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‘The Black Dahlia’ Author James Ellroy: The Demon Dog Howls

He is the self-proclaimed “Demon Dog of American Literature,” and he has something to howl about. One of the most praised and bestselling authors of the last 20 years, James Ellroy has crafted a vibrant, vicious, visceral literary landscape of postwar Los Angeles in his “L.A. Quartet,” epic explorations of obsession and ambition filtered through a post-modern prism of upended crime noir conventions.

But if L.A. was his muse, he couldn’t have cared less when Hollywood came calling for the book rights. His attitude was cut the check and skip the celebratory champagne—his novels were his lifeblood and he cared little about how the movies would mutate them. But against all odds and Ellroy’s every expectation, his most labyrinthine novel, the masterful L.A. Confidential—the third in the series—was adapted to critical acclaim and numerous awards nominations.

And now The Black Dahlia, the first in the series and his most personally felt piece of fiction, owing to his mingled obsessions with the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short and the similarly unsolved 1958 slaying of his own mother, has been committed to film by director Brian De Palma, and he is similarly pleased. So pleased, in fact, that when he sat down with Hollywood.com at L.A.’s Biltmore Hotel (site of the last known sighting of the Dahlia before her body was discovered), the Demon Dog of American Literature howled—literally.

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Hollywood.com: Two of your four “L.A. Quartet” novels have been made into major motion pictures—nine years apart—and although you’ve been indifferent, pragmatic, even cynical about what happens when your works are optioned, you’ve been pleasantly surprised with the results. Are you optimistic that the remainder of the series will make it to the big screen, and as be well-executed?
James Ellroy:
Between the years 1986 and 1992, I wrote my “L.A. Quartet,” an epic pop history of Los Angeles—my smog-bound fatherland—between the years 1947 and 1959: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White JazzL.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia have been made as motion pictures, The Big Nowhere and White Jazz, not so. I doubt—and this is no kind of comment on Mr. De Palma‘s film, or Curtis Hanson‘s film—that there will ever be another motion picture made of one of my books, because dysfunctional-ism in the motion picture industry trumps the creative process 99.9 percent of the time. Don’t hold your breath.

HW: And whatever Hollywood does, or does wrong, or ultimately never does to your works after they’re optioned is not at all bothersome to you.
JE: Money is the gift that no one ever returns. In 1986, my novel The Black Dahlia was optioned. I’m a realist: I grew up on the edge of Hollywood, my old man was Rita Hayworth’s business manager in the late ‘40s, and allegedly “poured her the pork” on several notable occasions. So I know that the motion picture option is to the finished and released movie what the first kiss is to the 50th monogamous anniversary. I never thought it would be a movie, let alone a good movie. I have been very pleasantly surprised, in large part due to the efforts of [the screenwriter] Mr. Friedman…The ending of my novel The Black Dahlia takes place off page at a hush. Mr. De Palma‘s film, written by Mr. Friedman, is a reduction and compression of my overall story, but it retains the arc of motive, and characterization, and isolates the key themes. The ending had to be more melodramatic than the ending of my novel, and it was executed thusly.

HW: Obsession is one of those key themes. Is that a valuable tool to a creative person, or can you be overcome by it?
JE:
Bucky Bleichert’s obsessive-ness with three women—the Black Dahlia, Kay Lake, Madeleine Sprague or Madeleine Linscott in the movie—presaged my obsession with a woman named Joan many years later. It’s the greatest story that I’ll never tell. And obsession has worked for me, and obsession has almost killed me on several notable occasions.

HW: Can you talk about why you’ve chosen now to officially end any commentary on both the death of the Black Dahlia, and that of your mother? JE: There are two stories that comprise the central myth of my life, my mother’s 1958 murder, still unsolved, and the 1947 murder of the Black Dahlia, still unsolved…Both women live in my imagination, I’ve exploited them to sell books, virtually every interviewer who’s interviewed me for over 20 years brings them up, and I have decided that Mr. De Palma‘s film will mark the end of all public discourse for me in the matter of my mother, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, and of Elizabeth Short. I re-investigated my mother’s murder and wrote a non-fiction memoir entitled My Dark Places, I’ve told this story trillions of times, I’m going on a book tour shortly for the movie, and that’s it. I’ve gone on to write many better books than The Black Dahlia, books not even set in Los Angeles—big historical, political novels, in no way crime novels, and I want to restrict public discourse to the newer work.

HW: The richness of detail in recreating the period your novels are set in is one of your most praised literary strengths. Are you as in tune with the culture of the present as you are bygone eras?
JE: I isolate myself from popular culture. I bury my head in the sand and limit my intellectual intake to the period of time that I’m writing about, thus today I ignore the world around me, and I’m isolating myself in the years 1968 to 1972. I don’t have a computer, I write by hand, I don’t have a television set, I don’t read, I don’t go to movies, I lie in a bed, lie on a couch, brood, and think. I think the power of The Black Dahlia as a novel, and all my subsequent novels, is a result of that isolation. My books are in no way meant to be metaphors for life today. My big political novels are in no way meant to be reflections of the current political scene. Whatever power my books possess, whatever level of insight, comes as a result of that period immersion.

HW: What are you working on currently, and how do you go about your period immersion?
JE: I’m working on the sequel to my novel The Cold Six Thousand, the concluding volume of my “Underworld U.S.A.” trilogy. I collate, I research, I think, I lie in the dark, I brood, I write copiously big outlines, and numerous drafts of the text. I’m usually writing. If not, I’m laying in the dark, brooding and obsessing. I have friends. I have an ex wife. I have an ex-dog. I have a pad here in L.A., I have a groovy sports car. I have friends with TV sets, because I don’t have a TV set. And I watch boxing at their place. And I may have said this before, I lay in the dark and brood. I don’t want any kind of distractions, and I don’t enjoy popular culture, so why have a TV set? I can watch L.A. Confidential from my novel, The Black Dahlia from my novel, at a friend’s place, because all of my friends have TV sets and VCR’s.

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HW: Do your friends understand your methodology?
JE: My friends love me, I love them, and they understand that I have certain limitations. When I was about 13 years old, I went to John Burroughs Junior High at 6th and McCadden, a tremendously stimulating experience for me. I never graduated from high school, but I loved John Burroughs, and I wrote a piece about it called “Let’s Twist Again,” about my 1959 to 1962 tenure at John Burroughs. It was published in GQ, and in my collection Crime Wave. When I was 12 or 13, I figured out there were six or seven things, that I dug to the exclusion of everything else: women, American history, dogs, classical music, boxing, and crime flicks. It’s 40-odd years later, and those are the things that drive me still. Sometimes you just know early, and I’ve been blessed with single-mindedness.

HW: What is the original novel and the film hoping to accomplish, ultimately?
JE: We are searching for a language to explain the remorseless, depraved, arrogant and narcissistic slaughter of Elizabeth Short, so that we can allay our own fear of death, and inoculate ourselves against the random nature of life.

HW: Since this is your valedictory lap on the subject of the real Black Dahlia, is there one prevailing theory that…
JE: No! Stop right there! There is one thing I never talk about: Who killed Betty Short, and why. Some theories are better than others. They’re all un-provable in the end. And none of the f**king theories have anything to do with my book.

HW: When you look at L.A. now, what do you see, as opposed to the city of your youth about which you’ve written so eloquently, lovingly, critically and horrifically?
JE:
I see a multi-cultural hellhole. Overpopulated, egregiously smoggy. I moved back here after 25 years away, and I’m thrilled to be here.

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