James Ellroy

news

America

The Fall 2017 issue of America, a Literary quarterly created by François Busnel, with an Ellroy interview. “America Like You've Never Read It.”

Hanks Plays Hopkins…In His Dreams!

If you could play one fictional character from a novel on stage or screen, who would it be and why? And one real-life figure you first encountered in a work of nonfiction?

I still am young enough to play Dean Reed, the American who, starting in the 1960s, was considered to be a big American singing star, but only to the Communist world. He was famous in the Soviet Union and East Germany and all over the Communist world. He was an actor, made movies, and was both beloved (by many) and dismissed (by many), was crazy-making good-looking and traveled in the upper echelons of the red world. That life, and all that attention, made for an inevitable tragedy by the 1980s. But those that loved him as a friend loved him very much.

In the fiction world, I'd like a whack at James Ellroy's Lloyd Hopkins character—a cop who is such a genius the only work for him is police work. He is so smart and off-world in his abilities, the L.A.P.D. just sort of leaves him to poke around. A brilliant creation from the oh-so-complicated typing of Ellroy.

Read it

“Buzz M for Murder” in Vanity Fair

It was a murder that gripped New York and would reverberate to the Supreme Court: the brutal 1963 slaying of two “career girls” on the Upper East Side. One of the greatest living crime novelists resurrects the investigation, creating a new voice in the landmark case.

Read it

L'intégrale, avec James Ellroy

Ellroy appears on the French television show “21CM”

On Curtis Hanson: 'He Was a Voyeur, He Was a Camera'

I wrote a piece for Variety on my friend Curtis Hanson:

Curtis Hanson's gaze was ever deferential to the art of film itself. His films explore and never explode. Even his heartbreak unfolds in restraint. There is a debit and credit sheet here. The viewer flails for emotional coherence and fails to find it. The viewer comes away with a sense of life deftly observed. Voyeur, filmmaker, observer — the most circumspect man I've ever met. Curtis Hanson was a camera above all else.

Marlon James' Great American Novel: None (with an 'American Tabloid' asterisk)

So while the whole idea of a great anything is pointless and even potentially harmful, if were you to put a gun to my head, or threaten my never to be born children, I would nominate James Ellroy's “American Tabloid.” Because Noir may have been America's greatest cultural invention, even if she might not have invented it. Because American Tabloid is the only novel I've read so far that realizes that the crucial moments in history are made by people who never make the history books. It's the rare novel to liberate American outcast language, Jazz talk, street talk, junkie talk, faggot talk, whore talk, and dare to position them as a new canon. And it is that American novel that realized before we did, that our American dream was somebody else's nightmare.

Secret Histories - James Ellroy’s “LAPD ’53” is Crime Noir Supreme

Miss Rosen, writing for Crave says “Ellroy never fails to tell it like it is."

Movie Version of ‘Blood’s A Rover’ to Start Filming by Year End

The Mark Gordon Company will produce and finance an adaptation of Blood's A Rover, the 2009 crime novel by L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy. A script has been written by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby, who were Oscar nominated for Children of Men and scripted Iron Man. Gordon will produce with Vincent Sieber — whose Midnight Road Entertainment developed the script with the scribes — and Clark Peterson. The film's being packaged to shoot at year's end with Sara Smith overseeing for Gordon.

'The Black Dahlia' Graphic Novel adaptation to be released in June

…an English version of “The Black Dahlia” adaptation will be released in June. The graphic novel will be published by Archaia, an imprint of Boom! Studios. The cover of the new English hardcover edition will feature a brand new image by Hyman.

James Ellroy, The Master of Mayhem, Moves in on the Mile High City

On a quiet Monday night at Elway's Cherry Creek, it's hard to miss James Ellroy. A trim six-three, clean-domed and fond of Hawaiian shirts, eyes blazing, he's easily the most animated talker in the room. He's not particularly loud or demonstrative, but he is passionate, holding forth on love and death and popular culture while attacking a slab of prime rib.