L.A.: Where Dreams Come To Die
ASK THE DUST (2005) was not a box office hit. A period movie about L.A. in The Great Depression, with a less than subtle theme about prejudice against Mexicans was doomed even though it involves a love story between stars Colin Farrell and Salma Hayak (including some hot nude sex scenes), and the project was affectionately nurtured, written and directed by Robert Towne, a long time Hollywood heavyweight (SHAMPOO, TEQUILA SUNRISE, CHINATOWN).
ASK THE DUST is a certain failure for modern audiences, not only because they can’t “get” period movies, but because the plot is hopelessly dated. A writer is inspired by the tragic death of the love he didn’t appreciate until it is too late. The doomed beauty dies of Camille’s illness, the cough that appears just as happiness is in sight, in order to provide a tragedy.
Colin Farrell plays “Arturo Bandini,” an aspiring idealistic writer embittered by the prejudice he has been subjected to as an Italian in Colorado, who comes to LA with dreams of becoming a famous and important writer. He has one published short story, but now has nothing to write about and the samples we are shown are trash and he knows it. He lives in Bunker Hill, in a shabby hotel, meets some strange LA characters - a grizzled old alcoholic (Donald Sutherland) and a scarred, lonelyhearted girl (Idena Menzel), who he beds out of pity after which she conveniently dies in the Long Beach earthquake.
Down to nickels, he demeans “Camilla Perez,”a Mexican waitress (Salma Hayek) because she is illiterate, until she seduces him. Camilla wants to marry an Anglo (she toys with a bartender named “White”) so she can get a green card and live the American dream, and at first sees the poor Italian writer as not much of an improvement on her own lot. But there are sparks — the old fashioned kind of romantic chemistry, where they bitch at each other until they fall into bed. But when he refuses to marry her because she is a Mexican, she leaves him. When he realizes what he has lost, he finds her – as she dies in his arms - and now that he has suffered, he can write that great American novel. This is a period plot that stopped boiling around 1939.
Towne’s respect for the author in this case probably overwhelmed his judgment with dire results. Reportedly, he was unlucky. He wrote the screenplay in 1990 and, after unsuccessfully shopping it for years, had Johnny Depp interested in the lead. Salma Hayek turned it down 8 years ago because she was avoiding Mexican roles as a threat to her career. Several studios backed it and then backed away - until Colin Farrell signed on. Unfortunately, Farrell’s eyebrows are his only feature that can act and he is unconvincing and unmoving as a starving Italian from Colorado.
Towne, an LA native, had discovered the novel while researching CHINATOWN in the 1970's. It had been written by John Fante, a onetime screenwriter (A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962)) in the 1930's. Fante’s series of semi-autobiographical books about “Arturo Bandini,” had temporarily been compared with other Depression era novels exposing the limits of the American myth of “the pursuit of happiness.” Fante’s work was later rediscovered by the LA poet, Charles Bukowski, who told his own cult followers of Fante’s “genius” and allegedly copied his style.
In the midst of The Great Depression, LA was a hot magnet for desperate hopes. If you were going to be homeless, it might as well be in the sunshine. You might be hungry but at least you could eat oranges, avocados and walnuts from the trees. The rumors and realities of boom drew immigrants like locusts. Hollywood’s Dream Factory had been churning by that time for twenty years. Every pretty young thing and her mother had visions of Shirley Temple or Lana Turner dancing in their heads. At the same time, any New Yorker who could scribble a short story, play, or novel, was recruited to script dialogue for the Talkies.
While they all came for the money and fame, the writers, being a self-absorbed depressed lot by nature, hated themselves for selling out. They morosely drank their booze, not in speakeasies and cafés, but around swimming pools and night clubs, carping about their servitude to The Studio moguls who kept them like expensive whores.
Out of this alcoholic haze of self-hatred came the literary and cinematic form we now call “L.A. Noir.” Raymond Chandler is the icon of the genre, but he is just one of the many who mined the underside of the golden glitz of lotus land. CHINATOWN drew heavily from Chandler’s stories and aura of corrupt cops, sex, drugs, dirty secrets behind the facades of Pasadena mansions.
Nathaniel West wrote “The Day Of The Locust” (1939) about the losers at the fringes of Hollywood in the 1930's. The book which climaxes in a riot at a premiere, was rediscovered in the 60's by a generation that was living through similar cataclysmic times. While he wrote, West worked as a clerk in cheap hotels owned by his relatives and provided often free lodging to a number of aspiring writers, including James T. Farrell and Erskine Caldwell. According to Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett wrote "The Thin Man" there. West died in car accident after hearing of the death of his close friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was once the most famous novelist in America before becoming a mediocre screenwriter.
Billy Wilder is the epitome of the wise guy intellectual writer who flayed the Hollywood that fed him. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1946) (which he co-wrote with Raymond Chandler from James M. Cain’s novel) and SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)(co-written with Charles Brackett, who had once been one of The New Yorker’s many theater critics who went west - like Herman Mankiewicz and Dorothy Parker) are products of this sensibility.
The genre continues into the modern era of novels and films.
TRUE CONFESSIONS (1981) starred Robert De Niro as a Priest and Robert Duvall as his police detective brother. From a novel by John Gregory Dunne and screenplay by Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, and directed by Ulu Grosbard, the movie follows the issues of the genre, corruption, sex, the seedy fringes of movie business as part of LA’s heritage.
Jack Nicholson (starring and directing) and Towne had failed to duplicate the success of CHINATOWN with its sequel, THE TWO JAKES (1990), although it deserves a second look without the unfair comparison with Polanski’s original work. Where CHINATOWN explored the corruption surrounding water and land development, THE TWO JAKES deals with oil and gas rights during the Post WW II San Fernando Valley building boom.
In 1995, Denzel Washington brought Walter Mosley’s sometime detective, Easy Rollins, to life in DEVIL WITH THE BLUE DRESS. Mosley’s Easy Rollins series of novels portrays LA’s African American heritage in the post war years, when a thriving Black middle class strove for the American Dream — before the freeways cut the life out of their community.
GET SHORTY (1995) written by Scott Frank from Elmore Leonard’s novel, and directed by Barry Sonenfeld has become a cult classic. “Chili Palmer” as played by John Travolta, became an instant icon, the east coast mobster who easily outtoughs the LA wannabes around the movie industry and drug traffic. Although the sequel, BE COOL, tried to recapture the Chili Palmer mystique, the wit was sadly strained.
MULHOLLAND FALLS (1996) also failed with critics and box office. The story was based on “The Hat Squad,” a group of LAPD officers who, in the 1950's, were assigned by reform chief Parker to dispose of mobsters. These corrupt cops (Nick Nolte, Chazz Palmentieri, Michael Madsen and Chris Penn) meet a hooker (Jennifer Connolly) who dies from radiation at a secret Army A-Bomb test site while servicing the head of the AEC (John Malkovich).
In recent years, the most successful movie of the genre was LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997). Although set in post war LA, the essential elements of LA noir — crooked cops, the seedy fringes of the movie business, racial prejudice — were there in James Ellroy’s novel. Ellroy, a self-proclaimed keeper of the flame of LA noir (his own mother was murdered when he was a child, a life altering event which sparked his continuing fascination with crime). Curtis Hansen directed the brilliant script by Brian Helgeland.
The film was a coming out party for emerging stars - Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce - provided an Oscar winning role for Kim Basinger as a burnt out call girl with a heart of gold and terrific parts for James Cromwell, David Strathairn, and Danny DeVito.
Following the formula of weaving fictional characters with reality, the movie convincingly depicted a turning point in LA crime when the LAPD began to reform itself under Chief Parker.
ASK THE DUST (2005) was not a box office hit. A period movie about L.A. in The Great Depression, with a less than subtle theme about prejudice against Mexicans was doomed even though it involves a love story between stars Colin Farrell and Salma Hayak (including some hot nude sex scenes), and the project was affectionately nurtured, written and directed by Robert Towne, a long time Hollywood heavyweight (SHAMPOO, TEQUILA SUNRISE, CHINATOWN).
ASK THE DUST is a certain failure for modern audiences, not only because they can’t “get” period movies, but because the plot is hopelessly dated. A writer is inspired by the tragic death of the love he didn’t appreciate until it is too late. The doomed beauty dies of Camille’s illness, the cough that appears just as happiness is in sight, in order to provide a tragedy.
Colin Farrell plays “Arturo Bandini,” an aspiring idealistic writer embittered by the prejudice he has been subjected to as an Italian in Colorado, who comes to LA with dreams of becoming a famous and important writer. He has one published short story, but now has nothing to write about and the samples we are shown are trash and he knows it. He lives in Bunker Hill, in a shabby hotel, meets some strange LA characters - a grizzled old alcoholic (Donald Sutherland) and a scarred, lonelyhearted girl (Idena Menzel), who he beds out of pity after which she conveniently dies in the Long Beach earthquake.
Down to nickels, he demeans “Camilla Perez,”a Mexican waitress (Salma Hayek) because she is illiterate, until she seduces him. Camilla wants to marry an Anglo (she toys with a bartender named “White”) so she can get a green card and live the American dream, and at first sees the poor Italian writer as not much of an improvement on her own lot. But there are sparks — the old fashioned kind of romantic chemistry, where they bitch at each other until they fall into bed. But when he refuses to marry her because she is a Mexican, she leaves him. When he realizes what he has lost, he finds her – as she dies in his arms - and now that he has suffered, he can write that great American novel. This is a period plot that stopped boiling around 1939.
Towne’s respect for the author in this case probably overwhelmed his judgment with dire results. Reportedly, he was unlucky. He wrote the screenplay in 1990 and, after unsuccessfully shopping it for years, had Johnny Depp interested in the lead. Salma Hayek turned it down 8 years ago because she was avoiding Mexican roles as a threat to her career. Several studios backed it and then backed away - until Colin Farrell signed on. Unfortunately, Farrell’s eyebrows are his only feature that can act and he is unconvincing and unmoving as a starving Italian from Colorado.
Towne, an LA native, had discovered the novel while researching CHINATOWN in the 1970's. It had been written by John Fante, a onetime screenwriter (A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962)) in the 1930's. Fante’s series of semi-autobiographical books about “Arturo Bandini,” had temporarily been compared with other Depression era novels exposing the limits of the American myth of “the pursuit of happiness.” Fante’s work was later rediscovered by the LA poet, Charles Bukowski, who told his own cult followers of Fante’s “genius” and allegedly copied his style.
In the midst of The Great Depression, LA was a hot magnet for desperate hopes. If you were going to be homeless, it might as well be in the sunshine. You might be hungry but at least you could eat oranges, avocados and walnuts from the trees. The rumors and realities of boom drew immigrants like locusts. Hollywood’s Dream Factory had been churning by that time for twenty years. Every pretty young thing and her mother had visions of Shirley Temple or Lana Turner dancing in their heads. At the same time, any New Yorker who could scribble a short story, play, or novel, was recruited to script dialogue for the Talkies.
While they all came for the money and fame, the writers, being a self-absorbed depressed lot by nature, hated themselves for selling out. They morosely drank their booze, not in speakeasies and cafés, but around swimming pools and night clubs, carping about their servitude to The Studio moguls who kept them like expensive whores.
Out of this alcoholic haze of self-hatred came the literary and cinematic form we now call “L.A. Noir.” Raymond Chandler is the icon of the genre, but he is just one of the many who mined the underside of the golden glitz of lotus land. CHINATOWN drew heavily from Chandler’s stories and aura of corrupt cops, sex, drugs, dirty secrets behind the facades of Pasadena mansions.
Nathaniel West wrote “The Day Of The Locust” (1939) about the losers at the fringes of Hollywood in the 1930's. The book which climaxes in a riot at a premiere, was rediscovered in the 60's by a generation that was living through similar cataclysmic times. While he wrote, West worked as a clerk in cheap hotels owned by his relatives and provided often free lodging to a number of aspiring writers, including James T. Farrell and Erskine Caldwell. According to Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett wrote "The Thin Man" there. West died in car accident after hearing of the death of his close friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was once the most famous novelist in America before becoming a mediocre screenwriter.
Billy Wilder is the epitome of the wise guy intellectual writer who flayed the Hollywood that fed him. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1946) (which he co-wrote with Raymond Chandler from James M. Cain’s novel) and SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)(co-written with Charles Brackett, who had once been one of The New Yorker’s many theater critics who went west - like Herman Mankiewicz and Dorothy Parker) are products of this sensibility.
The genre continues into the modern era of novels and films.
TRUE CONFESSIONS (1981) starred Robert De Niro as a Priest and Robert Duvall as his police detective brother. From a novel by John Gregory Dunne and screenplay by Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, and directed by Ulu Grosbard, the movie follows the issues of the genre, corruption, sex, the seedy fringes of movie business as part of LA’s heritage.
Jack Nicholson (starring and directing) and Towne had failed to duplicate the success of CHINATOWN with its sequel, THE TWO JAKES (1990), although it deserves a second look without the unfair comparison with Polanski’s original work. Where CHINATOWN explored the corruption surrounding water and land development, THE TWO JAKES deals with oil and gas rights during the Post WW II San Fernando Valley building boom.
In 1995, Denzel Washington brought Walter Mosley’s sometime detective, Easy Rollins, to life in DEVIL WITH THE BLUE DRESS. Mosley’s Easy Rollins series of novels portrays LA’s African American heritage in the post war years, when a thriving Black middle class strove for the American Dream — before the freeways cut the life out of their community.
GET SHORTY (1995) written by Scott Frank from Elmore Leonard’s novel, and directed by Barry Sonenfeld has become a cult classic. “Chili Palmer” as played by John Travolta, became an instant icon, the east coast mobster who easily outtoughs the LA wannabes around the movie industry and drug traffic. Although the sequel, BE COOL, tried to recapture the Chili Palmer mystique, the wit was sadly strained.
MULHOLLAND FALLS (1996) also failed with critics and box office. The story was based on “The Hat Squad,” a group of LAPD officers who, in the 1950's, were assigned by reform chief Parker to dispose of mobsters. These corrupt cops (Nick Nolte, Chazz Palmentieri, Michael Madsen and Chris Penn) meet a hooker (Jennifer Connolly) who dies from radiation at a secret Army A-Bomb test site while servicing the head of the AEC (John Malkovich).
In recent years, the most successful movie of the genre was LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997). Although set in post war LA, the essential elements of LA noir — crooked cops, the seedy fringes of the movie business, racial prejudice — were there in James Ellroy’s novel. Ellroy, a self-proclaimed keeper of the flame of LA noir (his own mother was murdered when he was a child, a life altering event which sparked his continuing fascination with crime). Curtis Hansen directed the brilliant script by Brian Helgeland.
The film was a coming out party for emerging stars - Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce - provided an Oscar winning role for Kim Basinger as a burnt out call girl with a heart of gold and terrific parts for James Cromwell, David Strathairn, and Danny DeVito.
Following the formula of weaving fictional characters with reality, the movie convincingly depicted a turning point in LA crime when the LAPD began to reform itself under Chief Parker.
excellent post - informative and insightful - i always enjoy these!
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