James Ellroy's Hollywood Confidential (aka James Ellroy's LA: City Of Demons)

[Phil_A]

Oh dear God, what is this? I picked it up for 50p from CEX as it looked interesting, James Ellroy doing a true crime series has got to be worth a look, right?

Right from the first second it's like a parody of a ridiculous crime documentary. Like every Discovery Channel cliche of unnecessary graphics, constant re-enactments and over-the-top narration all at once. Why does every single line in the script have to contain such awful alliteration("That bought this Hell-hurtling horror home to me!" )? Ellroy has a talking CG dog! What is this madness.

This is a flavour of what it's like. Bear in mind, he's talking about his own mother's death in this bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncat-ugX6a8

Let's just say if you were expecting something along the lines of the great documentary "Feast Of Death" Ellroy made in 2001, this ain't it.

I'm going to watch a bit more to see if it gets any less silly, but I have my doubts.

[mothman]

"Swarthy." There's an adjective you don't hear anymore. What does that even mean, swarthy? 'Probably a bit Mediterranean or Hispanic?'

[Satchmo Distel]

A throwback to when nationalities such as Italians and Greeks were not considered fully white in the US.

[Funcrusher]

There is a school of thought that Ellroy was always a bit overrated, particularly once he started believing his own publicity.

[mothman]

There's a John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme sketch where an author insists on narrating his own novel's audiobook despite his comedically nasal voice and speech impediment. This reminded me of that. As a vanity project there was presumably nobody to try to persuade him that being his own narrator wasn't the best idea.

But his recent material has shown him becoming a parody of himself anyway. I really struggled with Blood's A Rover and haven't bothered with anything else since.

[jobotic]

But his recent material has shown him becoming a parody of himself anyway. I really struggled with Blood's A Rover and haven't bothered with anything else since.

I agree. It seems to be a common view that The Big Nowhere is his best novel and being the iconoclast contrarian that I am... I entirely agree. I borrowed a fantastic 12 cassette audio book of this about 12 years ago which was so good that I still have found memories of washing up at that time.

Never fancied any of his non-fiction.

[Skip Bittman]

He really embraced the cartoon character persona that he thinks he needs to maintain to sell books and get publicity. I ran into him five years ago in a bookstore and he was incredibly lowkey, amusing, and chattered endlessly about Jack Webb and Dragnet in general. In a way I was kind of disappointed, expected a blithering contrarian cunt inhaling panties or something. It did lead to watching the later 60s run on Netflix and having a blast, so thanks to the poet laureate of peepers for that one!

Haven't tried Perfidia yet, any good?

Quite liked the last trilogy, especially the Cold Six Thousand. Enjoyed My Dark Places. Hilliker Curse was a bit by-the-numbers.

[amputeeporn]

His whole persona's an act, put on because it's preferable to being himself in public - which I totally get.

It's also how he first broke out. His first few books did nothing nothing nothing, and he self-funded his tour for Black Dahlia knowing it was his last shot - hence the showman.

I was lucky enough to spend some time with him this year in a work capacity (happened once before but not for as long), and behind the scenes he was a total sweetheart - reminded me of a big goofy kid. This was in Spain, and he had a translator booked who I'd spoken to the previous day. She told me she was terrified, having only seen his promotional stuff before. He sensed that when he met her and was charm itself.

I also had some bad personal shit going on at the time and he actually sat down and talked to me about it, gave me some advice and then went out of his way to help me out.

Sure he'd be the first to disown everything outside of his books. I really liked Perfidia - and the follow-up is meant to be with us early next year (he was just finishing it up when I met him).

EDIT TO ADD: Sounds like that pilot of LA Confidential hasn't been picked up anywhere. It sounded very network rather than a solid HBO-esque production, so maybe for the best. What's annoying is that they'd adapt that, rather than the quartet. That would be amazing to see, and surely tap in better to the vogue of anthology shows a-la fargo, with only some returning characters between books.

[Phil_A]

His whole persona's an act, put on because it's preferable to being himself in public - which I totally get.

It's also how he first broke out. His first few books did nothing nothing nothing, and he self-funded his tour for Black Dahlia knowing it was his last shot - hence the showman.

Yeah, I get the whole showman persona thing. What's disappointing though is I found a promo bit about this series where he talks about it being "unfiltered Ellroy" and getting to do it exactly how he wants, and then you watch the show and it just doesn't live up to that premise at all. It's just...not good.

Glad to hear he's a nice guy, though.

[Ignatius_S]

He really embraced the cartoon character persona that he thinks he needs to maintain to sell books and get publicity. I ran into him five years ago in a bookstore and he was incredibly lowkey, amusing, and chattered endlessly about Jack Webb and Dragnet in general. In a way I was kind of disappointed, expected a blithering contrarian cunt inhaling panties or something. It did lead to watching the later 60s run on Netflix and having a blast, so thanks to the poet laureate of peepers for that one!....

Have you read Jack Webb's The Badge?

A few years, it was reprinted and Ellroy wrote an introduction – he received it as a gift in his boyhood and said it was a huge influence on his writing ('you don't say!' was my reaction).

Although it says it covers some cases that Dragnet couldn't feature (e.g. The Blue Dahlia) it's largely about how LAPD operates and its history - found it to be a excellent read. Obviously, Webb wasn't unbiased in his observations (and couldn't afford to be) but there's a lot of information that's interesting. A while later, I read John Buntin's LA Noir and found certain elements of that weak in comparison.

[kngen]

But his recent material has shown him becoming a parody of himself anyway. I really struggled with Blood's A Rover and haven't bothered with anything else since.

Agreed 100% (not least because Blood's A Rover wasn't the Nixon-era third part of the America trilogy we were all expecting). I also think My Dark Places, as brilliant as it is, kind of ruined him for me. All the B&E, peeping-tom and weird sexual proclivities peppered through his books make for far less interesting character beats when you realise he is basically talking about himself - to the extent that when I was watching Rampart, and Woody Harrelson's character is shown to be in a weird menage a trois relationship with two sisters when he isn't spying on one of his (sexually attractive female) adversaries, while indulging in a quick rifle through her knicker drawer when he gets the chance, I thought, 'Hang on. This is classic Ellroy behaviour.' And there he was, in the credits as a script consultant. Ho hum ...