L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential is a crime novel by James Ellroy published in 1990 that was adapted into a 1997 feature film. Both tell the story of Los Angeles police in the 1950s, and police corruption bumping up against Hollywood celebrity.

Ellroy's novel (ISBN 0446674249 in paperback) is the third entry in Ellroy's "LA Quartet" series of noir novels.

The film adaptation was directed and cowritten by Curtis Hanson, and stars Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, and Guy Pearce as a trio of protagonists. Co-stars include James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, David Strathairn, and Ron Rifkin. __TOC__

Plot

The story is about three policemen in 1953 who are caught up in a mixture of lies, sex, corruption and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The story spans more than seven years and eventually stretches to encompass organized crime, political corruption, heroin, pornography, prostitution, tabloid journalism, plastic surgery and Hollywood. The novel's title refers to the infamous 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed fictionally therein as Hush-Hush.

Jack Vincennes is a slick and likable Hollywood cop who moonlights as the technical advisor of Badge of Honor, a popular Dragnet-like television show. Vincennes is connected with Hush-Hush magazine: he receives hefty payoffs for making orchestrated celebrity arrests, often involving narcotics, that will attract even more readers to the magazine - and more fame to himself.

Edmund Exley, the son of a legendary LAPD cop, is a brilliant detective determined to outdo his father . Ed's intelligence, his education, his glasses, his insistence on following regulations, and his cold demeanor all contribute to Ed's social isolation from other officers. He increases the resentment of other police against him by testifying against other cops in a police brutality case (a fictional version of the Bloody Christmas incident) early in the novel.

Wendell "Bud" White, the most feared man in the LAPD, is a six-foot tall muscleman. His partner was convicted and imprisoned in the "Bloody Christmas" scandal by Exley's testimony, and Bud vows revenge. He has a violent obsession with men who abuse women, counterbalanced by his tenderness towards the victims. His temper often overpowers his thought.

Changes from novel to film

Helgeland and Hanson were forced to make major changes to the plot to pare the story down to feature-length. Those sections notably missing or shortened are:

Bud's subplot involving a serial killer who murders prostitutes
Ed's father
Inez Soto's subplot
the Dieterling (Disney) subplot
nearly all of Jack's back story and his marriage
Bud's partner loses his job and pension in the film but is not imprisoned.
In Ed's back story, the role of his brother is replaced with an anecdote about his father, whose murder by an unknown criminal Ed dubbed Rollo Tomasi inspired his police career.

Author James Ellroy expressed his satisfaction with the finished result on the DVD extra features.

Film

The movie was adapted by Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson from Ellroy's novel. Hanson directed the movie.

Awards and nominations

The film won two Oscars:

It received an additional seven nominations:

References to real life

The scandal magazine Hush-Hush is a reference to gossip magazines of the 1950s, such as Confidential.
Badge of Honor is seen as a Dragnet pastiche, as both shows use actual police consultants to achieve verisimilitude.
Bloody Christmas, the brutal beating of seven Latino men in police custody on Christmas day in 1951.
The Fleur de Lis club, which features prostitutes specifically cast and operated upon to look like contemporary celebrities is probably a reference to the T&M Studio, a famous Hollywood brothel with celebrity-lookalikes. This and other such specific brothels were mentioned in several famous Hollywood memoirs, including those of Mickey Rooney and Garson Kanin.
Lynn Bracken (Basinger) makes herself up deliberately to look like actress Veronica Lake. Lake's This Gun for Hire is also shown on a TV in her apartment in one scene.
Mickey Cohen was a real-life mobster. He is arrested at the beginning of the novel/film for tax evasion and spent four years in federal prison McNeil Island for it.
Johnny Stompanato (Cohen's bodyguard) did date Lana Turner while Cohen was behind bars, and Turner's daughter did kill Stompanato in 1958.
William H. Parker was the LAPD Chief from 1950 to 1966, succeeded by Thad F. Brown.
Ray Dieterling, Dream-a-Dreamland, and Moochie Mouse superficially correspond to Walt Disney, Disneyland, and Mickey Mouse.

Trivia

When Ed Exley (played by Guy Pearce) talks to Jack Vincennes about Rollo Tomasi, Pearce briefly drops his American accent and speaks with his natural Australian accent.

Had the film been successfully adapted into a TV series, Jack Vincennes would have been played by Kiefer Sutherland (coincidentally, Sutherland co-stars with Kim Basinger in The Sentinel (2006)), and Lynn Bracken by Melissa George. Basinger has also expressed an interest in joining the cast of 24 for Season 6. [http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2006-04-20/#celeb10

External Links

Spliced Online's interviews with James Ellroy and Curtis Hanson