2024 Entry #025 01-18-24 “L.A. Confidential” is a 1997 American neo-noir crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Curtis Hanson (“Wonder Boys”, “8 Mile”). The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is based on the 1990 novel of the same name by James Ellroy (“The Black Dahlia”), the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. The film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.
After watching the film adaptation of “The Black Dahlia”, I had originally planned to watch this adaptation directly after, but I hated that one so much that it put me off this one for a while. But I’m glad I finally saw this. I can see why it was so beloved at the time and the film’s cast and direction are impressive. But for my purposes, what’s interesting here is that had this film been released in my childhood, it is unlikely that there would be any queer characters in it at all – we likely would have been ignored and completely silent, but this film features queer characters woven throughout the film – none of whom are main characters, but as a kid this wouldn’t have mattered to me. What mattered to me was representation. So often our existence was either completely denied, or we were portrayed as villains and / or victims – and usually even then the roles were only coded to be interpreted as gay. Here this is still true – most of the queer characters are victims or villains – however, that’s true of nearly ALL of the characters in this film, which is about the darkness that pervades through the lives of the characters. At least one of the gay characters makes it out of the film with most of his power intact, and a few of the straight (but severely compromised) heroes also get happy endings. It is kind of the best you can hope for in this kind of story.