On Sunday, August 31st, I was lucky enough to see an advance screening of LA Confidential as part of Seattle's annual arts festival, Bumbershoot. As part of this screening, both Curtis Hanson and James Ellroy were on hand to talk about the novel and the process of translating it to film. Here is a little of what was discussed at that Q&A.

Knowing that often novelists absolutely hate the film adaptions of their work, Ellroy was asked what he thought of the film of LA Confidential. He likes it, actually - he's seen it five times. He said "it moves me, it perplexes me and disturbs me in strange ways. Every time I see it, I pick up another level" (of subtlety). He had thought, at the time he sold the rights to the book to Warner Brothers, that there was just no way that anyone was ever going to make a movie from the novel. "So I took the money and ran." Hanson said that the screenplay was in its seventh draft before Hanson and co-screenwriter Brian Helgeland felt happy enough with it to show it to Ellroy. The decision not to include Ellroy in the translation process was explained by Hanson "I felt that (by giving us the book to work from) he had already completed his part of the collaboration". Ellroy approved of the tough choices Hanson and Helgeland made in condensing this incredibly complex book "with 100 characters, covering a multi-year period, with no fewer than 9 fully developed plot lines" (as Ellroy noted), as it "maintained the tripartite structure of the book" by retaining all three main characters, that it "used much of the original dialog, and where it was changed it was very respectful to the spirit of the book".

Since Cannes, people have been comparing the film to Chinatown. When asked about this, both Hanson and Ellroy had some interesting comments. Hanson feels that Chinatown is a masterpiece of filmmaking, so he said if people were referring to the density, the complexity, and the quality of the film, he was flattered. On the other hand, he observed that the fundmental themes of the two movies are very different. He described Chinatown as "a revisionist look at Raymond Chandler" and his period (the 1930's), and felt that Chandler's writing, though in the same genre as Ellroy's, was very different, and didn't feel that kind of comparison was appropriate. At this point, Ellroy added that his writing explored themes of "bad white men doing bad things in the name of authority" (and gettting away with them), and, for the LA books specifically, how events in LA's postwar boom period shaped and corrupted institutions like the LAPD, with ramifications that are still in the headlines. He expressed digust with the myth of the "lone hero", which was a theme of Chandler's work and other writers of both that period and the crime genre in general, and said that his writing, which deals more with insitutional corruption, was a total antithesis to Chandler.

Since it has been mentioned so much in the entertainment press, Hanson was asked about his casting choices for the film. Hanson got a lot of heat for casting Australian actor Russell Crowe as Bud White. Crowe has been in American films for years now, including Quick and the Dead, Virtuosity, and the upcoming Rough Magic, but is not exactly a household name here, though he has won several awards in his native Oz and has done some memorable work in such films as Romper Stomper and Proof. Another "unknown" (to American audiences at least, though again, Guy Pearce is known Down Under from film and several televeision series in Australia as well) was cast as Exley, and Hanson explained that he wanted it this way. Well known actors, he says, bring in their past relationships with the audience from all the other films that the audience knows them from. In some cases, this makes it harder for the character to come through. Since Hanson wanted the audience to discover these characters as if we were reading the book, he wanted to use less known actors for these roles. Strangely enough, he says, the studio didn't realize that Guy Pearce, who plays Exley, is also Australian (he's best known to American audiences as one of the drag queens in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). On the other hand, he said, he got some heat for casting James Cromwell as Dudley Smith. "While he's American," Hanson sighed, "everyone think's he's Australian!" The film does condense several characters, and does not retain many of the plot lines of the book. The multi-year span of the book is condensed into 3 months. Hanson focuses on the characters of White, Exley, and Vincennes, and this is ultimately plenty of material for a 135-minute film. As a fan of the book, I was prepared to be disappointed, but though the film is very different from the book, Hanson has achieved something remarkable here by letting us discover these characters, and by how he has used the vocabulary of film to communicate the vision of the book. There is a scene in the film which has Vincennes sitting in a bar, staring at a 50 dollar bill he's taken as a kickback from Sid Hudgens. He smooths out the bill, looks at it, turning it over and over, looks at his reflection in the mirror, and back to the bill again. His expression is a mixture of sadness and disgust. Finally, he leaves the crisp, flattened bill on his glass and walks out of the bar. It might not be as detailed as the book, but it was a great shorthand for the self-realization that Vincennes comes to in the book, no less tortured. And this is what makes the film still L.A. Confidential, even if the plot is different from the book. Hanson didn't try to include everything and do it poorly; he did only a little bit of the book, but he did it very well. And I have to add, after several more viewings, I am even more appreciative of what Hanson has accomplished.

LA Confidential stars Kevin Spacey as Jack Vincennes, Russell Crowe as Bud White, Guy Pearce as Ed Exley, James Cromwell as Dudley Smith, Kim Basinger as Lynn Bracken, Danny DeVito as Sid Hudgens, and David Strathairn as Pierce Patchett. It was directed by Curtis Hanson with a screenplay from James Ellroy's novel by Brian Helgeland and Hanson. It will be released on September 19th.

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