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Speaker 2: Oh j is folks, It's showtime. People say, good money
Speaker 2: to see this movie.
Speaker 1: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 3: They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 3: the projection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone for ten podcasting isn't boring?
Speaker 4: Put it off?
Speaker 5: What city please like?
Speaker 3: I'm in Hollywood and I want to report a murder.
Speaker 6: I'm detective starting a Lloyd Hopkins with the police department.
Speaker 6: It's about Julie Neimar Yea.
Speaker 2: Actually, I was thinking about calling you, guys.
Speaker 4: I just didn't know what to say.
Speaker 6: Why do you kill her?
Speaker 3: There's a dangerous man on the loose.
Speaker 6: All I care about is stopping his maniac before he
Speaker 6: kills a Can do you understand? Come on, Dutch, you're
Speaker 6: blown away abroad state. The least you can do is
Speaker 6: drive her home.
Speaker 3: His boss thinks he's trouble. If you go to the media,
Speaker 3: I'll crucify you.
Speaker 5: You wanted that day, don't you?
Speaker 2: How can you tell?
Speaker 6: You always shake just a little.
Speaker 3: His friends think he's crazy.
Speaker 4: Now one day should spend up in the force, breaking
Speaker 4: an entering, robbery and now possible murder. But he got
Speaker 4: lined up for tonight.
Speaker 3: Women think he's a menace.
Speaker 4: Would you do that?
Speaker 5: Why would you do that?
Speaker 3: Try to think of a three letter word for explosive?
Speaker 2: A cop, you gotta take me in.
Speaker 6: Well, there's some good news and there's some bad news.
Speaker 6: The good news is you're right. I'm a cop and
Speaker 6: I gotta take you in. Bad news is I've been
Speaker 6: suspended and I don't give up any.
Speaker 3: Cop. James Woods in the most startling performance of his
Speaker 3: career with Leslie Ann Warren and Charles Derning. When a
Speaker 3: man cares too much? How far is too far?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Projection Booth, I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 1: joined me once again as mister.
Speaker 5: Rod Lott Innocence kills j Also.
Speaker 1: Back in the booth is mister Andrew Netty.
Speaker 4: You blow away a broad's DT. The least you can
Speaker 4: do is drive a home.
Speaker 1: We wrap up Noirvember with a request from Dallas Novell
Speaker 1: Cop released in nineteen eighty eight. The film was the
Speaker 1: first time James Elroy's fiction was adapted for the big screen.
Speaker 1: Adapted by writer director James B. Harris, the film stars
Speaker 1: James Woods as Detective Lloyd Hopkins, a genius super cop
Speaker 1: who stumbles onto a mystery eighteen years in the making.
Speaker 1: We will be spoiling the film as well as Elroy's
Speaker 1: original source novel Blood on the Moon, as well as
Speaker 1: other things as we go along. So if you don't
Speaker 1: want anything ruined, to turn off the podcast and come
Speaker 1: back after you've seen the movie, read the book, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. We will still be here. So, Rod, when
Speaker 1: was the first time you saw Cop and what did
Speaker 1: you think?
Speaker 5: I saw it first when it came out, actually in
Speaker 5: theaters at the nearest theater to my house, which was
Speaker 5: a little place called French Market Mal twin Cinemas, Oklahoma City.
Speaker 5: I think it shut down a year later, but mal
Speaker 5: is a not exactly the right word for it. It's
Speaker 5: just a small indoor maybe twenty four stores total. It
Speaker 5: was designed to look like New Orleans kind of, so
Speaker 5: it's very strange. But the theater was on its last
Speaker 5: legs at that point, and I think could see that
Speaker 5: it was like eighty eight, so I would have been seventeenth.
Speaker 1: At the time.
Speaker 5: I was going to a lot of movies since I
Speaker 5: had a driver's license. Corralled my brother into it, telling
Speaker 5: him it was going to be just like Above the
Speaker 5: Law with Steven Segall. It wasn't. He didn't care for
Speaker 5: that comparison. But I remembered liking it, but I didn't
Speaker 5: love it, and I wasn't sure exactly how to interact
Speaker 5: with it because at that point I hadn't seen a
Speaker 5: cop movie quite like this, which I'm sure we'll get into.
Speaker 5: At the time, I was kind of a fan of
Speaker 5: James Woods, not today necessarily, but he was a really
Speaker 5: good run at that late eighties with the B level
Speaker 5: modestly budd well reviewed but underperforming thrillers like this True
Speaker 5: Believer with Robert Downey Junior bestseller written by Larry Cohen,
Speaker 5: and this I think is the best of those. I
Speaker 5: was also a big fan of Brandy Brooks, who's in
Speaker 5: this briefly, but for very different reasons. Yeah, I liked it.
Speaker 5: This is the fourth time I've seen it, and I
Speaker 5: think it's probably the best of those viewings because you know,
Speaker 5: being middle aged now as opposed to all the previous
Speaker 5: other times, I picked up a lot more on it
Speaker 5: than I have ever before.
Speaker 1: And Andrew, how about yourself?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was thinking about this. When did I first
Speaker 4: see cop and I can't remember. It was a long
Speaker 4: time ago, maybe back in the early nineties, I can't remember.
Speaker 4: I liked it then, We're gonna must have watched it
Speaker 4: four or five times since then, I think, I mean,
Speaker 4: as in my opinion, I wrote something for this for
Speaker 4: this website that was I don't think it exists anymore.
Speaker 4: It was called back Ali Noirs and they, you know,
Speaker 4: and I wrote an article where I said that it
Speaker 4: will I think the best el Roy adaptation, and by
Speaker 4: that I don't mean the best film, but the best
Speaker 4: film that had actually channeled Elroy's spirit and work and
Speaker 4: essential nastiness. And I still think that that was. That
Speaker 4: was quite controversial that post. I think someone even had
Speaker 4: to pull in what was his name, Eddie Muller, because
Speaker 4: of course there's only one person who really knows anything
Speaker 4: about NOAA in the entire world, and that's Eddie. So
Speaker 4: what does Eddie think about? You know, this view that
Speaker 4: copp is the best Elroy adaptation, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: I still think it's great Woods Drunk Deep, the margakool Aid.
Speaker 4: But let's for a moment separate the art from the artist.
Speaker 4: He was amazing in the eighties and in the early
Speaker 4: nineties or just a run of incredible films. We can
Speaker 4: talk about that. He's fantastic. He's kind of like the
Speaker 4: original bad Lieutenant in this, I think, And it's I
Speaker 4: have read the book. I didn't get around to reading
Speaker 4: at this time. I liked the book. I liked the
Speaker 4: Floyd Hopkins books. I don't this time around. I was
Speaker 4: probably a little bit more critical of the movie. But
Speaker 4: I still think it works. And it's just good narrative
Speaker 4: drive that I just think is really really just pushes
Speaker 4: away all the stuff in the film that doesn't work.
Speaker 4: It's also a completely you know, it's how to make
Speaker 4: a nineteen eighties crime film. Have seen it a number
Speaker 4: of times. Still think it's a great film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember the first time that I saw this.
Speaker 1: I want to say it might have been when I
Speaker 1: was in college. I definitely watched it post Elie Confidential
Speaker 1: at one point, and I imagine that that person who
Speaker 1: is going off on you was probably thinking La Confidential,
Speaker 1: which I can see your point. That's probably the best
Speaker 1: movie that's loosely based on an el Roy book, but
Speaker 1: it is not the best adaptation. I mentioned when we
Speaker 1: talked about Eli Confidential that the book and the movie
Speaker 1: are so completely different, but they are both genius. And
Speaker 1: this I do agree is it really does cap sure
Speaker 1: that means spiritedness, that almost apocalyptic vision of La that
Speaker 1: Elroy really, you know, minds every single time he goes
Speaker 1: to his typewriter. It's also kind of a good thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, Lloyd Hopkins in the book is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a bigger person, not quite a Jack Reacher
Speaker 1: type of a person, but he's a bigger guy. Woods
Speaker 1: is not a shrimp by any means. And also, Lloyd
Speaker 1: Hopkins in the book is purported by many people to
Speaker 1: be a genius. And James Woods, yes, despite his politics,
Speaker 1: is literally a genius. Like I think he's a MENSA member,
Speaker 1: very super smart guy, and it makes sense that he
Speaker 1: plays this character who's both incredibly slimy, which Woods pulls
Speaker 1: off every single time he wants to be a bad
Speaker 1: guy on screens or every single film, pretty much every
Speaker 1: single film he's made, whether he's the hero in video
Speaker 1: drome or you know, the the secret bad guy and
Speaker 1: something like the Specialist or something like. He's always slimy,
Speaker 1: which I really like about him. I mean his small
Speaker 1: turn in something like Night Moves. He's perfect in that,
Speaker 1: and he's great in this as far as he wants
Speaker 1: to uphold the law, but he will do anything that
Speaker 1: it takes to uphold the spirit rather than the actual
Speaker 1: literal law that is going on. He is very much
Speaker 1: that cop. Outside of the police department. He has given
Speaker 1: carte blanche a lot of times by his superiors because
Speaker 1: he is so smart and he can go out and
Speaker 1: figure these things out. He figures out that there's a
Speaker 1: serial killer, and no one else on the entire force
Speaker 1: of many, many different police departments was able to put
Speaker 1: that stuff together. But he is. And I think that
Speaker 1: the casting of Woods as Lloyd Hopkins really just fit
Speaker 1: very perfectly his persona and his demeanor.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because I always like James Woods as an actor,
Speaker 5: but the character itself, and I had not read the
Speaker 5: book until we were prepping for this, how unlikable the
Speaker 5: character is. But you have to he has to walk
Speaker 5: that line of playing an unlikable character while still being
Speaker 5: just likable enough for the audience to be on his
Speaker 5: side because you still root for him despite him being
Speaker 5: just a terrible person. That's not easy to do.
Speaker 4: And he did it so effortlessly in so many films.
Speaker 5: I don't know how he does it, but yeah, it's
Speaker 5: not easy to do.
Speaker 4: James B. Harris too is a really interesting filmmaker. I mean,
Speaker 4: not a huge over, but has done some really interesting films,
Speaker 4: I think. And I was reading somewhere you know what
Speaker 4: because he of course he worked with Kubrick too, so
Speaker 4: seriously serious lineage there, and he learned his craft from
Speaker 4: Kubrick And I was reading that, you know what did
Speaker 4: he learn from Kubrick? And it's like, you know, casting
Speaker 4: his eighty five percent of the film. If you cast
Speaker 4: the right people, they're disciplined, they know their lines, and
Speaker 4: they're great actors, you're going to get a lot of help.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, he learned some other things from
Speaker 4: Kubrick too, But I think that's the Woods thing. Woods
Speaker 4: is Floyd Hopkins, you know, and he's so to your point, right,
Speaker 4: He's so good in this and he's so nasty, so venal,
Speaker 4: he's so sleezy. It's a terrible thing, but I still
Speaker 4: laugh everything. It's a terrible thing. But when you know,
Speaker 4: trying to come on to the to the woman who's
Speaker 4: the feminist who owns the bookstore. He's just basically comes
Speaker 4: on to every single woman that he he basically encounters
Speaker 4: quite successfully. It seems, you know, he's so venal and sleazy,
Speaker 4: and it just it works.
Speaker 5: I think it helps that he's not you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: he's a handsome guy, but he's not Carrie Grant or
Speaker 5: anything like that. He's park marked. You know, he has
Speaker 5: very thin lips. They sort of go diagonal every now
Speaker 5: and then, and he's fallible. I think that does help
Speaker 5: the character. It makes him a little more relatable. Well,
Speaker 5: he's doing these terrible, terrible things. James woods Man, this
Speaker 5: was he was never better than late eighties to early nineties.
Speaker 4: I would say, we've got Once upon a Time in
Speaker 4: America where he plays possibly one of the most disagreeable
Speaker 4: Prohibition gangster's ever put on screen. He's got Salvador, which
Speaker 4: is great, which is terrific in bestseller and I totally
Speaker 4: agree with you Rod that Bestseller is completely underrated film.
Speaker 5: It's such a good anything with Larry Cohen touches is
Speaker 5: pretty much.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But Brian Deanna here is the cop and the
Speaker 4: other guys as cleave the hit man who wants him
Speaker 4: to write his sort of story, wants him to write
Speaker 4: his bio digs down. You know, that's a terrific And
Speaker 4: of course, come on, Lester Diamond in Casino. I mean
Speaker 4: I could have done a whole less to Diamond film.
Speaker 1: I really like him in the hard way.
Speaker 4: It's absolutely don't you take that with me? Yeah, no,
Speaker 4: it's such a good film, which is Woods taking the
Speaker 4: piss out of himself too. So the guy I had
Speaker 4: a sense of humor.
Speaker 1: Once, Lloyd Hopkins is just so morally flawed, and I
Speaker 1: love that. The scene in Elroy's book that really got
Speaker 1: to Harris, that made him want to do this as
Speaker 1: a movie was when Hopkins comes home for the day
Speaker 1: and tells his little girl the whole story of the
Speaker 1: perp who was robbing these apartment buildings and all this,
Speaker 1: and he is not being very he's not bolderizing the
Speaker 1: story at all. He's being very forthright with his little girl,
Speaker 1: and they he has a huge argument with his wife
Speaker 1: about why protect your family, why protect women? From knowing
Speaker 1: what's really going on out there.
Speaker 6: Let me tell you something you should get through your head.
Speaker 6: They're all little girls, Jan, every one of them, Every
Speaker 6: one of those pathetic souls who eventually does herself in is.
Speaker 5: A little girl.
Speaker 6: Every neurotic lies on a couch and pays some assholes
Speaker 6: only good money to listen to her bullshit is a
Speaker 6: little girl. Every hooker I'll hustling or ask for up him,
Speaker 6: winds up with a dyke, a habit, or wasted by
Speaker 6: some psychopath.
Speaker 5: Is a little girl.
Speaker 6: All these little girls have one thing in common, you
Speaker 6: know what That is disillusionment, and it always comes from
Speaker 6: the same thing.
Speaker 4: Expectations.
Speaker 6: The greatest woman killer of all time, a terminal disease
Speaker 6: that starts way back when they're all just little girls,
Speaker 6: when they're being fed all a bullshit about being entitled
Speaker 6: to happiness like it's a birthright. That's what you don't
Speaker 6: understand when to stop perpetrating the myths that ruin their lives.
Speaker 6: Innocence kills Jan. Believe me, it kills I see it
Speaker 6: every fucking day of my life.
Speaker 1: And really, so much of this movie is about this
Speaker 1: idea of do you live in this fantasy? World, or
Speaker 1: do you live in the real world, Hopkins is very
Speaker 1: much like people should really live in the real world.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to prepare my daughter for what the world
Speaker 1: is giving me. You know, I'm the kind of person
Speaker 1: who can walk into a apartment building, open up a door,
Speaker 1: and see a woman hanging there, gutted, and still have
Speaker 1: the calm, cool collectiveness to go through all of our things,
Speaker 1: light up a cigarette and just wait for the rest
Speaker 1: of the cops to arrive while I riffle through everything
Speaker 1: and steal evidence. Basically because he knows this is the
Speaker 1: kind of person that I need to protect. This innocent person,
Speaker 1: very much like my daughter, is the kind of person
Speaker 1: I need to protect. And then you contrast that with Kathy,
Speaker 1: the Leslie N. Warren character, who just lives in this
Speaker 1: whole fantasy world of poetry and journaling, and she seems
Speaker 1: to have made up this whole story about her court
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, even though we'll talk about her
Speaker 1: origin story versus his origin story versus the killer's origin story,
Speaker 1: because they definitely change those things around. I see it
Speaker 1: more in the book as far as the fantasy world
Speaker 1: that she lives in, because that character that Kathy hasn't
Speaker 1: been raped.
Speaker 5: That bedtime story thing, that's like the first high point
Speaker 5: in the movie for me. I remember that vividly from
Speaker 5: the first screen. Tell me how you got the scumbag daddy.
Speaker 5: That's a good line. And I'm glad that they from
Speaker 5: the book That girl's twelve, which is way too old
Speaker 5: for a bedtime story or to be tucked in by
Speaker 5: daddy or anything like that, so aging her down was
Speaker 5: perfect for that. Putting all three kids into one was
Speaker 5: a good idea. But that, yeah, that scene is incredible.
Speaker 5: And you mentioned him going into the apartment. He not
Speaker 5: only goes in, but he first tries to kick the
Speaker 5: door in and fails, And that's like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: this is like a non movie movie. Because cops can
Speaker 5: kick the doors down, of course they can, this one cannot.
Speaker 5: He fails to do it, and I think that I
Speaker 5: remember that help me off guard at first, and it
Speaker 5: still did this time. I completely forgot about it. And
Speaker 5: he also contaminates the crime scene by touching the door knob,
Speaker 5: Like he does all these things wrong, and he like
Speaker 5: even touches the door knob after he sees blood seeping
Speaker 5: under the door with cockroaches stuck in it, which I
Speaker 5: do like because that's not the kind of detail you
Speaker 5: normally get from these things. He's doing his job well
Speaker 5: but also not well. He succeeds in spite of himself.
Speaker 5: He plays Johnny Law while breaking laws and breaking rules.
Speaker 5: And I like that dichotomy and just the whole like you,
Speaker 5: like you mentioned that, the doubling, the contrast we get
Speaker 5: with all the characters. It's it's really.
Speaker 4: Interesting Kathleen, that's that's that's classical or the feminist book
Speaker 4: you know, his cliche of a feminist bookshop owner. I
Speaker 4: think that character is a bit weak. And I do
Speaker 4: think the ceial the serial killer when he actually finds
Speaker 4: him in the whole serial killer plot is very under baked,
Speaker 4: I thought the time. But again, the film has such
Speaker 4: an impressive narrative drive, and it's so well put together,
Speaker 4: and Woods carries it so well that it kind of
Speaker 4: pushes what are otherwise quite serious narrative failings in the
Speaker 4: story aside, and you kind of don't really notice them.
Speaker 4: It's taken me at least five viewings to notice that, oh,
Speaker 4: that doesn't quite work. You know, there's a problem with this,
Speaker 4: But I'd still I still think and I probably was
Speaker 4: being more critical this time because I was watching the
Speaker 4: film with a purpose for a podcast. But I still
Speaker 4: think it. I still think it works fantastically.
Speaker 5: One the one thing I noticed and related to Leslie
Speaker 5: and Horren's character. You know, when they're out on there,
Speaker 5: I guess you call it a date, and he talks
Speaker 5: about going by their old high school and she's like, no,
Speaker 5: don't go there. I don't want anything to do with
Speaker 5: that place. And so then they go to her house
Speaker 5: and she's going to take a bath before they're supposedly
Speaker 5: going to have sex, and what does he do for
Speaker 5: the what's on the coffee table? It's a high school yearbook,
Speaker 5: because of course, if you hated high school, you would
Speaker 5: just leave your high school yearbook.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Sure, that's the first time I noticed that that that
Speaker 5: was And that's you know, it has to it serves
Speaker 5: the plot, it gets you through faster. But yeah, that's
Speaker 5: stuck out for me. I do like, I love Leslie
Speaker 5: and Warren as an actress, but I do think that
Speaker 5: part where she's introduced and they meet, it slows the
Speaker 5: movie down for me for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Speaker 5: It sort of shifts into a lower gear it's not bad,
Speaker 5: but it just it. It definitely changes the speed of things.
Speaker 5: But it is at the midpoint of the movie, so
Speaker 5: I get way why they did it.
Speaker 4: But it's also about how absolutely Venal Hopkins's as a character.
Speaker 4: She's telling him that terrible story about what she experienced
Speaker 4: the school, and he says, hey.
Speaker 6: Look, I got to the rape book here, I might
Speaker 6: as well go for the hall in Chilada.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like he's got no sensitivity at all.
Speaker 4: It's just totally and you know, if she looks away
Speaker 4: and he looks at he's watching yourns, I mean, such
Speaker 4: a scumbag, such a complete scumbag.
Speaker 1: That scene is fascinating just to watch his face, just
Speaker 1: to watch him while she's laying out that story, and
Speaker 1: Harris knows. Harris has that shot done so well to
Speaker 1: have her on the right side of the screen telling
Speaker 1: that very personal story, and to have him on the
Speaker 1: left side of the screen kind of facing us a
Speaker 1: little bit more, and we're just locked in. I'm just
Speaker 1: locked in on him more than her telling her horrific
Speaker 1: origin story. Yeah. I did write down the note that
Speaker 1: he what he says to his wife after he's been
Speaker 1: talking with his daughter, and he says, in its sense
Speaker 1: is a terminal disease that starts way back when they're
Speaker 1: just little girls, when they're being fed all the bullshit
Speaker 1: about being entitled to happiness, like it's a birthright. That's
Speaker 1: what you don't understand when to stop perpetrating myths that
Speaker 1: ruin their lives. And I love that his little girl,
Speaker 1: she's got a couple decorations on her wall, but one
Speaker 1: of them is a hand drawn picture of a cop basically,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, you know, I'm surprised he doesn't
Speaker 1: say daddy. Underneath that he's got his father figure with Dutch,
Speaker 1: the Charles Derning here. Oh, he's always wonderful, And I
Speaker 1: like that he gets two phone calls from Lloyd basically
Speaker 1: like I need your help covering up this shit. Like
Speaker 1: both times I think he's just like, hey, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: done some bad things or I've found this crime scene,
Speaker 1: but basically I want you to run this thing and
Speaker 1: you know, get going on this stuff. It's weird because
Speaker 1: he's very much a father figure, but at the same
Speaker 1: time he is kind of a servant to Lloyd. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got Raymond Jay Berry in here is Captain Fred Gaffney,
Speaker 1: who I think has a bigger role in the movie
Speaker 1: than he does the book. He just keeps showing up
Speaker 1: and basically upsetting things. And he's this big ultra Christian,
Speaker 1: which I found to be interesting that it's his faith
Speaker 1: that conflicts with what Lloyd does. Like he knows how
Speaker 1: we've mentioned the word venyl, Like he knows how venial
Speaker 1: Lloyd Hopkins is all the time. And he just does
Speaker 1: not approve of Hopkins just because he's running around on
Speaker 1: his wife all the time. And Derning also doesn't really
Speaker 1: the Pelts character, Dutch Pelts doesn't agree with that either,
Speaker 1: but he kind of lets that slide, like that's you know,
Speaker 1: Lloyd's one little problem that he has is that he
Speaker 1: sleeps around with other women all the time. And yeah,
Speaker 1: literally picks up a woman from a crime scene after
Speaker 1: he's just blown away her.
Speaker 4: Date and gets Dutch Shells to do the you're tired, Dutch,
Speaker 4: do you feel like doing the paperwork? Well, I tell
Speaker 4: you why, I drive this woman home. You know, he
Speaker 4: meets Kathleen and then he takes it to the party.
Speaker 4: It's just like absolutely no no shame about anything this guy,
Speaker 4: you know, and there's that there's that great scene with
Speaker 4: Julian Nemi, other woman who's who's sort of link in,
Speaker 4: not is it Julian Nemo? Who is that? Who is
Speaker 4: the woman? The old slightly older woman, So Julian Nemi
Speaker 4: is the woman who was killed at the very beginning,
Speaker 4: I think no. And then there is that woman who's
Speaker 4: kind of like the hook go who runs the sort
Speaker 4: of swinger party, Joni prattry Brooks. And then and then
Speaker 4: and then you know, he sleeps Jooney Pratt and we
Speaker 4: figure out, we find out that someone's watching them. And
Speaker 4: later on, you know that the Right to Life cop
Speaker 4: is showing him the picture and going, look at this,
Speaker 4: what do you think this is? And you know, for
Speaker 4: it do you think it is? You know, it's it's
Speaker 4: me having sex with this woman. You know, he's's completely shameless.
Speaker 5: When he brings Leslie to the party, Charles dernings party,
Speaker 5: and Charles Derning's wife is just like a ghast, what
Speaker 5: are you doing? You're a married you know she hasn't
Speaker 5: seen this face like, you're a married man and you're
Speaker 5: bringing this woman here to our party. Well it looks
Speaker 5: like a things giving party practically, because Derning's carving that turkey,
Speaker 5: and Charles Derning has this great little aside where he
Speaker 5: just looks at his wife and it's like shakes this,
Speaker 5: you know, moves his hand back and forth like let
Speaker 5: it go. Don't say a word. He probably does that
Speaker 5: every day at work, like telling, you know, to other cops,
Speaker 5: to Raymond Barrier's character, just like I'll get it, I'll
Speaker 5: get it. I'll deal with him. He's mine, you know,
Speaker 5: he's my son in quotes son. Yeah, he's definitely. He
Speaker 5: definitely is the dad character. But James Woods is like
Speaker 5: the uncontrollable kid. Basically, it's like he's going to do
Speaker 5: the opposite of what his parents say until he needs
Speaker 5: to be bailed out, and then it's like, hey, Dad,
Speaker 5: bail me out. I need your help. That's exactly what
Speaker 5: the relationship is like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Dutchess there for him every single time. I
Speaker 1: found it interesting though, that they changed what happens at
Speaker 1: that party from the book to the movie. And we'll
Speaker 1: definitely talk a little bit more about the book slash
Speaker 1: movie stuff. But in the in the book, I think
Speaker 1: it's Dutch has gotten a promotion, and right, he got
Speaker 1: a promotion and then he's going to be not in
Speaker 1: that same position to help out Lloyd, and Lloyd calls
Speaker 1: him Judas and slaps him in the face in front
Speaker 1: of everyone, and somehow I think that's what starts the
Speaker 1: IA investigation of him and gets him suspended and puts him,
Speaker 1: you know, even more on the outs with the law,
Speaker 1: whereas with this one, he's just talking about what a
Speaker 1: needle dick the Raymond J. Berry character is, and turns
Speaker 1: around and there he is, and that's what gets him
Speaker 1: in trouble, and I'm just like, wow, I would think,
Speaker 1: like the slap of Dutch in front of everyone is
Speaker 1: much more egregious than just like making fun of your boss.
Speaker 1: Now he's right behind me, isn't he.
Speaker 5: Audience has loved Charles Derney even as a kid. I
Speaker 5: loved Charles Derney. I don't think you could get away
Speaker 5: with that in this movie. I can see why James
Speaker 5: Harris changed it, assuming it was Harris that did so.
Speaker 5: But it's just like, you know, a bridge too far.
Speaker 1: For a me, and Dutch still wants to help him out.
Speaker 1: I mean, Dutch is really the savior in the book
Speaker 1: that comes along out of pretty much nowhere and figures
Speaker 1: out what Lloyd is doing because in the in the book, again,
Speaker 1: sorry to go back to it, but it's the whole
Speaker 1: thing with the tape recorder that he finds outside of
Speaker 1: Whitey's place, and that tape recorder becomes that major piece
Speaker 1: of evidence because it's such a specialized machine that only
Speaker 1: what like twenty one have been sold around Los Angeles
Speaker 1: for the last however many years, and it was only
Speaker 1: made for like one year kind of thing, so they're
Speaker 1: able to track down who owns that stuff. And the
Speaker 1: whole thing is after Lloyd has already figured out who
Speaker 1: the killer is, then Dutch has to follow in his
Speaker 1: footsteps and start making those same calls as to who
Speaker 1: owned this or who bought this tape recorder. But in
Speaker 1: this it really it doesn't work that way at all.
Speaker 5: It's fine, real player in the bushes, well not really bushes,
Speaker 5: but you know, on the wall outside, and I'm thinking, man,
Speaker 5: someone has to switch out those reels that real to
Speaker 5: real tape of the player. I don't know how often.
Speaker 5: Like that'd be tough, Rod.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you just got to let art flow over you,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, it really I mean, and
Speaker 4: I think this is why I think it's the best
Speaker 4: it's the most faithful elroyd adaptation because if you really
Speaker 4: forensically read up until the last three, which I haven't read,
Speaker 4: but I mean I've read every single other thing that
Speaker 4: Elroy wrote, and I read the Floyd Hopkins, the three
Speaker 4: Floyd Hopkins novels. I think I've read them two or
Speaker 4: three times in the past. You can start to pick
Speaker 4: Elroy apart easily. I mean it doesn't, you know, but
Speaker 4: it's just that frenetic pace, the dialogue, the narrative that
Speaker 4: this you know that that el Roy achieves, which this,
Speaker 4: all that stuff just gets flicked.
Speaker 5: Aside, shortcuts. It like shortcuts the story. It just keeps
Speaker 5: moving in along movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you don't have time to think about,
Speaker 4: oh that it didn't make a great deal of sense.
Speaker 4: How did that work? It just it's onto the next,
Speaker 4: onto the next thing, Onto the next Floyd Hopkins atrocity,
Speaker 4: onto the next on to the next woman that Floyd
Speaker 4: is seducing, Onto the next drama, on to the next argument.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it really stuck out to me this time because
Speaker 5: I never questioned it before. But I think with today's
Speaker 5: technology and they're you know, if a teenager was to
Speaker 5: watch this today, they probably wouldn't even know what a
Speaker 5: real to real player is. They might not know, so
Speaker 5: it really sticks out today. It's so analog, but I mean,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't change it. I still love it.
Speaker 1: Elroy sets it up in the book about that tape recorder.
Speaker 1: He says that it is such a model that it
Speaker 1: does require I think it could record for a ton
Speaker 1: of hours. I want to say, it like switched out
Speaker 1: different tapes and things. And it also is it's activated
Speaker 1: with Whitey's door, so it only turns on once the
Speaker 1: door is closed. So it was very much just like
Speaker 1: it wasn't voice activated. You know. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we had that technology at that time, but it was
Speaker 1: such that it would only record when he got home
Speaker 1: from work kind of thing. So el Right sets up
Speaker 1: this whole thing with a tape recorder that has such
Speaker 1: a long length to it. But then the killer comes
Speaker 1: back like the next day and finds that the recorder
Speaker 1: is gone. He's just like ah, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: he only recorded four hours worth of stuff on this tape.
Speaker 1: He shouldn't have been back the next day, so it
Speaker 1: was odd. But I mean, the book definitely goes back
Speaker 1: and forth between Hopkins and Teddy just back and forth,
Speaker 1: back and forth. And I know he's not Teddy in
Speaker 1: the movie. He's what Bobby Franco I think is his name.
Speaker 1: So he just goes back and forth between those two.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because you look at other cop thrillers
Speaker 1: at the time and you think about, like, how often
Speaker 1: do we see the killer and we see him see
Speaker 1: those killers in different amounts in all of these kind
Speaker 1: of films, and the few of them that stuck out
Speaker 1: to me were things like The Hero and The Terror,
Speaker 1: where the Terror is actually like second build kind of thing,
Speaker 1: or you get like Nighthawks where You've got it was
Speaker 1: Nighthawks right with Rutger Hower as the bad guy in
Speaker 1: that Sylvester Sloan Ability Williams.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like we follow these killers, but in this
Speaker 1: one other than and you don't know it at the
Speaker 1: time unless you're really paying attention. Other than the guy
Speaker 1: who's at the post office watching Lloyd when he meets
Speaker 1: up with Jony. You don't see the bad guy until
Speaker 1: right towards the end, and there was a scene where
Speaker 1: he takes out Birdman, but apparently Harris was so displeased.
Speaker 1: Now this is the story that Harris tells on the
Speaker 1: Auto Audio commentary. So Harris says that he was not
Speaker 1: really happy with the quality of acting from the guy
Speaker 1: who was a stuntman. And by the way, he's the
Speaker 1: same stuntman who Arnold Schwarzenegger uses as a human shield
Speaker 1: in total recall in that escalator scene, which I just
Speaker 1: fucking love, and he's actor, slash, stuntman and a few
Speaker 1: other things, and he didn't like the performance, so he
Speaker 1: just cut out that scene. So we really don't see
Speaker 1: him until the very freaking end of the movie. And
Speaker 1: I always wondered if that robed this movie of something,
Speaker 1: or if it's better that we just stay with Woods,
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to think of any scenes where Woods
Speaker 1: isn't present, and I have a hard time thinking about that.
Speaker 1: I can't think of any place where we don't see him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 5: That was what stuck out to me reading the book
Speaker 5: was it's it's like fifty to fifty essentially, I mean,
Speaker 5: between Teddy and Lloyd, but the movie's not like that,
Speaker 5: and I'm glad it's becomes Lloyd's story. Changes have to
Speaker 5: be made, and adapting for film completely different. I don't
Speaker 5: think it would have worked because Teddy's story is I
Speaker 5: don't know. It makes this more of a mystery, which
Speaker 5: I like Teddy's story in the book is it's a
Speaker 5: repeating of a lot of the same type of thing.
Speaker 5: Although it would be interesting to see him stalk the
Speaker 5: women and how he does it sort of as a procedural,
Speaker 5: I do like the fact that he's sort of sidelined
Speaker 5: until the very end, and it's more of a mystery
Speaker 5: of like, who the hell is doing this and why?
Speaker 5: It does help the suspense of it.
Speaker 1: Well, then it makes you also wonder, is it Charles Hayde,
Speaker 1: Is it even Leslie and Warren? At one point I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 1: very briefly, I'm thinking about Leslie and Warren.
Speaker 5: Well, I agree. I remember the first time it was
Speaker 5: very much like every one of these people could be
Speaker 5: a red herring. You just didn't know. It's always good
Speaker 5: when you cannot figure out now, when a movie is
Speaker 5: able to not tricky necessarily but be way ahead of you,
Speaker 5: that's always a good thing in my book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought Charles Hayde definitely. Well, I think the
Speaker 4: first two or three times I saw this film, I
Speaker 4: thought Charles Haydes Cat because I think I think Sheriff
Speaker 4: Dealbert Whitey Haines is a great It's a terrible person,
Speaker 4: just a dreadful, slightly pasty, overweight Hollywood sheriff who's obviously
Speaker 4: so corrupt. I thought that was the same guy who
Speaker 4: played Ralph in Happy Days for about the first three
Speaker 4: times that I saw this film, and then I looked
Speaker 4: it up with an MD because they kind of have
Speaker 4: a similarity. They kind of look a bit the same,
Speaker 4: and I thought that would be actually very cool if
Speaker 4: that was the case, but obviously it wasn't. I thought
Speaker 4: that Whitey Haynes was definitely and as it is, he
Speaker 4: is completely suspected taking down male prostitutes and running drugs.
Speaker 5: So you know, I'd love in his apartment the Bustin'
Speaker 5: Ass poster that he had up on his wall. It's
Speaker 5: just basically a woman's butt in a thong and I
Speaker 5: think you see a police badge and yeah, bustin ass.
Speaker 5: It's classy. He didn't frame it.
Speaker 1: People who read the book would know that it definitely
Speaker 1: wasn't him because he and Birdman are the two that
Speaker 1: again in the book rape Teddy, so rather than them
Speaker 1: raping Kathy in this one, and that's an interesting thing. Well, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, very very different motivation for Teddy having been
Speaker 1: raped by these two, and that really sets him off
Speaker 1: on this whole psychotic journey of protecting Catherine and going
Speaker 1: after women that reminded him of her court that she
Speaker 1: had when she was in high school. And that sets
Speaker 1: up a parallel that we also don't get, where we
Speaker 1: have Teddy being raped when he was what eight seventeen
Speaker 1: something like that, and then you've got Lloyd being raped
Speaker 1: when he is.
Speaker 4: Eight I think it is, I've forgotten about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we have this whole thing. And then what's
Speaker 1: interesting too is that his mother, Lloyd Hopkins's mother, is
Speaker 1: the one who finds out who raped you. He can't
Speaker 1: even say it, he has to write it down. She
Speaker 1: takes that information, finds out that it was a guy
Speaker 1: from the neighborhood who is shell shocked from either must
Speaker 1: have been World War two or maybe Korea. And because
Speaker 1: this is happening I guess in the late fifties, it is,
Speaker 1: so she is the one that employs vigilante justice. Lloyd
Speaker 1: follows her to the Silver Lake Power Plant and she
Speaker 1: kills this guy puts six bullets into this shell shocked veteran.
Speaker 1: And that weird thing that Lloyd says whence when they
Speaker 1: got home, she gave him her breast and lets him
Speaker 1: sleep with her that night. This weird maternal thing that's
Speaker 1: going on with that, which is absolutely wild. And then
Speaker 1: where does the book end up. The book ends up
Speaker 1: at the Silver Lake power Plant, taking all of this
Speaker 1: stuff back to the beginning where Teddy and Lloyd face
Speaker 1: off and it's like who can survive their trauma? Lloyd
Speaker 1: survives pretty well, except that he can't handle music because
Speaker 1: music and TV all of these things were turned on
Speaker 1: inside of the workshed where he was tied up after
Speaker 1: his brother tied him up. And I'm glad that we
Speaker 1: don't have the brother, we don't have the parents, we
Speaker 1: don't have any of that stuff. I mean, he really
Speaker 1: Harrish just stripped down that narrative and I think making
Speaker 1: Catherine the rape victim rather than our killer. But I mean, God, again,
Speaker 1: what an amazing motivator to have this killer be raped
Speaker 1: by these guys. And I love that whole attack of
Speaker 1: him in the book where I think Whitey goes to
Speaker 1: piss on him and finds out that he's hard and
Speaker 1: then ends up raping the guy and then has Birdman
Speaker 1: rape him as well. And then we see Birdman so
Speaker 1: many later, so many years later as the street hustler,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, how this whole incident has affected
Speaker 1: his life.
Speaker 5: Well, Kathy's clown plays and like, you'll never hear the
Speaker 5: same way again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then doesn't he right on the wall and
Speaker 1: blood at the end, rather than let's go victors or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, doesn't he write I am not Kathy's clown.
Speaker 5: I don't remember that it's possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's what really tips Lloyd off is he goes
Speaker 1: back to the year book. I mean that year book
Speaker 1: and this whole high school trauma. It's like I always say,
Speaker 1: you know, so much trauma comes from high school comes
Speaker 1: out in different ways.
Speaker 3: I suppose.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's where in the movie, it's out of school,
Speaker 5: right they meet at the end, that's where the finale is. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that to me, it's interesting that you get that shift
Speaker 5: away from the book, Like all the stuff that happened
Speaker 5: in school to Teddy now in the movie Teddy or
Speaker 5: Now Bobby inflicted that upon Lesli and Warren's character at school.
Speaker 5: So that's where it ends here. It's interesting. I like it.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm always intrigued just visually of empty schools
Speaker 5: at night. For some reason, it always works.
Speaker 1: It's like the finale of La Confidential taking place at
Speaker 1: the Victory Hotel, where it's a lot of bad stuff
Speaker 1: happened here. He might as well say that, as he's
Speaker 1: going back to that high school, a lot of bad
Speaker 1: stuff happened here.
Speaker 5: Is it too early to talk about that last line
Speaker 5: right now?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I think it's always a good time to talk about
Speaker 1: that last line.
Speaker 5: Like I don't know, I don't want to ruin it
Speaker 5: for those who haven't seen it. But what I remember
Speaker 5: from from seeing the film the first time in the
Speaker 5: theaters is an audience not sure how to react to
Speaker 5: that line, because it goes from that to black as
Speaker 5: he cocks the gun. It's like a perfect edit.
Speaker 2: Well, well, what aren't you going to read me by rights?
Speaker 2: Cuff me, take me into.
Speaker 6: Custody, Why so you can sid in a nice comfortable cell.
Speaker 6: That's just a smart ass. Lay a cup in the sanity,
Speaker 6: please at the idea.
Speaker 2: What's it to you on kins? You're a cop, you
Speaker 2: gotta take me in.
Speaker 6: Well, there's some good news and there's some bad news.
Speaker 6: The good news is you're right, I'm a cop and
Speaker 6: I gotta take you in. The bad news is I've
Speaker 6: been suspended and I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 5: And it just kind of floors you. And I think
Speaker 5: today people might clap at something like that, but back
Speaker 5: then it was dead silent. No one know what to
Speaker 5: do with it. I didn't know how to react to it,
Speaker 5: although I thought it was definitely interesting because I'd never
Speaker 5: seen a movie in that way before. I think when
Speaker 5: you talk about this movie today, those who have seen it,
Speaker 5: remember that a lot. If more people had seen it,
Speaker 5: you would see Cop talked about on the best Last Scenes,
Speaker 5: best last shots, best last lines, whatever, all those lists
Speaker 5: that get done on the internet. I definitely think Cop
Speaker 5: would be on there a lot more.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing to hear Harris talk about that in
Speaker 1: that commentary and that it doesn't sound like it was
Speaker 1: made up on the spot, because there is some of
Speaker 1: that in the script. But they definitely changed the way
Speaker 1: that the script ended. Basically, the movie was supposed to
Speaker 1: end with them finding Teddy slash Bobby hung up by
Speaker 1: one leg, very much like the original victim that we saw,
Speaker 1: and then there's a title card that explains what happens
Speaker 1: to everybody after the end of the movie, which is
Speaker 1: wild to me that they would go that far and
Speaker 1: have Lloyd having murdered the guy the same way. So
Speaker 1: the title card appears and it says Lloyd Hopkins was
Speaker 1: suspended without pay for one year pending a hearing. At
Speaker 1: that time, he is presently looking for work in the
Speaker 1: San Francisco area. Janice Hopkins is suing for divorce and
Speaker 1: has plans to marry Bernard Plotkin, a Marin County psychotherapist.
Speaker 1: Arthur Dutch Pelts was promoted to commander in the Internal
Speaker 1: Affairs Division, reporting directly to Commander Fred Gaffney MS Kathleen McCarthy,
Speaker 1: which is nice that they kept the Miz sold her
Speaker 1: bookstore and now lives with Thelma Teddy Bailey, a Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Silver Liberties attorney, So they kept the Teddy in there,
Speaker 1: but changed it to the name of the woman that
Speaker 1: she's now living slash sleeping with.
Speaker 4: So she checked up with the lawyer that that represents
Speaker 4: her with Dutch that that you know, and she's that
Speaker 4: woman who's sitting there. Yes, wasn't the problem one of
Speaker 4: the problem, one of the many problems with the making
Speaker 4: of this film is that the studio wanted a dirty
Speaker 4: Harry film.
Speaker 5: That last letter is very dirty hardy yet yeah.
Speaker 4: Well exactly, and so they got that. But it's thinking
Speaker 4: about it, you know, they will worry because it's kind
Speaker 4: of like it's almost like a slasher film in some
Speaker 4: respects and in some respects just thinking about it now,
Speaker 4: it's also kind of arguably could be put in that
Speaker 4: small group of American films which you would call American
Speaker 4: giallo's as well. It's actually, now that I think about it,
Speaker 4: it actually has a lot of things in common with
Speaker 4: that very small sort of body of film. So I mean, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's more dirty. It ended up being more Dirty Harry
Speaker 4: than it did being you know, but it combines that
Speaker 4: sort of slasher thing, it combines giallo elements. There's there's
Speaker 4: all kinds of things in this It's quite sort of
Speaker 4: narratively sophisticated film as well as having real pace.
Speaker 5: A studio do you mean the Atlantic releasing group that
Speaker 5: put it out. There were so many indie labels in
Speaker 5: the eighties that were putting out movies like Wide and
Speaker 5: they had I guess their biggest hit was Teenwolf, but
Speaker 5: they did like the Garbage pil Kids movie. I remember
Speaker 5: seeing their low go on Paul Schrader's Patty Hurst Night
Speaker 5: of the comment Steal Justice with Marvin and Cove. They
Speaker 5: had like a Smurf's cartoon back in the eighties, and
Speaker 5: it's just a strange time where yeah, Atlantic, they never
Speaker 5: think they didn't last much longer than this to be.
Speaker 1: According to Harris, this was one of the last three
Speaker 1: movies that Atlantic put out. He was talking about how
Speaker 1: Ciskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up, and he
Speaker 1: was like, oh great, put it out on the poster,
Speaker 1: and they're like, we don't have money to rerun these posters.
Speaker 5: I actually I remember I saw this movie because of
Speaker 5: Ciscol and Neighbor It's review back then, Like I worshiped
Speaker 5: Cisco Niehburt, Like I grew up on their show and
Speaker 5: I learned a lot from those guys, and this was
Speaker 5: one where I was like, yeah, I like it. I
Speaker 5: don't love it, but I'm glad I went to see it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I definitely do remember that review because it got me
Speaker 5: in the seat.
Speaker 1: I was just looking up to see what else that
Speaker 1: they did. Well they did Valley Girl. Night of the
Speaker 1: Common met very well. Extremities, even that was a rough one.
Speaker 5: You know how Roger Corman would import foreign films and stuff.
Speaker 5: Guess Cannon did that as well too, before making them
Speaker 5: move more towards just exploitation. They'd been around a while
Speaker 5: back in the eighties when VHS hit, there were a
Speaker 5: ton of those labels. Every week there'd be things opening
Speaker 5: up from these little shingles. It was quite a time.
Speaker 5: You had your pick, You had your pick every week
Speaker 5: of many, many, many films.
Speaker 4: Well there was all that money slashing around too, you
Speaker 4: know that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 4: You know that, you know that we're making a movie. Yeah,
Speaker 4: do you want to invest? I mean that, you know,
Speaker 4: that's that's partly what's driving a lot of those little,
Speaker 4: sort of small labels that are putting out really interesting
Speaker 4: stuff like this.
Speaker 5: Speaking of Dirty Harry, this movie reminded me a lot
Speaker 5: of tightrope.
Speaker 4: The Clinte movie, which is another American Giallo.
Speaker 5: Very sleazy, has the Herbo serial killer and actually, now
Speaker 5: that I remember, Randy Brooks is in it as eye
Speaker 5: candy again. But yeah, it plays like that.
Speaker 4: Is that the one with the horror is that the
Speaker 4: one people are killing people in the horror film or
Speaker 4: something like, there's a horror film being I.
Speaker 5: Think you're thinking of Deadpool.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking of Deadpool. Sorry, yeah, I get that light Clintace, so,
Speaker 4: I get that Clintaste would cop fi is mixed up
Speaker 4: a bit that because you know, but the.
Speaker 5: Killer when he kills Randy Brooks, and I think it's like,
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's the opening of Tirerope, but
Speaker 5: it's soon into the beginning.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 5: He has this crazy like kabookie mask type thing on
Speaker 5: that's really chilling to look at. She like gets into
Speaker 5: a hot tub and is just soaky, like looks up
Speaker 5: or something and sees this face staring out of her.
Speaker 5: It's pretty pretty chilling. But Randy Brooks, so I mentioned
Speaker 5: her earlier as the woman who sets up these floating
Speaker 5: swingers parties with Really, that line to me is funny
Speaker 5: because she left acting to become a realtor. So I
Speaker 5: wonder if maybe she sets those things up now I'm
Speaker 5: just kidding. She doesn't. I'm sure that you know of
Speaker 5: that I know of. But the scene in the book
Speaker 5: where he goes with her to the next swinger party,
Speaker 5: which I think is that night he says, when your
Speaker 5: next one, I'm going as your date. And so he
Speaker 5: goes there, gives a brief speech at the beginning like hey,
Speaker 5: you guys have fun, I'm going to go upstairs and
Speaker 5: lay down. And then he goes upstairs and lays down
Speaker 5: like looks through you know, evidence or whatever. And then
Speaker 5: as he comes comes down to leave, like all the
Speaker 5: music is blaring and he has like this kind of
Speaker 5: a anxiety attack, I guess of swords, which ties back
Speaker 5: to the trauma that Mike was talking about. I'm glad
Speaker 5: they cut that because it was just it would have
Speaker 5: been weird.
Speaker 4: But in the book, that's that's a chance for Erro
Speaker 4: to chuck in a bit to b swinger clubs, a
Speaker 4: bit of a swinger experience for the night Light nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: One of the things that he had in the book
Speaker 5: was where Teddy's for Plank I think is the last
Speaker 5: name the book, which I could see why they changed
Speaker 5: it to Bobby Franco works at a porno bookstore, and
Speaker 5: which I Olroy did for a brief time before it
Speaker 5: came James L.
Speaker 3: Roy.
Speaker 5: But that again that the book gets and I don't
Speaker 5: remember if I'm reading this in Blood on the Moon
Speaker 5: as was published or the La Death Trip version. Be
Speaker 5: it's really explicit about one of the encounters he has
Speaker 5: at the bookstore at like three am when he comes
Speaker 5: upon this guy. Don't read into that enjoying himself.
Speaker 1: That is definitely in Blood on the Moon.
Speaker 5: This movie could have been.
Speaker 4: A lot nastier, which is saying something.
Speaker 5: Which is saying something because it probably I don't remember
Speaker 5: what else was out that year that was like causing controversy,
Speaker 5: not that this did, because it wasn't a blockbuster. It
Speaker 5: wasn't a project so much, but that would have made
Speaker 5: some headlines which we would have probably helped the box office.
Speaker 1: They really toned down the homosexuality of the characters and
Speaker 1: just they race it. Yes, yeah, those very heterosexual posters
Speaker 1: in Whitey's room. I mean he does have those very
Speaker 1: nice padded leather cuffs. I mean, you are not going
Speaker 1: to get any sort of marks on your wrist having that.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a lot of padding in there.
Speaker 4: So isn't there a box of Dudos as well? I
Speaker 4: think that or am I imagining this? I'm want projecting this.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if that's the case, but I know that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they definitely take out the whole thing where part of
Speaker 1: Birdman's job is to basically take care of Whitey every
Speaker 1: single time that he sees him, and yeah, really just
Speaker 1: remove that whole homosexual angle altogether. And then Teddy slash Bobby,
Speaker 1: I don't think that he's being portrayed, even though he's
Speaker 1: very life and everything, I don't think that he's being
Speaker 1: portrayed as gay either, which is ironic because you're talking
Speaker 1: about controversy and what three years later we're going to
Speaker 1: have Silence of the Lambs, which just gets a ton
Speaker 1: of controversy with the Jamie Gumm James Grant character.
Speaker 5: And yeah, this was a time where AIDS was still
Speaker 5: a public menace, basically something to fear, with all the
Speaker 5: you know, fake stories going around about how you could
Speaker 5: catch it. And there are a lot of movies where
Speaker 5: the homosexual is the villain, and so it is kind
Speaker 5: of surprising just that all that is erased because it
Speaker 5: was part of the course back then.
Speaker 1: I guess I wanted to talk about another Thomas Harris
Speaker 1: adaptation to have Maynhunter a few years before this and
Speaker 1: have the reason why he takes I can't remember the
Speaker 1: reporter's name, but takes him out is because he printed
Speaker 1: that the tooth Fairy was gay, and he doesn't.
Speaker 4: Like they planted yes to flush out the Toothpairy. Says, Fairy,
Speaker 4: do you imply that I'm clear?
Speaker 5: God, no, before me.
Speaker 1: You're a slug in the sun.
Speaker 2: You are pretty to a great becoming, and you recognize nothing.
Speaker 5: You're an antony afterbirth.
Speaker 1: And it works too well almost, I mean even the
Speaker 1: name tooth Fairy. He doesn't like that either, because it
Speaker 1: implies that he's gay as well.
Speaker 5: There's another in the book going back to the homosexuality
Speaker 5: of the characters, where Lloyd Hopkins is looking in a
Speaker 5: car or something and a black guy is getting serviced
Speaker 5: and he's sort of comparing his own penis to his
Speaker 5: and wondering why he doesn't get blowjobs like this fat
Speaker 5: guy does, and starts thinking about why his wife doesn't
Speaker 5: do that anymore, and it's just sort of this weird
Speaker 5: twisted you know, It's like he's partly admiring the guy
Speaker 5: while also despising him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really wants his wife to give him a
Speaker 1: low job and she will not do that. And I
Speaker 1: remember that line about how you know, would she take
Speaker 1: him in his mouth in her mouth at some point
Speaker 1: And I was just like, well, this is really odd.
Speaker 1: Like he was so happy when he passed the detectives
Speaker 1: exam or whatever, and he was just like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: for sure Janis is going to give me a blowjob tonight.
Speaker 1: But Nope, doesn't do that. And her whole thing too
Speaker 1: where because she leaves him very early in the movie.
Speaker 1: It goes on for a little bit longer in the book.
Speaker 1: And who does she go out with. She's got this
Speaker 1: gay friend, George, and it feels like, well, that's okay
Speaker 1: that she's hanging out with this gay guy because he's
Speaker 1: not a sexual threat in this world, and like he
Speaker 1: kind of gives that a passage. He's the one. Like
Speaker 1: she actually moves out and moves in, I believe, with
Speaker 1: George and a friend of his, and then they have
Speaker 1: this whole thing of like how she moves to San
Speaker 1: Francisco is kind of like a coding for that.
Speaker 4: Not really say that guy people, You know, queer people
Speaker 4: have a good run at any any award book though,
Speaker 4: you know, just to say the least, you.
Speaker 1: Know, you think about that. Simon Baker character from La confidential.
Speaker 4: And I mean, god, there's a numerable fruit hustlers and
Speaker 4: rent boys and who always end up on the sort
Speaker 4: of killers slab at some point or another, collateral collateral
Speaker 4: damage to what's going on.
Speaker 1: I was just surprised that nobody's a shipbird in this movie.
Speaker 4: Floyd is a compound, as that says at one point,
Speaker 4: I think that's you.
Speaker 1: Know, Olroy definitely has his turns of phrase.
Speaker 5: That's that's right, that's right, he does. He sure does.
Speaker 5: You know the Leslie and Warren character with the we
Speaker 5: mentioned the eearbook and how she wouldn't really have that
Speaker 5: on her table if she, you know, hated high school
Speaker 5: so much, didn't want to think about it. But at
Speaker 5: the end, and I did not remember this from previous viewings,
Speaker 5: is that she calls Bobby Franco to give him a
Speaker 5: heads up they're suspecting him of being a killer, and
Speaker 5: James Woods runs after her. You know, she's calling from
Speaker 5: the payphone outside the police station, and he's screaming at
Speaker 5: her like why would you do that? And I'm thinking
Speaker 5: the same thing, why would you do that? And her
Speaker 5: reasoning is.
Speaker 1: I thought he was innocent. I thought you would first
Speaker 1: keep what I thought was a talented and sensitive boy.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Okay, she seems smarter than that. Even though she's latest
Speaker 5: comes as woo woo. She probably is like into crystals
Speaker 5: and things like that, even though they don't talk about that.
Speaker 5: Just a weird character with her head in the clouds.
Speaker 5: But it doesn't I don't know why she would do that.
Speaker 5: It doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she does the same thing in the book, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't know about it, I don't think, or at
Speaker 1: least he doesn't know about it at first. And she
Speaker 1: directly is the one that gets Janice kilt because when
Speaker 1: she puts Teddy in the book onto Hopkins, he starts
Speaker 1: following Hopkins. Hopkins goes to visit Jonie and comes out
Speaker 1: and next thing you know, there's a knock at the door.
Speaker 1: She thinks that Lloyd is back. No, it's Teddy, and
Speaker 1: he massacres her, and luckily Catherine is smart enough in
Speaker 1: the book to realize, oh, I was the one that
Speaker 1: caused that. If I had not called him, that woman
Speaker 1: would still be alive, and that guilt haunts her for
Speaker 1: the rest of the book, and she ends up leaving
Speaker 1: Lloyd at the end of the book, you know, even
Speaker 1: though it seems like they're going to be together, she
Speaker 1: ends up leaving and is like, I can't handle this
Speaker 1: guilt and seeing you every single day is just making
Speaker 1: it worse again. The kind of sins of the past.
Speaker 1: I mean, so much of Elroy's work too, is just
Speaker 1: sins of the past. And I think Leslie and Warren
Speaker 1: really works in this role for me, because she's got
Speaker 1: that voice, that little girl voice that she does, and
Speaker 1: she just seems like a damaged little girl. She seems like,
Speaker 1: mentally at times, the same age as Penny the Daughter.
Speaker 1: She didn't have a daddy who told her stories to
Speaker 1: prepare her for the real world, so when she saw
Speaker 1: how awful the real world is, she didn't know how
Speaker 1: to handle it.
Speaker 5: I thought about that. Actually, as she goes to smoke
Speaker 5: a joint and take a bath before they are are
Speaker 5: supposed to make love or have sex, I guess she
Speaker 5: does call it make love, and she's talking about it
Speaker 5: like kind of like a kid would, are we about
Speaker 5: to make love? She just sort of flighty and does
Speaker 5: this like little boop thing with her finger and half
Speaker 5: dances out of the room. It is kind of a
Speaker 5: child she acts like a child.
Speaker 4: You're right, it's it's play. I have a feminist though,
Speaker 4: you know, it was one of these it's they're paying
Speaker 4: out and all the feminist women that the other Dido
Speaker 4: didn't sleep with l I in the sort of light
Speaker 4: seventies and eighties, you know it completely. What's that? You
Speaker 4: know when they when they find that what's that book
Speaker 4: where he finds the body of Julianne Nemia Rage from
Speaker 4: the Womb, Rage from the Womb by Pamela van Dyke.
Speaker 4: There's other bits though, that sort of work in the film.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: I do like a good piece of analog police work.
Speaker 4: And I think that scene where he's pulled all the
Speaker 4: files and he stays up all night going through the files.
Speaker 4: He's going, no to black, too young, not innocent, not innocent,
Speaker 4: Talk to me, Talk to me. I just think that's
Speaker 4: a great that's actually quite believable. That's quite a quite
Speaker 4: a good scene, I think. And you know, his police
Speaker 4: work seeds are terrific. I mean when when he Floyd
Speaker 4: first confronts Whitey hot Whitey about you know, and he
Speaker 4: just sits in down at the table, he's eating pie
Speaker 4: and he hardly says anything. And and and the Delbert
Speaker 4: Whitey Haines characters, you know, fills the silence by talking
Speaker 4: him and kind of incriminating himself a bit. I think
Speaker 4: things like that are really really good. You know, there's
Speaker 4: some good and all place action in this film, which
Speaker 4: is oloys four time. In the books.
Speaker 1: I think Hopkins says to Whitey when he's talking about
Speaker 1: working like West Hollywood or something. He calls it, I
Speaker 1: think a fact at sewer, just to like throw Whitey
Speaker 1: off of his game a little bit. In the book,
Speaker 1: it has more impact since Whitey is engaging in some
Speaker 1: of this stuff, but it really tips him off to
Speaker 1: the whole birdman hustler aspect of it. I really kind
Speaker 1: of wish we had a little bit more of the
Speaker 1: Birdman in there, just because I like the actor that
Speaker 1: played him.
Speaker 5: That.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Pockmarked, but that guy from Greece that I
Speaker 1: love when people take pictures from Greece and they're just
Speaker 1: like these people are supposed to be in high school,
Speaker 1: and like Dennis Stewart is probably the least I look
Speaker 1: like I'm in high school of all of them. You know,
Speaker 1: I think he was thirty when they were shooting that.
Speaker 1: And I always liked when he would show up and
Speaker 1: stuff because he just had a great look.
Speaker 5: I forgot he was in Greece. I totally forgot that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and Andy Beccenroe is in this barely, and I didn't
Speaker 5: recognize her. Raymond J. Berry I didn't recognize until this
Speaker 5: time because I wasn't familiar with him in viewings before.
Speaker 5: After justified the mwar Leonard series, like you can't not
Speaker 5: think of like you can't not remember who that guy
Speaker 5: is anytime he shows up. It is good. But to
Speaker 5: go back to Andrew's point, like eighty five percent in
Speaker 5: the movie is casting. This is a really well cast movie.
Speaker 5: There's so many good people. I will include Randy Brooks
Speaker 5: in here because she's always, you know, the like man
Speaker 5: with two Brains or Hamburger the motion picture. She's the dits.
Speaker 5: She's the blonde dits, you know who's gonna get naked,
Speaker 5: And here she she doesn't get naked, and she's not
Speaker 5: a dits, and she's good. She actually acts, and she
Speaker 5: didn't get that many opportunities like that. She was always
Speaker 5: eye candy or sometimes just scenery, like she's in William
Speaker 5: Friedkin's Deal of the Century, not even has any lines,
Speaker 5: just like he is in a bikini on stage. But
Speaker 5: she's really good. I think she's fine.
Speaker 1: I think she's really good. Yeah and yeah, I'm used
Speaker 1: to her playing the dits, So when she's got her
Speaker 1: shit together in this movie, I'm like, Okay, that's great.
Speaker 1: And it does make me very sad when we see
Speaker 1: her strung up in that same position that she was
Speaker 1: in while she was having sex in that crime scene.
Speaker 1: That's a very disturbing moment.
Speaker 5: In the book, in that scene where not the one
Speaker 5: where she dies, but where they're having sex and she
Speaker 5: has this she's really turned on by the handcuffs, gets
Speaker 5: him to cuff her well, or they think they attempt
Speaker 5: to or something. That effect goes on a lot longer.
Speaker 5: But then it does end in the same place with
Speaker 5: the door creaking, which I'm surprised they don't here.
Speaker 4: Well, that's ceisling. They've got their raws, and lot of
Speaker 4: things come up.
Speaker 5: The movie itself, like they didn't need to have like
Speaker 5: they put in the sound effect of the creaking door.
Speaker 5: You didn't need that sound effect. You could have just
Speaker 5: shown that door and you'd get you'd get it. Audiences
Speaker 5: are not always smart, but they're smart enough for things like.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy. When Dallas Novelle asked for this for
Speaker 1: an episode, I was like, oh cool, I'll get Elroy back,
Speaker 1: I'll get Charles Hayde back, I'll get James b Harris back.
Speaker 1: This will be fantastic. So Elroy just won't respond to
Speaker 1: my emails right now. I don't know what's going on Hayde.
Speaker 1: When I reached out to him, he said, I will
Speaker 1: not have anything to do with talking about James Woods
Speaker 1: or James Woods movie, and I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: So I think there's definitely either bad blood from the
Speaker 1: past or what Woods is today is affecting Hayde talking
Speaker 1: about this now. But luckily James b Harris agreed to
Speaker 1: come back and talk to me about this.
Speaker 5: Did you try Randy Brooks real toor I did try
Speaker 5: Randy Brooks never got any sort of response. I really
Speaker 5: wanted to, and I mean, I've had Lesley and Warren
Speaker 5: on the show, but that was set up through a
Speaker 5: press thing, so was unable to get in.
Speaker 1: Touch with her. I was beating the bushes. I really
Speaker 1: like this movie a lot and really wanted to give
Speaker 1: this a little bit more oof, but at least we've
Speaker 1: got James b Harris.
Speaker 4: So I didn't listen to that interview deliberately because I
Speaker 4: just thought, if I listened to the James b Harris interview,
Speaker 4: It'll start changing what I'm going to think about the
Speaker 4: film and what I'm going to say about the film. So,
Speaker 4: guys had an amazing career. I mean, not only the
Speaker 4: whole Kubrick connection, but I mean Cop, and I don't
Speaker 4: know if you guys got to look. I mean there
Speaker 4: was Cop, there was the Bedford Incident, which was his
Speaker 4: nuclear war thriller in nineteen sixty five. And he did
Speaker 4: this amazing film in nineteen eighty two called Fast Walking,
Speaker 4: which also had Woods and I don't know if you've
Speaker 4: either of you have.
Speaker 1: Seen Tim Carrey. I think Carry isn't there?
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, about a corrupt prison kin. That's
Speaker 4: a terrific film and also very dark and very sleazy.
Speaker 4: So and then of course goes on to do I
Speaker 4: think his last film is Boiling Point, which is what
Speaker 4: was that the boiling when was Boiling Point ninety three?
Speaker 5: That's right, that's it. It's like, why did he not
Speaker 5: direct work?
Speaker 4: He's we did the bits and pieces. He did a
Speaker 4: sort of semi porn film, semi some call it loving.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we talked about that on the show before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's the one film of his I haven't seen,
Speaker 4: but I have seen the Bedford Incident, which I think
Speaker 4: is great, and I've seen Fast Walking three or four times.
Speaker 5: That's just bad movies. It's like, why did he not?
Speaker 5: I don't know that he has a definable style. But
Speaker 5: the scene that I thought was one of the best
Speaker 5: directed in this is when James Woods goes to Charles
Speaker 5: Head Charles Heed's Wade's apartment and he's just sitting there
Speaker 5: and it cuts between like Woods just sitting and then
Speaker 5: what he's seeing, which is the wall with the door,
Speaker 5: and then it every time it cuts back, which is
Speaker 5: not quick quick quick, but you know, it has pace,
Speaker 5: has pauses. It gets in a little tighter to what
Speaker 5: he's seeing, and a little tighter and a little tighter,
Speaker 5: and I could not figure out what is what is
Speaker 5: he trying to show us. You don't actually see until
Speaker 5: it gets like you could see there's something above the doorframe,
Speaker 5: but it's not until Woods gets up out of a
Speaker 5: seat and goes and moves it that you can tell
Speaker 5: it's a you know, a wire or a microphone. I
Speaker 5: guess that leads to But the way that that is framed,
Speaker 5: composed cut is a really effective scene. I thought that
Speaker 5: was really well done.
Speaker 4: I think Harris too. I mean, I'm not sure. Again.
Speaker 4: I deliberately didn't listen to the interview you did, Mike,
Speaker 4: because I just thought it would clear my pitch about
Speaker 4: a whole of things I might say or might not
Speaker 4: say about Cop. But I know that Harris basically says
Speaker 4: at one point, you know, in terms of it, you know,
Speaker 4: to your question right about why did he do so
Speaker 4: few films, he said, I preferred the kind of material
Speaker 4: and the kind of subjects that were not deemed or
Speaker 4: perceived as commercial, so it was almost impossible to raise
Speaker 4: money to do them. I was spoiled, I suppose, having
Speaker 4: worked on what I thought were very important films. But
Speaker 4: you know, he also then went out of his own
Speaker 4: and then had to raise the money had for these.
Speaker 4: I mean, fast Walking is an incredibly non commercial project.
Speaker 4: It's like COP. I suppose it's like you know, it's
Speaker 4: a it's a film that straddles about three or four
Speaker 4: genres boiling points. Maybe his most mainstream film.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I'd say definitely the most mainstream, but
Speaker 5: even that was it wasn't hit.
Speaker 4: Absolutely not, because they was that Wesley Strike, Wesley Snipe
Speaker 4: was it? Wesley Snipes is it cop? And they wanted
Speaker 4: it in the studio, wanted a Passenger fifty sort of
Speaker 4: another version of Passenger fifty seven. They sort of hard
Speaker 4: charging Wesley Snipes as a kind of dirty Harry type cop.
Speaker 4: And what they get is this weird character study about
Speaker 4: all these criminals gone wrong and ballroom dancing and a
Speaker 4: whole the other weird stuff that's in Boiling Point.
Speaker 5: The poster for Boiling Point is extremely similar to Caps, but.
Speaker 4: The film is not. The film is not. The film
Speaker 4: is totally, very low key, quite soft in parts, a
Speaker 4: strange kind of mixture of ninety three so early nineties.
Speaker 4: It's kind of got eighties cop thriller tropes in it,
Speaker 4: but it's also a very strange film.
Speaker 5: I'm going to look, I'm going to like raise that
Speaker 5: on top of this. Now they've revisited, so I want
Speaker 5: to see that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't think Boiling Point's a brilliant film, but
Speaker 4: I think it's an interesting film, and you can sort
Speaker 4: of see what Harris is trying to do and there's
Speaker 4: lots of really interesting full of great American character actors,
Speaker 4: so you know, it's it's definitely worth saying. I mean,
Speaker 4: the film I will watch again and again is Fast Walking.
Speaker 4: I think that's fantastic film. I it's probably my favorite
Speaker 4: Harris film.
Speaker 1: After they did this, Harris actually did do a adaptation
Speaker 1: of Black Dahlia, and that would have been interesting to see.
Speaker 1: And then since he was involved in the project, he
Speaker 1: ended up with a executive producer credit on the Brian
Speaker 1: De Palmer Black Dahlia, and I was glad that he
Speaker 1: had no qualms on the auto commentary for cop saying
Speaker 1: that he was a little disappointed, let's say, in Black Dahlia,
Speaker 1: because I very much am there with him.
Speaker 4: I rewatched that recently after having seen it in the
Speaker 4: cinema when it came out. It's a terrible film. It's
Speaker 4: an atrocious film. I really I'm.
Speaker 1: Very glad that my memory is correct because I have
Speaker 1: no desire to see it.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, it just does not work in any way,
Speaker 4: shape or form.
Speaker 5: I'd love Brian de Palmer, and I couldn't finish it.
Speaker 5: I think it's just it's dreadfully boring.
Speaker 1: I just remember because you know, we talked about doubling
Speaker 1: and the doubling of Hopkins and Teddy, and there's doubling
Speaker 1: that happens in The Black Dahlia, and that doubling is
Speaker 1: supposed to be between the Hillary swaink character and the
Speaker 1: Mia Kirshner character, Hillary playing Madeline Lynn Scott and Mia
Speaker 1: Kirshner as the titular Black Dahlia. Elizabeth Short, Hilary's swink
Speaker 1: says this line with a straight face. Everyone says, I
Speaker 1: look like her, and I'm just like, oh my god, honey,
Speaker 1: you look nothing like Mia Kirshner whatsoever.
Speaker 5: It's just so bad. Really.
Speaker 4: The Elroy film that I do remember liking a lot,
Speaker 4: and I haven't had a chance to rewatch it because
Speaker 4: I'm living overseas and I haven't got all my stuff
Speaker 4: with me. I did like Brown's Rickliem.
Speaker 1: I do remember liking that one because that was Michael Rooker.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, Michael Rooker. And it's it's again. It's another
Speaker 4: Railroy adaptation, and I do remember thinking, yea, this is
Speaker 4: quite faithful to the original novel. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: was Brown's Recreem before the Floyd hop was that was.
Speaker 4: Was that one OF's earliest.
Speaker 1: Brown's Requiem, Yeah, I think it was Clandestine and Brown's
Speaker 1: Requiem were the first two.
Speaker 4: The Floyd Hopkins film Cop came out and then brought
Speaker 4: and then I think Brown's Recreem came out, and then
Speaker 4: La Confidential. I do love La Confidential. I think it's
Speaker 4: terrific film, but it's a sort of cleaned up version
Speaker 4: of Bilroy's novel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think La Confidential came out, and then
Speaker 1: Brown's Recreem the movie came out the next year, just
Speaker 1: because it had that little from La Confidential, like, oh cool,
Speaker 1: let's adapt more of this guy's work. And then the
Speaker 1: thing I didn't realize because I knew that they had
Speaker 1: tried to adapt La Confidential as a TV show way
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and three, and I think Southern Yeah,
Speaker 1: the key for Sutherland one. And then I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that there was another one from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: Was that Jordan Harper crime writer who also did the
Speaker 4: script on his on that And I've actually seen the
Speaker 4: first episode. I did do an episode. Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 4: It's really good.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize until I was interviewing Dominic Burgess, who
Speaker 1: played the Victor Bono character in Feud, that he had
Speaker 1: played Sid Hudgens in that new version of La Confidential.
Speaker 1: But since that's from twenty nineteen, I don't think we're
Speaker 1: getting a series out of it, even though it's got
Speaker 1: a great cast. Walter Goggins as Jack Vincent's pretty freaking.
Speaker 4: Almost one episode. I made one episode and then never
Speaker 4: went anywhere. But the episode is great.
Speaker 5: Shave Wigham. I love Share Wigham in everything. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: want to see that. I remember here reading or start
Speaker 5: reading hearing a podcast with Jordan Harper. Can't remember what
Speaker 5: it was on, but they did talk about that Elie
Speaker 5: Confidential pilot and that it's probably Yeah, I think it's dead,
Speaker 5: which is because that could it could be a really
Speaker 5: good series for something like HB. But I think the
Speaker 5: key for said Lerdland, if i'd recall, was for Fox,
Speaker 5: which would not have been good just the way.
Speaker 1: That Elroy writes and just the disturbing content he gets into.
Speaker 1: You have to do this for cable. It cannot be
Speaker 1: for broadcast television. If you're going to do an Elroy thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's got so many things like had you said, Okay,
Speaker 1: La confidential, but let's make a prequel. Let's go all
Speaker 1: the way back to Blackdalia itself, Like, let's start there
Speaker 1: and just show this whole history of la I mean,
Speaker 1: because that's what that's the thing that Elroy does so well.
Speaker 1: And it could almost be like a Noah Howley thing
Speaker 1: where it's like each season becomes a different book, or
Speaker 1: you do two seasons per book, because these are vast
Speaker 1: tapestries that Elroy is creating. So speaking of let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and take a break, and we're going to be
Speaker 1: back with that interview with James B. Harris, the writer
Speaker 1: director of cop Right after these brief messages.
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Speaker 1: I understand you and James Woods have worked together on
Speaker 1: fast Walking, and even before we talk about cop I'm
Speaker 1: so curious how fast Walking came about.
Speaker 10: I did an adaptation on a book called a Rap
Speaker 10: by writing named Ernest Browley, when Laura mar was in
Speaker 10: business at that, you know, doing feature films after they
Speaker 10: had done Dallas as a huge hit on television and
Speaker 10: they wanted to go into the making of features. So
Speaker 10: I showed on my script on what I called fast Walking,
Speaker 10: because he was a minor character in the novel, but
Speaker 10: I made him a major character because I just thought
Speaker 10: he was more interesting and and Laura Man loved the script,
Speaker 10: and we decided I had to find an actor. Jimmy
Speaker 10: Woods was starting to He had done the Holocaust TV
Speaker 10: show and I think I don't know if he did
Speaker 10: the Onion Field yet, but he had never he never
Speaker 10: had a lead in the picture. He's always, you know,
Speaker 10: a good supporting actor. So we decided to go after Woods,
Speaker 10: and he loved the script, and he and I got
Speaker 10: together to discuss it and found out that, you know
Speaker 10: that we had a lot of things in common, you know,
Speaker 10: aside from from movies, and we got along great and
Speaker 10: it was really it made it so much fun doing
Speaker 10: the film with him. You can always tell whether things
Speaker 10: work or not if they want to do a second
Speaker 10: picture with you, which turned out to be cop not
Speaker 10: only did we work well together, but we became best
Speaker 10: friends and to this day we're still buddies, in touch
Speaker 10: with each other all the time. Just as in Aside.
Speaker 10: He lives in Pacific Palisades, and strangey enough, his house survived.
Speaker 10: It has smoking damage, but all the houses next to
Speaker 10: him on both sides went down and he survived, Thank goodness.
Speaker 10: You know, it's amazing. But anyway, we're still in touch,
Speaker 10: we're still buddies, and he's a great guy, you know,
Speaker 10: as far as a friend is concerned.
Speaker 1: You had such a stellar cast on Fast Walking. I
Speaker 1: mean I love M. M. Walsh, Susan Tyrrell, Robert Hooks.
Speaker 1: I mean, just so many amazing character actors and just
Speaker 1: you know, straight actors, just such a wonderful pool of talent.
Speaker 10: You're forgetting about the too many a Tim Carrey, Remember
Speaker 10: Timothy Carey from Pars Glory.
Speaker 1: I love Timothy Carey, and I was definitely going to
Speaker 1: ask about him because I'm so curious what he is
Speaker 1: like to work with.
Speaker 10: He's difficult to work with because he he's he was
Speaker 10: a scene stealer, you know, he loves to do things
Speaker 10: that were not in the rehearsals and always surprised us.
Speaker 10: You know, what you need is one good take, and
Speaker 10: he looks terrific on the screen. He basically was a
Speaker 10: good guy.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 10: We used him in the killing Koprick and I we
Speaker 10: used him in Pairs of Glory and then uh, I
Speaker 10: gave him another another shot and uh fast Walking and
Speaker 10: then the other guy, Uh, Tim McIntyre, he's another fun character.
Speaker 10: I mean. And playing your scene with those two were
Speaker 10: really amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I thought the same as you that that this was
Speaker 10: the terrific gest you know, starting with Woods and Tim
Speaker 10: McIntyre and Timothy Carrey and Waltz and Kay Lens and
Speaker 10: a few others and what's his name. Uh, but all
Speaker 10: those guys were terrific. And we shot half the film
Speaker 10: in deal Large, Montana at a vacated prison, and so
Speaker 10: we got the use of that prison as our set
Speaker 10: and it just worked out fine.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 10: It was one of those sixers that didn't get a
Speaker 10: major distribution. Warners has the picture now because they bought
Speaker 10: out Lorimar and they have it in their Buried Treasure
Speaker 10: group of pictures. You could probably get it on Amazon
Speaker 10: or one of those things. That was the start of
Speaker 10: my relationship with Woods. And we had such a good
Speaker 10: time making it, we decided we want to do another one,
Speaker 10: and I came up with James elroy book Cold Blood
Speaker 10: on the Moon. I adapted that and the distributor was
Speaker 10: to cause who they were. They went bankrupt whatever they were,
Speaker 10: you know, going to finance the movie, and it was
Speaker 10: a shame. But this seemed like I thought, really good
Speaker 10: movies at Fast Walking and Cop and neither one of
Speaker 10: them got a proper distribution. The distributor for a Cop
Speaker 10: when bankrupt. They didn't have enough money to even do
Speaker 10: television advertising. And how can you compete with all the
Speaker 10: other product on the market if you're not advertising on TV.
Speaker 10: You know, they limited it to I don't know to
Speaker 10: radio and news I guess not even that, just a
Speaker 10: newspaper ads. The picture did well and it opened in
Speaker 10: Los Angeles and Westwood did fine, and he got great reviews.
Speaker 10: It was book two thumbs up with Cisco and remember
Speaker 10: those guys. But did you know it's just one of
Speaker 10: those pictures that not too many people know about it,
Speaker 10: and which thinks of it as one of his best works.
Speaker 10: You know, we did it after he was nominated for Salvador.
Speaker 10: You didn't win the Academy Award. He got nominated for Salvador,
Speaker 10: so he was he was starting to be known. And
Speaker 10: he's had a hell of a career. You know, he's
Speaker 10: done some really good work that had a good cast too,
Speaker 10: you know, Leslie un Warrant and Charlie Derning, Charlie had
Speaker 10: Who's fun working with those people they wove? Is it
Speaker 10: difficult to do? They You know, you have such great
Speaker 10: expectations before you start, and you can get eighty percent
Speaker 10: of of what you if you're looking what you're dreaming about.
Speaker 10: You're lucky. You know, You've got so many problems that develop,
Speaker 10: and that's why you do as much preparation as possible
Speaker 10: to try to deal with the problems. You know are
Speaker 10: are on the horizon and may sure are. You know,
Speaker 10: you're dealing with human beings, you know. So actors sometimes
Speaker 10: are very cooperative, and sometimes they have other problems that
Speaker 10: interfere with their work. And you're trying to get a performance,
Speaker 10: and then you've got weather problems, You've got time restraints
Speaker 10: because you have a budget and a schedule, you have
Speaker 10: a completion bond, and those people looking over your shoulder
Speaker 10: to make sure you don't go overtime and over budget
Speaker 10: and over schedule. It's well, you're so glad when it's
Speaker 10: over and you just hope that you have at least
Speaker 10: eighty percent of what you had helped you get. The
Speaker 10: cop turned out okay, I mean it was really made.
Speaker 10: A lot of people pay attention. Was that ending? Do
Speaker 10: you remember? The ending? Was kind of a shock. We
Speaker 10: did that picture for under three million. It was really tough.
Speaker 10: You didn't want too many, you know, take five, take six.
Speaker 10: You have to keep moving along and you get it right.
Speaker 10: Casting is everything, you know, cooping, and I always felt
Speaker 10: that testing was like eighty percent of the movie because
Speaker 10: if you get the right actors requires less directing. The
Speaker 10: better the actor is, the less you have to direct,
Speaker 10: as long as they understand the script and they know
Speaker 10: what the scenes are about, and they can add things
Speaker 10: too that you know, you just don't want an actor
Speaker 10: who just stands there and says tell me what to do.
Speaker 10: They have ideas of their own. I mean, you as
Speaker 10: a director can always negate them, and you always have
Speaker 10: final say when you're making the movie. But if you
Speaker 10: ca the right actors, mixed directing a lot easier than
Speaker 10: you think. And that's what it's all about you know,
Speaker 10: if the young filmmakers they should watch a lot of
Speaker 10: movies and start to recognize the actors that are really good,
Speaker 10: and those are the ones you want to work with.
Speaker 10: You know, unless you're doing a documentary or an animated film,
Speaker 10: you need actors. You know, they're the ones that are
Speaker 10: going to tell you a story. You better get good ones,
Speaker 10: you know, good character, you know, good thinking people that
Speaker 10: can create for you. And I think I had that
Speaker 10: with Woods with Charlie Derning. He was terrific. And unless
Speaker 10: Leanne Warren, you remember her and Victor Victoria. She got
Speaker 10: nominated to that.
Speaker 1: When did you first encounter Blood on the Moon And
Speaker 1: what about that story appealed to you and you said, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to make a fantastic movie.
Speaker 10: I'm always looking for what you call published material. You know,
Speaker 10: when I met Kubrick we decided to become partners and
Speaker 10: the movies together. I told him that the one thing
Speaker 10: that I'm going to bring to the partnership is the
Speaker 10: wherewithal to acquire previously published material, because up to that
Speaker 10: point Kubrick had only done, you know, two pictures that
Speaker 10: sort of looked like he made it up as he
Speaker 10: went along. What was so good about Kubrick's early works
Speaker 10: was not the pictures themselves, but the fact that he
Speaker 10: was so young and that he did everything himself. But
Speaker 10: the one thing he didn't have the wherewithal is to
Speaker 10: acquire material, you have to option it and then you
Speaker 10: have to buy it. And since then, since nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 10: when we made our first picture together, Kubrick on his
Speaker 10: own or myself on our own or together, we never
Speaker 10: did a picture that wasn't based on previously published material.
Speaker 10: It really is, you know, again, advice to the filmmakers,
Speaker 10: rather than make up your own stories, which are probably
Speaker 10: not anywhere as good as the novelist. Just think, you know,
Speaker 10: the novelist that did all the groundwork, he did all
Speaker 10: the heavy listening for you, He made up the story,
Speaker 10: he made up all the characters, he did all the
Speaker 10: research on whatever the picture was about. And then you
Speaker 10: come along and all you have to do is, and
Speaker 10: I know it's not that easy, but all you have
Speaker 10: to do is decide what scenes you know you want
Speaker 10: to dramatize, because you can't do the whole book, usually
Speaker 10: the four hundred pages or so. To try to do
Speaker 10: a two hour movie you know, you have to be
Speaker 10: concerned about what's necessary to dramatize to tell you a story.
Speaker 10: But anyway, getting back to the fact that I'm always
Speaker 10: looking for books and bookstores and I subscribe to it
Speaker 10: to a service that gives you advanced reviews of books
Speaker 10: to be published. And I came across in a book.
Speaker 10: So I came across Elroy's one of the trilogy, you
Speaker 10: know he did. I figure what they're all called. What's
Speaker 10: his name, Lloyd Hopkins. There was the cop you know,
Speaker 10: you know, over the top cop, you know, a cop
Speaker 10: who makes up his own rules and likes to settle
Speaker 10: things out of court. And I thought the character was terrific,
Speaker 10: and then the story worked. Lady never had anything made
Speaker 10: of his books, those three, and I contacted him and
Speaker 10: and he was go ahead to sell me an option
Speaker 10: on Blood on the Moon. And we became good friends too,
Speaker 10: because he became probably the most known crime writer, you know,
Speaker 10: since the old days of Dashall Hammett and all those guys,
Speaker 10: you know, James McCain. He had best sellers, you know,
Speaker 10: like La Confidential, remember that one, you know, when the
Speaker 10: Academy Award for my friend Curtis Hansen for writing a script.
Speaker 10: But anyway, I came across Blood on the Moon in
Speaker 10: the bookstore and I thought, see if I can acquire
Speaker 10: this thing, I think I can make a good movie
Speaker 10: out of it. And when I did, I sat down
Speaker 10: and wrote the script and got back in touch with
Speaker 10: Jimmy Woods and said, you know, let's do this together.
Speaker 10: You know, we both produce it and New Star and
Speaker 10: I've written it and I'll direct it. And that's what
Speaker 10: we did. We think at least a lot of critics
Speaker 10: thought as well, that it turned out pretty good.
Speaker 1: Obviously, the book goes in so many different directions, but
Speaker 1: you pare it down to just those essential facts that
Speaker 1: really keep a very tight, fast moving story.
Speaker 10: When you look at a lot of crime films, they
Speaker 10: kind of slow down the action with too much of
Speaker 10: personal things of a side with these the characters, and
Speaker 10: they always put up a song that the girl has
Speaker 10: to sing in the nightclub or something, and it's you know,
Speaker 10: I just wanted to stay away from that. And you know,
Speaker 10: had already worked with Stanley and we did the killing,
Speaker 10: and the killing was one of those picture. Just what
Speaker 10: we loved about it was the way the story was
Speaker 10: told in a series of flashbacks which just follows each
Speaker 10: participant in the robbery up until a certain point. It
Speaker 10: kind of set a whole standard for film noir in Hollywood,
Speaker 10: you know, because Roger Corman, who made you know, low
Speaker 10: budget pictures, they realized that you could make a low
Speaker 10: budget picture that looked like an a budget picture, you know,
Speaker 10: they killing We used Lucian Ballad, who was a terrific cameraman,
Speaker 10: you know. I mean it was really well known and
Speaker 10: well respected. But you know, and Van Kubrick, being a
Speaker 10: photographer himself, I was able to use the right lenses
Speaker 10: and the right camera moves and everything, and we made
Speaker 10: a real low budget picture look like like a major movie.
Speaker 10: We were talking about the pace and keeping it tight
Speaker 10: and getting rid of all the you know, the unnecessary
Speaker 10: set that you want to trim away, and that's what
Speaker 10: we did with Kapp. We just kept it moving and
Speaker 10: told the story that people could understand, and you get
Speaker 10: the right actors to play those characters. And that's a
Speaker 10: good recipe to make a movie.
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned some of the major players, but even
Speaker 1: some of the minor actors or minor characters that should
Speaker 1: say are so well done. I mean, Dennis Stewart or
Speaker 1: you know, even Stephen Lambert in there. I just love
Speaker 1: or gosh, I mean Raymond Jay Berry, who always brings
Speaker 1: so much to play kind of a smallish role as
Speaker 1: that police captain, but oh my gosh, he just lights
Speaker 1: up the screen every time he's on.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you remember he did a picture for Tomino. I
Speaker 10: think it was the Year the Dragon or something in
Speaker 10: Chinatown and New York and I saw Ray Berry in
Speaker 10: that and I said, I got to you know, if
Speaker 10: if ever I do a crime film, I got to
Speaker 10: get this guy in the film. He's just terrific and
Speaker 10: so I wish the part of them bigger. But but
Speaker 10: but I figured ray had to do that. I had to.
Speaker 10: I had to have him. And even the girl books. Yeah,
Speaker 10: Randy Brooks, she was terrific in a real small part.
Speaker 10: That's the whole thing. You know, at the beginning of
Speaker 10: our conversation, I told you that Stanley and I really
Speaker 10: believe that casting is eighty percent of the movie, and
Speaker 10: you get the right people. It's such a great hate start.
Speaker 10: You have. You have to pay attention. You know, like
Speaker 10: a lot of directors, you trust the casting director and
Speaker 10: they don't pay enough attention to every little part because
Speaker 10: they think, well, it's only a small part, is not
Speaker 10: that important. But every part's important, you know, especially you know,
Speaker 10: you make one mistake in the movie and it can
Speaker 10: it can ruin it if you pick the right people,
Speaker 10: even for those small parts. You know, even in Fast
Speaker 10: Walking it was minor parts with Charlie, you know, Charlie Weldon.
Speaker 10: You know, I figured her first name, Weldon was a
Speaker 10: terrific singer. You know, she was a recording artist and
Speaker 10: she was just great. But Charlie, he played the part great,
Speaker 10: and Hooks did. Of course, everybody in there was was great.
Speaker 10: And as I said, the first time I directed a picture,
Speaker 10: it was called a Bedford incident if you ever saw
Speaker 10: that one. But you know, I had never directed a
Speaker 10: film before. You know, spending time with Kubrick, you know,
Speaker 10: he makes it look easy and it's not easy. But
Speaker 10: he also inspires you to want to direct yourself, and
Speaker 10: he was always pushing me to because that's the most
Speaker 10: rewarding part of making a movie, is directing, because you know,
Speaker 10: when you look at the dais other rushes, that's what
Speaker 10: you see on the screen. You did that as a director,
Speaker 10: you put it up there, and as a producer. You know,
Speaker 10: I was fulfilled in that I had acquired all the
Speaker 10: material and made sure everything got made, and an interference
Speaker 10: for Kubrick. But I never felt that it was as
Speaker 10: a rewarding as if I had directed the movies. So
Speaker 10: I got a shot to direct the picture. You know,
Speaker 10: I found this book the Bedford Incident. I didn't write
Speaker 10: the script myself this time. Had never written a script before.
Speaker 10: I've worked on scripts with Stanley. But I got a
Speaker 10: good script, which is which of course, you know, it's
Speaker 10: the old story. You can't make good mayonnaise with rotten eggs,
Speaker 10: you know. And you got a good screenplay. You know,
Speaker 10: you're you're off to a real good start if you
Speaker 10: if the screenplay floored, if it's not doesn't work, you're
Speaker 10: not going to make a good movie. I mean, it's
Speaker 10: the blueprint of the movie and it better be right.
Speaker 10: So anyway, we look at the actors that I had.
Speaker 10: Widmark was a pro that maybe have done fifty movies
Speaker 10: or some crazy like that. Porty had just won the
Speaker 10: Academy at work for Lidley's of the Field. And I
Speaker 10: had a great English actor named Eric Portman. And then
Speaker 10: I had James MacArthur. I had Wally Cox, I had
Speaker 10: Marty Botham, he's always so good, you know, and even
Speaker 10: Donald Sutherland had a small part in the infidences. But
Speaker 10: the point I'm making is that these are all terrific actors.
Speaker 10: And I had never directed a film before, but the
Speaker 10: picture turned out like like I was an old pro
Speaker 10: and why But because I had the good actors. And
Speaker 10: as I said before, you know, the better the actor is,
Speaker 10: the less directing you have to do. What you have
Speaker 10: to do is have an year. You know, they can
Speaker 10: tell whether a scene plays or not. Pretty tough to say,
Speaker 10: why not playing? If it's not, then you have to
Speaker 10: go back to Stanislawsky, and you know, you got to say,
Speaker 10: first of all, it does reactor understand the scene? Secondly,
Speaker 10: does he know his lines? If that proves to be positive,
Speaker 10: then you better look at the script and you better
Speaker 10: rewrite the scene. You have to have the ability to
Speaker 10: tell whether a scene plays or not. I don't think
Speaker 10: that's too tough. When you got actors like I had,
Speaker 10: they make the scene play and it doesn't. You know,
Speaker 10: it doesn't take it, you know, rocket scientist. If you've
Speaker 10: got a good year to tell that, it doesn't sound
Speaker 10: that matures. It doesn't sound like there's too much air
Speaker 10: between the responses back and forth. Plus the fact, you know,
Speaker 10: you can make scenes work a lot in the editing room.
Speaker 10: You know, you can tighten them up, you can loosen
Speaker 10: them up, you can you can change the pace. You
Speaker 10: can do a lot of things. But you know, if
Speaker 10: you have a good negative, you can make a good
Speaker 10: print net in photography, you know. So if you have
Speaker 10: a good if you if you have a good script,
Speaker 10: then you have good scenes that you don't have to
Speaker 10: do too much in the editing room except except that
Speaker 10: the properly. You know, listen, I'm making it sound a
Speaker 10: lot easier than it is. But you just have to
Speaker 10: have the right ingredients. And it starts with the script
Speaker 10: and the story and the actors.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to know a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of the people behind the camera. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: about like your DP Steve Dhuben from one to understand
Speaker 1: he wasn't the original DP on this, but he came
Speaker 1: in after just a few days.
Speaker 10: That's right. Woods and I you have screened a lot
Speaker 10: of stuff, and we really wanted to work with King Baggett,
Speaker 10: you know who photographed fast walking, But King wasn't available
Speaker 10: a cameraman that had only done commercials. But the commercials
Speaker 10: were really fabulous. I mean they were beautifully photographs, and
Speaker 10: we figured, Jesus, this guy really should do a feature film.
Speaker 10: I forget his name. He's really a nice guy and
Speaker 10: he meant so well, but he was not used to
Speaker 10: doing feature films where you run a schedule and a
Speaker 10: tight budget and you got to keep moving and you
Speaker 10: got to light the thing fast. And the first day
Speaker 10: we shot a scene, it was totally out of focus.
Speaker 10: So we had a foul focused guy that evidently screwed
Speaker 10: up on this thing and we had to reshoot that stuff. Secondly,
Speaker 10: he really wasn't accustomed to, you know, working at the
Speaker 10: pace we needed. He was always trying to improve, you know,
Speaker 10: always you're fussing with the adjustments and things. And he'd
Speaker 10: even be walking around while we was shooting. I mean,
Speaker 10: I remember a time when Woods was doing the scene
Speaker 10: and this cameraman was walking around, you know, looking at
Speaker 10: the with his meet to looking at lights and things,
Speaker 10: and we stopped the take and Woods had to tell
Speaker 10: this guy to sit down and stop moving around. He's
Speaker 10: becoming a distraction. We eventually had to let him go,
Speaker 10: and he understood that feature film was, you know, especially
Speaker 10: a low budget of film, and Cup was not in
Speaker 10: the same way of working as the commercials he had
Speaker 10: been doing. And then we got Steve Nuban, who was
Speaker 10: a real pro. This guy was, you know, he worked fast,
Speaker 10: he got the job done. I remember when I showed
Speaker 10: the picture to Stanley Kubrick, he commented how he thought
Speaker 10: how good the photography was, you know, and it was
Speaker 10: sort of a he doing was not known, you know,
Speaker 10: like the big boys, but he came through for us,
Speaker 10: and he was really terrific. I've never heard of anything
Speaker 10: that Steve did after that if I just lost track
Speaker 10: of him. But I would certainly love to work with
Speaker 10: him again if I ever made another movie. He's a
Speaker 10: good guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he even did some directing as well.
Speaker 10: Oh he did good to him. I didn't know that.
Speaker 10: Then we had a terrific art director, you know, a
Speaker 10: production design guy. I can't remember his name. I mean
Speaker 10: we're talking nineteen eighty five, eighty six. You know what
Speaker 10: was tough about that movie is when we let the
Speaker 10: first photographer, first cinematographer go, and Steve Dubin had to
Speaker 10: We had to go and look at all the locations again,
Speaker 10: you know the time of them. You know, you have
Speaker 10: to go out with a caravan, usually with your sound guy,
Speaker 10: your cinematographer, maybe you're art director and look at all
Speaker 10: the locations to see what problems you're in store for you.
Speaker 10: Do you want to gell the windows? Do you want
Speaker 10: to adjust the interior? Anyway, it was a nightmare of
Speaker 10: shooting your regular stuff, and then on lunch break we
Speaker 10: had to go and look at at locations in your
Speaker 10: future locations so that the crew could could because we
Speaker 10: have really a new crew. You've got a new cameraman
Speaker 10: and a new follow focused guy and a new operator.
Speaker 10: You have to go and take a look at the
Speaker 10: locations to see what is in store for you. Can
Speaker 10: you imagine, you know, having to shoot scenes and then
Speaker 10: you only get a half hour lunch break, maybe a
Speaker 10: half hour to an hour. Then you've got to get
Speaker 10: in the van and go and look at the tomorrow's
Speaker 10: location to see what to be done, then come back
Speaker 10: and finish shooting the rest of the day. I think
Speaker 10: I must have lost, you know, fifteen pounds on that move.
Speaker 10: So when you talk about you know, behind the camera,
Speaker 10: then we had you know, a good, good assistant director.
Speaker 10: They're important. Tell them what you want and they have
Speaker 10: to get it done for you. You know, they have
Speaker 10: to organize the extras and you have to tell the
Speaker 10: extras you know, what to do, what to wear. As
Speaker 10: a director, you know, you get a million questions all
Speaker 10: the time. Everybody, all the department has wants to know
Speaker 10: what you want so they can give it to you.
Speaker 10: And if if you're going to have a day tomorrow
Speaker 10: is the day of let's say you need a hundred extras,
Speaker 10: they want to know you know, what age is, you
Speaker 10: know what they're black? Are they white? Are they female?
Speaker 10: Are they male? You know, are they high class? You know,
Speaker 10: how do you want them dressed? And then you have
Speaker 10: to where do you want them place. The ones that
Speaker 10: look good to you should be near the camera because
Speaker 10: they'll be in focus, and the ones that you're not
Speaker 10: happy with you put them in the back because they're
Speaker 10: mostly out of focus. It's exhausted, you know, directing them
Speaker 10: over it really is. You know, I'd love to direct now,
Speaker 10: but I just don't think that i'd have the physical capabilities.
Speaker 10: You know, I don't think I could be insured anymore.
Speaker 10: You know, I'm going to be I'm ninety six. Now
Speaker 10: I'm ninety six. I don't think I'm insurable anymore. You know,
Speaker 10: if it was so innovating it when I was young,
Speaker 10: you can imagine whether it be like to try to
Speaker 10: do it now, because you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 10: nighttime shooting too. You've got these night shots and you
Speaker 10: think you could sleep all day. You can't because you've
Speaker 10: got production problems to deal with during the day, so
Speaker 10: you get very little sleep and you have to go
Speaker 10: to work when the sun comes down. You know, you
Speaker 10: get the blue out of the sky so that you
Speaker 10: can start shooting. Man, it's a tough go, but I
Speaker 10: don't know you s a disease you have. You know,
Speaker 10: once you get bitten by the bug to be a
Speaker 10: filmmaker crisis, it's hard to want to do anything else.
Speaker 10: I guess you've talked to enough of them to know
Speaker 10: it's a disease, is incurable.
Speaker 1: You mentioned trying to keep the budget down and you
Speaker 1: said it's a three million dollar film. Did I read
Speaker 1: write that you and James Woods were working for scale
Speaker 1: and had to keep the budget down with the rest
Speaker 1: of the actors as well.
Speaker 10: Uh huh. Yeah, the deal we made it was because
Speaker 10: you know, they couldn't afford our real prices. So we
Speaker 10: made a what you call an unadjusted gross deal where
Speaker 10: we would get ten percent of the unadjusted gross of
Speaker 10: the picture and we would work for nothing. But because
Speaker 10: of the union, we'd have to at least get scale.
Speaker 10: So I got scale for you know, director scale, and
Speaker 10: Woods got active scale, and we bought the picture in
Speaker 10: for under three million dollars. But we thought we'd make
Speaker 10: an absolute I mean, this would be a conu minion
Speaker 10: having ten percent of a gross to gross twenty five million.
Speaker 10: Around the world, there's not much of a gross. I
Speaker 10: mean some some pictures do that in the first weekend,
Speaker 10: you know. But let's say we grossed all in, you know,
Speaker 10: fifty million dollars, of which the distributor would would would
Speaker 10: would get half twenty five million. We would get ten
Speaker 10: percent of that with no adjustment, you know, less like
Speaker 10: two and a half million. The jun and I could
Speaker 10: could split up. But the company had later that's the
Speaker 10: name of the company. They they went bankrupt. They went bankrupt,
Speaker 10: and so they said, you know, the our deal was
Speaker 10: a great deal on paper, but in practicality there was
Speaker 10: had to give them. They gave the film back to
Speaker 10: Woods and I we owned the film today and we
Speaker 10: gave it to MGM MGM to distribute, you know, not
Speaker 10: seen very much. And so you know, the whole idea
Speaker 10: of working for scale and making a whole budget picture
Speaker 10: was to was to really on their back end, you know,
Speaker 10: make a lot of money. Talking about money, it's I
Speaker 10: can't be less serious because my first love really is
Speaker 10: to make the picture good. You know, it's not you know,
Speaker 10: the truth be known, all of us filmmakers would work
Speaker 10: for nothing because we love making films. Keep it a
Speaker 10: secret that you would do that you can negotiate your
Speaker 10: fair fee for doing it. So my first priority really
Speaker 10: is my first love is to make a good film. Secondly,
Speaker 10: it'd be nice to make some money with it as well.
Speaker 10: You don't make a film to make money. I mean,
Speaker 10: at least my kind of guys don't. Stanley and I
Speaker 10: we never made pictures to make money. We make pictures
Speaker 10: to make movies, to make pictures as good as we
Speaker 10: can make them, and hope that we would make some money.
Speaker 10: You want success really not to take vows, but you
Speaker 10: want success to make it easier to finance your next project,
Speaker 10: whatever it is. You know, the more successes you are,
Speaker 10: the easier it is to get a picture made. And
Speaker 10: that was always my trouble. I made these pictures that
Speaker 10: for some reason they didn't like fast walking. They'd get distributed.
Speaker 10: Some call it loving was it was independently distributed. Cop
Speaker 10: went down the drain with Atlantic when they went bankrupt,
Speaker 10: and you know, you never got the kind of recognition
Speaker 10: and the kind of success that would make it easier
Speaker 10: to get the next project made. I was lucky to
Speaker 10: get a Bully Point made, you know, which was done
Speaker 10: in the early nineties. You know, they answer a question,
Speaker 10: that's that's what they working for. Scale was all about.
Speaker 1: I've had the pleasure of talking with mister Elroy before.
Speaker 1: He's an interesting character and I was curious as far
Speaker 1: as you know, you said that you're still friends with him,
Speaker 1: which is great.
Speaker 10: Once I got to meet him. You know, when when
Speaker 10: I made a deal to acquire who acquire the film?
Speaker 10: I was to Blood on the Moon through his agent,
Speaker 10: not Solo in New York, but but but Elroy came
Speaker 10: to LA and when he did, naturally we got together
Speaker 10: because I was the guy that was going to make
Speaker 10: a film of his book and he had never had
Speaker 10: a film made of his book, of any of his books,
Speaker 10: so we had did it together and he was the
Speaker 10: guy that who was totally honest. He wasn't devious in
Speaker 10: any way. He was very helpful, he was appreciative, and
Speaker 10: we became really good friends. We had a lot, we
Speaker 10: spent a lot of fun times together. And if you've
Speaker 10: talked to him, you know he's quite a character. But
Speaker 10: the guy doesn't I mean, he speaks his mind. You know,
Speaker 10: he's not a shick. He's not afraid to say anything.
Speaker 10: I mean, he'll talk about his background as a vagrant.
Speaker 10: He got arrested, you know, he was in jail. He's
Speaker 10: we used to kid about a din and dash, you
Speaker 10: know that he used to have a meal at a
Speaker 10: restaurant and run for before the check came. Waite is
Speaker 10: chasing him down the street. So he had, you know,
Speaker 10: a real fun background. Then of course he he wrote
Speaker 10: a book about his mother's murder, you know about that
Speaker 10: or his mother had did one night just been I
Speaker 10: don't know what the circumstances were, but she was found dead,
Speaker 10: you know, having been goodally killed. That was never solved,
Speaker 10: but he tried to sell that, you know, by working
Speaker 10: with the detail active years after and he wrote a
Speaker 10: book about it, but never never got any satisfactory results
Speaker 10: from it. So he's had quite a quite a background,
Speaker 10: and he used to caddy at the golf clubs here
Speaker 10: in Los Angeles before he wrote his source book. It's
Speaker 10: quite something and I'm still friendly with him. He's lived
Speaker 10: in Denver now and we talked from time to time.
Speaker 10: I've always had an arrangement that I could do because
Speaker 10: The Night, you know, it was one of those three
Speaker 10: books with Lloyd Hopkins. Since Woods and I, Jimmy Wood
Speaker 10: and I have the we own the The Blood on
Speaker 10: the Moon cop film, that means that we also own
Speaker 10: the character of Lloyd Hopkins, which and I were actually
Speaker 10: talking about maybe doing a series that with the grown
Speaker 10: with the Lloyd Hopkins being now forty years older. But
Speaker 10: the Fire came along and we've kind of started. We
Speaker 10: haven't talked about it for a while. Maybe we'll pick
Speaker 10: it up against at some point. That's if I'm still around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that you're listed as a producer on
Speaker 1: Black Dalia. Was there talk of you adapting Black Dalia
Speaker 1: at some point?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I made a deal after a cop and since
Speaker 10: I was so friendly with Elboy at that time. Ever,
Speaker 10: I needed a new car, I said, he said, you
Speaker 10: know I was interested in the Black Dalua. He said, look,
Speaker 10: he said, why don't you get me, you know, give
Speaker 10: me the money for a car and you can you
Speaker 10: can have you can. Well, that'll give you the option
Speaker 10: on the Black. He said, I'll tell my agent. You know,
Speaker 10: you call my agent and you make an offer. He'll
Speaker 10: of course think it's too little and everything, but he'll
Speaker 10: be a large to ask his client and I'll accept
Speaker 10: these And he said, I'll accept the offer. And he said,
Speaker 10: then we'll do it that way. So the next day
Speaker 10: I called up his agent and I made an offer
Speaker 10: of twenty five thousand dollars for I guess it was
Speaker 10: the year eighteen month option on the Black Guys. He said, oh,
Speaker 10: you know, that's no idea what we would take for that,
Speaker 10: he said. I said, well, why don't you check it
Speaker 10: out with your client and maybe He called me back
Speaker 10: and he said, I don't understand this, he said, but
Speaker 10: but he accepted. So we got to make a deal.
Speaker 10: So I made So I made a deal and I
Speaker 10: wrote it for Woods. I mean, I talked to Jimmy
Speaker 10: once about it. When he heard that I that I
Speaker 10: had acquired and he wanted immediately to play the part
Speaker 10: of the of the cop and so I sat down
Speaker 10: and wrote. I wrote the screenpoint, but Woods got busy
Speaker 10: doing other things and I made a deal with it
Speaker 10: with a German company, Capella Films. So I made a
Speaker 10: deal to direct the film, and the Boiling Point had
Speaker 10: had become alive, and I had to do that first.
Speaker 10: I had such a bad experience with one of brothers
Speaker 10: and the French company, you know Ken Kennel Plus. Have
Speaker 10: you heard of that company? They financed The Boiling Point
Speaker 10: and they wanted to say the picture to Warner Brothers. Now,
Speaker 10: Warner Brothers had a film with Wesley Snipes called Passenger
Speaker 10: of fifty seven and it was a big success for them,
Speaker 10: and they wanted another Passenger of fifty seven type movie
Speaker 10: with Wesley Snipes. So they were interested in buying the
Speaker 10: North American distribution rights from for Canon Plus. But they
Speaker 10: wanted the the editing to be changed so that it
Speaker 10: would be more of a action film, which which is impossible.
Speaker 10: You know, I did not plan on being an action film.
Speaker 10: It was more of a study about the that there's
Speaker 10: a fine line in fact, there's not much difference between
Speaker 10: the criminal and the cop as far as their private
Speaker 10: lives are concerned. They live the same kind of life.
Speaker 10: And so I did not have final cut on Boiling Point,
Speaker 10: and it was such an an unpleasant experience to have
Speaker 10: to deal with, you know, having my directors cut, mishandled
Speaker 10: and miss cut, mis edited, which I had to do.
Speaker 10: I mean if I quit and walked away, God knows
Speaker 10: what they would have done with it. So I at
Speaker 10: least stuck around to win some of the arguments. But
Speaker 10: what it did was it was it. It made me
Speaker 10: feel I never wanted to do another film. But I
Speaker 10: didn't have final cut, and I knew that my next
Speaker 10: schedule picture would be would be The Black Dahalia and
Speaker 10: they Capella was was making a deal with Universal at
Speaker 10: that time, and I know I could never get final
Speaker 10: cut from Universal. Only the big, the absolute big top
Speaker 10: directors could get final cut. And so I decided that
Speaker 10: I just want to remove myself from that project. So
Speaker 10: they brought me out and they gave me a producer,
Speaker 10: you know, executive producer credit on the picture. I was
Speaker 10: not going to subject myself to another where some production
Speaker 10: executive at a studio can can ruin your movie, you know,
Speaker 10: it can recut it or re edit it because they
Speaker 10: think they previews didn't turn out as as as favorable
Speaker 10: as I had hope. It's a tough go when you
Speaker 10: you know, when you can't control, you know, the final
Speaker 10: edit of your funnel. You know, the Directors Guild all
Speaker 10: the studios are signatories to that, so they have to
Speaker 10: abide by the contract. But the contract only provides two
Speaker 10: previews for the director of his cut, and once you've
Speaker 10: had the two, whoever has final cut takes over and
Speaker 10: you're finished. I didn't want to subject myself to that again,
Speaker 10: and so that was the story where that's why I
Speaker 10: got the credit. You know, I got paid off pretty
Speaker 10: nicely to step away.
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have seen what you could
Speaker 1: have done with Black Dahalia, because I was not very
Speaker 1: happy with the final product.
Speaker 10: Man, you should have seen Elroy talk about being unhappy.
Speaker 10: Elder and I went to the they had a special
Speaker 10: showing at the Academy Theater, you know, the one on
Speaker 10: Wilson Boulevard. Both of us were really disappointed, and particularly Elroy,
Speaker 10: I mean he was he thought it was terrible. They
Speaker 10: didn't approach it the way would they Elroy and I
Speaker 10: and and Woods would have done. We've handled it differently,
Speaker 10: but they bounced around with a lot of directors. They
Speaker 10: foundly around up with with uh the Palmer. He had
Speaker 10: done some good work in his in his in his
Speaker 10: you know, in his hormography. There were some good films
Speaker 10: that he had done. But he also you know, sometimes
Speaker 10: he really missed the mark, you know, like in the
Speaker 10: Bonfire the Vanities, you remember that one and and and
Speaker 10: now now backed down. It didn't turn out the way
Speaker 10: it should have either. But anyway, uh, that was too
Speaker 10: bad because it was it was a very interesting subject.
Speaker 10: He's still doing it, you know, he still write novels
Speaker 10: and that's what that's how we spent it. It's tough
Speaker 10: to see what they're publishing and what book things are
Speaker 10: like nowadays, you know, because Amazon has just put everybody
Speaker 10: out of business except maybe maybe Barnes and Nobles, the
Speaker 10: only one is still going. But anyway, Elthoy is still
Speaker 10: writing those novels about l A in the in the
Speaker 10: forties and the stuff that's the saber subject. They become
Speaker 10: more convoluted, you know, his earlier work was not as
Speaker 10: is what he calls dense, you know his you know,
Speaker 10: once he got passed, I guess, I guess l A
Speaker 10: Confidential started to get really his style of writing is,
Speaker 10: you know, you really have to be paying attention because
Speaker 10: a lot of times you can't. You know, you can
Speaker 10: only read so many pages in the city, so you
Speaker 10: have to come back to it the next day when
Speaker 10: stuff is that convaluted, and stuff is tough to remember
Speaker 10: what you read the day before. So you look at
Speaker 10: you look at Elroy's works, and then you have to
Speaker 10: really stay as focused, you know, when you're reading that stuff,
Speaker 10: you know, to understand it all. But it's he's so
Speaker 10: he's so clever, and he's so talented. It's a pleasure
Speaker 10: to I mean, I think, you know, I'm a lucky
Speaker 10: guy to I mean, just think of the people that
Speaker 10: I've got to work with, like Kubrick, for God's sake,
Speaker 10: he's probably one of the finest best directors ever. And
Speaker 10: el Roy, you know, probably taking the place of Raymond
Speaker 10: Sandler and nash O Hammont and James King and all
Speaker 10: those people. And then King Jim Thompson, you know who
Speaker 10: we work with on The Killing Impairs of Glory. And
Speaker 10: then then el Roy, you know, you know, you're talking
Speaker 10: about crime writers. The best Elbroy certainly is probably at
Speaker 10: the head of a group right now. It's probably a
Speaker 10: reason why they don't get made, you know, into movies.
Speaker 10: It's probably much more of a novel and interesting than
Speaker 10: it would be, I mean to try to find a
Speaker 10: way to tell a story in movie terms. You know.
Speaker 10: Just there's just no question about his talent. I mean
Speaker 10: that that's that that can cannot be denied. And also,
Speaker 10: I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm a little weird
Speaker 10: or something, but I found him to be really really
Speaker 10: I mean, with all the prinsicities. He was a good friend.
Speaker 10: I mean, he was an interesting guy and fun to
Speaker 10: be with. And we used to spend a lot of
Speaker 10: time at the Pacific Dining Car, which went out of
Speaker 10: business recently, but that was a big popular restaurant in
Speaker 10: downtown LA. He was married there actually, at the Pacific
Speaker 10: Dining Car. He was dressed if if you saw pictures
Speaker 10: of him when he was very he was wearing a kilt,
Speaker 10: you know, a Scottish kilt, So that gives a little idea. Yeah,
Speaker 10: what a character to be wearing a kilt. But he's
Speaker 10: a winner for me. I'll have to talk to him,
Speaker 10: you know, just to say hello at some point. But
Speaker 10: I can just hear him say, you know, he's the
Speaker 10: you know, the dog. You know he's he calls himself dog.
Speaker 10: You know, he's the dog of of American literature.
Speaker 1: Well, mister Harris, thank you so much. I really cannot
Speaker 1: tell you how much I appreciate you taking this time
Speaker 1: to talk to me today. Call me Jimmy, Jimmy, thanks,
Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well it's fun for me too, you know, I just
Speaker 10: get a kick out of it. I hope there's an
Speaker 10: awful lot of stuff that you have to deal with.
Speaker 1: We are back and we were talking about cop and Rod.
Speaker 1: I believe you mentioned before the earlier version of Blood
Speaker 1: on the Moon, which was called La Death Trip. And
Speaker 1: it was very interesting reading last night about why that
Speaker 1: book is the way that it is, and that this
Speaker 1: was Elroy having done those two books that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: Andrew Clandestine and Brown's Requiem. He did that for I
Speaker 1: think Avon and then he said either he lost his
Speaker 1: contract or he tried to sell La Death Trip to
Speaker 1: them and they said no fucking way. And he tried
Speaker 1: seventeen different publishers to get La Death Trip made before
Speaker 1: he ended up meeting with Mysterious Press and Mysterious Press
Speaker 1: Otto and I can't remember the other guy's name. They
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, no, this isn't going to fly the
Speaker 1: way it is, but there is a book here, so
Speaker 1: let's try to get the book out of La Draft
Speaker 1: Trip because man, oh man, what four hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: three pages and you can see the bones of Blood
Speaker 1: on the Moon inside of there, but it goes in
Speaker 1: a lot of other ways. So Rod, it sounds like
Speaker 1: you read this one. Do you want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about your impressions of La Death Trip.
Speaker 5: I didn't really care for it because it is the
Speaker 5: bones are I mean, the flesh that's on them is
Speaker 5: really similar to what we actually got in Blood on
Speaker 5: the Moon, but it is also different. It's like the
Speaker 5: same sort of things happen, they just are told differently
Speaker 5: or expanded upon in ways that you know, then we're
Speaker 5: trimmed down, Like I somewhat confused the two. I don't
Speaker 5: remember exactly what I read from Death Trip versus Blood
Speaker 5: and Moon, but I just remembered not really liking Death Trip.
Speaker 5: I'm having trouble putting it into words. But what's weird
Speaker 5: about that is both the books. Both those books have
Speaker 5: shared some of the same dialogue that then Harris copies
Speaker 5: pastes into his script for Cop Like there are scenes
Speaker 5: where the dialogue is, if not one hundred ninety percent
Speaker 5: the same Ellie death trip, it feels undisciplined. I didn't
Speaker 5: compare the page numbers to see how they work out
Speaker 5: that way, like if one is considerably longer than the other,
Speaker 5: but it just seems to go on more tangents. I
Speaker 5: feel like, I know I wouldn't have read another another
Speaker 5: book in that series if it had come out.
Speaker 1: Well, there was no Lloyd Hopkins to go back to.
Speaker 5: That's the big change. He grenades himself to death, I
Speaker 5: guess though he's trying.
Speaker 1: To kill Dutch and all of the helicopter pilots and
Speaker 1: all of the cops, he's basically taking out innocent bystanders
Speaker 1: and victims. At the end of the book, you're like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing, Lloyd, Like he just wants to
Speaker 1: burn it all down. I know that Elroy himself has
Speaker 1: talked about how the book ends with La on fire,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, not La, like just around
Speaker 1: that power station at Silver Lake again. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't all of LA though. You get that apocalypse more.
Speaker 1: I think with the opening, well, one of the opening
Speaker 1: scenes with the Watts riot, which is interesting. How many
Speaker 1: books of el Roy's begin with riots that happen in
Speaker 1: LA Because I want to say that La Confidential starts
Speaker 1: either La Confidential or maybe Black Dalia starts.
Speaker 4: The two cop characters bomb during the zoot Suit roots.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's interesting how many of these books start
Speaker 1: with that. And it's not two guys that rape Teddy,
Speaker 1: it's five guys. So we kind of blow that out
Speaker 1: and then we meet Catherine really early in the book.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a lot of war stuff too, which I
Speaker 5: didn't think works very well. I don't know, it seems
Speaker 5: like a different genre. I generally don't like war stories
Speaker 5: in general, so I'm kind of maybe predisposed to disliking it.
Speaker 5: But I didn't feel like you added anything.
Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting because that's also going back to La Confidential.
Speaker 1: The whole thing of Exley in World War Two, like
Speaker 1: that's his secret shame of how he survived by pretending
Speaker 1: to be a dead body, or like crawling under a
Speaker 1: whole heap of dead bodies, and that's how he I
Speaker 1: think he ends up winning like the Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: or something, because they think he's the hero of this battle.
Speaker 1: But he actually hid under all of these bodies, and
Speaker 1: that's the secret he carries around at all times.
Speaker 5: I probably shouldn't have read both books the same day.
Speaker 5: They really do bleed together.
Speaker 1: They do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, those details like yeah, the five guys versus two,
Speaker 5: those are the things that it didn't immediately come to
Speaker 5: mind until you mentioned it. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Including two beaners, as el Roight would say. Jesus, you
Speaker 1: learned so many new racial epithets when you read James
Speaker 1: right books.
Speaker 5: Also just sexual like wiener wagging and things like that.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan of the term fuck pad. That's
Speaker 4: my favorite eer roy esque term.
Speaker 5: White. He is introduced as an albino Robert Mitcham Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again, I mean Elroy's almost a bit of
Speaker 4: a sort of bit more of a sad character now,
Speaker 4: I think, I mean a bit of a bit of
Speaker 4: a bit of a talking want to be headline. And
Speaker 4: you know he's got that whole He's got that film
Speaker 4: coming out, el Roy Versus l I where I mean,
Speaker 4: I think, is there any aspect of his life he
Speaker 4: hasn't dredged up for profit? But you know, obviously that
Speaker 4: on the other side of it, you know, the guy
Speaker 4: blew It's incredibly hard working and blew a massive hole
Speaker 4: in the middle of what we thought crime fiction could
Speaker 4: be in the in the nineteen eighties. And I mean
Speaker 4: it's a function of the fact that he's so influential
Speaker 4: that he's never been canceled because he has influenced most
Speaker 4: major crime writers working today would have been influenced by
Speaker 4: all war and fair enough too. I mean the guy,
Speaker 4: as I say, he blew a massive hole in the
Speaker 4: middle of what we thought crime fiction could.
Speaker 5: Be, such a mythic figure, and it was surprising to
Speaker 5: me yesterday to realize this cop came out in the
Speaker 5: eighty eight and he'dn't even been writing books for like
Speaker 5: less than a decade by then, I think, or at
Speaker 5: least published less than a decade. I mean, he hadn't
Speaker 5: been writing that long publist author that long. And it
Speaker 5: just seems like he looms so large in the world
Speaker 5: of crime fiction and pop culture, you know as a whole,
Speaker 5: that he seems one of those guys who have been
Speaker 5: at it since the fifties. I mean, he's obviously not
Speaker 5: he's not that age, but he seems like he should
Speaker 5: have been. Like it's just amazing to me that he wasn't.
Speaker 5: He's relatively new in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Brown's Requiem came out in eighty one, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if he made his bones doing short stories
Speaker 1: or not, because I know he's definitely done a lot
Speaker 1: of short.
Speaker 4: Stories also my knowledge, I mean he was banging out.
Speaker 4: He was banging Brown's Recreem Clandestine, as you said. And
Speaker 4: then those three Floyd Hopkins books, none of which that's
Speaker 4: five books, none of which did well. So he's also
Speaker 4: had a dream run. So he's also had a good
Speaker 4: good run. I mean, most crime fiction authors today wouldn't
Speaker 4: be able to do, you know, I wouldn't be able
Speaker 4: to have five failed books and just keep on going,
Speaker 4: which is a problem with where crime fiction is at
Speaker 4: at the moment.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't think I've read any of his books
Speaker 1: since the called six thousand back in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got Bloods of Rover, I can see
Speaker 1: it right here, and somebody gave that to me, or
Speaker 1: maybe the book committed sent it to me. But anyway,
Speaker 1: they've had that since two thousand and nine, and still
Speaker 1: haven't read that one.
Speaker 4: And I did, like Bloods are over, and I tried
Speaker 4: reading Perfidiou. I think I've got one hundred pages into
Speaker 4: the Fidya and I just thought, I can't this is garbage.
Speaker 4: I don't like it. And I did read what was
Speaker 4: the book that he did was sid on Sid Hutchins,
Speaker 4: the hush hush journalist. Was it widespread panic?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, they call that the fred Otash spread Otash.
Speaker 4: Sorry, not so not Sid Hutchins. It was fred fred Otash.
Speaker 4: And again I just thought, this is just a kind
Speaker 4: of a variation on a theme. You know, I'm not
Speaker 4: really getting a lot out of this. So I haven't
Speaker 4: gone to any of his books. I haven't read any
Speaker 4: I haven't read how was it After the Dead, Usual,
Speaker 4: After the Fall or whatever, the sequel to Perfidio. And
Speaker 4: then there was another one after that. I haven't read
Speaker 4: any of those. And there's big books, you know, you
Speaker 4: really got to commit yourself.
Speaker 5: The most recent one I read, which was over Covid,
Speaker 5: wasn't even a novel. It was his book Crime Wave,
Speaker 5: which is a collection of short stories and reporting, like
Speaker 5: I think specifically for it's either Esquire or GQ with JQ. Yeah,
Speaker 5: those are excellent. I think those are those articles are fantastic.
Speaker 5: The way he does journalism, it kind of gets to
Speaker 5: what you were seeing in earlier about the how he
Speaker 5: shows the the procedural aspects of being a cop. I
Speaker 5: just I think think like how he approaches journalism too.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's not the first crime writer to mine
Speaker 4: LA history for a crime fiction book, but he the
Speaker 4: materials he was using, old cop files, old tabloid magazines,
Speaker 4: old pop novels, retired cops. I think that's that was
Speaker 4: part of the innovation. That and that and that world
Speaker 4: he created from that was also part of his you
Speaker 4: know innovation. I mean everyone does that now, but I
Speaker 4: don't think so many people were doing it before Elroy
Speaker 4: was doing it. I just wish he wasn't to use
Speaker 4: his terminology so much of a shipbird these days, because,
Speaker 4: as I say, I want to be really clear, I
Speaker 4: mean I love Elroy. I mean there's el Roy books
Speaker 4: I will still reread. I've read The Big Nowhere at
Speaker 4: least five times, and I think it's you know, that's
Speaker 4: his Red Scare novel, his second book in the in
Speaker 4: the On These, in the in the Quintet series, and
Speaker 4: I just think he's brilliant. But I also think he's
Speaker 4: had a really good run, and he's as I say,
Speaker 4: he had five really poorly selling books that he still
Speaker 4: kept getting opportunities. Then he had the Hollywood scriptwriting gravy train,
Speaker 4: which is that's kind of dead now, and then he
Speaker 4: had a glossy magazine, GQ, sending him all over America
Speaker 4: to report on true crime story. So he's also none
Speaker 4: of those things exists anymore, and he's written every single
Speaker 4: one of those right waves, and good on him. He's
Speaker 4: a hard worker, but I don't I don't see him
Speaker 4: as some sort of outside demon dog. You know, this
Speaker 4: persona that he cultivates now is kind of annoying. I mean,
Speaker 4: the only outside I think about him now as everyone
Speaker 4: kind of knows he's a racist. I mean that's.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed him twice now, and both times is just
Speaker 1: he's so difficult and he just has clinging to that
Speaker 1: persona the whole time that he just wants to be disagreeable,
Speaker 1: and it's like, can you just give me an interview.
Speaker 7: I am.
Speaker 1: I am a fan of your work. I've been reading
Speaker 1: your work since the late nineties if net earlier, and
Speaker 1: I really like what I'm reading and I would love
Speaker 1: to talk to you about your stuff. But he just
Speaker 1: gets to be you know, I think I commented on
Speaker 1: your Instagram or blue Skuy the other day. It's like
Speaker 1: he's king Curmudgeon. He's just like the most curmudgeonly author
Speaker 1: that there is out there. And it's like, well, this
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything for me, and it doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: it's doing anything for you, so like, why are we
Speaker 1: even doing this? So I was kind of like, I
Speaker 1: would like to talk to you about cop but at
Speaker 1: the same time, you're just going to tell me how
Speaker 1: much you dislike adaptations of your work. It's the same thing.
Speaker 4: And he's done well and he's and he's canon. So
Speaker 4: I stopped winchy because really, you are you know, and
Speaker 4: you you've also managed to sc a fairly nasty cancel,
Speaker 4: so you know, if we go back and read the
Speaker 4: stuff in your book. I mean, I'm not saying that
Speaker 4: he should be canceled, but I'm not I was kind
Speaker 4: of waiting for it to happen. It never did because
Speaker 4: the guy's so influential, because all the crime writers who
Speaker 4: would potentially cancel him have also been influenced by him. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, the other guys, the guy's so so important
Speaker 4: in that crime fiction culture. I don't know what he
Speaker 4: thinks about the adaptation of Cop. I know he he's
Speaker 4: bagged out of La.
Speaker 1: Confidential, which is crazy to me.
Speaker 4: Insane because it's such a as you as you said, Rod,
Speaker 4: it's such a good film. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 4: don't think it's Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 5: It's it's not only that it's a I think I've
Speaker 5: seen it three times and it's a movie that gets better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree, I totally agree. I totally agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see echoes. I mean watching Cop again
Speaker 1: a few months ago before I interviewed Harris again and
Speaker 1: the scene with Whitey comes up where he's playing rush
Speaker 1: and Roulette or you know, Hopkins is playing Russian Roulette
Speaker 1: with him kind of, I mean, basically just holding a
Speaker 1: gun with one bullet in the chamber and pulling it.
Speaker 1: And my wife's like, is this an el Roy adaptation?
Speaker 1: Because she's thinking of the scene with Bud white in
Speaker 1: the Police department where he's doing that same thing with
Speaker 1: the black suspect, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, actually this
Speaker 1: is so and that it's funny. In the book, I
Speaker 1: think Whitey says, you know, oh you had a blank
Speaker 1: in there, right, and it's like, yeah, no, Lloyd Hopkins
Speaker 1: does not play Russian Roulette with blankstike you very much.
Speaker 1: And instead of Hopkins shooting him, he basically says like,
Speaker 1: your career's over, leaves the house, and then can hear
Speaker 1: a shot from inside the house, which is amazing restraint
Speaker 1: for an Elroy passage.
Speaker 5: You reminded me of the first scene of this movie,
Speaker 5: which plays out over opening credits, the you know, completely
Speaker 5: like we see nothing. It's just black black screen. You
Speaker 5: see the titles and names and things, and it's a
Speaker 5: black guy calling an operator on a payphone to report
Speaker 5: the murder. And it's a recording like thank you for calling,
Speaker 5: and the guy keeps talking to it like it's a person.
Speaker 5: Oh you're welcome. It's so insulting the way that that
Speaker 5: the way that they play that. But also it's been
Speaker 5: a while since I have even seen a payphone. But
Speaker 5: I didn't think you needed quarters to call the operator.
Speaker 1: I don't think you do or to call nine to
Speaker 1: one one.
Speaker 5: But he did. That's another thing entirely, and I don't.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's not in the book, so that's purely
Speaker 5: a Harris invention.
Speaker 1: It's more of a tweaker that calls them.
Speaker 5: I don't like it. I don't like it at all.
Speaker 5: I also don't like how many scenes Harris puts in
Speaker 5: a Woods eating in this, because he's eating a lot,
Speaker 5: and one of them in particular, the sound is like
Speaker 5: upped and you get a lot of mouth noise. That's
Speaker 5: just disgusting.
Speaker 4: Poor dietary choices too.
Speaker 5: He eats more than Leslie and Warren smokes.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's it a lot.
Speaker 5: I mean, James Woods does a lot of phone acting
Speaker 5: in this. You know, where he's talking on the phone
Speaker 5: when no one else is on the other line. You know,
Speaker 5: it's one of those things I would not have noticed before.
Speaker 5: I don't think he gives long enough pauses for you know,
Speaker 5: the other end to say what that he should have said.
Speaker 5: But he's still pretty convincing at it. He does a
Speaker 5: fairly good job. But there are times though in this
Speaker 5: where he is so hammy. I think it comes through
Speaker 5: in particular on the one scene with his wife where
Speaker 5: they're arguing and he gives that speech that you read, Mike,
Speaker 5: he kind of overdoes it, I think in that scene.
Speaker 5: But for the most part, I think like this is
Speaker 5: probably my favorite James Wood performance. James Woods.
Speaker 4: That's interesting. That's interesting.
Speaker 5: It's definitely the one I've seen the most.
Speaker 4: Watching Woods in this made me want to revisit Salvador,
Speaker 4: which is possibly, I think probably my favorite.
Speaker 5: Well, and it made me one like I've never seen
Speaker 5: the onion field speak and also to speak of another
Speaker 5: La Creme writer, Joseph Wambaugh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I always think of that big serial killer from Mindhunter,
Speaker 1: Ed Kemper.
Speaker 5: Do you know.
Speaker 1: Joseph Wambaugh, Please three you go to.
Speaker 5: Watch that, huge fan. I got a lot of my
Speaker 5: insights right there.
Speaker 1: Really, I would not allow myself to walk into a
Speaker 1: trap because I knew exactly how their minds work from
Speaker 1: watching Wombaugh.
Speaker 5: I forgot about that. He even mentions that seen that
Speaker 5: twice that series twice, and I totally forgot about that.
Speaker 1: I just love the end that whole season with the
Speaker 1: BTK killer. That's so good. But we'll get another season
Speaker 1: of whatever you know anytime it's like, oh please.
Speaker 5: Oh the last thing. And I wanted to ask you
Speaker 5: guys this when James Woods and his daughter the exchange
Speaker 5: they have and they do give me five on the side.
Speaker 5: And I've never heard this part of it. Cut the pickle,
Speaker 5: you owe me a nickel? Have you ever heard that
Speaker 5: before other than the movie? I did never.
Speaker 4: No, that's not a common sign in Australia.
Speaker 1: No, I can't say I've ever heard of that. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and take another break and play a
Speaker 1: preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Speaker 3: For pays for.
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Speaker 1: That's right, We'll be back next week with the Lengo Leaders.
Speaker 1: Till then, I want to thank my co host Andrew
Speaker 1: and Rod. So, Andrew, what is the latest with you, sir?
Speaker 4: I have a project I'm working on at the moment,
Speaker 4: another book for PM Press, but I probably shouldn't say
Speaker 4: anything about it just yet, kind of follow on from
Speaker 4: Revolution in thirty five millimeters but different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever you write, I'll buy, and so just keep writing.
Speaker 4: I appreciate I appreciate it, and right.
Speaker 1: How about yourself?
Speaker 5: Still flick Attack dot com with film reviews, The Flick
Speaker 5: Attack movie Arsenal Book one still available price to sell
Speaker 5: at Amazon dot com and soon Flick a Tech Movie
Speaker 5: Arsenal Book two will be out. I'm sure I was
Speaker 5: hoping to have it by Christmas, but it's probably going
Speaker 5: to be more like Spring of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: This will come out the day before Thanksgiving because there's
Speaker 1: nothing better to talk about the day before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5: So on Thanksgiving, on Black Friday, you should go to
Speaker 5: Amazon dot com and you could buy book one and
Speaker 5: it will still be under twenty dollars for a huge
Speaker 5: phone book size compinium of reviews and articles, which Mike
Speaker 5: White graciously blurbed.
Speaker 1: You're doing the lord's work, Rod, So I appreciate everything,
Speaker 1: so were you well. Thank you so much guys for
Speaker 1: being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. You
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Speaker 1: Projection Booth take over this rotten, stinking world.
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Speaker 13: He's no man at all, don't want you anymore, don't cook?
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