Ellroy Boys

Today on the Ellroy Boys, we’re discussing a couple of films concerned with assassins, their networks and men who attempting to stop them. One, is a lean home invasion flick starring Frank Sinatra & Sterling Hayden, Suddenly, the other is The Parallax View, a film Alex Cox called the “greatest JFK conspiracy film of the all”. Whether or not you agree with said statement, Pakula’s labyrinthine thriller, gorgeously photographed by Gordon Willis, is entertaining and wonderfully well put together. We discuss our favorite moments from each film and naturally, further extrapolate on how and why these movies are tied to themes so explicitly examined by our favorite writer.

The Ellroy Boys are joined by one of the finest people on the planet, the crime fiction scholar and author, Steven Powell. This show would not exist without his work as he is truly the original Ellroy Boy. Additionally, he created the wonderful resource, The Venetian Vase (https://venetianvase.co.uk/) and if you're at all interested in this show, if you're fan of the demon dog, it's just essential, so if you haven't, check it out. Anyhow, today we're talking about James Ellroy's latest novel, Widespread Panic, a benzedrine blitzed confessional from real-life police officer turned Hollywood extortionist and private investigator, the one and only "hellhound who kept Hollywood captive" Fred Otash. The boys dig deep into the pervdog opus that chronicles everything from communist conspiracies to Caryl Chessman to the depraved antics of Nicolas Ray while shooting Rebel Without A Cause. The book is a rhizomatic and wildly entertaining tale. It's a joyous jolt to the system, a devilish dexedrine trip without the comedown. We celebrate and analyze the book, while exploring its grand excavation of Hollywood perversion, exposing and illuminating the industry's purposeful perpetuation of corruption, as well as deconstructing it's most insidious myths with aplomb. That aside! Forgive my hyperbole, I just loved this book and had such a great time talking to this crew. Hope you enjoy! Nothing is left unsaid.

Featuring

Steven Powell @EllroyReader

@luso_brendan @blauer_geist & @rubberwidow

The Night and the City is a wonderfully warped and thrilling noir that welcomes the audience into a shifting & vicious world hijacked by frauds and hucksters of the worst variety. The real heroes of the story, those like Gregorius (Stanislaus Zbyszko), have their hearts and bodies crushed by manipulative hustlers looking only to bleed them dry. It’s a sad, stylish, and prescient film. Richard Widmark leads the way and he's terrific as an anti hero, whose really more of a villain than anything, and who slithers around London like a spastic, feral animal. It’s dark and dreary and inseparable from the tales of Dassin making it. There’s no fat on it, it’s purposefully dark, beautifully photographed, and it's action sequences are peerless. The great brawl at the heart of the movie and the chase scene alone make the film worth watching. Our guest, Oliver Bateman does an incredible job shedding light on the history of the athletes featured in Night and the City, as well as those who appeared in other noirs. He explains the significance of movie's central fight scene and how it relates to the popularity of "works" in the professional wrestling world, as well as the athletes who pushed back against it. Hope you enjoy!

with @MoustacheClubUS @blauer_geist @luso_brendan @rubberwidow

This week on THE ELLROY BOYS...

Brendan and Sam are joined by dear friend and honorary Ellroy Boy, jack, the perfume nationalist, to discuss a mutual favorite work, James M. Cain's masterpiece, Mildred Pierce. And while we spend some time talking about the book, its origin, and all of it's adaptations, we concentrate on the best one: the Michael Curtiz version. It's a bizarre and baroque masterpiece and we celebrate it's strange power, the torrid and fascinating life of Joan Crawford, how the film revolves around unspoken & unrequited incestuous lesbian longing, the brilliance of Curtiz, why it's not a feminist picture, Cain's big 3, the madness of actors, and much, much more. Thirtysomething is even talked about. On another note, Blauer is unfortunately not on the episode but he's absolutely there in spirit. This is our second look at a Cain noir, so go ahead and re-listen to the Double Indemnity episode if you need a primer.

featuring jack @lotus__point, brendan @luso_brendan, and sam @rubberwidow

This weeks episode finds the Ellroy Boys talking about classic film noir, In a Lonely Place in addition to Dario Argento's Tenebrae. The first film, arguably auteur Nicholas Ray’s best movie, is a deeply personal excavation of Hollywood’s dark heart that follows a brilliant, cynical, and self-important screenwriter, both charismatic and possibly homicidal. It’s Ray’s most important film and Humphrey Bogart’s character appears to be playing a version of the director. It’s a sad & strange movie about loss and the self-destructive psyche of a troubled and violent man, whose gifts as an artist are inseparable from his sadistic streak. His nature keeps him in a lonely place and seems to suggest that this purgatorial state is one he’s doomed to live in. It’s a sad drunk of a movie that is more of a hyper-masculine maudlin melodrama than a film noir in my opinion, one that is deeply intertwined with the ego & self-pity of its director. Paired with it, is perhaps, Dario Argento’s best giallo, Tenebrae, a splashy, vibrant, & blood soaked self-referential horror/thriller about a crime novelist going to Rome to promote his latest book. Upon arriving, a series of brutal murders begin, each exactly alike the killings described in the writer's latest work. The title of film may be a reference to Tenebrism, a painting technique, in which an artist keeps part of the canvas completely black, so as to strongly illuminate other elements of the drawing. This is different from Chiaroscuro, which refers to a kind of shading that gives figures in a picture a three dimensional quality. Interestingly, Tenebrae is a bright, bright film, and one of Argento’s bloodiest and most lurid. If there’s one thing that explicitly sets the film apart from Ray’s picture, it’s that Argento, while a serious artist, does not take himself as seriously as Ray, and while In a Lonely Place feels very seriously self-conscious about its own artistry, Tenebrae knows its limits as a genre film and embraces its own pulp sensibility in a way that elevates its overall quality. Its Grand Guginol filtered through Italian Vogue & it has no delusions of being anything else. Regardless, both films are exciting & worth investigating. Furthermore, we discuss Bogart, video nasties, where Ellroy intersects with gialli, Gloria Graham marrying both the director & his son, the insufferable self-important auteur, the french, and of course Nicholas Ray, his influence, career & the cult of film students he tormented toward the end of his career.

The Ellroy Boys are joined by the brilliant writer & poet, Hayden Church to discuss Hitchcock's lurid masterpiece of obsessive love, 1958's VERTIGO starring Jimmy Stewart & Kim Novak. We discuss peeping, prowling, perversion & how all these matters relate to the artists we love. Furthermore, we opine on Hitchcock's true intentions, why the film remains so haunting, and finally, Hayden hips us to one of his earliest and strangest films, 1927'S The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.

This week, the intrepid Ellroy Boys venture into serial killer cinema. First, they discuss David Fincher's magnificent, epic procedural drama, 2007's Zodiac, in addition to 1971's singular and bizarre grindhouse oddity, The Zodiac Killer. The latter picture was in part crafted in collaboration with crime reporter, Paul Avery, who thought a movie might draw the real killer out of hiding, by drawing him into an actual movie theater. Furthermore, the boys explore why Fincher's film functions so well and why it remains so strangely addictive. It's a film, unafraid of it's inherent tragedy, of its bold dismissal of the idea that there can be closure and catharsis for the casualties of this monster. It explores how unchecked obsession eats some men alive while others manage to circumvent the abyss without letting it consume them. Despite a lack of closure, we still learn that people move on and that there is hope, but that it's not always in line with expectation. Ultimately, Zodiac is one of the last American cinematic tragedies writ large and is hugely emblematic of a kind of film we no longer see.

-produced by @GOLDpny

feat: @blauer_geist @luso_brendan @rubberwidow

The Ellroy Boys discuss David Lean's tragically beautiful, Brief Encounter, with the wonderful and wise, @bimboubermensch. The film, an adaptation of Noël Coward's Still Life, tells the story of an affair between two married strangers who meet at a railway station, prior to the beginning of WWII. The story is entirely set to Sergei Rachmaninoff's incredible Second Piano Concerto, which feels inextricably tethered to the film's heart and to it's success and overall effectiveness. Our discussion goes far and wide as we talk about love, extramarital affections, the death of romance, the film's Ellrovian sensibilities, and of course, Rachmaninoff.

produced by @GOLDpny

feat: @luso_brendan, @blauer_geist & @rubberwidow

The Ellroy Boys discuss Andre De Toth's minimalist noir masterwork, Crime Wave, an exceptionally well crafted crime picture elevated by it's sure handed direction and incredible cast, featuring Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, Ted de Corsia, and Timothy Carey. The boys dive deep into police procedural mythos, the expanse of film noir, Ellroy's cinematic inspirations, old directors, redemption, and the excavation of sacred geography.

This week, the Ellroy Boys examine Samuel Fuller's sublime "The Baron of Arizona", an especially strange and wonderful western about infamous master forger, James Reavis and his fraudulent attempt to lay claim to the state of Arizona. The boys dissect the film and talk Vincent Price, alchemy, noir, 'geography as destiny', Brendan's adventure to the hallowed grounds of El Monte, CA, and why Samuel Fuller may be our new favorite director.

Starring @blauer_geist, @luso_brendan, & @rubberwidow

produced by @GOLDpny