James Ellroy and Scala Dreams
James Ellroy often comes across as a conservative or reactionary figure. This is only natural. His politics are centre-right and he takes a certain joy in shocking audiences and reporters with his uncensored spiel. And yet it is precisely this Demon Dog persona that, in the late 80s and early 90s, gave Ellroy’s work a punk sensibility and a counter-culture following. It was only when I was watching the documentary Scala!!! recently on BFI Player that this facet of Ellroy’s identity really began to stand out to me.
I should point out that Scala!!! isn’t about James Ellroy. It tells the story of an independent London cinema that operated in King’s Cross from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as beloved by its regulars as it was notorious for its seedy vibe. The sordid shenanigans which went on in the building, which often rivalled the X-rated antics onscreen, gave the Scala it’s nickname ‘Sodom’s Odeon’. The documentary begins with the voice of Cathi Unsworth reminiscing about the Scala. Right away my Ellroy radar started pinging. Cathi is a journalist and novelist who interviewed Ellroy a few times back in the day. I spoke to Cathi about her memories of meeting Ellroy when I was researching Love Me Fierce in Danger. With her blue hair and husky voice, Cathi is gorgeous company and she introduced me to a few other people who knew Ellroy around the same time that she did.
Another Scala devotee who pops in the documentary is the musician Barry Adamson. Adamson is known, among other things, for being a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Ellroy had a run-in with Nick Cave which went hilariously awry in the mid-90s. Things had started so promisingly between them. Cave declared how his study contains photos, lined up side by side, of his three idols – Jesus Christ, James Ellroy and John Lee Hooker. In turn, Ellroy stated his admiration for Cave’s song “Till The End Of The World”. However, when the pair finally met in London in March 1995 it was not a happy affair. Cave described Ellroy as ‘Jet-lagged and clearly deranged, he ranted on about rock ‘n roll being nothing more than “institutionalized rebellion”‘. Similarly, Ellroy said of Cave ‘I met Nick Cave-and he was a big bore. He was number 7 on my list of the 8 most boring people I have ever met. He was also number 8 on my list of the 8 most pretentious and self-absorbed people I have ever met.’
Around the same time that Ellroy met Cave he also had a business meeting with Barry Adamson. In Scala!!!, Adamson describes how the time he spent at the legendary cinema inspired his most celebrated record Moss Side Story. For those of you unfamiliar with the album, Moss Side Story is structured as a soundtrack to a crime film that doesn’t exist. The track titles are descriptive of a film noir plot outline and the music has all the ambience of classic noir. The record was so successful that people would contact Adamson and ask him where they could see a print of the film. When he met Ellroy, Adamson pitched him an idea that would have taken some of the ideas of Moss Side Story to a whole new level. Adamson wanted to do a spoken-word audio adaptation of White Jazz. Ellroy would narrate the entire novel and Adamson would compose a suitably jazzy backing soundtrack. Unfortunately, as Ellroy was touring American Tabloid at the time, he refused to consider any project that didn’t directly promote that novel. He suggested Adamson take the same idea and use it for American Tabloid, but Adamson declined. You can see why Adamson wouldn’t have been keen. Firstly, American Tabloid is twice the length of White Jazz. Secondly, White Jazz has a distinct location, setting and musical flavour, whereas Tabloid takes place over a five-year timeframe with the entire USA as the setting, and occasional excursions abroad. Thus, it would be a mammoth task to render the novel into music. American Tabloid was later adapted into an audio drama with Ellroy narrating the exposition and an all-star cast voicing the characters.
The beginning of the end for the Scala began in April 1992, with a showing of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Billed as ‘a surprise film’ A Clockwork Orange had been withdrawn from circulation by Kubrick himself over fears that it was inspiring copycat acts of violence. The legal action that followed was enough to empty Scala’s coffers. However, in March 1999, Scala reopened as a music venue which it remains to this day. In July 2022, Thurston Moore unveiled a blue plaque at the Scala to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Lou Reed / Iggy Pop gigs which took place there in 1972. The ceremony could be taken as a sign that the Scala had come full circle, but even here there was an Ellroy connection. Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth were both early supporters of James Ellroy’s writing. They used to attend Ellroy’s book readings and even wrote a song, ‘The Wonder’, in honour of his work.
James Ellroy has spent the last thirty years talking about his intense dislike of rock-n-roll, but dig deep enough into his history and you can find many rock and punk influences. Scala!!! brings many of those influences to the fore.
ELLROY READS – Out by Natsuo Kirino
For the latest episode of Ellroy Reads I delve into global crime fiction with a look at Natsuo Kirino’s modern Japanese classic Out. The story follows four women who work at a Bento packing plant. Their grinding day to day existence suddenly becomes both grisly and dangerous when, in a emergency, they need to dispose of a corpse.
Out is both a modern feminist crime novel and grand guignol feast for the imagination. Things get gruesome. But I won’t say anymore here, find out more in the video below, and hit that subscribe button. It’s just a button. It won’t electrocute you.
World History: The Hollywood Version by Andy Rohmer – Review
Andy Rohmer is the author of the highly entertaining Writers on Film series. So far, he has produced three books in this series which focuses on crime writers work and how the adaptations have fared on the small and silver screen. Now Rohmer has started a new series and it promises to be just as good, exploring his fascination of how cinema provides a unique perspective on knowledge we have already acquired through text.
World History – the Hollywood Version analyses, film by film, how history has been shaped, rendered and distorted onscreen. Rohmer isn’t the first author to make this study. He acknowledges the work of George MacDonald Fraser but argues convincingly that the Flashman author was too soft on his Hollywood paymasters when he claimed that the big screen gets most of the historical details right. Rohmer doesn’t go so easy on them. Indeed, as the first volume is on pre-history, roughly 3 million years to 10,000 BC, relatively few filmmakers have had the courage to translate this period into a celluloid narrative. But Rohmer finds the films and covers them forensically one by one. His writing style is witty and engaging, and film-lovers will find much to admire here. Even the most seasoned cinephile will be surprised at the depths of knowledge that can be found in the book. Highly recommended.
CFP: “America was Never Innocent”: Special issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection for the Thirtieth Anniversary of James Ellroy’s American Tabloid
The deadline for proposals/abstract for the special James Ellroy issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection is fast approaching. So if you’ve been working on a proposal get it in soon. Details below:
Theme issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection
Guest editors: Nathan Ashman (University of East Anglia) and Steven Powell (University of Liverpool)
2025 will mark the 30-year anniversary of James Ellroy’s American Tabloid, a historical novel which
challenged the established view of the events leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy. For
Ellroy, who had heretofore written acclaimed but largely genre-focused noir novels set in his native Los
Angeles, it represented a critical breakthrough in his writing career, and proved a major step in him
becoming a literary figure with an idiosyncratic revisionist take on American history. Thus, as Ellory’s
literary career moves into its fifth decade, it seems like an appropriate moment to reappraise his vast
literary output, particularly given the seeming decline of critical interest in his work from within the
academy over recent years. This can perhaps be situated within the context of Ellroy’s ever provocative
and controversial ‘Demon Dog’ persona, one that feels increasingly anachronistic in the era of social media and in the wake of recent political and social movements such as Black Lives Matter and Me Too. Yet these contexts also provide fertile ground for new or revised approaches to Ellroy’s canon and to the mode of the historical novel more broadly.
Subjects might include (but are not limited to):
● Ellroy’s characters as agencies of the State (and questions of state power more broadly)
● Ellroy and the Historical Crime Novel (including Ellroy’s influence on other practitioners and on
the development of the form more broadly)
● The various meanings of ‘policing’ and its relationship with the State in Ellroy’s fiction
● Gender in Ellroy’s work
● Ellroy and American History
● Sexuality in Ellroy’s work
● Race/racism in Ellroy’s work
● Music in Ellroy’s work
● Underworld and Overworld. Webs of corruption linking organised crime to the LAPD in James
Ellroy’s novels
● The protagonist as voyeur: Perverted viewpoints in the Quartet and Underworld USA novels
● Public and Private space
● Ellroy’s ‘demon dog’ persona (as well as broader consideration of animality in Ellroy’s work)
● Ellroy’s ‘late’ fiction
Submissions should include an abstract of 250-300 words and a brief bio (max 150 words). Proposals due 1st March 2025 and should be sent to Dr Steven Powell (s.p.powell@liverpool.ac.uk) and Dr Nathan Ashman (n.ashman@uea.ac.uk). Full manuscripts due of 5,000 to 6,500 words based on accepted proposal will be due 31st October 2025.
Ellroy Reads – A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
In the latest episode of Ellroy Reads I look at Chester Himes’s hardboiled classic A Rage in Harlem, the first novel in the Harlem Detective series. I enjoyed discussing this novel, and I begin the episode with some thoughts on Ellroy’s present state of mind and his literary career.
I hope you enjoy the episode and if you do, hit those like and subscribe buttons.
ELLROY READS – A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
For the latest episode of Ellroy Reads, I look at Ruth Rendell’s classic psychological mystery A Judgement in Stone. This novel is one of seven of the crime genre that was reprinted as part of The Vintage Crime Black Lizard Collection in 2022, and for which James Ellroy wrote the introduction. I’ll be reviewing several more in this series in the weeks ahead.
In the meantime, here are my thoughts on A Judgement in Stone, which include a hilarious anecdote about the Demon Dog’s one and only meeting with Baroness Rendell of Babergh.
Enjoy, spread the word and subscribe:
In Film We Trust – The Black Dahlia
You can now listen to my third, and for the foreseeable future, final guest appearance on the In Film We Trust podcast. In previous episodes we covered the film adaptations of James Ellroy’s Blood on the Moon (retitled Cop for the big screen) and LA Confidential. We have now rounded off our discussion of the trilogy of Ellroy adaptations, the straight to video Brown’s Requiem is best avoided.
I had a blast appearing on this podcast. These guys really understand cinema and we go on plenty of entertaining tangents, including the odd anecdote about my biography Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy. You can listen to the full episode here.
Ellroy Reads – Heed the Thunder by Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson is now considered one of the greatest American crime writers, but his work wasn’t fully appreciated in his lifetime. By the time of his death in 1977, all of his work was out of print in the United States. Then in the early nineties, critical and commercial interest in Thompson’s novels was revived, helped along by several excellent film adaptations. James Ellroy played a small role in this Thompson revival, which I go into in the latest episode of Ellroy Reads which covers Thompson’s second novel Heed the Thunder, one of the few Thompson novels that doesn’t fall squarely into the noir genre.
I hope you enjoy the episode and please remember to like, share and subscribe to the channel as it helps the algorithm and my long-term plans to break the internet!
Where the Bones Lie by Nick Kolakowski – Review
Dash McClane has hit rock bottom. His glory days as a Hollywood fixer are over. His new gig as a stand-up comic is going nowhere and a beautiful young woman is about to get him into a whole lot of trouble. Ken Ironwood is a smuggler who rubbed shoulders with LA celebrities in his pomp. But when Ironwood is found dead, his remains stuffed inside a barrel in a dry lake bed, it threatens to unleash some dangerous secrets. Working under the ropey assumption that McClane is a private detective, Ironwood’s daughter Madeline hires Dash to find some answers.
Nick Kolakowski is a noir voice for the 21st century. He understands Southern California, from it’s warped celebrity-obsessed culture to the sardonic fatalism of its people who once nurtured dreams of fame and fortune but are now just looking to make a buck, and is able to render it compellingly in his fiction. Where the Bones Lie is a darkly comic new take on the private detective/fixer novel in the vein of Jordan Harper’s modern classic Everybody Knows. I was touched by how the relationship deepened between McClane and Madeline and found myself bracing for the inevitable showdown as they drew nearer to Ironwood’s killer.
The Dream by Iain Ryan – Review
Australia, Gold Coast, 1982. Brisbane is hosting the Commonwealth Games. The tourist economy is booming. The country is an emerging economic powerhouse, but in the backdrop of this sunny paradise a criminal underworld is thriving. The lives of three people will intertwine in this treacherous climate. Bruno Karras is a jaded detective whose fading interest in police work is suddenly jolted back to life when he is sent anonymous photos of a blood-stained house. Thus begins a mystery that will see Karras cross paths with Amy Owens, an investigator flying too close to the sun, and Mike Nichols, a backroom player whose dreams of the big time are likely to turn sour.
This is the world of The Dream. Noir in an Antipodean setting.
Iain Ryan is one of the most gifted writers in the contemporary Australian crime fiction scene. He paints a vivid portrait of the eighties Gold Coast as similar to James Ellroy’s LA Quartet, in that economic boom times create a veneer of middle-class expansion but are masking a sordid culture of graft, sleaze and constant betrayal. Karras, Owens and Nichols learn to navigate this world of perfidy and vice. Their journey makes for compelling reading. The Dream is one of the must-read crime novels of 2025.
The Venetian Vase 