Curtis Hanson
US
Los Angeles: a city itching to have its underbelly scratched. It's the early 50s, hype has been given an adrenaline rush by the birth of television and a new breed of salesman - the tabloid journalist - is doing great business in sleaze. Celebrity cop Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) has a neat racket on the go with Hush-Hush tell-all magazine editor Sid Hudgeons (Danny DeVito). Sid pulls down celebrity pants, Jack makes the bust, Sid scoops the story, Jack gets the credit. There are cops on the make, cops on the take, a wealthy socialite and a ringer for Veronica Lake (Kim Basinger). Murder, corruption, intrigue: there's not a vice that can't be pinned on someone. And that's barely a ripple on the story's glittering, post-war booming surface.
Labyrinthine doesn't get close to describing the plot of James Ellroy's crime classic LA Confidential. "The challenge," explains director Curtis Hanson (The River Wild, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle), "was how to deal with all those convoluted and complicated plot lines, to put it into a workable screenplay and at the same time be true to Ellroy's characters. As you meet each of the main guys they're all doing things that you don't like. You realise you're not going to like anybody, but you gradually get sucked in and you find yourself caring about them."
It was vital for the picture's shifting tone to depart from the standard screenwriter's gambit of creating sympathy for the lead character from the very first page. Hanson co-wrote the screenplay with Brian Helgeland (Assassins, Nightmare on Elm Street IV), then took the shrewd decision to cast two Australians - Russell Crowe (Romper Stomper) and Guy Pearce (ex-soap star of Neighbours and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) - as west coast cops Bud White and Ed Exley.
"I wanted to find actors the movie audience was not already familiar with," says Hanson, "to allow the audience to jump to conclusions about them right away. A movie star can bring the power of their past performances with them. It seems that nobody who has seen a preview of the movie has noticed that these guys are Australian."
Pearce found a reliable source of research in old police training footage, "the films they showed to young, enthusiastic recruits on how to be a good cop".
The casting of Kevin Spacey, a real "stalking horse" after the form he showed in The Usual Suspects, was sealed in the Formosa Cafe - that nicely pickled old-Hollywood bar on Santa Monica Boulevard and location for one of the movie's pivotal scenes. "I explained to Kevin that the character of Jack Vincennes was the technical advisor on a TV show very much like Dragnet, and that he was the one who taught Jack Webb how to act like a cop. Only, he should be much more like Dean Martin." The pair suddenly noticed Jack Webb and Dean Martin watching over them, framed in old photos. "At that moment," recalls Hanson, "I knew we had him."
The look of the city in LA Confidential was as important for Hanson as the characterisation. In Dante Spinotti, the director of photography who shot contemporary Los Angeles in Heat, he found a man who knew his territory. But the crew had to contend with shifting sands: "The challenge was to find that 'city in the past' in a place that is notorious for having no respect for its past. Things are bulldozed as quickly as there's new demand," says Hanson. "I'm from Los Angeles and it's a little bit like watching a movie you're very familiar with on television chopped up with commercials. You can still see those parts of it that you love. You just have to put on the blinkers and not be distracted by all the crap. The Los Angeles of LA Confidential is a state of mind more than a reality."
Mike Hodgkinson
Prod co: Regency Enterprises presents an Arnon Milchan/David L Wolper production
Prod: Arnon Milchan, Michael Nathanson, David L Wolper, Dan Kolsrud, Curtis Hanson, Brian Helgeland
Dir: Curtis Hanson
Scr: Curtis Hanson Brian Helgeland,
Ph: Dante Spinotti
Cos: Ruth Myers
Ed: Peter Honess
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito
Running time: 135 mins
Int sales: Warner Bros
