Pynchon

"The Black Dahlia".



I once met the writer James Ellroy.

A couple of years back Ellroy was in the UK promoting the hardback release of "The Cold Six Thousand". Ellroy appeared at Waterstones, on the High Street in Birmingham city centre, for a reading, Q&A and signing session. I enjoyed it very much. From the get-go and his opening spiel, "Welcome paeodophiles, panty sniffers, perverts, degenerates, glue sniffers, etc." it was more than just a reading. It was a performance.

During the Q&A Ellroy's distrust and dislike of Hollywood was obvious. I asked him about the casting of "L. A. Confidential" , a film that I liked a great deal (either that or "Boogie Nights" should have won the Oscar that year, but they were both beaten out by "Titanic") and whether the casting matched how he had visualized the characters. He said that Guy Pearce stole the film and was exactly how he had imagined Ed Exley, but that he didn't really rate Russell Crowe or Kevin Spacey in their roles at all. (Personally I thought that Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe were perfectly cast, but that Kevin Spacey was completely different from the Jack Vincennze in the book. Now, Michael Madsen... He would have been a very good Jack Vincennze. Many will disagree with me.) Ellroy said that he did think "L. A. Confidential" was a good film, even though they had only used about 10% of the book. (400 characters were amalgamated to 40).

While watching, I did wonder what Ellroy thought about "The Black Dahlia". I don't suppose he liked it very much. I thought "The Black Dahlia" was an interesting attempt at Ellroy, but finally was just OK. I say OK because some of it was very good and some of it was very bad.

Very good. Brian De Palma has always known how to make a beautiful looking film. "The Black Dahlia" visually is absolutely gorgeous. It has really beautiful production values and design. It looks like the kind of film that Hitchcock might have made in the 50's (the look reminded me a lot of "Vertigo"), right down to some of the obviously fake, shot indoors street scenes. De Palma has a couple of good set pieces to get his teeth into. De Palma is very good at set pieces. I have never read the book, but it seemed that the typical Ellroy themes of perversity and corruption beneath the glamorous surface of film stars, big business and gangsters were all present and correct.

Very bad. Some of the acting is beyond camp. Josh Harnett is OK. (Some people might be surprised by that, but I have never thought that Josh Harnett is awful.) Aaron Eckhart (suprisingly) does a quite bad caricature of a cop falling apart. All sweat and bluster. Scarlett Johanssen is beautiful, but her performance is empty and she has practically nothing to do. Hilary Swank suprised me by being good as the femme fatale. (Good actress, obviously, but hardly a lot of people's idea of a femme fatale.) Finally, Fiona Shaw has a cameo which could be the worst performance by an actress I have seen in a film this year. Appalling.

I would see it again. Interesting film.

It is late. I will write about "The Queen" tomorrow.