The director confessed to disliking the characters for too long into the story, and. Equally high is the chance of, when in conversation with others about such a movie, some motherfucker opening their mouth and saying, it wasnt as good as the book. Confidential is a 1997 american neonoir crime film directed, produced and cowritten by curtis hanson. Energetic, sprawling and often stylistically irritating police procedural that follows three lapd members over a tenyear period, beginning in 1950. Kitchen confidential 2000, a memoir by chef anthony bourdain, is based on the. Open library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Supersummary, a modern alternative to sparknotes and cliffsnotes, offers highquality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. Confidential is epic noir, a crime novel of astonishing detail and scope written by the bestselling author of the black dahlia. This onepage guide includes a plot summary and brief analysis of kitchen confidential by anthony bourdain.
Ed exley, a patrician who venerates his herocop father, presumably holds high ideals and unassailable standards. Confidential, based on james ellroys 1990 noir novel that spawned curtis hansons oscarwinning 1997 film. James elroys novel, from which the movie was taken, is chock full of 1940s cop. While the movies plot is twisty and complex, it all makes sense when pieced together. Confidential feels like the book that james ellroy has been preparing for and working up to during his entire career up to this point. Sagalike narrative hardboils down to three gutsy, basically honest but flawed lapd officers. Every mystery or crime novel ive read since has been chasing the dragon of l. The magazine sank in a sea of lawsuits, but it created a genre. Confidential while guy pearce, russell crowe, kim basinger, and danny devito filled out the cast. A horrific mass murder invades the lives of victims and victimizers on both sides of the law. Actually, what he had done in the war, daddy, was to artfully arrange a.
The film tells the story of a group of lapd officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and hollywood celebrity. Published in 1990, it was ellroys coming out party as a force to be reckoned with in the genre and the dawn of a new generation in crime fiction. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Confidential is one of my favourite books of all time, and my favourite james ellroy book. Mickey cohen has just been sentenced to ten years in federal prison for failure to pay income tax. Based on a book by leading crime author james ellroy, l. Ed exley, the by the book cop who is forever in his fathers shadow, glory hound jack vincennes, and bud white, the man forever avenging his dead mother. The story revolves around three officers of the lapd in the early 1950s.
The screenplay by hanson and brian helgeland is based on james ellroys 1990 novel of the same name, the third book in his l. The story mostly focuses on pearces ed exley, a straightlaced, ambitious detective whose own father was a. The epigraph is a glory that costs everything and means nothingsteve erickson. Confidential has been hailed by critics as one of seminal works of neonoir. The police, led by captain dudley, convince wiseguys from jersey, cleveland, and elsewhere to go home.
But the story mostly takes place in its seedy underbelly, and the plot is full of twists and turns and characters with hidden agendas. Rich developer, pierce patchett, runs a stable of highclass hookers who are ringers for movie stars. Vin diesel is a valiant superhero the late curtis hanson directed l. After his twogrossing films the hand that rocks the cradle and wild river, he was able to get this. Confidential is an epic crime tale spanning nearly a decade, a tale of corruption, greed, drugs, pornography, and in the aftermath of the bloody christmas, the lives of three cops are forever entwined. With kevin spacey, russell crowe, guy pearce, kim basinger. Officer bud white, on the other hand, is brutal, violent, vengeful and jack trashcan vincennes, formerly of the. Ellroy is a master of crime, seamlessly weaving three narratives in his deliciously dark version of the city of angels. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine confidential, portrayed in the film as hushhush. The plot to replace cohen blindsides three plainclothes cops. Ellroy is a master of crime, seamlessly weaving three narratives in his deliciously dark. Those who arent somebody in hollywood are nobody, and with a cast of actors who in 1997 were all unknown faces, l.
Confidential was a key magazine of the 1950s, a monthly that sold millions of copies with its seamy exposes of celebrity drugs and sex. I dont usually like mysteries or cop stories, but ellroy is such a good writer that i easily kept up with the dozens of characters and halfdozen interwoven plots. Confidential quotes showing of 3 some men get the world, some men get exhookers and a trip to arizona. Confidential is such an immersive invocation of a bygone past that it can be hard to process the fact that the film is now 20 years old. Three very different cops are all after the truth, each. Confidential is a neonoir novel by james ellroy, and the third of his l. I found it on my dads night table and read it breathlessly, the stories of reefer parties, multiple divorces, wifeswapping and leading men who liked to wear frilly undergarments. He takes all of the themes he explored in previous novels and packs them into a book thats an even larger, more epic tale of crime, perversion, and hollywood corruption than any of his previous books. Confidential by brian helgeland based on the novel by. Detective lieutenant exley guy pearce, the son of a murdered detective, is out to avenge his fathers killing. Confidential the likelihood of a given movie these days being based on a book or a short story or some other extracinematic source is pretty high these days. Officer bud white, on the other hand, is brutal, violent.
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