James Ellroy's Feast of Death documentary review

Movie Review

"I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. Working backward, seeking only facts, I reconstructed her as a sad little girl and a whore, at best a could-have-been, a tag that might equally apply to me."
-James Ellroy, "The Black Dahlia" (1987)

Those familiar with the powerhouse works of hard-boiled novelist James "Demon Dog" Ellroy know that his complex and cynical tales are rooted in a tragic personal history that reads like the back cover of one of his own bestselling "American history" epics (Ellroy detests the label "crime fiction").

James Ellroy, author of The Black Dahlia

"An intimidating pitbull persona enhanced by his hulking six-foot-two frame, permanently furrowed brow, shaved head, Der Fuhrer moustache, and endless litany of hepcat-isms and profanity"

Perhaps best known for "L.A. Confidential" due to the acclaimed recent film adaptation, James Ellroy is closer identified with his seventh book seventh book "The Black Dahlia", inspired by the unsolved 1947 case of slain and dismembered actress Elizabeth Short. Ellroy's own mother was found strangled on a roadside in El Monte, California when he was only ten years old, and he spent his entire life loving her, hating her, and obsessed with finding her killer, much like "Dahlia"s antihero Bucky Bleichart. After years of petty crime and substance abuse, Ellroy pulled himself out of a downward spiral in his late 20s and reinvented himself as an author who both embraced and subverted the conventions of the so-called "detective novel".

The Dog is quite a character, and I know this first hand from having enjoyed a recent author's reading (shouting? swearing?) and autograph session at the University Of Toronto. He delights in presenting an intimidating pitbull persona enhanced by his hulking six-foot-two frame, permanently furrowed brow, shaved head, Der Fuhrer moustache, and endless litany of hepcat-isms and profanity. He's like a bookish former pro wrestler in Carl Kolchak duds. But reading his books, and listening to him sing the praises of his wife Helen Knode, Ellroy fails to completely hide the bigger heart and boyish yen for the homespun and sentimental that cries for attention within.

Vikram Jayanti's documentary, shot on 16mm and digital video for British television, perfectly captures Ellroy's schtick, encyclopedic crime knowledge, unique take on recent American history (especially the myth of Kennedy "Camelot"), many moods and contradictions. The author has granted Vikram Jayanti "full access" as we follow Ellroy to Vegas, to the site of JFK's assassination, to the homes of his relatives, to the site of Short's "body dump", to Ellroy's own childhood neighborhood, and along the various locales associated with his mother's death.

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To those new to James Ellroy's canon, this documentary will be completely fascinating, and it's as accomplished as one should expect from the producer of "When We Were Kings". But as a long-time buff, I found the bulk of the material rather familiar, much of it having already been covered in the earlier documentary "James Ellroy: Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction" and in several features on various American TV newsmagazines since "LA Confidential"s breakthrough.

The film does explore some fascinating, important new ground in the final third, in which Ellroy presides over a casual "feast" at his favorite spot, The Pacific Dining Car (Raymond Chandler's hangout). With true-blue LA detectives in attendance (one of whom has been worked with Ellroy to reopen his mother's case) and Nick Nolte of all people (who is reportedly spearheading an adaptation of "White Jazz"), a guest writer proposes a new theory for the Dahlia case that James Ellroy (and I) found to be completely plausible (a book detailing these findings will be published later this year). Punctuated with graphic crime scene stills and morgue photos of Elizabeth Short that are as sorrowful as they are grisly, this documentary captures the horror and cosmic cruelty of unsolved savage killings and puts the cliched slasher shocks of hollow confections like the Hughes' "From Hell" to shame.

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