James Ellroy
American crime writer and essayistWikipedia
28
MENTIONS
21
EPISODES
20
PODCASTS
Search complete. 28 mentions across 21 episodes found for "James Ellroy".
Sep 28, 2026
speaker_7HOST
Beautiful chaos.
speaker_6HOST
Which leads us to the next book in this category, LA Confidential by James Ellroy, published in 1990.
speaker_7HOST
A monumental achievement in the noir genre.
speaker_6HOST
Yeah, and we should probably clarify what we mean by noir in this context.
speaker_7HOST
You'd think so, yes.
speaker_6HOST
We are taught that writers need to hold the reader's hand, ensure the plot mechanics are clear, make sure nobody gets lost in the weeds.
speaker_6HOST
If James Ellroy is essentially sprinting ahead, throwing names, betrayals and plot twists over his shoulder and leaving you in the dust, how does that create a flow state?
speaker_7HOST
It sounds frustrating, right?
speaker_1HOST
Let's start in the gritty, corrupt underworld of 1950s Los Angeles.
speaker_1HOST
Number ten, the 1990 novel LA Confidential by James Ellroy, narrated by Jeff Harding.
speaker_2HOST
Urquhart establishes right away that trying to summarize the plot of LA Confidential is practically a nightmare.
speaker_1HOST
It's so convoluted.
speaker_1HOST
Urquhart even points out that the sheer complexity of this sprawling plot meant it was a much greater undertaking for a narrator than something shorter and slightly simpler like Ellroy's earlier novel, The Black Dahlia.
speaker_2HOST
Definitely a step up in difficulty.
speaker_1HOST
Also, James Ellroy has a very specific way of writing.
speaker_1HOST
It's often described as telegraphic.
JonahHOST
You know, there's...
JonahHOST
There's stories by like Raymond Chandler and James Elroy and Dashiell Hammett, like some of the big names, you kind of just assume a lot of things that are pulled from pulp magazines and short story collections.
JonahHOST
The story that this is based on the episode we're talking about today is like a 20 odd page short story that was published in a magazine.
JonahHOST
So things that work for half an hour plots.
Liam CarmeloHOST
of bank robbers and they go to it.
Liam CarmeloHOST
And I did write just like flash notes where almost like James Elroy in bullet points, I say the brilliance of the raid on the surf Nazis place.
Liam CarmeloHOST
We start by seeing it through the cracks of the blinds.
Liam CarmeloHOST
The radio can't be heard as a lot more starts up the arsenal of weapons in the house, human shields, Tom Sizemore, Utah, nearly getting his face pushed into a lot more blade.
Phillip BogolubHOST
I didn't even know this version of me existed.
Phillip BogolubHOST
And, you know, I'm working with, you know, these two, the James Elroy books and Chuck Dixon stuff and all this other stuff.
Phillip BogolubHOST
And now things are working even bigger with some other projects, my own short stories and things that keep moving and moving and moving and moving.
Phillip BogolubHOST
And it's, it's a matter of fact of there were a lot of sleepless nights and that i sat up and worried how can i how am i going to do this i'm not making anything um how long do i want to do this i'm not making anything how much more do i how much further do i want to do with this i'm not making anything and you know i'm still not really making anything financially speaking but you have to have that plan you have to have to understand that working harder whether you have more or less doesn't necessarily mean success
ScottHOST
I live in that ...
ScottHOST
That's why I love the author James Ellroy so much.
ScottHOST
He sai- he put it perfectly.
ScottHOST
He said, "I live in the past."
9 MINS LATER
ScottHOST
pretty much unintelligible.
ScottHOST
That's too bad.
ScottHOST
Um, she, she, she, she goes, she comes on and she goes, "Our guest is blah, blah, blah, author of, uh, the author of, uh, two books called American..." I think it was called American Monsters and American Monsters 2.
ScottHOST
And here's, here's my point.
Keith PhippsHOST
wants to take this on? Let's do a little bit of origin story here.
Keith PhippsHOST
This movie is directed by Ron Shelton, and it came out of another movie he did called Deep Blue, which originally started as a James Ellroy screenplay.
Keith PhippsHOST
It evolved.
Keith PhippsHOST
And during that, he consulted with a cop named Robert Souza, who told him all these stories about working Hollywood homicide, including also working as a real estate agent on the side.
Keith PhippsHOST
So this kind of comes out as like the comic B side to Deep Blue.
Keith PhippsHOST
And I remember I was really looking forward to Deep Blue because I generally like Ron Shelton.
Keith PhippsHOST
I'm a James Ellroy fan.
Keith PhippsHOST
It looked good.
Andre HardyGUEST
And he's like, oh my God.
Patrick MillikinHOST
You know James Elroy's books? Some of you, LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia.
Patrick MillikinHOST
I always describe reading an Elroy book, it's like just when you think you've gotten to the darkest level of depravity, he'll peel back another layer on you.
Patrick MillikinHOST
And what Coltrane gets into is the sex trafficking, the prostitution.
Black Box NedHOST
That was a fictitious novel, and I really didn't think that you guys... would be to do keen on that.
Black Box NedHOST
So feel free to check out James Ellroy's book if you're curious, but this is mostly a true crime channel, even though I have talked about fictitious works in the past, mostly from the sense of how people choose to portray the killer, like how do they choose to imagine the killer, because that can heavily relate to profiling.
Black Box NedHOST
as opposed to the elements of the story.
Black Box NedHOST
I mean, this just might not be the best fit for talking about elements of a fictitious story on Dahlia Thursday.
Jake SerwinGUEST
And that's another air.
Jake SerwinGUEST
I mean, James Ellroy, he's got a little more panache to him.
Jake SerwinGUEST
He's also like a, a huge, like racist piece of shit.
Jake SerwinGUEST
But, uh, but he's got panache he's got panache to his writing but it's you know that book is on the shelf next to blood work and next to I mean true crime probably not next to midnight in the garden of good and evil it's just a different part of the bookstore but it's from the same kind of cloth and yet You know, Helgeland gets praise for that.
11 more episodes mention James Ellroy.
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