Film Industry ‘Run By Morons’

LA Confidential: the best crime film since Goodfellas, right? Not according to James Ellroy. Word reaches Empire Online that the self-styled white knight of the far right rates a couple of big screen portrayals of Blighty's own criminal underworld higher than the Oscar-winning adaptation of his classic 1990 novel. "I've seen two British crime movies that are better than LA Confidential," blabbed Ellroy at a book reading in Glasgow this week. "I'm talking about John Boorman's film The General and Mike Hodges's film Croupier; both are better than LA Confidential." High praise indeed, especially for the little-seen Croupier which gets a timely reissue next month after its US success confounded British critics and defied its distributor's expectations. Ellroy was hardly dismissive of Curtis Hanson's lavish 1997 Russell Crowe-starrer, however, and praised LA Confidential as "a very good movie." That said, with typical vitriol he scotched rumours that any of his other densely plotted novels - including White Jazz - would be made into films. "The motion picture business is richly dysfunctional," spat Ellroy. "It is run by tyrants, little babies, infants and morons. You cannot expect motion picture people to act logically because motion pictures are bastard hybrids that have to pander to a wide and debased range of tastes in order to make money. Just forget Ellroy movies and concentrate on Ellroy books and you and I will be a whole lot better off." Don't mince your words too much there James.