L.A. Confidential
Everything is suspect... Everyone is for sale... And nothing is what it seems.
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Budget
$35 000 000
Revenue
$126 216 940
Director
Scenario
James Ellroy
Author
Composer
Producer
Actors
Kevin Spacey
Jack Vincennes
Russell Crowe
Wendell 'Bud' White
Guy Pearce
Edmund 'Ed' Exley
James Cromwell
Dudley Smith
Kim Basinger
Lynn Bracken
Danny DeVito
Sid Hudgens
David Strathairn
Pierce Patchett
Ron Rifkin
D.A. Ellis Loew
Short description
Set in 1950s Los Angeles, the film follows three detectives whose approaches to police work could hardly be more different. Ed Exley is an ambitious newcomer determined to clean up a force riddled with corruption, Jack Vincennes is a celebrity detective with ties to a scandal magazine, and Bud White is known for his willingness to use his fists. A shooting at an all-night diner leaves several people dead, including a police officer, and draws the three men into a single investigation. What begins as a search for those responsible leads them toward a web of corruption reaching deep into the department itself.
Curtis Hanson directed the film, his seventh of thirteen features, arriving between The River Wild and Wonder Boys. He wrote the screenplay with Brian Helgeland and produced alongside Arnon Milchan and Michael G. Nathanson. Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce play the three detectives, with James Cromwell, Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito in supporting roles. The production involved 95 credited cast members and 183 credited crew.
Made for about 35 million dollars, the film took roughly 126 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 8.2 out of 10 from around 657,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.8 from a far smaller group of about 5,740 voters. A critics' rating of 9.3 from 165 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- To prepare the actors for their roles, director Curtis Hanson showed them several films from the 1950s.
- The voiceover in the morgue scene belongs to director Curtis Hanson.
- The film is set in an era when Los Angeles did not allow buildings to be built higher than City Hall, so the cameras had to be positioned in such a way as not to show buildings constructed since then that exceeded the height of City Hall.
- Screenwriter James Ellroy called Bud White the best cop in the Los Angeles Police Department. Realizing he didn't have the height, falling far short of the over six-foot stature of his character, Russell Crowe moved into an apartment so tiny that he had to duck his head in doorways and simply couldn't stand up straight. According to the actor himself, appearing on set after all this, he involuntarily felt like a giant, which was reflected in his performance.
- Director Curtis Hanson (1945-2016) did not want the film to be overly nostalgic, and he asked cinematographer Dante Spinotti to shoot it as if it were contemporary, and to use more realistic lighting than in classic film noir. He instructed Spinotti and the film's production designer, Janine Oppewall, to pay particular attention to detail, but to do so subtly.
- Russell Crowe initially declined to participate in the project, as he did not believe he could convincingly portray such a tough character on screen.
- Before the start of filming, Curtis Hanson put Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce up in Los Angeles for two months so that they could immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the city and the time period in which the story unfolds. He also hired linguists for them and introduced them to real police officers. Guy Pearce did not like the police officers he rode along with on patrol, and they, in turn, considered him racist. He gleaned further information about the police from training films for police officers from the 1960s.
- Some close-up shots of Guy Pearce's face during the fight scene with Russell Crowe's character were filmed four months after the end of filming. To Curtis Hanson's great displeasure, the actor had already had his hair cut, so he had to be filmed wearing a wig. Pearce once called it a “very expensive” wig and noted that it is not customary in Australia to reshoot anything after filming has been completed.
- Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Brian Helgeland worked on the script together for two years. During that time, Hanson turned down several offers to take on another project, while Helgeland "churned out" seven other scripts, all for free.
- According to Kim Basinger, while preparing for the role, she lightened her hair more than usual and ultimately burned it completely, forcing the props department to scramble and quickly find her a wig made of natural hair.
- Kevin Spacey found it very difficult to play a dead man. He could easily stare straight ahead when someone was visible, but when James Cromwell’s character began to move, Spacey would instinctively track him with his eyes. Eventually, the actor asked for a circle to be drawn on the opposite wall, which he could fix his gaze on.
- Much of the film's plot is based on real events. These included: the Christmas scene where drunken police officers beat two detainees suspected of assaulting police officers; the storyline of the arrest of real-life gangster Mickey Cohen (1913-1976), which triggered a redistribution of territories controlled by criminal gangs; and even the existence of a Los Angeles Police Department unit whose officers would pick up "outsider" criminals, beat them, and threaten to simply kill them if they ever returned to the city.
- At the 43rd minute, a girl pours whiskey for White, and then he takes it in his hands. Then the glass disappears from his hands during a cut. A minute later, the whiskey appears in another room on the table.
- Before filming, Russell Crowe moved into an apartment so tiny that he had to duck his head in the doorways and simply couldn't stand up straight. According to the actor himself, after this, on the set, he involuntarily felt like a giant, which was reflected in his performance.
- Russell Crowe once recalled James Ellroy telling him that Bud White doesn’t drink, so he stayed away from alcohol throughout the entire shooting period, which, he admitted, was quite difficult. Curtis Hanson provided the actors with a lot of additional information about their characters to help them better get into their roles. For example, he told Crowe that his character White doesn’t drink beer because beer encourages socializing, and White is a man who is not sociable. According to the director, White only drinks whiskey – and only alone.
- Initially, the role of Lynn Bracken was offered to Izabella Scorupco, but she declined to participate in the film.
- Several famous early 20th-century Hollywood landmarks were featured in the film: Formosa Cafe; the Frolic Room bar; and the Crossroads of the World shopping center, which was used at the beginning of the movie as the cinema for the premiere of 'When Worlds Collide'.
- It was not easy for Curtis Hanson to secure three lead protagonists for the film. Initially, he was told to make Bud White (played by Russell Crowe) the central character and completely remove Exley (Guy Pearce) and Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) from the plot. After the director explained that Exley was essential, he was ordered to remove White and Vincennes instead. When he insisted on keeping all three, only $15 million was allocated for the entire project, meaning he couldn't afford a top-tier A-list star (even if he had wanted one, which he didn't). He needed actors who wouldn't trigger automatic expectations in the audience regarding their role or character. The only exception was James Cromwell, from whom the public expected a character similar to the one he played in Chris Noonan's comedy 'Babe' (1995).
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
