James Ellroy--back in L.A.

[ghost of miles]

Wow--just came across this today. Much of it is a magazine re-telling of MY DARK PLACES, but the last two pages provide some info on why we haven't heard much from Ellroy for the past several years. I think I've said this before, but I wondered where he'd go as a writer after MY DARK PLACES, which seemed like a dangerous excavation of the psyche; and THE COLD SIX THOUSAND was, IMO, a very disappointing followup to AMERICAN TABLOID. Plus Ellroy's style was veering into the realm of self-parody, bogging down in ridiculous amounts of alliteration, the punchiness seemingly becoming more inflated and less substantial. Not surprising that a guy who once told a friend of mine to "pursue your hideous obsessions" would again find himself verging on addictive madness... but I liked this piece more than anything else I've read by him in quite awhile, and it seems to reclaim the classic Ellroyian style:

James Ellroy comes home

[RDK]

You might be pleased to learn (or maybe not) that George Clooney will be starring in and producing (directing even?) White Jazz.

[Harold_Z]

Thanks for posting that Ghost. I haven't read it all the way through yet, but I will.

I dig Ellroy, but at one point in The Cold Six Thousand he had me wondering. He writes of a Vegas lounge trio consisting of sax(sic), drums and bass. Not likely for a Vegas lounge trio!

Not unless Sonny Rollins clone bands were playing the strip.

Hey! Nobody's perfect.

[Werf]

sidenote: White Jazz, when you consider the title, implications... shit! coulda had Joe Maini, Art Peppter, the Gellers, Lenny, Chet, etc etc... even in background, like some of the funny shit about Billy Eckstine in other books. i haven't read since it was released but i don't recall ANY of that.

I think Art Pepper is in White Jazz, if memory serves, and in the background. I'll have to dig the volume out to check it.

[brownie]

Ghost, thanks for the link!

Speaking of James Ellroy...

Not sure it is really good news! (RDK already mentioned this project!)

From Reuters

CLOONEY BOOKS TWO CRIME PROJECTS FOR 2008

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - George Clooney has signed on to two high-profile projects with Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Independent Pictures.

First, Clooney is set to star in and produce "White Jazz," an adaptation of a James Ellroy novel, for Warner Independent. He then will reteam with his "Ocean's Eleven" producer Jerry Weintraub to direct the heist movie "Belmont Boys" for the parent studio. Both are set for 2008 starts.

"Jazz" is the last volume of what is known as Ellroy's "L.A. quartet" of crime novels, which includes "L.A. Confidential," "The Big Nowhere" and "The Black Dahlia."

Clooney will play a corrupt police lieutenant assigned to a potentially explosive case for the Los Angeles Police Department during a time when the department is under investigation for corruption.

He will produce with his "Good Night, and Good Luck" producing partner Grant Heslov. The film will be directed by Joe Carnahan ("Narc").

"Belmont Boys" is the name of a group of seven thieves who meet as railbirds at the racetrack in the old days and almost pull off the job of a lifetime. Now, 30 years later, they are thrown back together to finish what they started.

The film will take place in the U.S. and locations throughout Europe, with Clooney and Weintraub already in discussions with seven major actors for the lead roles.

Weintraub said the movie will not be an "Ocean's" retread and that the actors will be much older, "though all big stars."

Clooney's calendar is all tied up through 2008. He is set to star in Joel and Ethan Coen's upcoming film, "Burn After Reading," for Focus Features after he directs and stars in "Leatherheads," a football movie for Universal Pictures. Shooting for "Leatherheads" is to start in the spring.

He made his directorial debut in 2002 with "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" and earned an Oscar nomination this year for directing "Good Night, and Good Luck." He won the Oscar this year for his supporting role in "Syriana."

[Harold_Z]

Coincidentally - Ellroy was on "Murder By The Book" on Court TV last night at 10:00 pm. He pretty much went over the ground covered in "My Dark Places". The show was pretty interesting. altho Court TV pretty much stretches what should have been a 1/2 hour show into a full hour by repeating A LOT and by A LOT of commercials. Anyway...it was worth watching so check around for repeats if interested.

Good news about Clooney doing "White Jazz". He'll probably do a good job on it.

[ghost of miles]

Clem, it wasn't an issue with lyricism for me--I really liked his pared-down style in AMERICAN TABLOID & in LA CONFIDENTIAL. It was what I felt to be an inflation/exaggeration of that style. (Apropos of this, I opened COLD SIX THOUSAND the other day to look up a certain passage and stumbled across this: "Pete gulped. Pete swallowed. Pete choked his gum back." I mean, that's just ludicrous, and what drove me crazy about the book when I read it... it seemed like Ellroy was degenerating into "See Spot run" territory.) The story was pretty good, though I recall it seemed as if JE telescoped the last year or two... I got the feeling I was reading part of his infamous outline, rather than his narrative. Agree w/you that there's an end-of-the-line feeling to it, but evidently JE's resurrecting the same characters for the final book. (Wonder if he'll ever get around to writing his Harding/early 1920s book... that would be a good read, I think. The 1920s seem like a good era for JE to explore.)

I remember another anachronism from COLD SIX: Pete B. chewing Nicorette gum. Not important in terms of critical estimation, just creates a passing raised-eyebrow effect when you're reading.

[brownie]

Looks like George Romney is pulling out of that 'White Jazz' film

http://www.product-reviews.net/2007/10/22/...-of-white-jazz/

[ghost of miles]

Amazon's now listing Blood's a Rover (final novel of trilogy that began with AMERICAN TABLOID and THE COLD SIX THOUSAND) for Sept. '09 publication.

[Harold_Z]

COOL! I'm in as soon as it comes out.

I was in a used bookstore and bought a three-in-one called LA NOIR. It's Ellroy's first three novels. Relatively obscure. The hero is a cop - "Sgt. LLoyd Hopkins." Good stuff and definitely the harbinger of thigns to come.

[ghost of miles]

Amazon synopsis for the new one:

Summer, 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead. The assassination conspiracies have begun to unravel. A dirty-tricks squad is getting ready to deploy at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Black militants are warring in southside L.A. The Feds are concocting draconian countermeasures. And fate has placed three men at the vortex of History.

Dwight Holly is J. Edgar Hoover’s pet strong-arm goon, implementing Hoover’s racist designs and obsessed with a leftist shadow figure named Joan Rosen Klein. Wayne Tedrow—ex-cop and heroin runner—is building a mob gambling mecca in the Dominican Republic and quickly becoming radicalized. Don Crutchfield is a window-peeping kid private-eye within tantalizing reach of right-wing assassins, left-wing revolutionaries and the powermongers of an incendiary era. Their lives collide in pursuit of the Red Goddess Joan—and each of them will pay “a dear and savage price to live History.”

Political noir as only James Ellroy can write it—our recent past razed and fully reconstructed—Blood’s A Rover is a novel of astonishing depth and scope, a massive tale of corruption and retribution, of ideals at war and the extremity of love. It is the largest and greatest work of fiction from an American master.

[Matthew]

I don't know, I just got tired of Ellroy, his writing style never seems to go anywhere, just this mad rush to show you how dirty life is, and how the fix is in for everything. I'm passing on him now.

[ghost of miles]

I agree that he got fairly tedious with THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, but I'll probably read this one anyway, just to complete the trilogy--and with hopes that he's pulled back a bit from the rat-a-tat-tat, see-Pete-shoot style of COLD. I thought that direction for his style worked well for AMERICAN TABLOID and MY DARK PLACES, but it did seem like he went off the rails with it after that.