Conversations with James Ellroy

James Ellroy: The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential

149 James Ellroy: The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential Peter Canavese/2006 From Groucho Reviews (August 21, 2006). Reprinted by permission of Peter Canavese. Though he has yet to have a screenplay produced, author James Ellroy scored big in Hollywood when Curtis Hanson filmed the much-lauded L.A. Confidential , adapted from Ellroy’s novel. Ellroy’s other books include American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, The Big Nowhere, White Jazz, and the autobiographical My Dark Places. The documentary film Feast of Death retells the story of My Dark Places by following Ellroy around L.A. Ellroy came to San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel to talk up The Black Dahlia, Brian DePalma ’s film of what may be Ellroy’s most celebrated novel. Interviewer: In 1947, Betty Short was cut in half with bits of dug-out flesh and her mouth sliced wide. Brian De Palma chalks up the weird allure of the Black Dahlia case as coming from the imprint of those crime scene photos on people who’ve seen them. Why do you think the case has held people’s imagination for so long? Is it the unsolved quality of it? Ellroy: It’s January 15, 1947. I defy you to think of anything that’s happening in America, much less specifically Los Angeles, during that particular time. It’s postwar years, boom economy—America is on a roll. We have no language for sexual psychopathy. We have a profound language for it today. Here’s a young woman, horribly tortured, dumped in a vacant lot. It is the first media-manufactured murder. It is a primer on how certain women get dead. And it takes over the public imagination as no crime, truly, before or since. 150 CONVERSATIONS WITH JAMES ELLROY Interviewer: In recent years, credible suspects have emerged in the Dahlia Case— Ellroy: Hold on, Mr. Canavese. I do not talk about who really killed Elizabeth Short. Let me state for attribution: I don’t know. I don’t care. I wanted to create art out of the death of Elizabeth Short. That’s what I’ve done with my book and what Brian De Palma has done with his movie. Interviewer: I’m guessing you never made it out to the Bulgarian set? Ellroy: I did not fly to Bulgaria to watch the movie being shot because Bulgaria ’s bulgarity. And I could drive five hours—I was living in San Francisco then—to L.A. So I did. Interviewer: So were you involved at any stage in the development of the film? Did David Fincher [who abandoned the project in preproduction] or Brian De Palma ever approach you to discuss the material? Ellroy: I had one discussion with David Fincher and one discussion with Brian De Palma. I was not an active participant in the movie. Interviewer: You did take screenwriter Josh Friedman out to see the site of the crime scene, right? Ellroy: Josh Friedman and I have since become good friends, yes. Josh and I had dinner at the Pacific Dining Car Steak House downtown and drove down to Thirty-Ninth and Norton to talk to Elizabeth Short. Interviewer: What did you say to her? Ellroy: “Betty, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?/—you with your”—oh, shit. It’s a Gerard Manley Hopkins1 poem: “Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?/ . . . You [sic], like the things of man, you/With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?” You know what? I didn’t say that. I quoted Anne Sexton. And this is the epigraph from my novel, The Black Dahlia. “Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator . . . to love, or look at later.” Interviewer: I know you been back to that site more than once. Do you ever hear her talking back to you? Ellroy: No, because I’m sane, Mr. Canavese. Interviewer: [Laughs.] PETER CANAVESE / 2006 151 Ellroy: Yeah, when I start having auditory hallucinations, you know—you go out and you get the net for me. Interviewer: Right. [Laughs.] I understand you were particularly impressed with Josh Hartnett and Mia Kirshner when you saw footage from the film. Ellroy: Mia Kirshner especially. She breaks your heart. This is Elizabeth Short. Interviewer: What does the film do best, do you think, in adapting your book? Ellroy: It is a lush evoking of Dahlia mania. Of what Elizabeth Short’s death was...