James Ellroy: A Harry Lime Thread
Posted: Fri February 21, 2014 2:48 pm
http://www.avclub.com/article/james-ell ... ing-201329
James Ellroy hates The Wire, hipsters, lots of things
By Sean O'Neal Feb 20, 2014 • 4:31PM
No stranger to stories of men lashing out against an entrenched system, or to making combative and self-aggrandizing statements, author James Ellroy has trained his staccato language on a whole bunch of stuff he hates in a new interview with Shortlist. “I hate hipsters, I hate liberals, I hate rock ’n’ rollers, I hate the counter-culture, I hate movie people,” declares the author of several novels, including L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia, that have been readily embraced by many a rock ‘n’ roll-listening, liberal hipster over the years and adapted into movies.
Never pausing to insert any superfluous adjectives or modesty, in that classic Ellroy style, he rattles off all the other things he dislikes: driving on the left-hand side, President Obama (“I hate him. I think he’s a coward, incompetent and I find him sinister”), dive bars (“I can’t stand even a hint of discord or squalor”), “meth labs, white trash and women with tattoos,” and even the whole of the modern world (“I don’t give a shit about the modern world”). All of which pretty much leaves dogs, women without tattoos, and restaurants with an “A” health rating in Ellroy’s favor.
Still, while most of us can probably agree that meth labs aren’t that great, and that driving on the left-hand side is an affront to God, you may quibble with Ellroy’s assessment that, for example, Skyfall is “fucking brilliant”—and indeed, “the only profound James Bond movie”—but that most of the TV shows you revere pale in comparison. “I think Deadwood and Mad Men were intermittently quite wonderful, but often shoddy and veered into incoherence,” Ellroy says. “I saw one or two episodes of The Wire and thought it was bullshit. Bad writing. And I have no sympathy for the underclass.”
Anyway, while already provoking backlash from people who’ve apparently never read a James Ellroy interview before, it’s hardly surprising that Ellroy has no time for The Wire’s plight of the “underclass,” seeing as he proclaims himself a “Thatcherite and a Reaganite,” has long espoused a fiercely neo-con point-of-view—whether genuinely or as a way of fucking with people—and has written countless stories about cops mowing that underclass down. It’s also not surprising he would dislike The Wire after a mere two episodes, no doubt turning it off in disgust after seeing not a single one of its detectives wears a proper hat.
James Ellroy hates The Wire, hipsters, lots of things
By Sean O'Neal Feb 20, 2014 • 4:31PM
No stranger to stories of men lashing out against an entrenched system, or to making combative and self-aggrandizing statements, author James Ellroy has trained his staccato language on a whole bunch of stuff he hates in a new interview with Shortlist. “I hate hipsters, I hate liberals, I hate rock ’n’ rollers, I hate the counter-culture, I hate movie people,” declares the author of several novels, including L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia, that have been readily embraced by many a rock ‘n’ roll-listening, liberal hipster over the years and adapted into movies.
Never pausing to insert any superfluous adjectives or modesty, in that classic Ellroy style, he rattles off all the other things he dislikes: driving on the left-hand side, President Obama (“I hate him. I think he’s a coward, incompetent and I find him sinister”), dive bars (“I can’t stand even a hint of discord or squalor”), “meth labs, white trash and women with tattoos,” and even the whole of the modern world (“I don’t give a shit about the modern world”). All of which pretty much leaves dogs, women without tattoos, and restaurants with an “A” health rating in Ellroy’s favor.
Still, while most of us can probably agree that meth labs aren’t that great, and that driving on the left-hand side is an affront to God, you may quibble with Ellroy’s assessment that, for example, Skyfall is “fucking brilliant”—and indeed, “the only profound James Bond movie”—but that most of the TV shows you revere pale in comparison. “I think Deadwood and Mad Men were intermittently quite wonderful, but often shoddy and veered into incoherence,” Ellroy says. “I saw one or two episodes of The Wire and thought it was bullshit. Bad writing. And I have no sympathy for the underclass.”
Anyway, while already provoking backlash from people who’ve apparently never read a James Ellroy interview before, it’s hardly surprising that Ellroy has no time for The Wire’s plight of the “underclass,” seeing as he proclaims himself a “Thatcherite and a Reaganite,” has long espoused a fiercely neo-con point-of-view—whether genuinely or as a way of fucking with people—and has written countless stories about cops mowing that underclass down. It’s also not surprising he would dislike The Wire after a mere two episodes, no doubt turning it off in disgust after seeing not a single one of its detectives wears a proper hat.
