The End of the Line for Ellroy?

Between now and September 15, when Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia hits theaters, the hype surrounding that film is likely to reach record-setting levels. Benefiting tremendously is James Ellroy, whose 1987 novel of the same name provided the basis for De Palma’s movie. Profiled in the newspaper Pasadena Weekly, Ellroy declares that his current cross-country promo tour for the flick marks his farewell to two things: his mother’s unsolved 1958 murder, which helped lead him both to write crime fiction and to investigate the 1947 slaying of “Dahlia” Elizabeth Short; and the Dahlia case itself. “After this tour,” he tells reporter Nikki Bazar, “I will never answer another question about these things. It’s an idea whose time has come and gone. ... I have told the fucking story of my mother and the Black Dahlia 96 million fucking times.”

But in the meantime, what does Ellroy--who, it turns out, wasn’t even consulted by De Palma and Company for the forthcoming film--think about the results?

“It’s a very interesting adaptation of my book,” he tells the Pasadena Weekly. “It dramatically isolates many of my themes, impresses action, and there is a wrenching performance by Mia Kirshner as the doomed Elizabeth Short herself. And this was a decision that Brian De Palma and [screenwriter] Josh Friedman made, because it was my contention that she should not appear on screen in any kind of flashback or flash forward and that she should only be discussed and ruminated upon. But Mr. De Palma and Mr. Friedman decided that in order to humanize her and give some moral weight to her that she should appear.”

Filmgoers themselves will be able to judge soon whether that decision was the right one.

(Hat tip to Sarah Weinman.)

READ MORE: “A Master and a Masterpiece,” by Otto Penzler (New York Sun); “James Ellroy--‘I’m Having a Blast,’” by Marshal Zeringue (Campaign for the American Reader); “The Great Right Place,” by James Ellroy (Los Angeles Times).