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Oh j is folks, It's showtime. People say, good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater.
They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth.
Everyone for ten podcasting isn't boring?
Put it off?
What city please like?
I'm in Hollywood and I want to report a murder.
I'm detective starting a Lloyd Hopkins with the police department. It's about Julie Neimar Yea.
Actually, I was thinking about calling you, guys.
I just didn't know what to say.
Why do you kill her?
There's a dangerous man on the loose.
All I care about is stopping his maniac before he kills a Can do you understand? Come on, Dutch, you're blown away abroad state. The least you can do is drive her home.
His boss thinks he's trouble. If you go to the media, I'll crucify you.
You wanted that day, don't you?
How can you tell?
You always shake just a little.
His friends think he's crazy.
Now one day should spend up in the force, breaking an entering, robbery and now possible murder. But he got lined up for tonight.
Women think he's a menace.
Would you do that?
Why would you do that?
Try to think of a three letter word for explosive?
A cop, you gotta take me in.
Well, there's some good news and there's some bad news. The good news is you're right. I'm a cop and I gotta take you in. Bad news is I've been suspended and I don't give up any.
Cop. James Woods in the most startling performance of his career with Leslie Ann Warren and Charles Derning. When a man cares too much? How far is too far?
Welcome to the Projection Booth, I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again as mister.
Rod Lott Innocence kills j Also.
Back in the booth is mister Andrew Netty.
You blow away a broad's DT. The least you can do is drive a home.
We wrap up Noirvember with a request from Dallas Novell Cop released in nineteen eighty eight. The film was the first time James Elroy's fiction was adapted for the big screen. Adapted by writer director James B. Harris, the film stars James Woods as Detective Lloyd Hopkins, a genius super cop who stumbles onto a mystery eighteen years in the making. We will be spoiling the film as well as Elroy's original source novel Blood on the Moon, as well as
other things as we go along. So if you don't want anything ruined, to turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen the movie, read the book, et cetera, et cetera. We will still be here. So, Rod, when was the first time you saw Cop and what did you think?
I saw it first when it came out, actually in theaters at the nearest theater to my house, which was a little place called French Market Mal twin Cinemas, Oklahoma City. I think it shut down a year later, but mal is a not exactly the right word for it. It's just a small indoor maybe twenty four stores total. It was designed to look like New Orleans kind of, so
it's very strange. But the theater was on its last legs at that point, and I think could see that it was like eighty eight, so I would have been seventeenth.
At the time.
I was going to a lot of movies since I had a driver's license. Corralled my brother into it, telling him it was going to be just like Above the Law with Steven Segall. It wasn't. He didn't care for that comparison. But I remembered liking it, but I didn't love it, and I wasn't sure exactly how to interact with it because at that point I hadn't seen a cop movie quite like this, which I'm sure we'll get into.
At the time, I was kind of a fan of James Woods, not today necessarily, but he was a really good run at that late eighties with the B level modestly budd well reviewed but underperforming thrillers like this True Believer with Robert Downey Junior bestseller written by Larry Cohen, and this I think is the best of those. I was also a big fan of Brandy Brooks, who's in this briefly, but for very different reasons. Yeah, I liked it.
This is the fourth time I've seen it, and I think it's probably the best of those viewings because you know, being middle aged now as opposed to all the previous other times, I picked up a lot more on it than I have ever before.
And Andrew, how about yourself?
Yeah, I was thinking about this. When did I first see cop and I can't remember. It was a long time ago, maybe back in the early nineties, I can't remember. I liked it then, We're gonna must have watched it four or five times since then, I think, I mean, as in my opinion, I wrote something for this for this website that was I don't think it exists anymore.
It was called back Ali Noirs and they, you know, and I wrote an article where I said that it will I think the best el Roy adaptation, and by that I don't mean the best film, but the best film that had actually channeled Elroy's spirit and work and essential nastiness. And I still think that that was. That was quite controversial that post. I think someone even had to pull in what was his name, Eddie Muller, because of course there's only one person who really knows anything
about NOAA in the entire world, and that's Eddie. So what does Eddie think about? You know, this view that copp is the best Elroy adaptation, et cetera, et cetera. I still think it's great Woods Drunk Deep, the margakool Aid. But let's for a moment separate the art from the artist. He was amazing in the eighties and in the early nineties or just a run of incredible films. We can talk about that. He's fantastic. He's kind of like the original bad Lieutenant in this, I think, And it's I
have read the book. I didn't get around to reading at this time. I liked the book. I liked the Floyd Hopkins books. I don't this time around. I was probably a little bit more critical of the movie. But I still think it works. And it's just good narrative drive that I just think is really really just pushes away all the stuff in the film that doesn't work. It's also a completely you know, it's how to make a nineteen eighties crime film. Have seen it a number
of times. Still think it's a great film.
Yeah, I don't remember the first time that I saw this. I want to say it might have been when I was in college. I definitely watched it post Elie Confidential at one point, and I imagine that that person who is going off on you was probably thinking La Confidential, which I can see your point. That's probably the best movie that's loosely based on an el Roy book, but it is not the best adaptation. I mentioned when we talked about Eli Confidential that the book and the movie
are so completely different, but they are both genius. And this I do agree is it really does cap sure that means spiritedness, that almost apocalyptic vision of La that Elroy really, you know, minds every single time he goes to his typewriter. It's also kind of a good thing. I mean, Lloyd Hopkins in the book is a little bit of a bigger person, not quite a Jack Reacher type of a person, but he's a bigger guy. Woods
is not a shrimp by any means. And also, Lloyd Hopkins in the book is purported by many people to be a genius. And James Woods, yes, despite his politics,
is literally a genius. Like I think he's a MENSA member, very super smart guy, and it makes sense that he plays this character who's both incredibly slimy, which Woods pulls off every single time he wants to be a bad guy on screens or every single film, pretty much every single film he's made, whether he's the hero in video drome or you know, the the secret bad guy and something like the Specialist or something like. He's always slimy, which I really like about him. I mean his small
turn in something like Night Moves. He's perfect in that, and he's great in this as far as he wants to uphold the law, but he will do anything that it takes to uphold the spirit rather than the actual literal law that is going on. He is very much that cop. Outside of the police department. He has given carte blanche a lot of times by his superiors because he is so smart and he can go out and
figure these things out. He figures out that there's a serial killer, and no one else on the entire force of many, many different police departments was able to put that stuff together. But he is. And I think that the casting of Woods as Lloyd Hopkins really just fit very perfectly his persona and his demeanor.
It's interesting because I always like James Woods as an actor, but the character itself, and I had not read the book until we were prepping for this, how unlikable the character is. But you have to he has to walk that line of playing an unlikable character while still being just likable enough for the audience to be on his side because you still root for him despite him being just a terrible person. That's not easy to do.
And he did it so effortlessly in so many films.
I don't know how he does it, but yeah, it's not easy to do.
James B. Harris too is a really interesting filmmaker. I mean, not a huge over, but has done some really interesting films, I think. And I was reading somewhere you know what because he of course he worked with Kubrick too, so seriously serious lineage there, and he learned his craft from Kubrick And I was reading that, you know what did he learn from Kubrick? And it's like, you know, casting
his eighty five percent of the film. If you cast the right people, they're disciplined, they know their lines, and they're great actors, you're going to get a lot of help. I mean, you know, he learned some other things from Kubrick too, But I think that's the Woods thing. Woods is Floyd Hopkins, you know, and he's so to your point, right, He's so good in this and he's so nasty, so venal, he's so sleezy. It's a terrible thing, but I still
laugh everything. It's a terrible thing. But when you know, trying to come on to the to the woman who's the feminist who owns the bookstore. He's just basically comes on to every single woman that he he basically encounters quite successfully. It seems, you know, he's so venal and sleazy, and it just it works.
I think it helps that he's not you know, I mean, he's a handsome guy, but he's not Carrie Grant or anything like that. He's park marked. You know, he has very thin lips. They sort of go diagonal every now and then, and he's fallible. I think that does help the character. It makes him a little more relatable. Well, he's doing these terrible, terrible things. James woods Man, this was he was never better than late eighties to early nineties.
I would say, we've got Once upon a Time in America where he plays possibly one of the most disagreeable Prohibition gangster's ever put on screen. He's got Salvador, which is great, which is terrific in bestseller and I totally agree with you Rod that Bestseller is completely underrated film.
It's such a good anything with Larry Cohen touches is pretty much.
Yeah. But Brian Deanna here is the cop and the other guys as cleave the hit man who wants him to write his sort of story, wants him to write his bio digs down. You know, that's a terrific And of course, come on, Lester Diamond in Casino. I mean I could have done a whole less to Diamond film.
I really like him in the hard way.
It's absolutely don't you take that with me? Yeah, no, it's such a good film, which is Woods taking the piss out of himself too. So the guy I had a sense of humor.
Once, Lloyd Hopkins is just so morally flawed, and I love that. The scene in Elroy's book that really got to Harris, that made him want to do this as a movie was when Hopkins comes home for the day and tells his little girl the whole story of the perp who was robbing these apartment buildings and all this, and he is not being very he's not bolderizing the story at all. He's being very forthright with his little girl, and they he has a huge argument with his wife
about why protect your family, why protect women? From knowing what's really going on out there.
Let me tell you something you should get through your head. They're all little girls, Jan, every one of them, Every one of those pathetic souls who eventually does herself in is.
A little girl.
Every neurotic lies on a couch and pays some assholes only good money to listen to her bullshit is a little girl. Every hooker I'll hustling or ask for up him, winds up with a dyke, a habit, or wasted by some psychopath.
Is a little girl.
All these little girls have one thing in common, you know what That is disillusionment, and it always comes from the same thing.
Expectations.
The greatest woman killer of all time, a terminal disease that starts way back when they're all just little girls, when they're being fed all a bullshit about being entitled to happiness like it's a birthright. That's what you don't understand when to stop perpetrating the myths that ruin their lives. Innocence kills Jan. Believe me, it kills I see it every fucking day of my life.
And really, so much of this movie is about this idea of do you live in this fantasy? World, or do you live in the real world, Hopkins is very much like people should really live in the real world. I'm trying to prepare my daughter for what the world
is giving me. You know, I'm the kind of person who can walk into a apartment building, open up a door, and see a woman hanging there, gutted, and still have the calm, cool collectiveness to go through all of our things, light up a cigarette and just wait for the rest of the cops to arrive while I riffle through everything and steal evidence. Basically because he knows this is the kind of person that I need to protect. This innocent person, very much like my daughter, is the kind of person
I need to protect. And then you contrast that with Kathy, the Leslie N. Warren character, who just lives in this whole fantasy world of poetry and journaling, and she seems to have made up this whole story about her court and all this stuff, even though we'll talk about her origin story versus his origin story versus the killer's origin story,
because they definitely change those things around. I see it more in the book as far as the fantasy world that she lives in, because that character that Kathy hasn't been raped.
That bedtime story thing, that's like the first high point in the movie for me. I remember that vividly from the first screen. Tell me how you got the scumbag daddy. That's a good line. And I'm glad that they from the book That girl's twelve, which is way too old for a bedtime story or to be tucked in by daddy or anything like that, so aging her down was perfect for that. Putting all three kids into one was a good idea. But that, yeah, that scene is incredible.
And you mentioned him going into the apartment. He not only goes in, but he first tries to kick the door in and fails, And that's like, oh my gosh, this is like a non movie movie. Because cops can kick the doors down, of course they can, this one cannot. He fails to do it, and I think that I remember that help me off guard at first, and it
still did this time. I completely forgot about it. And he also contaminates the crime scene by touching the door knob, Like he does all these things wrong, and he like even touches the door knob after he sees blood seeping under the door with cockroaches stuck in it, which I do like because that's not the kind of detail you normally get from these things. He's doing his job well but also not well. He succeeds in spite of himself. He plays Johnny Law while breaking laws and breaking rules.
And I like that dichotomy and just the whole like you, like you mentioned that, the doubling, the contrast we get with all the characters. It's it's really.
Interesting Kathleen, that's that's that's classical or the feminist book you know, his cliche of a feminist bookshop owner. I think that character is a bit weak. And I do think the ceial the serial killer when he actually finds him in the whole serial killer plot is very under baked,
I thought the time. But again, the film has such an impressive narrative drive, and it's so well put together, and Woods carries it so well that it kind of pushes what are otherwise quite serious narrative failings in the story aside, and you kind of don't really notice them. It's taken me at least five viewings to notice that, oh,
that doesn't quite work. You know, there's a problem with this, But I'd still I still think and I probably was being more critical this time because I was watching the film with a purpose for a podcast. But I still think it. I still think it works fantastically.
One the one thing I noticed and related to Leslie and Horren's character. You know, when they're out on there, I guess you call it a date, and he talks about going by their old high school and she's like, no, don't go there. I don't want anything to do with that place. And so then they go to her house and she's going to take a bath before they're supposedly going to have sex, and what does he do for
the what's on the coffee table? It's a high school yearbook, because of course, if you hated high school, you would just leave your high school yearbook.
Yeah.
Sure, that's the first time I noticed that that that was And that's you know, it has to it serves the plot, it gets you through faster. But yeah, that's stuck out for me. I do like, I love Leslie and Warren as an actress, but I do think that part where she's introduced and they meet, it slows the movie down for me for about fifteen to twenty minutes. It sort of shifts into a lower gear it's not bad, but it just it. It definitely changes the speed of things.
But it is at the midpoint of the movie, so I get way why they did it.
But it's also about how absolutely Venal Hopkins's as a character. She's telling him that terrible story about what she experienced the school, and he says, hey.
Look, I got to the rape book here, I might as well go for the hall in Chilada.
You know, it's like he's got no sensitivity at all. It's just totally and you know, if she looks away and he looks at he's watching yourns, I mean, such a scumbag, such a complete scumbag.
That scene is fascinating just to watch his face, just to watch him while she's laying out that story, and Harris knows. Harris has that shot done so well to have her on the right side of the screen telling that very personal story, and to have him on the left side of the screen kind of facing us a little bit more, and we're just locked in. I'm just locked in on him more than her telling her horrific
origin story. Yeah. I did write down the note that he what he says to his wife after he's been talking with his daughter, and he says, in its sense is a terminal disease that starts way back when they're just little girls, when they're being fed all the bullshit about being entitled to happiness, like it's a birthright. That's what you don't understand when to stop perpetrating myths that
ruin their lives. And I love that his little girl, she's got a couple decorations on her wall, but one of them is a hand drawn picture of a cop basically, and it's just like, you know, I'm surprised he doesn't say daddy. Underneath that he's got his father figure with Dutch, the Charles Derning here. Oh, he's always wonderful, And I like that he gets two phone calls from Lloyd basically
like I need your help covering up this shit. Like both times I think he's just like, hey, yeah, I've done some bad things or I've found this crime scene, but basically I want you to run this thing and you know, get going on this stuff. It's weird because he's very much a father figure, but at the same time he is kind of a servant to Lloyd. Meanwhile, you've got Raymond Jay Berry in here is Captain Fred Gaffney, who I think has a bigger role in the movie
than he does the book. He just keeps showing up and basically upsetting things. And he's this big ultra Christian, which I found to be interesting that it's his faith that conflicts with what Lloyd does. Like he knows how we've mentioned the word venyl, Like he knows how venial Lloyd Hopkins is all the time. And he just does not approve of Hopkins just because he's running around on
his wife all the time. And Derning also doesn't really the Pelts character, Dutch Pelts doesn't agree with that either, but he kind of lets that slide, like that's you know, Lloyd's one little problem that he has is that he sleeps around with other women all the time. And yeah, literally picks up a woman from a crime scene after he's just blown away her.
Date and gets Dutch Shells to do the you're tired, Dutch, do you feel like doing the paperwork? Well, I tell you why, I drive this woman home. You know, he meets Kathleen and then he takes it to the party. It's just like absolutely no no shame about anything this guy, you know, and there's that there's that great scene with Julian Nemi, other woman who's who's sort of link in, not is it Julian Nemo? Who is that? Who is
the woman? The old slightly older woman, So Julian Nemi is the woman who was killed at the very beginning, I think no. And then there is that woman who's kind of like the hook go who runs the sort of swinger party, Joni prattry Brooks. And then and then and then you know, he sleeps Jooney Pratt and we figure out, we find out that someone's watching them. And later on, you know that the Right to Life cop is showing him the picture and going, look at this,
what do you think this is? And you know, for it do you think it is? You know, it's it's me having sex with this woman. You know, he's's completely shameless.
When he brings Leslie to the party, Charles dernings party, and Charles Derning's wife is just like a ghast, what are you doing? You're a married you know she hasn't seen this face like, you're a married man and you're
bringing this woman here to our party. Well it looks like a things giving party practically, because Derning's carving that turkey, and Charles Derning has this great little aside where he just looks at his wife and it's like shakes this, you know, moves his hand back and forth like let it go. Don't say a word. He probably does that every day at work, like telling, you know, to other cops, to Raymond Barrier's character, just like I'll get it, I'll
get it. I'll deal with him. He's mine, you know, he's my son in quotes son. Yeah, he's definitely. He definitely is the dad character. But James Woods is like the uncontrollable kid. Basically, it's like he's going to do the opposite of what his parents say until he needs to be bailed out, and then it's like, hey, Dad, bail me out. I need your help. That's exactly what the relationship is like.
Yeah, and Dutchess there for him every single time. I found it interesting though, that they changed what happens at that party from the book to the movie. And we'll definitely talk a little bit more about the book slash
movie stuff. But in the in the book, I think it's Dutch has gotten a promotion, and right, he got a promotion and then he's going to be not in that same position to help out Lloyd, and Lloyd calls him Judas and slaps him in the face in front of everyone, and somehow I think that's what starts the IA investigation of him and gets him suspended and puts him, you know, even more on the outs with the law, whereas with this one, he's just talking about what a
needle dick the Raymond J. Berry character is, and turns around and there he is, and that's what gets him in trouble, and I'm just like, wow, I would think, like the slap of Dutch in front of everyone is much more egregious than just like making fun of your boss. Now he's right behind me, isn't he.
Audience has loved Charles Derney even as a kid. I loved Charles Derney. I don't think you could get away with that in this movie. I can see why James Harris changed it, assuming it was Harris that did so. But it's just like, you know, a bridge too far.
For a me, and Dutch still wants to help him out.
I mean, Dutch is really the savior in the book that comes along out of pretty much nowhere and figures out what Lloyd is doing because in the in the book, again, sorry to go back to it, but it's the whole thing with the tape recorder that he finds outside of Whitey's place, and that tape recorder becomes that major piece of evidence because it's such a specialized machine that only what like twenty one have been sold around Los Angeles for the last however many years, and it was only
made for like one year kind of thing, so they're able to track down who owns that stuff. And the whole thing is after Lloyd has already figured out who the killer is, then Dutch has to follow in his footsteps and start making those same calls as to who owned this or who bought this tape recorder. But in this it really it doesn't work that way at all.
It's fine, real player in the bushes, well not really bushes, but you know, on the wall outside, and I'm thinking, man, someone has to switch out those reels that real to real tape of the player. I don't know how often. Like that'd be tough, Rod.
Sometimes you just got to let art flow over you, you know what I mean, it really I mean, and I think this is why I think it's the best it's the most faithful elroyd adaptation because if you really forensically read up until the last three, which I haven't read, but I mean I've read every single other thing that Elroy wrote, and I read the Floyd Hopkins, the three Floyd Hopkins novels. I think I've read them two or three times in the past. You can start to pick
Elroy apart easily. I mean it doesn't, you know, but it's just that frenetic pace, the dialogue, the narrative that this you know that that el Roy achieves, which this, all that stuff just gets flicked.
Aside, shortcuts. It like shortcuts the story. It just keeps moving in along movie.
Yeah, I mean, you don't have time to think about, oh that it didn't make a great deal of sense. How did that work? It just it's onto the next, onto the next thing, Onto the next Floyd Hopkins atrocity, onto the next on to the next woman that Floyd is seducing, Onto the next drama, on to the next argument. You know.
Yeah, it really stuck out to me this time because I never questioned it before. But I think with today's technology and they're you know, if a teenager was to watch this today, they probably wouldn't even know what a real to real player is. They might not know, so it really sticks out today. It's so analog, but I mean, I wouldn't change it. I still love it.
Elroy sets it up in the book about that tape recorder. He says that it is such a model that it does require I think it could record for a ton of hours. I want to say, it like switched out different tapes and things. And it also is it's activated with Whitey's door, so it only turns on once the door is closed. So it was very much just like it wasn't voice activated. You know. I don't know if we had that technology at that time, but it was such that it would only record when he got home
from work kind of thing. So el Right sets up this whole thing with a tape recorder that has such a long length to it. But then the killer comes back like the next day and finds that the recorder is gone. He's just like ah, and it's like, no, he only recorded four hours worth of stuff on this tape. He shouldn't have been back the next day, so it was odd. But I mean, the book definitely goes back and forth between Hopkins and Teddy just back and forth, back and forth. And I know he's not Teddy in
the movie. He's what Bobby Franco I think is his name. So he just goes back and forth between those two.
And it's interesting because you look at other cop thrillers at the time and you think about, like, how often do we see the killer and we see him see those killers in different amounts in all of these kind of films, and the few of them that stuck out to me were things like The Hero and The Terror, where the Terror is actually like second build kind of thing, or you get like Nighthawks where You've got it was Nighthawks right with Rutger Hower as the bad guy in
that Sylvester Sloan Ability Williams.
Yeah.
So it's like we follow these killers, but in this one other than and you don't know it at the time unless you're really paying attention. Other than the guy who's at the post office watching Lloyd when he meets up with Jony. You don't see the bad guy until right towards the end, and there was a scene where he takes out Birdman, but apparently Harris was so displeased. Now this is the story that Harris tells on the
Auto Audio commentary. So Harris says that he was not really happy with the quality of acting from the guy who was a stuntman. And by the way, he's the same stuntman who Arnold Schwarzenegger uses as a human shield in total recall in that escalator scene, which I just fucking love, and he's actor, slash, stuntman and a few other things, and he didn't like the performance, so he just cut out that scene. So we really don't see
him until the very freaking end of the movie. And I always wondered if that robed this movie of something, or if it's better that we just stay with Woods, because I'm trying to think of any scenes where Woods isn't present, and I have a hard time thinking about that. I can't think of any place where we don't see him.
Yeah, no, I agree, I agree.
That was what stuck out to me reading the book was it's it's like fifty to fifty essentially, I mean, between Teddy and Lloyd, but the movie's not like that, and I'm glad it's becomes Lloyd's story. Changes have to be made, and adapting for film completely different. I don't think it would have worked because Teddy's story is I don't know. It makes this more of a mystery, which I like Teddy's story in the book is it's a repeating of a lot of the same type of thing.
Although it would be interesting to see him stalk the women and how he does it sort of as a procedural, I do like the fact that he's sort of sidelined until the very end, and it's more of a mystery of like, who the hell is doing this and why? It does help the suspense of it.
Well, then it makes you also wonder, is it Charles Hayde, Is it even Leslie and Warren? At one point I'm thinking, like, very briefly, I'm thinking about Leslie and Warren.
Well, I agree. I remember the first time it was very much like every one of these people could be a red herring. You just didn't know. It's always good when you cannot figure out now, when a movie is able to not tricky necessarily but be way ahead of you, that's always a good thing in my book.
Yeah, I thought Charles Hayde definitely. Well, I think the first two or three times I saw this film, I thought Charles Haydes Cat because I think I think Sheriff Dealbert Whitey Haines is a great It's a terrible person, just a dreadful, slightly pasty, overweight Hollywood sheriff who's obviously so corrupt. I thought that was the same guy who played Ralph in Happy Days for about the first three times that I saw this film, and then I looked it up with an MD because they kind of have
a similarity. They kind of look a bit the same, and I thought that would be actually very cool if that was the case, but obviously it wasn't. I thought that Whitey Haynes was definitely and as it is, he is completely suspected taking down male prostitutes and running drugs.
So you know, I'd love in his apartment the Bustin' Ass poster that he had up on his wall. It's just basically a woman's butt in a thong and I think you see a police badge and yeah, bustin ass. It's classy. He didn't frame it.
People who read the book would know that it definitely wasn't him because he and Birdman are the two that again in the book rape Teddy, so rather than them raping Kathy in this one, and that's an interesting thing. Well, obviously, you know, very very different motivation for Teddy having been raped by these two, and that really sets him off on this whole psychotic journey of protecting Catherine and going after women that reminded him of her court that she
had when she was in high school. And that sets up a parallel that we also don't get, where we have Teddy being raped when he was what eight seventeen something like that, and then you've got Lloyd being raped when he is.
Eight I think it is, I've forgotten about that.
Yeah, So we have this whole thing. And then what's interesting too is that his mother, Lloyd Hopkins's mother, is the one who finds out who raped you. He can't even say it, he has to write it down. She takes that information, finds out that it was a guy from the neighborhood who is shell shocked from either must have been World War two or maybe Korea. And because this is happening I guess in the late fifties, it is,
so she is the one that employs vigilante justice. Lloyd follows her to the Silver Lake Power Plant and she kills this guy puts six bullets into this shell shocked veteran. And that weird thing that Lloyd says whence when they got home, she gave him her breast and lets him sleep with her that night. This weird maternal thing that's going on with that, which is absolutely wild. And then
where does the book end up. The book ends up at the Silver Lake power Plant, taking all of this stuff back to the beginning where Teddy and Lloyd face off and it's like who can survive their trauma? Lloyd survives pretty well, except that he can't handle music because music and TV all of these things were turned on inside of the workshed where he was tied up after his brother tied him up. And I'm glad that we don't have the brother, we don't have the parents, we
don't have any of that stuff. I mean, he really Harrish just stripped down that narrative and I think making Catherine the rape victim rather than our killer. But I mean, God, again, what an amazing motivator to have this killer be raped by these guys. And I love that whole attack of him in the book where I think Whitey goes to piss on him and finds out that he's hard and then ends up raping the guy and then has Birdman
rape him as well. And then we see Birdman so many later, so many years later as the street hustler, and it's just like, how this whole incident has affected his life.
Well, Kathy's clown plays and like, you'll never hear the same way again.
Yeah, and then doesn't he right on the wall and blood at the end, rather than let's go victors or whatever it is, doesn't he write I am not Kathy's clown.
I don't remember that it's possible.
Yeah. That's what really tips Lloyd off is he goes back to the year book. I mean that year book and this whole high school trauma. It's like I always say, you know, so much trauma comes from high school comes out in different ways.
I suppose.
Well, and that's where in the movie, it's out of school, right they meet at the end, that's where the finale is. Yeah, that to me, it's interesting that you get that shift away from the book, Like all the stuff that happened in school to Teddy now in the movie Teddy or Now Bobby inflicted that upon Lesli and Warren's character at school. So that's where it ends here. It's interesting. I like it. I mean, I'm always intrigued just visually of empty schools
at night. For some reason, it always works.
It's like the finale of La Confidential taking place at the Victory Hotel, where it's a lot of bad stuff happened here. He might as well say that, as he's going back to that high school, a lot of bad stuff happened here.
Is it too early to talk about that last line right now?
No?
I think it's always a good time to talk about that last line.
Like I don't know, I don't want to ruin it for those who haven't seen it. But what I remember from from seeing the film the first time in the theaters is an audience not sure how to react to that line, because it goes from that to black as he cocks the gun. It's like a perfect edit.
Well, well, what aren't you going to read me by rights? Cuff me, take me into.
Custody, Why so you can sid in a nice comfortable cell. That's just a smart ass. Lay a cup in the sanity, please at the idea.
What's it to you on kins? You're a cop, you gotta take me in.
Well, there's some good news and there's some bad news. The good news is you're right, I'm a cop and I gotta take you in. The bad news is I've been suspended and I don't give a fuck.
And it just kind of floors you. And I think today people might clap at something like that, but back then it was dead silent. No one know what to do with it. I didn't know how to react to it, although I thought it was definitely interesting because I'd never seen a movie in that way before. I think when you talk about this movie today, those who have seen it,
remember that a lot. If more people had seen it, you would see Cop talked about on the best Last Scenes, best last shots, best last lines, whatever, all those lists that get done on the internet. I definitely think Cop would be on there a lot more.
And it's amazing to hear Harris talk about that in that commentary and that it doesn't sound like it was made up on the spot, because there is some of that in the script. But they definitely changed the way
that the script ended. Basically, the movie was supposed to end with them finding Teddy slash Bobby hung up by one leg, very much like the original victim that we saw, and then there's a title card that explains what happens to everybody after the end of the movie, which is wild to me that they would go that far and have Lloyd having murdered the guy the same way. So the title card appears and it says Lloyd Hopkins was
suspended without pay for one year pending a hearing. At that time, he is presently looking for work in the San Francisco area. Janice Hopkins is suing for divorce and has plans to marry Bernard Plotkin, a Marin County psychotherapist.
Arthur Dutch Pelts was promoted to commander in the Internal Affairs Division, reporting directly to Commander Fred Gaffney MS Kathleen McCarthy, which is nice that they kept the Miz sold her bookstore and now lives with Thelma Teddy Bailey, a Los Angeles Silver Liberties attorney, So they kept the Teddy in there, but changed it to the name of the woman that she's now living slash sleeping with.
So she checked up with the lawyer that that represents her with Dutch that that you know, and she's that woman who's sitting there. Yes, wasn't the problem one of the problem, one of the many problems with the making of this film is that the studio wanted a dirty Harry film.
That last letter is very dirty hardy yet yeah.
Well exactly, and so they got that. But it's thinking about it, you know, they will worry because it's kind of like it's almost like a slasher film in some respects and in some respects just thinking about it now, it's also kind of arguably could be put in that small group of American films which you would call American giallo's as well. It's actually, now that I think about it, it actually has a lot of things in common with that very small sort of body of film. So I mean, yeah,
it's more dirty. It ended up being more Dirty Harry than it did being you know, but it combines that sort of slasher thing, it combines giallo elements. There's there's all kinds of things in this It's quite sort of narratively sophisticated film as well as having real pace.
A studio do you mean the Atlantic releasing group that put it out. There were so many indie labels in the eighties that were putting out movies like Wide and they had I guess their biggest hit was Teenwolf, but they did like the Garbage pil Kids movie. I remember seeing their low go on Paul Schrader's Patty Hurst Night
of the comment Steal Justice with Marvin and Cove. They had like a Smurf's cartoon back in the eighties, and it's just a strange time where yeah, Atlantic, they never think they didn't last much longer than this to be.
According to Harris, this was one of the last three movies that Atlantic put out. He was talking about how Ciskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up, and he was like, oh great, put it out on the poster, and they're like, we don't have money to rerun these posters.
I actually I remember I saw this movie because of Ciscol and Neighbor It's review back then, Like I worshiped Cisco Niehburt, Like I grew up on their show and I learned a lot from those guys, and this was one where I was like, yeah, I like it. I don't love it, but I'm glad I went to see it. Yeah, I definitely do remember that review because it got me in the seat.
I was just looking up to see what else that they did. Well they did Valley Girl. Night of the Common met very well. Extremities, even that was a rough one.
You know how Roger Corman would import foreign films and stuff. Guess Cannon did that as well too, before making them move more towards just exploitation. They'd been around a while back in the eighties when VHS hit, there were a ton of those labels. Every week there'd be things opening up from these little shingles. It was quite a time. You had your pick, You had your pick every week of many, many, many films.
Well there was all that money slashing around too, you know that.
Yeah, that's a good point.
You know that, you know that we're making a movie. Yeah, do you want to invest? I mean that, you know, that's that's partly what's driving a lot of those little, sort of small labels that are putting out really interesting stuff like this.
Speaking of Dirty Harry, this movie reminded me a lot of tightrope.
The Clinte movie, which is another American Giallo.
Very sleazy, has the Herbo serial killer and actually, now that I remember, Randy Brooks is in it as eye candy again. But yeah, it plays like that.
Is that the one with the horror is that the one people are killing people in the horror film or something like, there's a horror film being I.
Think you're thinking of Deadpool.
I'm thinking of Deadpool. Sorry, yeah, I get that light Clintace, so, I get that Clintaste would cop fi is mixed up a bit that because you know, but the.
Killer when he kills Randy Brooks, and I think it's like, I don't know if it's the opening of Tirerope, but it's soon into the beginning.
Uh.
He has this crazy like kabookie mask type thing on that's really chilling to look at. She like gets into a hot tub and is just soaky, like looks up or something and sees this face staring out of her. It's pretty pretty chilling. But Randy Brooks, so I mentioned her earlier as the woman who sets up these floating swingers parties with Really, that line to me is funny because she left acting to become a realtor. So I wonder if maybe she sets those things up now I'm
just kidding. She doesn't. I'm sure that you know of that I know of. But the scene in the book where he goes with her to the next swinger party, which I think is that night he says, when your next one, I'm going as your date. And so he goes there, gives a brief speech at the beginning like hey, you guys have fun, I'm going to go upstairs and lay down. And then he goes upstairs and lays down
like looks through you know, evidence or whatever. And then as he comes comes down to leave, like all the music is blaring and he has like this kind of a anxiety attack, I guess of swords, which ties back to the trauma that Mike was talking about. I'm glad they cut that because it was just it would have been weird.
But in the book, that's that's a chance for Erro to chuck in a bit to b swinger clubs, a bit of a swinger experience for the night Light nineteen seventies. You know.
One of the things that he had in the book was where Teddy's for Plank I think is the last name the book, which I could see why they changed it to Bobby Franco works at a porno bookstore, and which I Olroy did for a brief time before it came James L.
Roy.
But that again that the book gets and I don't remember if I'm reading this in Blood on the Moon as was published or the La Death Trip version. Be it's really explicit about one of the encounters he has at the bookstore at like three am when he comes upon this guy. Don't read into that enjoying himself.
That is definitely in Blood on the Moon.
This movie could have been.
A lot nastier, which is saying something.
Which is saying something because it probably I don't remember what else was out that year that was like causing controversy, not that this did, because it wasn't a blockbuster. It wasn't a project so much, but that would have made some headlines which we would have probably helped the box office.
They really toned down the homosexuality of the characters and just they race it. Yes, yeah, those very heterosexual posters in Whitey's room. I mean he does have those very nice padded leather cuffs. I mean, you are not going to get any sort of marks on your wrist having that. I mean that's a lot of padding in there.
So isn't there a box of Dudos as well? I think that or am I imagining this? I'm want projecting this.
I don't remember if that's the case, but I know that, Yeah, they definitely take out the whole thing where part of Birdman's job is to basically take care of Whitey every single time that he sees him, and yeah, really just
remove that whole homosexual angle altogether. And then Teddy slash Bobby, I don't think that he's being portrayed, even though he's very life and everything, I don't think that he's being portrayed as gay either, which is ironic because you're talking about controversy and what three years later we're going to have Silence of the Lambs, which just gets a ton of controversy with the Jamie Gumm James Grant character.
And yeah, this was a time where AIDS was still a public menace, basically something to fear, with all the you know, fake stories going around about how you could catch it. And there are a lot of movies where the homosexual is the villain, and so it is kind of surprising just that all that is erased because it was part of the course back then.
I guess I wanted to talk about another Thomas Harris adaptation to have Maynhunter a few years before this and have the reason why he takes I can't remember the reporter's name, but takes him out is because he printed that the tooth Fairy was gay, and he doesn't.
Like they planted yes to flush out the Toothpairy. Says, Fairy, do you imply that I'm clear?
God, no, before me.
You're a slug in the sun.
You are pretty to a great becoming, and you recognize nothing.
You're an antony afterbirth.
And it works too well almost, I mean even the name tooth Fairy. He doesn't like that either, because it implies that he's gay as well.
There's another in the book going back to the homosexuality of the characters, where Lloyd Hopkins is looking in a car or something and a black guy is getting serviced and he's sort of comparing his own penis to his and wondering why he doesn't get blowjobs like this fat guy does, and starts thinking about why his wife doesn't do that anymore, and it's just sort of this weird twisted you know, It's like he's partly admiring the guy while also despising him.
Yeah, he really wants his wife to give him a low job and she will not do that. And I remember that line about how you know, would she take him in his mouth in her mouth at some point And I was just like, well, this is really odd. Like he was so happy when he passed the detectives exam or whatever, and he was just like, oh, you know, for sure Janis is going to give me a blowjob tonight. But Nope, doesn't do that. And her whole thing too where because she leaves him very early in the movie.
It goes on for a little bit longer in the book. And who does she go out with. She's got this gay friend, George, and it feels like, well, that's okay that she's hanging out with this gay guy because he's not a sexual threat in this world, and like he kind of gives that a passage. He's the one. Like she actually moves out and moves in, I believe, with George and a friend of his, and then they have this whole thing of like how she moves to San Francisco is kind of like a coding for that.
Not really say that guy people, You know, queer people have a good run at any any award book though, you know, just to say the least, you.
Know, you think about that. Simon Baker character from La confidential.
And I mean, god, there's a numerable fruit hustlers and rent boys and who always end up on the sort of killers slab at some point or another, collateral collateral damage to what's going on.
I was just surprised that nobody's a shipbird in this movie.
Floyd is a compound, as that says at one point, I think that's you.
Know, Olroy definitely has his turns of phrase.
That's that's right, that's right, he does. He sure does. You know the Leslie and Warren character with the we mentioned the eearbook and how she wouldn't really have that on her table if she, you know, hated high school so much, didn't want to think about it. But at the end, and I did not remember this from previous viewings, is that she calls Bobby Franco to give him a heads up they're suspecting him of being a killer, and
James Woods runs after her. You know, she's calling from the payphone outside the police station, and he's screaming at her like why would you do that? And I'm thinking the same thing, why would you do that? And her reasoning is.
I thought he was innocent. I thought you would first keep what I thought was a talented and sensitive boy. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Okay, she seems smarter than that. Even though she's latest comes as woo woo. She probably is like into crystals and things like that, even though they don't talk about that. Just a weird character with her head in the clouds. But it doesn't I don't know why she would do that. It doesn't make sense to me.
Yeah, she does the same thing in the book, but he doesn't know about it, I don't think, or at least he doesn't know about it at first. And she directly is the one that gets Janice kilt because when she puts Teddy in the book onto Hopkins, he starts following Hopkins. Hopkins goes to visit Jonie and comes out and next thing you know, there's a knock at the door.
She thinks that Lloyd is back. No, it's Teddy, and he massacres her, and luckily Catherine is smart enough in the book to realize, oh, I was the one that
caused that. If I had not called him, that woman would still be alive, and that guilt haunts her for the rest of the book, and she ends up leaving Lloyd at the end of the book, you know, even though it seems like they're going to be together, she ends up leaving and is like, I can't handle this guilt and seeing you every single day is just making it worse again. The kind of sins of the past. I mean, so much of Elroy's work too, is just
sins of the past. And I think Leslie and Warren really works in this role for me, because she's got that voice, that little girl voice that she does, and she just seems like a damaged little girl. She seems like, mentally at times, the same age as Penny the Daughter. She didn't have a daddy who told her stories to prepare her for the real world, so when she saw how awful the real world is, she didn't know how to handle it.
I thought about that. Actually, as she goes to smoke a joint and take a bath before they are are supposed to make love or have sex, I guess she does call it make love, and she's talking about it like kind of like a kid would, are we about to make love? She just sort of flighty and does this like little boop thing with her finger and half dances out of the room. It is kind of a child she acts like a child.
You're right, it's it's play. I have a feminist though, you know, it was one of these it's they're paying out and all the feminist women that the other Dido didn't sleep with l I in the sort of light seventies and eighties, you know it completely. What's that? You know when they when they find that what's that book where he finds the body of Julianne Nemia Rage from the Womb, Rage from the Womb by Pamela van Dyke. There's other bits though, that sort of work in the film.
I do.
I do like a good piece of analog police work. And I think that scene where he's pulled all the files and he stays up all night going through the files. He's going, no to black, too young, not innocent, not innocent, Talk to me, Talk to me. I just think that's a great that's actually quite believable. That's quite a quite a good scene, I think. And you know, his police
work seeds are terrific. I mean when when he Floyd first confronts Whitey hot Whitey about you know, and he just sits in down at the table, he's eating pie and he hardly says anything. And and and the Delbert Whitey Haines characters, you know, fills the silence by talking him and kind of incriminating himself a bit. I think things like that are really really good. You know, there's some good and all place action in this film, which is oloys four time. In the books.
I think Hopkins says to Whitey when he's talking about working like West Hollywood or something. He calls it, I think a fact at sewer, just to like throw Whitey off of his game a little bit. In the book, it has more impact since Whitey is engaging in some of this stuff, but it really tips him off to the whole birdman hustler aspect of it. I really kind of wish we had a little bit more of the Birdman in there, just because I like the actor that played him.
That.
Speaking of Pockmarked, but that guy from Greece that I love when people take pictures from Greece and they're just like these people are supposed to be in high school, and like Dennis Stewart is probably the least I look like I'm in high school of all of them. You know, I think he was thirty when they were shooting that. And I always liked when he would show up and stuff because he just had a great look.
I forgot he was in Greece. I totally forgot that. Yeah, and Andy Beccenroe is in this barely, and I didn't recognize her. Raymond J. Berry I didn't recognize until this time because I wasn't familiar with him in viewings before. After justified the mwar Leonard series, like you can't not think of like you can't not remember who that guy is anytime he shows up. It is good. But to go back to Andrew's point, like eighty five percent in the movie is casting. This is a really well cast movie.
There's so many good people. I will include Randy Brooks in here because she's always, you know, the like man with two Brains or Hamburger the motion picture. She's the dits. She's the blonde dits, you know who's gonna get naked, And here she she doesn't get naked, and she's not a dits, and she's good. She actually acts, and she
didn't get that many opportunities like that. She was always eye candy or sometimes just scenery, like she's in William Friedkin's Deal of the Century, not even has any lines, just like he is in a bikini on stage. But she's really good. I think she's fine.
I think she's really good. Yeah and yeah, I'm used to her playing the dits, So when she's got her shit together in this movie, I'm like, Okay, that's great. And it does make me very sad when we see her strung up in that same position that she was in while she was having sex in that crime scene. That's a very disturbing moment.
In the book, in that scene where not the one where she dies, but where they're having sex and she has this she's really turned on by the handcuffs, gets him to cuff her well, or they think they attempt to or something. That effect goes on a lot longer. But then it does end in the same place with the door creaking, which I'm surprised they don't here.
Well, that's ceisling. They've got their raws, and lot of things come up.
The movie itself, like they didn't need to have like they put in the sound effect of the creaking door. You didn't need that sound effect. You could have just shown that door and you'd get you'd get it. Audiences are not always smart, but they're smart enough for things like.
I'm so happy. When Dallas Novelle asked for this for an episode, I was like, oh cool, I'll get Elroy back, I'll get Charles Hayde back, I'll get James b Harris back. This will be fantastic. So Elroy just won't respond to my emails right now. I don't know what's going on Hayde. When I reached out to him, he said, I will not have anything to do with talking about James Woods or James Woods movie, and I was like, oh, okay.
So I think there's definitely either bad blood from the past or what Woods is today is affecting Hayde talking about this now. But luckily James b Harris agreed to come back and talk to me about this.
Did you try Randy Brooks real toor I did try Randy Brooks never got any sort of response. I really wanted to, and I mean, I've had Lesley and Warren on the show, but that was set up through a press thing, so was unable to get in.
Touch with her. I was beating the bushes. I really like this movie a lot and really wanted to give this a little bit more oof, but at least we've got James b Harris.
So I didn't listen to that interview deliberately because I just thought, if I listened to the James b Harris interview, It'll start changing what I'm going to think about the film and what I'm going to say about the film. So, guys had an amazing career. I mean, not only the whole Kubrick connection, but I mean Cop, and I don't know if you guys got to look. I mean there was Cop, there was the Bedford Incident, which was his
nuclear war thriller in nineteen sixty five. And he did this amazing film in nineteen eighty two called Fast Walking, which also had Woods and I don't know if you've either of you have.
Seen Tim Carrey. I think Carry isn't there?
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, about a corrupt prison kin. That's a terrific film and also very dark and very sleazy. So and then of course goes on to do I think his last film is Boiling Point, which is what was that the boiling when was Boiling Point ninety three?
That's right, that's it. It's like, why did he not direct work?
He's we did the bits and pieces. He did a sort of semi porn film, semi some call it loving.
Oh yeah, we talked about that on the show before.
Yeah, well that's the one film of his I haven't seen, but I have seen the Bedford Incident, which I think is great, and I've seen Fast Walking three or four times.
That's just bad movies. It's like, why did he not? I don't know that he has a definable style. But the scene that I thought was one of the best directed in this is when James Woods goes to Charles Head Charles Heed's Wade's apartment and he's just sitting there and it cuts between like Woods just sitting and then what he's seeing, which is the wall with the door, and then it every time it cuts back, which is not quick quick quick, but you know, it has pace,
has pauses. It gets in a little tighter to what he's seeing, and a little tighter and a little tighter, and I could not figure out what is what is he trying to show us. You don't actually see until it gets like you could see there's something above the doorframe, but it's not until Woods gets up out of a seat and goes and moves it that you can tell it's a you know, a wire or a microphone. I guess that leads to But the way that that is framed,
composed cut is a really effective scene. I thought that was really well done.
I think Harris too. I mean, I'm not sure. Again. I deliberately didn't listen to the interview you did, Mike, because I just thought it would clear my pitch about a whole of things I might say or might not
say about Cop. But I know that Harris basically says at one point, you know, in terms of it, you know, to your question right about why did he do so few films, he said, I preferred the kind of material and the kind of subjects that were not deemed or perceived as commercial, so it was almost impossible to raise money to do them. I was spoiled, I suppose, having
worked on what I thought were very important films. But you know, he also then went out of his own and then had to raise the money had for these. I mean, fast Walking is an incredibly non commercial project. It's like COP. I suppose it's like you know, it's a it's a film that straddles about three or four genres boiling points. Maybe his most mainstream film.
I don't know, I'd say definitely the most mainstream, but even that was it wasn't hit.
Absolutely not, because they was that Wesley Strike, Wesley Snipe was it? Wesley Snipes is it cop? And they wanted it in the studio, wanted a Passenger fifty sort of another version of Passenger fifty seven. They sort of hard charging Wesley Snipes as a kind of dirty Harry type cop. And what they get is this weird character study about all these criminals gone wrong and ballroom dancing and a whole the other weird stuff that's in Boiling Point.
The poster for Boiling Point is extremely similar to Caps, but.
The film is not. The film is not. The film is totally, very low key, quite soft in parts, a strange kind of mixture of ninety three so early nineties. It's kind of got eighties cop thriller tropes in it, but it's also a very strange film.
I'm going to look, I'm going to like raise that on top of this. Now they've revisited, so I want to see that one.
Yeah. I don't think Boiling Point's a brilliant film, but I think it's an interesting film, and you can sort of see what Harris is trying to do and there's lots of really interesting full of great American character actors, so you know, it's it's definitely worth saying. I mean, the film I will watch again and again is Fast Walking. I think that's fantastic film. I it's probably my favorite Harris film.
After they did this, Harris actually did do a adaptation of Black Dahlia, and that would have been interesting to see. And then since he was involved in the project, he ended up with a executive producer credit on the Brian De Palmer Black Dahlia, and I was glad that he had no qualms on the auto commentary for cop saying that he was a little disappointed, let's say, in Black Dahlia, because I very much am there with him.
I rewatched that recently after having seen it in the cinema when it came out. It's a terrible film. It's an atrocious film. I really I'm.
Very glad that my memory is correct because I have no desire to see it.
No, no, no, it just does not work in any way, shape or form.
I'd love Brian de Palmer, and I couldn't finish it. I think it's just it's dreadfully boring.
I just remember because you know, we talked about doubling and the doubling of Hopkins and Teddy, and there's doubling that happens in The Black Dahlia, and that doubling is supposed to be between the Hillary swaink character and the Mia Kirshner character, Hillary playing Madeline Lynn Scott and Mia Kirshner as the titular Black Dahlia. Elizabeth Short, Hilary's swink
says this line with a straight face. Everyone says, I look like her, and I'm just like, oh my god, honey, you look nothing like Mia Kirshner whatsoever.
It's just so bad. Really.
The Elroy film that I do remember liking a lot, and I haven't had a chance to rewatch it because I'm living overseas and I haven't got all my stuff with me. I did like Brown's Rickliem.
I do remember liking that one because that was Michael Rooker.
Right, yeah, Michael Rooker. And it's it's again. It's another Railroy adaptation, and I do remember thinking, yea, this is quite faithful to the original novel. I mean, it was was Brown's Recreem before the Floyd hop was that was. Was that one OF's earliest.
Brown's Requiem, Yeah, I think it was Clandestine and Brown's Requiem were the first two.
The Floyd Hopkins film Cop came out and then brought and then I think Brown's Recreem came out, and then La Confidential. I do love La Confidential. I think it's terrific film, but it's a sort of cleaned up version of Bilroy's novel.
Yeah, and I think La Confidential came out, and then Brown's Recreem the movie came out the next year, just because it had that little from La Confidential, like, oh cool, let's adapt more of this guy's work. And then the thing I didn't realize because I knew that they had tried to adapt La Confidential as a TV show way back in two thousand and three, and I think Southern Yeah, the key for Sutherland one. And then I didn't realize that there was another one from twenty nineteen.
Was that Jordan Harper crime writer who also did the script on his on that And I've actually seen the first episode. I did do an episode. Yeah, it's really good. It's really good.
Yeah.
I didn't realize until I was interviewing Dominic Burgess, who played the Victor Bono character in Feud, that he had played Sid Hudgens in that new version of La Confidential. But since that's from twenty nineteen, I don't think we're getting a series out of it, even though it's got a great cast. Walter Goggins as Jack Vincent's pretty freaking.
Almost one episode. I made one episode and then never went anywhere. But the episode is great.
Shave Wigham. I love Share Wigham in everything. Yeah, I want to see that. I remember here reading or start reading hearing a podcast with Jordan Harper. Can't remember what it was on, but they did talk about that Elie Confidential pilot and that it's probably Yeah, I think it's dead, which is because that could it could be a really good series for something like HB. But I think the key for said Lerdland, if i'd recall, was for Fox, which would not have been good just the way.
That Elroy writes and just the disturbing content he gets into. You have to do this for cable. It cannot be for broadcast television. If you're going to do an Elroy thing, I mean, he's got so many things like had you said, Okay, La confidential, but let's make a prequel. Let's go all the way back to Blackdalia itself, Like, let's start there and just show this whole history of la I mean, because that's what that's the thing that Elroy does so well.
And it could almost be like a Noah Howley thing where it's like each season becomes a different book, or you do two seasons per book, because these are vast tapestries that Elroy is creating. So speaking of let's go ahead and take a break, and we're going to be back with that interview with James B. Harris, the writer director of cop Right after these brief messages.
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dot com and rediscover the wonders of physical media. So I understand you and James Woods have worked together on fast Walking, and even before we talk about cop I'm so curious how fast Walking came about.
I did an adaptation on a book called a Rap by writing named Ernest Browley, when Laura mar was in business at that, you know, doing feature films after they had done Dallas as a huge hit on television and they wanted to go into the making of features. So I showed on my script on what I called fast Walking, because he was a minor character in the novel, but I made him a major character because I just thought he was more interesting and and Laura Man loved the script,
and we decided I had to find an actor. Jimmy Woods was starting to He had done the Holocaust TV show and I think I don't know if he did the Onion Field yet, but he had never he never had a lead in the picture. He's always, you know,
a good supporting actor. So we decided to go after Woods, and he loved the script, and he and I got together to discuss it and found out that, you know that we had a lot of things in common, you know, aside from from movies, and we got along great and it was really it made it so much fun doing
the film with him. You can always tell whether things work or not if they want to do a second picture with you, which turned out to be cop not only did we work well together, but we became best friends and to this day we're still buddies, in touch with each other all the time. Just as in Aside. He lives in Pacific Palisades, and strangey enough, his house survived. It has smoking damage, but all the houses next to him on both sides went down and he survived, Thank goodness.
You know, it's amazing. But anyway, we're still in touch, we're still buddies, and he's a great guy, you know, as far as a friend is concerned.
You had such a stellar cast on Fast Walking. I mean I love M. M. Walsh, Susan Tyrrell, Robert Hooks. I mean, just so many amazing character actors and just you know, straight actors, just such a wonderful pool of talent.
You're forgetting about the too many a Tim Carrey, Remember Timothy Carey from Pars Glory.
I love Timothy Carey, and I was definitely going to ask about him because I'm so curious what he is like to work with.
He's difficult to work with because he he's he was a scene stealer, you know, he loves to do things that were not in the rehearsals and always surprised us. You know, what you need is one good take, and he looks terrific on the screen. He basically was a good guy.
You know.
We used him in the killing Koprick and I we used him in Pairs of Glory and then uh, I gave him another another shot and uh fast Walking and then the other guy, Uh, Tim McIntyre, he's another fun character. I mean. And playing your scene with those two were really amazing.
Yeah.
I thought the same as you that that this was the terrific gest you know, starting with Woods and Tim McIntyre and Timothy Carrey and Waltz and Kay Lens and a few others and what's his name. Uh, but all those guys were terrific. And we shot half the film in deal Large, Montana at a vacated prison, and so we got the use of that prison as our set and it just worked out fine.
You know.
It was one of those sixers that didn't get a major distribution. Warners has the picture now because they bought out Lorimar and they have it in their Buried Treasure group of pictures. You could probably get it on Amazon or one of those things. That was the start of my relationship with Woods. And we had such a good time making it, we decided we want to do another one, and I came up with James elroy book Cold Blood on the Moon. I adapted that and the distributor was
to cause who they were. They went bankrupt whatever they were, you know, going to finance the movie, and it was a shame. But this seemed like I thought, really good movies at Fast Walking and Cop and neither one of them got a proper distribution. The distributor for a Cop when bankrupt. They didn't have enough money to even do television advertising. And how can you compete with all the other product on the market if you're not advertising on TV.
You know, they limited it to I don't know to radio and news I guess not even that, just a newspaper ads. The picture did well and it opened in Los Angeles and Westwood did fine, and he got great reviews. It was book two thumbs up with Cisco and remember those guys. But did you know it's just one of those pictures that not too many people know about it, and which thinks of it as one of his best works. You know, we did it after he was nominated for Salvador.
You didn't win the Academy Award. He got nominated for Salvador, so he was he was starting to be known. And he's had a hell of a career. You know, he's done some really good work that had a good cast too, you know, Leslie un Warrant and Charlie Derning, Charlie had Who's fun working with those people they wove? Is it difficult to do? They You know, you have such great expectations before you start, and you can get eighty percent of of what you if you're looking what you're dreaming about.
You're lucky. You know, You've got so many problems that develop, and that's why you do as much preparation as possible to try to deal with the problems. You know are are on the horizon and may sure are. You know, you're dealing with human beings, you know. So actors sometimes are very cooperative, and sometimes they have other problems that
interfere with their work. And you're trying to get a performance, and then you've got weather problems, You've got time restraints because you have a budget and a schedule, you have a completion bond, and those people looking over your shoulder to make sure you don't go overtime and over budget and over schedule. It's well, you're so glad when it's over and you just hope that you have at least eighty percent of what you had helped you get. The cop turned out okay, I mean it was really made.
A lot of people pay attention. Was that ending? Do you remember? The ending? Was kind of a shock. We did that picture for under three million. It was really tough. You didn't want too many, you know, take five, take six. You have to keep moving along and you get it right. Casting is everything, you know, cooping, and I always felt that testing was like eighty percent of the movie because
if you get the right actors requires less directing. The better the actor is, the less you have to direct, as long as they understand the script and they know what the scenes are about, and they can add things too that you know, you just don't want an actor who just stands there and says tell me what to do. They have ideas of their own. I mean, you as a director can always negate them, and you always have
final say when you're making the movie. But if you ca the right actors, mixed directing a lot easier than you think. And that's what it's all about you know, if the young filmmakers they should watch a lot of movies and start to recognize the actors that are really good, and those are the ones you want to work with. You know, unless you're doing a documentary or an animated film, you need actors. You know, they're the ones that are
going to tell you a story. You better get good ones, you know, good character, you know, good thinking people that can create for you. And I think I had that with Woods with Charlie Derning. He was terrific. And unless Leanne Warren, you remember her and Victor Victoria. She got nominated to that.
When did you first encounter Blood on the Moon And what about that story appealed to you and you said, oh, this is going to make a fantastic movie.
I'm always looking for what you call published material. You know, when I met Kubrick we decided to become partners and the movies together. I told him that the one thing that I'm going to bring to the partnership is the wherewithal to acquire previously published material, because up to that point Kubrick had only done, you know, two pictures that sort of looked like he made it up as he
went along. What was so good about Kubrick's early works was not the pictures themselves, but the fact that he was so young and that he did everything himself. But the one thing he didn't have the wherewithal is to acquire material, you have to option it and then you have to buy it. And since then, since nineteen fifty five, when we made our first picture together, Kubrick on his own or myself on our own or together, we never did a picture that wasn't based on previously published material.
It really is, you know, again, advice to the filmmakers, rather than make up your own stories, which are probably not anywhere as good as the novelist. Just think, you know, the novelist that did all the groundwork, he did all the heavy listening for you, He made up the story, he made up all the characters, he did all the
research on whatever the picture was about. And then you come along and all you have to do is, and I know it's not that easy, but all you have to do is decide what scenes you know you want to dramatize, because you can't do the whole book, usually the four hundred pages or so. To try to do a two hour movie you know, you have to be concerned about what's necessary to dramatize to tell you a story.
But anyway, getting back to the fact that I'm always looking for books and bookstores and I subscribe to it to a service that gives you advanced reviews of books to be published. And I came across in a book. So I came across Elroy's one of the trilogy, you know he did. I figure what they're all called. What's his name, Lloyd Hopkins. There was the cop you know, you know, over the top cop, you know, a cop who makes up his own rules and likes to settle
things out of court. And I thought the character was terrific, and then the story worked. Lady never had anything made of his books, those three, and I contacted him and and he was go ahead to sell me an option on Blood on the Moon. And we became good friends too, because he became probably the most known crime writer, you know, since the old days of Dashall Hammett and all those guys,
you know, James McCain. He had best sellers, you know, like La Confidential, remember that one, you know, when the Academy Award for my friend Curtis Hansen for writing a script. But anyway, I came across Blood on the Moon in the bookstore and I thought, see if I can acquire this thing, I think I can make a good movie out of it. And when I did, I sat down and wrote the script and got back in touch with Jimmy Woods and said, you know, let's do this together.
You know, we both produce it and New Star and I've written it and I'll direct it. And that's what we did. We think at least a lot of critics thought as well, that it turned out pretty good.
Obviously, the book goes in so many different directions, but you pare it down to just those essential facts that really keep a very tight, fast moving story.
When you look at a lot of crime films, they kind of slow down the action with too much of personal things of a side with these the characters, and they always put up a song that the girl has to sing in the nightclub or something, and it's you know, I just wanted to stay away from that. And you know, had already worked with Stanley and we did the killing,
and the killing was one of those picture. Just what we loved about it was the way the story was told in a series of flashbacks which just follows each
participant in the robbery up until a certain point. It kind of set a whole standard for film noir in Hollywood, you know, because Roger Corman, who made you know, low budget pictures, they realized that you could make a low budget picture that looked like an a budget picture, you know, they killing We used Lucian Ballad, who was a terrific cameraman, you know. I mean it was really well known and
well respected. But you know, and Van Kubrick, being a photographer himself, I was able to use the right lenses and the right camera moves and everything, and we made a real low budget picture look like like a major movie. We were talking about the pace and keeping it tight and getting rid of all the you know, the unnecessary set that you want to trim away, and that's what we did with Kapp. We just kept it moving and told the story that people could understand, and you get
the right actors to play those characters. And that's a good recipe to make a movie.
Well, you mentioned some of the major players, but even some of the minor actors or minor characters that should say are so well done. I mean, Dennis Stewart or you know, even Stephen Lambert in there. I just love or gosh, I mean Raymond Jay Berry, who always brings so much to play kind of a smallish role as that police captain, but oh my gosh, he just lights up the screen every time he's on.
Yeah, you remember he did a picture for Tomino. I think it was the Year the Dragon or something in Chinatown and New York and I saw Ray Berry in that and I said, I got to you know, if if ever I do a crime film, I got to get this guy in the film. He's just terrific and so I wish the part of them bigger. But but but I figured ray had to do that. I had to. I had to have him. And even the girl books. Yeah, Randy Brooks, she was terrific in a real small part.
That's the whole thing. You know, at the beginning of our conversation, I told you that Stanley and I really believe that casting is eighty percent of the movie, and you get the right people. It's such a great hate start. You have. You have to pay attention. You know, like a lot of directors, you trust the casting director and they don't pay enough attention to every little part because they think, well, it's only a small part, is not
that important. But every part's important, you know, especially you know, you make one mistake in the movie and it can it can ruin it if you pick the right people, even for those small parts. You know, even in Fast Walking it was minor parts with Charlie, you know, Charlie Weldon. You know, I figured her first name, Weldon was a terrific singer. You know, she was a recording artist and she was just great. But Charlie, he played the part great,
and Hooks did. Of course, everybody in there was was great. And as I said, the first time I directed a picture, it was called a Bedford incident if you ever saw that one. But you know, I had never directed a film before. You know, spending time with Kubrick, you know,
he makes it look easy and it's not easy. But he also inspires you to want to direct yourself, and he was always pushing me to because that's the most rewarding part of making a movie, is directing, because you know, when you look at the dais other rushes, that's what you see on the screen. You did that as a director, you put it up there, and as a producer. You know, I was fulfilled in that I had acquired all the material and made sure everything got made, and an interference
for Kubrick. But I never felt that it was as a rewarding as if I had directed the movies. So I got a shot to direct the picture. You know, I found this book the Bedford Incident. I didn't write the script myself this time. Had never written a script before. I've worked on scripts with Stanley. But I got a good script, which is which of course, you know, it's the old story. You can't make good mayonnaise with rotten eggs,
you know. And you got a good screenplay. You know, you're you're off to a real good start if you if the screenplay floored, if it's not doesn't work, you're not going to make a good movie. I mean, it's the blueprint of the movie and it better be right. So anyway, we look at the actors that I had. Widmark was a pro that maybe have done fifty movies or some crazy like that. Porty had just won the Academy at work for Lidley's of the Field. And I
had a great English actor named Eric Portman. And then I had James MacArthur. I had Wally Cox, I had Marty Botham, he's always so good, you know, and even Donald Sutherland had a small part in the infidences. But the point I'm making is that these are all terrific actors. And I had never directed a film before, but the picture turned out like like I was an old pro and why But because I had the good actors. And as I said before, you know, the better the actor is,
the less directing you have to do. What you have to do is have an year. You know, they can tell whether a scene plays or not. Pretty tough to say, why not playing? If it's not, then you have to go back to Stanislawsky, and you know, you got to say, first of all, it does reactor understand the scene? Secondly, does he know his lines? If that proves to be positive, then you better look at the script and you better rewrite the scene. You have to have the ability to
tell whether a scene plays or not. I don't think that's too tough. When you got actors like I had, they make the scene play and it doesn't. You know, it doesn't take it, you know, rocket scientist. If you've got a good year to tell that, it doesn't sound that matures. It doesn't sound like there's too much air between the responses back and forth. Plus the fact, you know, you can make scenes work a lot in the editing room. You know, you can tighten them up, you can loosen
them up, you can you can change the pace. You can do a lot of things. But you know, if you have a good negative, you can make a good print net in photography, you know. So if you have a good if you if you have a good script, then you have good scenes that you don't have to do too much in the editing room except except that the properly. You know, listen, I'm making it sound a lot easier than it is. But you just have to
have the right ingredients. And it starts with the script and the story and the actors.
And I wanted to know a little bit about some of the people behind the camera. Can you tell me about like your DP Steve Dhuben from one to understand he wasn't the original DP on this, but he came in after just a few days.
That's right. Woods and I you have screened a lot of stuff, and we really wanted to work with King Baggett, you know who photographed fast walking, But King wasn't available a cameraman that had only done commercials. But the commercials were really fabulous. I mean they were beautifully photographs, and we figured, Jesus, this guy really should do a feature film.
I forget his name. He's really a nice guy and he meant so well, but he was not used to doing feature films where you run a schedule and a tight budget and you got to keep moving and you got to light the thing fast. And the first day we shot a scene, it was totally out of focus. So we had a foul focused guy that evidently screwed up on this thing and we had to reshoot that stuff. Secondly, he really wasn't accustomed to, you know, working at the
pace we needed. He was always trying to improve, you know, always you're fussing with the adjustments and things. And he'd even be walking around while we was shooting. I mean, I remember a time when Woods was doing the scene and this cameraman was walking around, you know, looking at the with his meet to looking at lights and things, and we stopped the take and Woods had to tell this guy to sit down and stop moving around. He's
becoming a distraction. We eventually had to let him go, and he understood that feature film was, you know, especially a low budget of film, and Cup was not in the same way of working as the commercials he had been doing. And then we got Steve Nuban, who was a real pro. This guy was, you know, he worked fast,
he got the job done. I remember when I showed the picture to Stanley Kubrick, he commented how he thought how good the photography was, you know, and it was sort of a he doing was not known, you know, like the big boys, but he came through for us, and he was really terrific. I've never heard of anything that Steve did after that if I just lost track of him. But I would certainly love to work with him again if I ever made another movie. He's a good guy.
Yeah, he even did some directing as well.
Oh he did good to him. I didn't know that. Then we had a terrific art director, you know, a production design guy. I can't remember his name. I mean we're talking nineteen eighty five, eighty six. You know what was tough about that movie is when we let the first photographer, first cinematographer go, and Steve Dubin had to We had to go and look at all the locations again,
you know the time of them. You know, you have to go out with a caravan, usually with your sound guy, your cinematographer, maybe you're art director and look at all the locations to see what problems you're in store for you. Do you want to gell the windows? Do you want to adjust the interior? Anyway, it was a nightmare of shooting your regular stuff, and then on lunch break we had to go and look at at locations in your future locations so that the crew could could because we
have really a new crew. You've got a new cameraman and a new follow focused guy and a new operator. You have to go and take a look at the locations to see what is in store for you. Can you imagine, you know, having to shoot scenes and then you only get a half hour lunch break, maybe a half hour to an hour. Then you've got to get in the van and go and look at the tomorrow's location to see what to be done, then come back
and finish shooting the rest of the day. I think I must have lost, you know, fifteen pounds on that move. So when you talk about you know, behind the camera, then we had you know, a good, good assistant director. They're important. Tell them what you want and they have to get it done for you. You know, they have to organize the extras and you have to tell the extras you know, what to do, what to wear. As a director, you know, you get a million questions all
the time. Everybody, all the department has wants to know what you want so they can give it to you. And if if you're going to have a day tomorrow is the day of let's say you need a hundred extras, they want to know you know, what age is, you know what they're black? Are they white? Are they female? Are they male? You know, are they high class? You know, how do you want them dressed? And then you have
to where do you want them place. The ones that look good to you should be near the camera because they'll be in focus, and the ones that you're not happy with you put them in the back because they're mostly out of focus. It's exhausted, you know, directing them over it really is. You know, I'd love to direct now, but I just don't think that i'd have the physical capabilities. You know, I don't think I could be insured anymore. You know, I'm going to be I'm ninety six. Now
I'm ninety six. I don't think I'm insurable anymore. You know, if it was so innovating it when I was young, you can imagine whether it be like to try to do it now, because you know, there's a lot of nighttime shooting too. You've got these night shots and you think you could sleep all day. You can't because you've got production problems to deal with during the day, so you get very little sleep and you have to go
to work when the sun comes down. You know, you get the blue out of the sky so that you can start shooting. Man, it's a tough go, but I don't know you s a disease you have. You know, once you get bitten by the bug to be a filmmaker crisis, it's hard to want to do anything else. I guess you've talked to enough of them to know it's a disease, is incurable.
You mentioned trying to keep the budget down and you said it's a three million dollar film. Did I read write that you and James Woods were working for scale and had to keep the budget down with the rest of the actors as well.
Uh huh. Yeah, the deal we made it was because you know, they couldn't afford our real prices. So we made a what you call an unadjusted gross deal where we would get ten percent of the unadjusted gross of the picture and we would work for nothing. But because of the union, we'd have to at least get scale. So I got scale for you know, director scale, and Woods got active scale, and we bought the picture in
for under three million dollars. But we thought we'd make an absolute I mean, this would be a conu minion having ten percent of a gross to gross twenty five million. Around the world, there's not much of a gross. I mean some some pictures do that in the first weekend, you know. But let's say we grossed all in, you know, fifty million dollars, of which the distributor would would would would get half twenty five million. We would get ten percent of that with no adjustment, you know, less like
two and a half million. The jun and I could could split up. But the company had later that's the name of the company. They they went bankrupt. They went bankrupt, and so they said, you know, the our deal was a great deal on paper, but in practicality there was had to give them. They gave the film back to Woods and I we owned the film today and we gave it to MGM MGM to distribute, you know, not
seen very much. And so you know, the whole idea of working for scale and making a whole budget picture was to was to really on their back end, you know, make a lot of money. Talking about money, it's I can't be less serious because my first love really is to make the picture good. You know, it's not you know, the truth be known, all of us filmmakers would work for nothing because we love making films. Keep it a secret that you would do that you can negotiate your
fair fee for doing it. So my first priority really is my first love is to make a good film. Secondly, it'd be nice to make some money with it as well. You don't make a film to make money. I mean, at least my kind of guys don't. Stanley and I we never made pictures to make money. We make pictures to make movies, to make pictures as good as we can make them, and hope that we would make some money.
You want success really not to take vows, but you want success to make it easier to finance your next project, whatever it is. You know, the more successes you are, the easier it is to get a picture made. And that was always my trouble. I made these pictures that for some reason they didn't like fast walking. They'd get distributed.
Some call it loving was it was independently distributed. Cop went down the drain with Atlantic when they went bankrupt, and you know, you never got the kind of recognition and the kind of success that would make it easier to get the next project made. I was lucky to get a Bully Point made, you know, which was done in the early nineties. You know, they answer a question, that's that's what they working for. Scale was all about.
I've had the pleasure of talking with mister Elroy before. He's an interesting character and I was curious as far as you know, you said that you're still friends with him, which is great.
Once I got to meet him. You know, when when I made a deal to acquire who acquire the film? I was to Blood on the Moon through his agent, not Solo in New York, but but but Elroy came to LA and when he did, naturally we got together because I was the guy that was going to make a film of his book and he had never had a film made of his book, of any of his books, so we had did it together and he was the guy that who was totally honest. He wasn't devious in
any way. He was very helpful, he was appreciative, and we became really good friends. We had a lot, we spent a lot of fun times together. And if you've talked to him, you know he's quite a character. But the guy doesn't I mean, he speaks his mind. You know, he's not a shick. He's not afraid to say anything. I mean, he'll talk about his background as a vagrant. He got arrested, you know, he was in jail. He's we used to kid about a din and dash, you know that he used to have a meal at a
restaurant and run for before the check came. Waite is chasing him down the street. So he had, you know, a real fun background. Then of course he he wrote a book about his mother's murder, you know about that or his mother had did one night just been I don't know what the circumstances were, but she was found dead,
you know, having been goodally killed. That was never solved, but he tried to sell that, you know, by working with the detail active years after and he wrote a book about it, but never never got any satisfactory results from it. So he's had quite a quite a background, and he used to caddy at the golf clubs here in Los Angeles before he wrote his source book. It's quite something and I'm still friendly with him. He's lived in Denver now and we talked from time to time.
I've always had an arrangement that I could do because The Night, you know, it was one of those three books with Lloyd Hopkins. Since Woods and I, Jimmy Wood and I have the we own the The Blood on the Moon cop film, that means that we also own the character of Lloyd Hopkins, which and I were actually talking about maybe doing a series that with the grown with the Lloyd Hopkins being now forty years older. But the Fire came along and we've kind of started. We
haven't talked about it for a while. Maybe we'll pick it up against at some point. That's if I'm still around.
Yeah, I know that you're listed as a producer on Black Dalia. Was there talk of you adapting Black Dalia at some point?
Yeah, I made a deal after a cop and since I was so friendly with Elboy at that time. Ever, I needed a new car, I said, he said, you know I was interested in the Black Dalua. He said, look, he said, why don't you get me, you know, give me the money for a car and you can you can have you can. Well, that'll give you the option on the Black. He said, I'll tell my agent. You know,
you call my agent and you make an offer. He'll of course think it's too little and everything, but he'll be a large to ask his client and I'll accept these And he said, I'll accept the offer. And he said, then we'll do it that way. So the next day I called up his agent and I made an offer of twenty five thousand dollars for I guess it was the year eighteen month option on the Black Guys. He said, oh, you know, that's no idea what we would take for that,
he said. I said, well, why don't you check it out with your client and maybe He called me back and he said, I don't understand this, he said, but but he accepted. So we got to make a deal. So I made So I made a deal and I wrote it for Woods. I mean, I talked to Jimmy once about it. When he heard that I that I had acquired and he wanted immediately to play the part of the of the cop and so I sat down
and wrote. I wrote the screenpoint, but Woods got busy doing other things and I made a deal with it with a German company, Capella Films. So I made a deal to direct the film, and the Boiling Point had had become alive, and I had to do that first. I had such a bad experience with one of brothers and the French company, you know Ken Kennel Plus. Have you heard of that company? They financed The Boiling Point
and they wanted to say the picture to Warner Brothers. Now, Warner Brothers had a film with Wesley Snipes called Passenger of fifty seven and it was a big success for them, and they wanted another Passenger of fifty seven type movie with Wesley Snipes. So they were interested in buying the North American distribution rights from for Canon Plus. But they wanted the the editing to be changed so that it would be more of a action film, which which is impossible.
You know, I did not plan on being an action film. It was more of a study about the that there's a fine line in fact, there's not much difference between the criminal and the cop as far as their private lives are concerned. They live the same kind of life. And so I did not have final cut on Boiling Point, and it was such an an unpleasant experience to have to deal with, you know, having my directors cut, mishandled and miss cut, mis edited, which I had to do.
I mean if I quit and walked away, God knows what they would have done with it. So I at least stuck around to win some of the arguments. But what it did was it was it. It made me feel I never wanted to do another film. But I didn't have final cut, and I knew that my next schedule picture would be would be The Black Dahalia and they Capella was was making a deal with Universal at that time, and I know I could never get final cut from Universal. Only the big, the absolute big top
directors could get final cut. And so I decided that I just want to remove myself from that project. So they brought me out and they gave me a producer, you know, executive producer credit on the picture. I was not going to subject myself to another where some production executive at a studio can can ruin your movie, you know, it can recut it or re edit it because they think they previews didn't turn out as as as favorable
as I had hope. It's a tough go when you you know, when you can't control, you know, the final edit of your funnel. You know, the Directors Guild all the studios are signatories to that, so they have to abide by the contract. But the contract only provides two previews for the director of his cut, and once you've had the two, whoever has final cut takes over and you're finished. I didn't want to subject myself to that again, and so that was the story where that's why I
got the credit. You know, I got paid off pretty nicely to step away.
I would have loved to have seen what you could have done with Black Dahalia, because I was not very happy with the final product.
Man, you should have seen Elroy talk about being unhappy. Elder and I went to the they had a special showing at the Academy Theater, you know, the one on Wilson Boulevard. Both of us were really disappointed, and particularly Elroy, I mean he was he thought it was terrible. They didn't approach it the way would they Elroy and I and and Woods would have done. We've handled it differently, but they bounced around with a lot of directors. They
foundly around up with with uh the Palmer. He had done some good work in his in his in his you know, in his hormography. There were some good films that he had done. But he also you know, sometimes he really missed the mark, you know, like in the Bonfire the Vanities, you remember that one and and and now now backed down. It didn't turn out the way it should have either. But anyway, uh, that was too bad because it was it was a very interesting subject.
He's still doing it, you know, he still write novels and that's what that's how we spent it. It's tough to see what they're publishing and what book things are like nowadays, you know, because Amazon has just put everybody out of business except maybe maybe Barnes and Nobles, the only one is still going. But anyway, Elthoy is still writing those novels about l A in the in the
forties and the stuff that's the saber subject. They become more convoluted, you know, his earlier work was not as is what he calls dense, you know his you know, once he got passed, I guess, I guess l A Confidential started to get really his style of writing is, you know, you really have to be paying attention because
a lot of times you can't. You know, you can only read so many pages in the city, so you have to come back to it the next day when stuff is that convaluted, and stuff is tough to remember what you read the day before. So you look at you look at Elroy's works, and then you have to really stay as focused, you know, when you're reading that stuff, you know, to understand it all. But it's he's so
he's so clever, and he's so talented. It's a pleasure to I mean, I think, you know, I'm a lucky guy to I mean, just think of the people that I've got to work with, like Kubrick, for God's sake, he's probably one of the finest best directors ever. And el Roy, you know, probably taking the place of Raymond Sandler and nash O Hammont and James King and all those people. And then King Jim Thompson, you know who
we work with on The Killing Impairs of Glory. And then then el Roy, you know, you know, you're talking about crime writers. The best Elbroy certainly is probably at the head of a group right now. It's probably a reason why they don't get made, you know, into movies. It's probably much more of a novel and interesting than it would be, I mean to try to find a way to tell a story in movie terms. You know. Just there's just no question about his talent. I mean
that that's that that can cannot be denied. And also, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm a little weird or something, but I found him to be really really I mean, with all the prinsicities. He was a good friend. I mean, he was an interesting guy and fun to be with. And we used to spend a lot of time at the Pacific Dining Car, which went out of business recently, but that was a big popular restaurant in downtown LA. He was married there actually, at the Pacific
Dining Car. He was dressed if if you saw pictures of him when he was very he was wearing a kilt, you know, a Scottish kilt, So that gives a little idea. Yeah, what a character to be wearing a kilt. But he's a winner for me. I'll have to talk to him, you know, just to say hello at some point. But I can just hear him say, you know, he's the you know, the dog. You know he's he calls himself dog. You know, he's the dog of of American literature.
Well, mister Harris, thank you so much. I really cannot tell you how much I appreciate you taking this time to talk to me today. Call me Jimmy, Jimmy, thanks, thank you, Thank you so much for your time.
Yeah.
Well it's fun for me too, you know, I just get a kick out of it. I hope there's an awful lot of stuff that you have to deal with.
We are back and we were talking about cop and Rod. I believe you mentioned before the earlier version of Blood on the Moon, which was called La Death Trip. And it was very interesting reading last night about why that book is the way that it is, and that this was Elroy having done those two books that you mentioned, Andrew Clandestine and Brown's Requiem. He did that for I think Avon and then he said either he lost his contract or he tried to sell La Death Trip to
them and they said no fucking way. And he tried seventeen different publishers to get La Death Trip made before he ended up meeting with Mysterious Press and Mysterious Press
Otto and I can't remember the other guy's name. They were like, yeah, no, this isn't going to fly the way it is, but there is a book here, so let's try to get the book out of La Draft Trip because man, oh man, what four hundred and twenty three pages and you can see the bones of Blood on the Moon inside of there, but it goes in a lot of other ways. So Rod, it sounds like you read this one. Do you want to talk a little bit about your impressions of La Death Trip.
I didn't really care for it because it is the bones are I mean, the flesh that's on them is really similar to what we actually got in Blood on the Moon, but it is also different. It's like the same sort of things happen, they just are told differently or expanded upon in ways that you know, then we're trimmed down, Like I somewhat confused the two. I don't remember exactly what I read from Death Trip versus Blood and Moon, but I just remembered not really liking Death Trip.
I'm having trouble putting it into words. But what's weird about that is both the books. Both those books have shared some of the same dialogue that then Harris copies pastes into his script for Cop Like there are scenes where the dialogue is, if not one hundred ninety percent the same Ellie death trip, it feels undisciplined. I didn't compare the page numbers to see how they work out that way, like if one is considerably longer than the other,
but it just seems to go on more tangents. I feel like, I know I wouldn't have read another another book in that series if it had come out.
Well, there was no Lloyd Hopkins to go back to.
That's the big change. He grenades himself to death, I guess though he's trying.
To kill Dutch and all of the helicopter pilots and all of the cops, he's basically taking out innocent bystanders and victims. At the end of the book, you're like, what are you doing, Lloyd, Like he just wants to burn it all down. I know that Elroy himself has talked about how the book ends with La on fire, and I was like, well, not La, like just around that power station at Silver Lake again. But yeah, it wasn't all of LA though. You get that apocalypse more.
I think with the opening, well, one of the opening scenes with the Watts riot, which is interesting. How many books of el Roy's begin with riots that happen in LA Because I want to say that La Confidential starts either La Confidential or maybe Black Dalia starts.
The two cop characters bomb during the zoot Suit roots.
So yeah, it's interesting how many of these books start with that. And it's not two guys that rape Teddy, it's five guys. So we kind of blow that out and then we meet Catherine really early in the book.
Yeah, there's a lot of war stuff too, which I didn't think works very well. I don't know, it seems like a different genre. I generally don't like war stories in general, so I'm kind of maybe predisposed to disliking it. But I didn't feel like you added anything.
Well, that's interesting because that's also going back to La Confidential. The whole thing of Exley in World War Two, like that's his secret shame of how he survived by pretending to be a dead body, or like crawling under a whole heap of dead bodies, and that's how he I think he ends up winning like the Medal of Honor or something, because they think he's the hero of this battle. But he actually hid under all of these bodies, and that's the secret he carries around at all times.
I probably shouldn't have read both books the same day. They really do bleed together.
They do.
Yeah, those details like yeah, the five guys versus two, those are the things that it didn't immediately come to mind until you mentioned it. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right.
Including two beaners, as el Roight would say. Jesus, you learned so many new racial epithets when you read James right books.
Also just sexual like wiener wagging and things like that.
I'm a big fan of the term fuck pad. That's my favorite eer roy esque term.
White. He is introduced as an albino Robert Mitcham Right.
Yeah, and again, I mean Elroy's almost a bit of a sort of bit more of a sad character now, I think, I mean a bit of a bit of a bit of a talking want to be headline. And you know he's got that whole He's got that film coming out, el Roy Versus l I where I mean, I think, is there any aspect of his life he
hasn't dredged up for profit? But you know, obviously that on the other side of it, you know, the guy blew It's incredibly hard working and blew a massive hole in the middle of what we thought crime fiction could be in the in the nineteen eighties. And I mean it's a function of the fact that he's so influential that he's never been canceled because he has influenced most major crime writers working today would have been influenced by
all war and fair enough too. I mean the guy, as I say, he blew a massive hole in the middle of what we thought crime fiction could.
Be, such a mythic figure, and it was surprising to me yesterday to realize this cop came out in the eighty eight and he'dn't even been writing books for like less than a decade by then, I think, or at least published less than a decade. I mean, he hadn't been writing that long publist author that long. And it just seems like he looms so large in the world of crime fiction and pop culture, you know as a whole, that he seems one of those guys who have been
at it since the fifties. I mean, he's obviously not he's not that age, but he seems like he should have been. Like it's just amazing to me that he wasn't. He's relatively new in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah, Brown's Requiem came out in eighty one, and I don't know if he made his bones doing short stories or not, because I know he's definitely done a lot of short.
Stories also my knowledge, I mean he was banging out. He was banging Brown's Recreem Clandestine, as you said. And then those three Floyd Hopkins books, none of which that's five books, none of which did well. So he's also had a dream run. So he's also had a good good run. I mean, most crime fiction authors today wouldn't be able to do, you know, I wouldn't be able to have five failed books and just keep on going, which is a problem with where crime fiction is at at the moment.
I honestly don't think I've read any of his books since the called six thousand back in two thousand and one. I mean, I've got Bloods of Rover, I can see it right here, and somebody gave that to me, or maybe the book committed sent it to me. But anyway, they've had that since two thousand and nine, and still haven't read that one.
And I did, like Bloods are over, and I tried reading Perfidiou. I think I've got one hundred pages into the Fidya and I just thought, I can't this is garbage. I don't like it. And I did read what was the book that he did was sid on Sid Hutchins, the hush hush journalist. Was it widespread panic?
Okay, yeah, they call that the fred Otash spread Otash.
Sorry, not so not Sid Hutchins. It was fred fred Otash. And again I just thought, this is just a kind of a variation on a theme. You know, I'm not really getting a lot out of this. So I haven't gone to any of his books. I haven't read any I haven't read how was it After the Dead, Usual, After the Fall or whatever, the sequel to Perfidio. And then there was another one after that. I haven't read any of those. And there's big books, you know, you really got to commit yourself.
The most recent one I read, which was over Covid, wasn't even a novel. It was his book Crime Wave, which is a collection of short stories and reporting, like I think specifically for it's either Esquire or GQ with JQ. Yeah, those are excellent. I think those are those articles are fantastic. The way he does journalism, it kind of gets to what you were seeing in earlier about the how he shows the the procedural aspects of being a cop. I just I think think like how he approaches journalism too.
I mean, he's not the first crime writer to mine LA history for a crime fiction book, but he the materials he was using, old cop files, old tabloid magazines, old pop novels, retired cops. I think that's that was part of the innovation. That and that and that world he created from that was also part of his you know innovation. I mean everyone does that now, but I don't think so many people were doing it before Elroy
was doing it. I just wish he wasn't to use his terminology so much of a shipbird these days, because, as I say, I want to be really clear, I mean I love Elroy. I mean there's el Roy books I will still reread. I've read The Big Nowhere at least five times, and I think it's you know, that's his Red Scare novel, his second book in the in the On These, in the in the Quintet series, and
I just think he's brilliant. But I also think he's had a really good run, and he's as I say, he had five really poorly selling books that he still kept getting opportunities. Then he had the Hollywood scriptwriting gravy train, which is that's kind of dead now, and then he had a glossy magazine, GQ, sending him all over America to report on true crime story. So he's also none of those things exists anymore, and he's written every single
one of those right waves, and good on him. He's a hard worker, but I don't I don't see him as some sort of outside demon dog. You know, this persona that he cultivates now is kind of annoying. I mean, the only outside I think about him now as everyone kind of knows he's a racist. I mean that's.
I've interviewed him twice now, and both times is just he's so difficult and he just has clinging to that persona the whole time that he just wants to be disagreeable, and it's like, can you just give me an interview.
I am.
I am a fan of your work. I've been reading your work since the late nineties if net earlier, and I really like what I'm reading and I would love to talk to you about your stuff. But he just gets to be you know, I think I commented on your Instagram or blue Skuy the other day. It's like he's king Curmudgeon. He's just like the most curmudgeonly author
that there is out there. And it's like, well, this doesn't do anything for me, and it doesn't feel like it's doing anything for you, so like, why are we even doing this? So I was kind of like, I would like to talk to you about cop but at the same time, you're just going to tell me how much you dislike adaptations of your work. It's the same thing.
And he's done well and he's and he's canon. So I stopped winchy because really, you are you know, and you you've also managed to sc a fairly nasty cancel, so you know, if we go back and read the stuff in your book. I mean, I'm not saying that he should be canceled, but I'm not I was kind of waiting for it to happen. It never did because the guy's so influential, because all the crime writers who
would potentially cancel him have also been influenced by him. So, I mean, the other guys, the guy's so so important in that crime fiction culture. I don't know what he thinks about the adaptation of Cop. I know he he's bagged out of La.
Confidential, which is crazy to me.
Insane because it's such a as you as you said, Rod, it's such a good film. I mean, you know, I don't think it's Yeah, it's really good.
It's it's not only that it's a I think I've seen it three times and it's a movie that gets better.
Yeah, I agree, I totally agree. I totally agree.
Yeah, and you see echoes. I mean watching Cop again a few months ago before I interviewed Harris again and the scene with Whitey comes up where he's playing rush and Roulette or you know, Hopkins is playing Russian Roulette with him kind of, I mean, basically just holding a gun with one bullet in the chamber and pulling it. And my wife's like, is this an el Roy adaptation?
Because she's thinking of the scene with Bud white in the Police department where he's doing that same thing with the black suspect, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, actually this is so and that it's funny. In the book, I think Whitey says, you know, oh you had a blank in there, right, and it's like, yeah, no, Lloyd Hopkins does not play Russian Roulette with blankstike you very much.
And instead of Hopkins shooting him, he basically says like, your career's over, leaves the house, and then can hear a shot from inside the house, which is amazing restraint for an Elroy passage.
You reminded me of the first scene of this movie, which plays out over opening credits, the you know, completely like we see nothing. It's just black black screen. You see the titles and names and things, and it's a black guy calling an operator on a payphone to report the murder. And it's a recording like thank you for calling, and the guy keeps talking to it like it's a person. Oh you're welcome. It's so insulting the way that that the way that they play that. But also it's been
a while since I have even seen a payphone. But I didn't think you needed quarters to call the operator.
I don't think you do or to call nine to one one.
But he did. That's another thing entirely, and I don't. I mean, that's not in the book, so that's purely a Harris invention.
It's more of a tweaker that calls them.
I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I also don't like how many scenes Harris puts in a Woods eating in this, because he's eating a lot, and one of them in particular, the sound is like upped and you get a lot of mouth noise. That's just disgusting.
Poor dietary choices too.
He eats more than Leslie and Warren smokes.
Oh boy, that's it a lot.
I mean, James Woods does a lot of phone acting in this. You know, where he's talking on the phone when no one else is on the other line. You know, it's one of those things I would not have noticed before. I don't think he gives long enough pauses for you know, the other end to say what that he should have said. But he's still pretty convincing at it. He does a fairly good job. But there are times though in this
where he is so hammy. I think it comes through in particular on the one scene with his wife where they're arguing and he gives that speech that you read, Mike, he kind of overdoes it, I think in that scene. But for the most part, I think like this is probably my favorite James Wood performance. James Woods.
That's interesting. That's interesting.
It's definitely the one I've seen the most.
Watching Woods in this made me want to revisit Salvador, which is possibly, I think probably my favorite.
Well, and it made me one like I've never seen the onion field speak and also to speak of another La Creme writer, Joseph Wambaugh.
Yeah, that's right.
Sorry, I always think of that big serial killer from Mindhunter, Ed Kemper.
Do you know.
Joseph Wambaugh, Please three you go to.
Watch that, huge fan. I got a lot of my insights right there.
Really, I would not allow myself to walk into a trap because I knew exactly how their minds work from watching Wombaugh.
I forgot about that. He even mentions that seen that twice that series twice, and I totally forgot about that.
I just love the end that whole season with the BTK killer. That's so good. But we'll get another season of whatever you know anytime it's like, oh please.
Oh the last thing. And I wanted to ask you guys this when James Woods and his daughter the exchange they have and they do give me five on the side. And I've never heard this part of it. Cut the pickle, you owe me a nickel? Have you ever heard that before other than the movie? I did never.
No, that's not a common sign in Australia.
No, I can't say I've ever heard of that. All right, let's go ahead and take another break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
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That's right, We'll be back next week with the Lengo Leaders. Till then, I want to thank my co host Andrew and Rod. So, Andrew, what is the latest with you, sir?
I have a project I'm working on at the moment, another book for PM Press, but I probably shouldn't say anything about it just yet, kind of follow on from Revolution in thirty five millimeters but different.
Yeah, whatever you write, I'll buy, and so just keep writing.
I appreciate I appreciate it, and right.
How about yourself?
Still flick Attack dot com with film reviews, The Flick Attack movie Arsenal Book one still available price to sell at Amazon dot com and soon Flick a Tech Movie Arsenal Book two will be out. I'm sure I was hoping to have it by Christmas, but it's probably going to be more like Spring of twenty twenty six.
This will come out the day before Thanksgiving because there's nothing better to talk about the day before Thanksgiving.
So on Thanksgiving, on Black Friday, you should go to Amazon dot com and you could buy book one and it will still be under twenty dollars for a huge phone book size compinium of reviews and articles, which Mike White graciously blurbed.
You're doing the lord's work, Rod, So I appreciate everything, so were you well. Thank you so much guys for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. You want to support physical media and get great movies in the mail, head over to scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by mail service, the largest publicly accessible collection in the world. You'll find film. They're entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when you want it,
without the scrolling. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at Waitingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over this rotten, stinking world.
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