The novel L.A. Confidential would make for a terrific adaptation into one of those limited series featured on channels like HBO or FX. As a feature film? No so much. The story in L.A. Confidential is another matter entirely, having been adapted into a well-received and commercially successful theatrical film that somehow for reasons nobody can fully explain lost the Oscar for Best Picture to Titanic. If that seems confusing, perhaps an explanation is required.
If it is not already being done, L.A. Confidential should be required study in every screenwriting class in America. Pardon the pun, but it is a textbook example—perhaps the most definitive example of the late 20th/early 21st century filmmaking—of how to adapt for a standard running time as a theatrical release a novel that by all standards should not be so adaptable. In novel form as written James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential is a crime epic packed with complicated characters each of whom is given complex parts to play within a dense panorama that may focus on the investigation of a massacre at a diner, but which expands to become a fictionalized portrait of legal system at work in Los Angeles in the 1950’s. Just how dense and complex is the novel? As just one example, an entirely separate film could be culled from the novel that is about nothing but the story arc of Jack Vincennes and it would only have to barely touch upon the Nite Owl Murders. Equally true is that intersecting stories of Ed Exley and Bud White are complicated enough in the novel that a two-part presentation could be produced about their respective careers in which the massacre at the diner is the climax of the first film.
What is amazing about the actual film adapted by Curtis Hanson is that so much of this external storyline has been completely excised—and not even referenced—and yet the story remains robust, the characters remain complicated, the themes are diverse and complex everything remains cohesive. Extraordinary chunks of the novel’s storyline are absolutely nowhere to be seen in the film and somehow it manages not to be completely disappointing to fans of the book. Of course, rabid fans might disagree, but even as they disagree they would have no idea how a theatrical film could possibly be made from the book that satisfies their desires without requiring two or three times the commitment sitting in cinema seats. To fully satisfy those who view L.A. Confidential in film form as a thin and weakly constructed visual representation will absolutely require the investment of a television miniseries. The bad news is that such a thing has been attempted twice already and has yet to make it past the pilot stage. The good news is that until such a thing is finally successful, the best possible adaptation of the novel already exists and is more than good enough.
