It has been twenty-five years since the acclaimed Oscar-winning film adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel “L.A. Confidential” hit cinemas.
In the years since, it has often been labelled a masterpiece, helping kickstart the Hollywood careers of Aussie actors Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce who shared the screen with Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey and Danny De Vito in the crime noir tale.
The late Curtis Hanson (“Wonder Boys,” “8 Mile,” “The River Wild”) directed the film from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland (“A Knight’s Tale,” “Mystic River,” “Man on Fire”) with the movie following a group of LAPD officers in 1953 as it explored the intersection between corruption and celebrity.
One person who is not a fan though? Ellroy himself. The author made an appearance at the L.A. Times Festival of Books (via Deadline) where he talked about the film and said:
“People love the movie L.A. Confidential. I think it’s a turkey of the highest form. I think Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger are impotent. The director [Curtis Hanson] died, so now I can disparage the movie.”
Ellroy has previously been critical of the adaptation Hanson made of his work, writing a piece in Variety in 2016 about how his book showed people ‘in extremis’ and the film toned that down – “My plotlines were reduced and re-stitched, my time frame was compressed, my love stories were re-triangulated… My dramatic sense and Curtis’s dramatic sense were always at odds.”
In 2020, Helgeland confirmed a sequel had been in development with Chadwick Boseman playing a cop in 1974, whilst Crowe and Pearce would have reprised their roles, however, Warners passed on it.
Writer Jordan Harper and director Michael Dinner were developing a new TV series adaptation of the novel for CBS which would’ve starred Walton Goggins in the Spacey role, Mark Webber in the Crowe roe, Brian J. Smith in the Pearce role, Dominic Burgess in the De Vito role and Sarah Jones in the Basinger role. Shea Whigham, Devon Graye, Charles Baker and Matt McCoy also starred.
