LA Confidential writer James Ellroy has torn into the 1997 film adaptation of his book, calling it “turkey”.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times at the publications Festival of Books event – where he was presented with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement – Ellroy slated the film adaptation of his book, which was a box office smash and earned a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars.
The writer said he was now free to “disparage” the 1997 crime thriller following director Curtis Hanson’s death in 2016.
“People love the movie ‘L.A. Confidential,’” Ellroy told the publication. “I think it’s turkey of the highest form,” he continued, before calling the performances by Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger “impotent.”
Ellroy has previously spoken about his disappointment of the film for Variety, saying that Hanson “rearranged my world and repopulated it with men and women less extreme than mine”.
He added: “My plotlines were reduced and re-stitched, my time frame was compressed, my love stories were re-triangulated. I created a world on paper. Curtis Hanson re-created it for film.
“It was my world but his world but my world to the point where all claims of ownership were blurred and lost. My dramatic sense and Curtis’s dramatic sense were always at odds.”
Basinger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film, and it additionally won the Best Screenplay Oscar for Hanson and Brian Helgeland. The film also starred Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Guy Pearce, David Strathairn and Danny DeVito.
Elsewhere, Russell Crowe recently admitted that he’s “slightly jealous” of Ridley Scott’s upcoming Gladiator sequel, which is rumoured to be starring Normal People actor Paul Mescal.
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