L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neo-noir crime film directed, produced and co-written by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same name, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. The film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.
L.A. Confidential | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Curtis Hanson |
Produced by |
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Screenplay by |
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Based on | L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy |
Starring |
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Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
Cinematography | Dante Spinotti |
Edited by | Peter Honess |
Production company | Regency Enterprises The Wolper Organization |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
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Running time | 138 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $35 million |
Box office | $126.2 million |
At the time, Australian actor Guy Pearce and New Zealand actor Russell Crowe were relatively unknown in North America. One of the film's backers, Peter Dennett, was worried about the lack of established stars in the lead roles. However, he supported Hanson's casting decisions, and the director had the confidence also to recruit Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito.
The film grossed $126 million worldwide and was critically acclaimed, holding a 99% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and an aggregated score of 90 out of 100 on Metacritic. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning two: Basinger for Best Supporting Actress and Hanson and Helgeland for Best Adapted Screenplay. Titanic won in the other categories. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected this film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Screenplay
In early 1950s Los Angeles, Sergeant Edmund "Ed" Exley, son of the legendary LAPD detective Preston Exley, is determined to live up to his father's reputation. His intelligence, insistence on following regulations, and cold demeanor contribute to his isolation from other officers. He exacerbates this resentment by volunteering to testify in the "Bloody Christmas" case against his fellow officers in exchange for a promotion to Detective Lieutenant. This goes against the advice of Captain Dudley Smith, who says that a detective should be willing to shoot a guilty man in the back for the greater good. Exley's ambition is fueled by the murder of his father, killed by an unknown assailant, whom Exley nicknames "Rollo Tomasi".
Officer Wendell "Bud" White, whom Exley considers a "mindless thug", is a plainclothes officer obsessed with violently punishing woman-beaters. One such incident leads him to confront a former cop named Leland "Buzz" Meeks, a driver for Pierce Patchett, operator of Fleur-de-Lis. His call girl service runs prostitutes who are altered by plastic surgery to resemble film stars. White comes to dislike Exley after White's partner, Dick Stensland, is fired due to Exley's testimony in the "Bloody Christmas" scandal. Smith wants White to torture the out-of-town criminal element who attempt to gain a foothold in Los Angeles when gangster Mickey Cohen is imprisoned for tax evasion. The "Nite Owl case", a multiple homicide at a coffee shop, becomes personal to the police after Stensland is found to be one of the victims.
Sgt. Jack Vincennes is a narcotics detective who moonlights as a technical advisor on Badge of Honor, a popular TV police drama series. He is also providing Sid Hudgens, publisher of the Hush-Hush tabloid magazine, with tips about celebrity arrests that will attract more readers to Hudgens' magazine. When Vincennes becomes involved in Hudgens' scheme to set up actor Matt Reynolds in a homosexual tryst with L.A. district attorney Ellis Loew, and Reynolds is killed, Vincennes becomes determined to find the killer.
Three African Americans are initially charged with the Nite Owl murders; they are later killed in a shootout. Although the Nite Owl crime initially looks like a botched robbery, Exley and White individually investigate it to discover indications of corruption all around them. White recognizes Nite Owl victim Susan Lefferts as one of Meeks' escorts which leads him back to Pierce Patchett. He begins a relationship with Lynn Bracken, a Veronica Lake look-alike prostitute. The body count rises when White searches the crawl space under Lefferts' mother's house, and finds the decomposed corpse of Meeks.
When Vincennes approaches Smith with the evidence he has found with Exley, Smith realizes his scheme to take over Mickey Cohen's heroin empire is threatened. Smith shoots Vincennes, who utters "Rollo Tomasi" before dying, the origin of which Exley told Vincennes in confidence. Exley's suspicions are aroused when Smith asks him who Rollo Tomasi is. During an interrogation of Hudgens, Smith arranges for White to see photos of Bracken sleeping with Exley, which sends White into a rage.
Confident that White has gone after Exley to kill him, Smith kills Hudgens. Exley investigates and discovers Meeks and Stensland used to work closely with Smith. White drives to the police station and begins to fight Exley, but Exley is able to convince White that Smith is corrupt and has set them both up. The two decide to team together to take down Smith. They are able to obtain evidence against Smith by threatening Loew, and later find Patchett murdered. Exley and White realize Smith himself has been taking over after Cohen, and the killings have been Smith tying up loose ends.
Exley and White are set up with a trap against Smith and his hitmen. After a gunfight that kills all the hitmen, Smith shoots White in the face, but then is forced to surrender to Exley. As police arrive, Exley shoots Smith in the back, killing him. The LAPD cover up Smith's crimes and say he died a hero in the shootout to protect the department's image, and in exchange Exley bargains to also be hailed a hero and receives a medal for his bravery. Upon leaving City Hall, Exley sees Bracken, who tells him she is returning home to Arizona with White, revealing White survived the shooting. Exley and White shake hands and Bracken drives off into the sunset.
- Kevin Spacey as Det. Sgt. Jack Vincennes
- Russell Crowe as Officer Wendell "Bud" White
- Guy Pearce as Det. Lt. Edmund "Ed" Exley
- Kim Basinger as Lynn Bracken
- James Cromwell as Capt. Dudley Smith
- Danny DeVito as Sid Hudgens
- David Strathairn as Pierce Morehouse Patchett
- Ron Rifkin as District Attorney Ellis Loew
- Graham Beckel as Det. Richard "Dick" Stensland
- Amber Smith as Susan Lefferts
- John Mahon as Police Chief
- Paul Guilfoyle as Meyer "Mickey" Cohen
- Matt McCoy as Brett Chase
- Paolo Seganti as Johnny Stompanato
- Simon Baker as Matt Reynolds
- Tomas Arana as Breuning
- Michael McCleery as Carlisle
- Shawnee Free Jones as Tammy Jordan
- Darrell Sandeen as Leland "Buzz" Meeks
- Marisol Padilla Sánchez as Inez Soto
- Gwenda Deacon as Mrs. Lefferts
- Jim Metzler as Councilman
Development
Curtis Hanson had read half a dozen of James Ellroy's books before L.A. Confidential and was drawn to its characters, not the plot. He said, "What hooked me on them was that, as I met them, one after the other, I didn't like them - but as I continued reading, I started to care about them." Ellroy's novel also made Hanson think about Los Angeles and provided him with an opportunity to "set a movie at a point in time when the whole dream of Los Angeles, from that apparently golden era of the '20s and '30s, was being bulldozed."
Screenwriter Brian Helgeland was originally signed to Warner Bros. to write a Viking film with director Uli Edel and then worked on an unproduced modern-day King Arthur story. Helgeland was a long-time fan of Ellroy's novels. When he heard that Warner Bros. had acquired the rights to L.A. Confidential in 1990, he lobbied to script the film. However, at the time, the studio was only talking to well-known screenwriters. When he finally did get a meeting, it was canceled two days before it was to occur.
Helgeland found that Hanson had been hired to direct and met with him while the filmmaker was making The River Wild. They found that they not only shared a love for Ellroy's fiction but also agreed on how to adapt Confidential into a film. According to Helgeland, they had to "remove every scene from the book that didn't have the three main cops in it, and then to work from those scenes out." According to Hanson, he "wanted the audience to be challenged but at the same time I didn't want them to get lost". They worked on the script together for two years, with Hanson turning down jobs and Helgeland writing seven drafts for free.
The two men also got Ellroy's approval of their approach. He had seen Hanson's films The Bedroom Window and Bad Influence, and found him to be "a competent and interesting storyteller", but was not convinced that his book would be made into a film until he talked to the eventual director. He later said, "They preserved the basic integrity of the book and its main theme. Brian and Curtis took a work of fiction that had eight plotlines, reduced those to three, and retained the dramatic force of three men working out their destiny."
Warner executive Bill Gerber showed the script to Michael Nathanson, CEO of New Regency Productions, which had a deal with the studio. Nathanson loved it, but they had to get the approval from the owner of New Regency, Arnon Milchan. Hanson prepared a presentation that consisted of 15 vintage postcards and pictures of L.A. mounted on posterboards, and made his pitch to Milchan. The pictures consisted of orange groves, beaches, tract homes in the San Fernando Valley, and the opening of the Hollywood Freeway to symbolize the image of prosperity sold to the public.
In the pitch, Hanson showed the darker side of Ellroy's novel by presenting the cover of scandal rag Confidential and the famous shot of Robert Mitchum coming out of jail after his marijuana bust. He also had photographs of jazz musicians Zoot Sims, Gerry Mulligan, and Chet Baker to represent the popular music people of the time. Hanson emphasized that the period detail would be in the background and the characters in the foreground. Milchan was impressed with his presentation and agreed to finance it.
Casting
Hanson had seen Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper and found him "repulsive and scary, but captivating". The actor had read Ellroy's The Black Dahlia but not L.A. Confidential. When he read the script, Crowe was drawn to Bud White's "self-righteous moral crusade". Crowe fit the visual preconception of Bud. Hanson put the actor on tape doing a few scenes from the script and showed it to the film's producers, who agreed to cast him as Bud.
Guy Pearce auditioned like countless other actors, and Hanson felt that he "was very much what I had in mind for Ed Exley." The director purposely did not watch the actor in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, afraid that it might influence his decision. As he did with Crowe, Hanson taped Pearce and showed it to the producers, who agreed he should be cast as Ed. Pearce did not like Ed when he first read the screenplay and remarked, "I was pretty quick to judge him and dislike him for being so self-righteous ... But I liked how honest he became about himself. I knew I could grow to respect and understand him."
Milchan was against casting "two Australians" in the American period piece (Pearce wryly commented in a later interview that while both he and Crowe grew up in Australia, he is British by birth, while Crowe is a New Zealander). Besides their national origins, both Crowe and Pearce were relative unknowns in North America, and Milchan was equally worried about the lack of film stars in the lead roles.
However, Milchan supported Hanson's casting decisions and this gave the director the confidence to approach Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey. Hanson cast Crowe and Pearce because he wanted to "replicate my experience of the book. You don't like any of these characters at first, but the deeper you get into their story, the more you begin to sympathize with them. I didn't want actors audiences knew and already liked."
A third Australian actor unknown to American audiences at the time, Simon Baker, later to star in the TV series The Mentalist, was cast in the smaller but noteworthy role of Matt Reynolds, a doomed young bisexual actor. He was billed as Simon Baker Denny in the film's credits.
Hanson felt that the character of Jack Vincennes was "a movie star among cops", and thought of Spacey, with his "movie-star charisma," casting him specifically against type. The director was confident that the actor "could play the man behind that veneer, the man who also lost his soul," and when he gave him the script, he told him to think of Dean Martin while in the role. Hanson cast Basi
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