L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed, produced, and co-written by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay, by Hanson and Brian Helgeland, is based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. The film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.
At the time, actors Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe were relatively unknown in North America. One of the film's backers, Peter Dennett, was worried about the lack of established stars in the lead roles, but supported Hanson's casting decisions, and Hanson had the confidence to also recruit Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, and Danny DeVito.
L.A. Confidential premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 1997, and was released by Warner Bros. on September 19, 1997. The film was a critical and commercial success. It grossed $126.2 million against a $35 million budget and received critical acclaim for the acting, writing, directing, editing, and Jerry Goldsmith's musical score. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning two: Best Supporting Actress (Basinger) and Best Adapted Screenplay; Titanic won in every other category for which L.A. Confidential was nominated. In 2015, the Library of Congress selected L.A. Confidential for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot In 1953, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) aims to improve its public image following decades of corruption. Career-focused sergeant Edmund Exley lives in the shadow of his legendary detective father, whose murderer was never identified; Exley names the suspect "Rollo Tomasi", representing any criminal who escapes justice. Fame-seeking narcotics sergeant Jack Vincennes collaborates with tabloid journalist Sid Hudgens to perform high-profile celebrity arrests, and volatile officer Wendell White uses violence to interrogate and intimidate suspects, particularly women-abusers, because his father murdered his mother.
On Christmas Eve, White encounters high-class prostitutes Lynn Bracken and Susan Lefferts, and former officer Leland Meeks. They work for Pierce Patchett, a businessman operating a prostitution ring supplying women surgically altered to resemble film stars. White begins a relationship with Bracken. After the "Bloody Christmas" scandal—involving drunken officers beating inmates—Exley is promoted to detective lieutenant for advising his superiors to save the department's reputation by dismissing only securely pensioned officers. Exley coerces Vincennes to testify, while White refuses to comply and is suspended. White's partner, Dick Stensland, is fired for his involvement, making other officers hostile toward Exley. After powerful gangster Mickey Cohen is imprisoned, police captain Dudley Smith recruits White to frighten off criminals attempting to take Cohen's place. A spate of murders targeting Cohen's underlings leads to the disappearance of of his heroin.
Exley investigates a massacre at the Nite Owl coffee house, with Stensland and Lefferts among the victims. Three felons are arrested for the crime, and interrogation reveals they have been raping a captive woman. White rushes to free the woman and executes her captor, planting evidence to suggest he acted in self-defense. The felons escape the station and are killed by Exley in the ensuing shootout, closing the case and earning him a medal for bravery. However, unable to ignore inconsistencies in the case, Exley and White continue the investigation independently. White interviews Lefferts's mother and discovers Meeks's body beneath her house. He interrogates Cohen's ex-bodyguard, Johnny Stompanato, who reveals Meeks was trying to sell the stolen heroin.
Hudgens and Vincennes orchestrate a homosexual tryst between struggling actor Matt Reynolds and district attorney Ellis Loew to create blackmail photos. But after Reynolds is found murdered, a guilt-ridden Vincennes joins Exley's investigation. Vincennes learns that Meeks and Stensland formerly worked under Smith, and dropped an investigation into Patchett and Hudgens blackmailing prominent businessmen with photos of their illicit trysts. He then confronts Smith, who shoots him dead. With his last breath, Vincennes says, "Rollo Tomasi."
Exley becomes suspicious when Smith asks him about "Rollo Tomasi", a name Exley disclosed only to Vincennes. Smith arranges for White to find photos that Hudgens took of Bracken having sex with Exley. Enraged, White fights Exley until they realize that their investigations implicate Smith. They deduce that Stensland killed Meeks for the heroin, and Smith orchestrated the Nite Owl massacre to kill Stensland and framed the felons. Exley and White interrogate Loew, discovering that Smith and Patchett are taking over Cohen's empire and blackmailed Loew to force his cooperation. Exley and White later find Hudgens and Patchett murdered.
Smith lures Exley and White into a remote ambush. Though badly wounded, the pair kill Smith's men. Smith offers to mislead the approaching police and further promote Exley, but Exley executes him to prevent him from avoiding punishment. Despite Exley's evidence, LAPD officials decide to protect the department's image by claiming Smith died a hero; Exley agrees to cooperate as a second "hero" for further accolades. Outside city hall, Exley says goodbye to Bracken and White before they leave for Arizona.
Cast
Production
Development Curtis Hanson had read half a dozen of James Ellroy's books before L.A. Confidential and was drawn to its characters, not the plot. He said, "What hooked me on them was that, as I met them, one after the other, I didn't like them—but as I continued reading, I started to care about them." Ellroy's novel also made Hanson think about Los Angeles and provided him with an opportunity to "set a movie at a point in time when the whole dream of Los Angeles, from that apparently golden era of the '20s and '30s, was being bulldozed."
Screenwriter Brian Helgeland was originally signed to Warner Bros. to write a Viking film with director Uli Edel and then worked on an unproduced modern-day King Arthur story. Helgeland was a longtime fan of Ellroy's novels. When he heard that Warner Bros. had acquired the rights to L.A. Confidential in 1990, he lobbied to script the film, but the studio was then talking only to well-known screenwriters. When he finally got a meeting, it was canceled two days before it was to occur.
Helgeland found that Hanson had been hired to direct and met with him while the filmmaker was making The River Wild. They found that they not only shared a love for Ellroy's fiction but also agreed on how to adapt Confidential into a film. According to Helgeland, they had to "remove every scene from the book that didn't have the three main cops in it, and then to work from those scenes out." According to Hanson, he "wanted the audience to be challenged but at the same time I didn't want them to get lost." They worked on the script together for two years, with Hanson turning down jobs and Helgeland writing seven drafts for free.
The two men also got Ellroy's approval. He had seen Hanson's films The Bedroom Window and Bad Influence, and found him "a competent and interesting storyteller", but was not convinced that his book would be made into a film until he talked to the eventual director. He later said, "They preserved the basic integrity of the book and its main theme. Brian and Curtis took a work of fiction that had eight plotlines, reduced those to three, and retained the dramatic force of three men working out their destiny."
Warner Bros. executive Bill Gerber showed the script to Michael Nathanson, CEO of New Regency Productions, which had a deal with the studio. Nathanson loved it, but they had to get the approval of New Regency's owner, Arnon Milchan. Hanson prepared a presentation that consisted of 15 vintage postcards and pictures of Los Angeles mounted on posterboards, and made his pitch to Milchan. The pictures consisted of orange groves, beaches, tract homes in the San Fernando Valley, and the opening of the Hollywood Freeway to symbolize the image of prosperity sold to the public.
In the pitch, Hanson showed the darker side of Ellroy's novel by presenting the cover of scandal rag Confidential and the famous shot of Robert Mitchum coming out of jail after his marijuana bust. He also had photographs of jazz musicians Zoot Sims, Gerry Mulligan, and Chet Baker to represent the popular music of the time. Hanson emphasized that the period detail would be in the background and the characters in the foreground. Milchan was impressed with his presentation and agreed to finance it.
Casting Hanson had seen Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper and found him "repulsive and scary, but captivating". The actor had read Ellroy's The Black Dahlia but not L.A. Confidential. When he read the script, Crowe was drawn to Bud White's "self-righteous moral crusade". Crowe fit the visual preconception of Bud. Hanson put the actor on tape doing a few scenes from the script and showed it to the film's producers, who agreed to cast him as Bud.
Guy Pearce auditioned, and Hanson felt that he "was very much what I had in mind for Ed Exley." The director purposely did not watch the actor in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, afraid that it might influence his decision. As he did with Crowe, Hanson taped Pearce and showed it to the producers, who agreed he should be cast as Ed. Pearce did not like Ed when he first read the screenplay and remarked, "I was pretty quick to judge him and dislike him for being so self-righteous ... But I liked how honest he became about himself. I knew I could grow to respect and understand him."
Milchan was against casting "two Australians" in the American period piece (Pearce wryly noted in a later interview that while he and Crowe grew up in Australia, he was born in England to a New Zealand father, while the Māori Crowe is a New Zealander too). Crowe and Pearce were also relative unknowns in North America, and Milchan was equally worried about the lack of film stars in the lead roles. But he supported Hanson's casting decisions and this gave the director the confidence to approach Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey. Hanson cast Crowe and Pearce because he wanted to "replicate my experience of the book. You don't like any of these characters at first, but the deeper you get into their story, the more you begin to sympathize with them. I didn't want actors audiences knew and already liked."
A third Australian actor unknown to American audiences at the time, Simon Baker, later to star in the television series The Mentalist, was cast in the smaller but noteworthy role of Matt Reynolds, a doomed young bisexual actor. He was billed as Simon Baker Denny in the film's credits.
Hanson felt that the character of Jack Vincennes was "a movie star among cops", and thought of Spacey, with his "movie-star charisma," casting him specifically against type. Hanson was confident that Spacey "could play the man behind that veneer, the man who also lost his soul," and when he gave him the script, he told him to think of Dean Martin while in the role. Hanson cast Basinger because he felt that she "was the character to me. What beauty today could project the glamour of Hollywood's golden age?"
Pre-production