretty well, I think, real rural trash. I especially liked the little fat guy who chases them around the fields in the hay baler combine, and chews up the Lincoln, at least I think it was the Lincoln.

where Dudley Smith is supposed to be played by Brian Dennehy;

I can't think of many actors from that time period that are large enough, except of course Dennehy. George Kennedy has the height and weight, too, and was in the right age range, and also has the Scotch/Irish Look.

Assuming they up the psycho quotient in his character, Crowe would make a servicable Bud, though still an undersized one.

I would have liked seen them use somebody like Andrew Dice Clay for those kind of roles. He's actually a much better actor than he is a standup comic, if his parts in the old Crime Stories TV series are a clue to his abilities. He is also a fairly large guy, and has a better body type for the Bud White role. But Clay got himself blacklisted by some dykes with penis envy and lost out on all kinds of casting.

[Winston]

Ah, well, I have a lousy memory.

The Peckinpaw movie where he plays a Chicago 'mob enforcer' and goes out to Kansas to twist 'Marianne's' arm, played by Gene Hackman, as the local meatpacking tycoon who runs gambling rackets and auctions off teenage sex slaves in his barn. Lee rescues Sissy Spacek and liberates the orphanage Hackman gets his 'stock' from. The supporting cast was chosen pretty well, I think, real rural trash. I especially liked the little fat guy who chases them around the fields in the hay baler combine, and chews up the Lincoln, at least I think it was the Lincoln.

That was Prime Cut. Not a Peckinpah movie.

[DudleySmith]

Also, I would go and read My Dark Places before reading the novels again. You can see a lot of himself and his mother in some of his fictional characters.

I found American Tabloid, one I'd forgotten about, but not part of the LA series, and Because The Night, which I'm not at all familiar with, but will probably read. It's based in LA, too.

[DudleySmith]

That was Prime Cut. Not a Peckinpah movie.

Yes, Prime Cut it indeed was. I thought it was a Peckinpaw movie. Thanks, people; this is saving me a lot foraging for this stuff.

Another movie that reminds me of Elroy's writing is The Big Heat, one of Glenn Ford's best roles, and Lee Marvin with a good role as well. At least I think he was in it ... Like all writers, Elroy lifted quite a bit of the best of earlier writers, like Chandler, Hammett, and co., and had the added advantage I mentioned earlier, far less censorship to work around.

[il ragno]

I made a score at the used book store by my house. Apparently some lymie sold off his Ellroy collection and I picked up a bunch of UK editions. They're nicely made and have bigger print than the American copies I have.

Also, I would go and read My Dark Places before reading the novels again. You can see a lot of himself and his mother in some of his fictional characters.

Ellroy is one of those characters who was much more compelling and likable the less one saw of him. When he was just the guy who wrote those LA Quartet books you waited on tenterhooks for his next book, but once the media "discovered" him it wasn't long before they had one more full-blown media whore on their hands. You can see the decline into self-parody begin with WHITE JAZZ.

As for MY DARK PLACES only a 'celebrity', a media personality, could've written it or - more importantly - sold it to a publisher. For all the otherwise-embarrassing revelations about his father's lovable-drunky loserness, or his own medicated-cotton-fueled j.o. marathons and panty-sniffing Adventures in B And E, that book is as grotesque an exercise in sheer self-adoration as I've ever encountered. Hammett would've left it unwritten, Chandler would've cut his own throat before writing it, and the lesser lights in the hardboiled pantheon would've been too busy plotting their next three books to have the time and/or narcissism available to attempt it.

[PseudoCop]

While we're on the subject is Mickey Spillane any good- never read a single book of his and that TV show about Mike Hammer was crap.

[il ragno]

Total piece of shit. But his first four books are camp classics - although your enjoyment of them should be tempered by the fact that, for decades, this ham-fisted dope was the best-selling author of all time. Try ONE LONELY NIGHT or MY GUN IS QUICK.

[Beethoven Jones]

Total piece of shit. But his first four books are camp classics - although your enjoyment of them should be tempered by the fact that, for decades, this ham-fisted dope was the best-selling author of all time. Try ONE LONELY NIGHT or MY GUN IS QUICK.

Four Million...Damn.

http://pages.interlog.com/~roco/images/gunquick2.jpg

[il ragno]

HoCam! You're back! Long time no see, babe.

[Beethoven Jones]

HoCam! You're back! Long time no see, babe.

Makin' the rounds, Br'er Rachnid...

[DudleySmith]

Ellroy is one of those characters who was much more compelling and likable the less one saw of him. When he was just the guy who wrote those LA Quartet books you waited on tenterhooks for his next book, but once the media "discovered" him it wasn't long before they had one more full-blown media whore on their hands. You can see the decline into self-parody begin with WHITE JAZZ.

True. I once heard him speaking to some book club or something, and he was sort of an asshole, badmouthing Hunter Thompson, raving on about his masturbation habits, and free associating from one topic to another in a flood of innui and neurotic rambling. That's likely why he's a writer and not exactly a top draw as a public speaker at Press Club luncheons and Talking Head shows.



As for MY DARK PLACES only a 'celebrity', a media personality, could've written it or - more importantly - sold it to a publisher. For all the otherwise-embarrassing revelations about his father's lovable-drunky loserness, or his own medicated-cotton-fueled j.o. marathons and panty-sniffing Adventures in B And E, that book is as grotesque an exercise in sheer self-adoration as I've ever encountered. Hammett would've left it unwritten, Chandler would've cut his own throat before writing it, and the lesser lights in the hardboiled pantheon would've been too busy plotting their next three books to have the time and/or narcissism available to attempt it.

though I haven't read anything of his but the best sellers, this is certainly the case with a lot of best sellers; the publishers have them crank out a lot of garbage in a short time to peddle while the Name is hot. Most writers of this sort of stuff rarely have more than one good book in them, Elroy certainly beating the average, but nonetheless has hit a wall and faded away, alas.

[DudleySmith]

Well, I finished The Big Nowhere, which had the prologue to LA Confidential, wherein Dudley kills Meeks at the motel shootout. I'll start Black Dahlia in a couple of weeks, I guess.

[Zed]

Originally Posted by Jaybird
I made a score at the used book store by my house. Apparently some lymie sold off his Ellroy collection and I picked up a bunch of UK editions. They're nicely made and have bigger print than the American copies I have.

What's that? An Englishman crossed with a j00?

[Jaybird]

Anglo-Saxon=Jew right?

[Zed]

We're the Lost Tribes, mate. The real Israelites, not these phony Khazar posers.