Become a backer of Daniel or Jack to get exclusive access to a new bonus episode. Becoming a patron also brings access to all other bonus episodes. To start 2022, we chat about Curtis Hanson's 1997 period thriller L.A. Confidential, starring Kim Basinger, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, fetus Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, pre-exposure Kevin Spacey, and Danny DeVito, and based on the James Ellroy novel of the same name. Content warnings, spoilers for movie and Ellroy's books. L.A. Confidential (film) - Wikipedia Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month. IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_ IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1
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I did admire how well it managed to shift gears.
Even if we don't know exactly why we're at any particular location at any given time, It's sort of re-explained in the scene a little bit there.
There are enough kind of clues that you sort of get the, and so you can sort of follow along an emotional logic, even if you're kind of lost in some of the, you know, you missed exactly what piece of evidence led, you know, Bud White to Pierce Pratchett or whatever, you know, like you're reminded by, you know, sort of subtle dialogue cues in the individual sequences.
And I think that's one of the strengths of the film is that it manages to You never really lose your place, despite the fact that it's, you know, three intricate plot lines that are kind of intersecting in, you know, complicated ways with three, well, really four kind of main characters who each have their own, you know, kind of problems and have, you know, moral shades of gray, et cetera, et cetera.
So, yeah, no, it's very intricate.
And I think that's what really struck me upon seeing it the first time, because I saw I would have seen it on like pay-per-view back in You know, 97 or 98 when it was when it was out.
And yeah, made it made a huge impression on me immediately, just just based on it's based on, well, everything that's great about it.
I mean, I think this is a you know, I think this is a kind of an unheralded masterpiece.
I think I think people have kind of largely forgotten it today, but it is absolutely worth a rewatch.
I mean, I think this is one of the better films we've covered in the series so far.
Yeah, certainly.
It was it was very big at the time.
I remember it did very well in award ceremonies, you know, it did.
Kim basically won her Oscar for it, yeah.
Yeah.
And I think I think it did win Best Adapted Screenplay.
Best Adapted Screenplay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which fits in very well with what you were just saying, because it is a very it's a it's a masterclass in that despite the fact that there's watching it again now.
There's there's actually quite a few things in it that jumped out of me, jumped out at me as in retrospect, a tad cornball.
You know, and even like it starts, it starts with a massive info dump, with a voiceover info dump and a theme dump as well.
Basically, it starts with Danny DeVito explaining the backstory and themes of the film to you.
So it's breaking sort of screenwriting rules right from the start.
But it's one of those things that gets away with stuff like that because it does it with a swagger, you know.
Firstly, it's Danny DeVito doing it and it's got like the swing band in the background and the Very post JFK sort of montage of contemporary, you know, stock footage from the time, etc.
And it just pulls it off.
And it was very, it was very popular at the time.
And I think it's, it's partly that sort of That Hollywood being interested in movies about movies and movies about things.
It's very in.
It's very about Hollywood.
Yeah.
And it was very 90s, like it's very much of that moment of, you know, we're just allowed to do this now because, you know, the The indie movie scene allows us to do this, despite the fact that this is very old-fashioned Hollywood in a lot of ways.
This doesn't feel like a Tarantino ripoff.
This is something a lot more straight-laced, but it partakes in a lot of the same sort of narrative techniques of kind of playing with some of the time and space and allowing things to sort of be left unsaid and some of the breaking of fourth walls.
It's playing with a lot of those same things that the indie directors, the big kind of hit directors were doing at that point.
So I think that strikes me again upon this rewatch as well.
I think it does owe a kind of attenuated debt to Tarantino because Tarantino does.
But certainly those first two movies, particularly Pulp Fiction, it spawned kind of this craze of, you know, quite low budget indie movies with, you know, quirky humor and metatextual stuff centered on crime.
I mean, there was a lot of dross in there.
It seems like it seemed like a while after Pulp Fiction, they were You know, a hundred movies every week that were some new quirky caper, crime caper drama thing, you know?
It's a bunch of people trying to ape Tarantino without understanding what Tarantino did right, you know?
And yeah, I mean, it's been said, you know, like they're basically, you know, Pulp Fiction is one of those, like, fulcrum points that you can make crime films before Pulp Fiction.
And you can make crime films after Pulp Fiction.
But at some point, if you're making a crime film after Pulp Fiction, you're in some way referencing Pulp Fiction.
Even if you're doing something completely the opposite, you're still living in that world because it was just that influential a film on, you know, just the way that these kinds of movies got made.
Yeah, you've got to react to it.
You've got to deal with it in some way.
And I think that's something similar is true about JFK, which we've talked about elsewhere.
And that came out in 91, 92.
And I think it's sort of from JFK onwards.
I think if you were going to make a movie about the the past, you know, the early 20th century past or mid 20th century past, you kind of had to, in some sense, deal with JFK, because one of the things that we talked about when we talked about JFK was that one of the things that's Aside from its actual sort of empirical claims, it is brilliant at summoning up the feeling of the past, isn't it?
On screen, aesthetically.
And I think LA Confidential, you can see that in this as well.
Right.
I mean, it very, I mean, it looks, I mean, obviously, I was not alive in 1953 or whatever year this is actually supposed to be set.
It's a little, it's a little nebulous at times, exactly what here it's supposed to be.
