Two new movies of James Ellroy novels are in the works. According to Deadline, Vincent Sieber and Clark Peterson will produce (and Ellroy will executive-produce) “Blood’s a Rover,” the most recent book by the self-styled Demon Dog of American literature. “Harry Potter” producer David Heyman is meanwhile setting up “The Big Nowhere” with co-producers Jeffrey Clifford and Maurizio Grimaldi; Luca Guadagnino, director of the elegant Tilda Swinton vehicle “I Am Love,” is attached to the latter project.
“The Big Nowhere” (1988) is the second novel in Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet,” following “The Black Dahlia” (1987) and preceding “L.A. Confidential” (1990) and “White Jazz” (1992). Set during the Red Scare in 1950, when anti-Communist fervor was exploited to break organized labor at the movie studios, it follows the interlocking fortunes of three protagonists: West L.A. sheriff’s deputy, Danny Upshaw, who’s investigating a gay sex murder and mutilation; Mal Considine of the D.A’s office, who’s involved in a child custody case; and disgraced former cop Buzz Meeks, a heavy working as head of security for Hughes Aircraft (and as Howard Hughes’s pimp) as well as gangster Mickey Cohen. The corrupt and murderous Irish LAPD lieutenant Dudley Smith (played by James Cromwell in “L.A. Confidential”) also features in the sprawling plot.
Following “American Tabloid” (1995) and “The Cold Six Thousand” (2001), “Blood’s a Rover” (2009) concluded Ellroy’s “Underworld USA” trilogy. It starts in 1968 in the aftermath of the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations and during the buildup of black militancy in southside L.A. Like “The Big Nowhere,” it has three protagonists.
The book’s official press release smacked of Ellroy-ese: “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.’”
“Blood’s a Rover” was eight years in gestation. “I was that long between books for a variety of reasons, all of which are determining factors in the Beethovian greatness of Blood’s a Rover,” Ellroy said on the Random House website at the time of its publication. “One, my marriage had to go in the shitter – as I rigorously held on to the friendship of my beloved ex-wife and most astute critic, Helen Knode.
“Helen convinced me to write a more emotionally and stylistically accessible novel – one that plumbed the murky recesses of my tortured, tender and perverted heart!!! Two, I had to become deeply involved with the transcendent woman, Joan, who re-taught me American history from the ground up. Three, I made a conscious decision to write an entirely different kind of novel – one that explored spiritual and political conversion on all-new level, while, of course, adhering to readily identifiably and identifiably groovy Ellroy shit!!!”
On Friday, when the movie was announced, he had this to say: “My most recent novel is – not surprisingly – my best. The story is no less the psychic inventory of America from 1968 to 1972. I have no doubt that Clark Peterson and Vincent Sieber will fashion a splendid motion picture from this noir epic.”
This may not be so simple. Whereas Curtis Hanson’s 1997 film of “L.A. Confidential” made a successful transition to the screen, “The Black Dahlia” (2006) fell flat, despite the intermittent brilliance Brian De Palma brought to his retro-noir visualization of 1947 L.A., particularly in such set pieces as the Zoot Suit Riots and the discovery of Elizabeth Short’s body.
Not only was the film miscast (aside from Mia Kirshner as the tragically pathetic Short), it lacked the intensity of Ellroy’s prose and the calculated luridness of his narrative. Fashioning a rhythmically appropriate screenplay from the even more staccato “Blood’s a Rover” will be a formidable challenge.