Rewatchables Reference

• Bill had too many: Crowe meets Basinger for the first time, the Night Owl aftermath ('hold on let me take my glasses off'), Crowe visits Basinger's house, the interrogation scene, Bud kills the rapist, the Rolo Tomasi story, the Johnny Stompanato scenes, Lynn seduces Exley, Smith shoots Hollywood Jack, and the Victory Motel shootout.
• Winner (consensus): The interrogation scene. Sean: 'It's probably my favorite.' CR: 'A masterpiece of scenes' – Bud moving from room to room with the chair while Dudley and Jack work the deep focus reflective shots.
• CR also had the post-Exley shootout montage – Exley gets promoted, Jack returns to Badge of Honor, Bud continues seeing Lynn, and the tent opens on Bud beating up mobsters moving in on Mickey's turf.
• Sean had Bud visiting Pierce Patchett for the first time – 'We have not talked about Pierce Patchett.'

• Andy: Tabloid culture. Audience willingness to explore twisty morality genre tales (just not in movie theaters anymore). LA still being a rough adjustment for outsiders.
• Sean: Hansen said 'I love characters who only have one scene, but they're the star of that scene' – this movie is a great example, and that approach has been dispensed with over the last 25 years.
• CR: Pierce Patchett as a proto-Epstein – enriching himself and exerting control from the shadows using blackmail. Also Dudley telling Exley he'll never be a great cop unless he can shoot a criminal in the back, which is exactly how Exley kills Dudley.
• Bill: Corrupt LA cops. 'I love movies where the Police Department hates one of their own cops.'

• CR: The reflection shots in the interrogation scene – Dudley and Jack in the deep focus reflective glass.
• Sean: Multiple split diopter shots – particularly when Exley and Bud burst into the DA's office with Rifkin in the background and Bud in the foreground. Also Exley holding up the badge in the shadows of the cop cars arriving.
• Sean: The zoom when Exley and Bud are about to have a showdown in the street – one of the only zooms in the movie.
• Andy: The camera movement when Stensland walks out of Dudley's office after turning in his badge, panning to the wall of raw faces, then completely moving to see Exley coming down the hall. 'It is such an unshowy movie in terms of camera work – it is always serving the story.'

• Bill and Andy: Danny DeVito as Sid Hudgens – too famous, too much comedy history, Italian guy playing a Jewish character. Bill: 'I just don't think Curtis Hanson was like, you know who we should get.'
• CR: The passage of time is unclear – 'how long does this movie take place over?'

• Kevin Spacey – the revelations about his behavior. Sean: 'When you go back and look at the movies and the parts that he took on, it's not unreasonable to see a red arrow pointing at the unseemliness of this person.' Guy Pearce's recent online activity suggests he may have had issues with Spacey on set.
• The Bud/Exley fight damage is unrealistic – both get brutally beaten but recover to fight at the Victory Motel. Bill: 'How many games could Jason Tatum play after getting shot in the heart?'
• Andy: The idea that 'every working man can have his own house' and 'downtown to the beach in 20 minutes' – the promises of the freeway-era LA dream.

• Sean: This is the second-best Wizard of Oz adaptation of all time – Bud has no brain, Ed has no heart, Jack has no courage, Lynn wants to go home to Arizona, and Dudley is the Wizard. 'And they all get what they want.'
• CR: Pierce Patchett as proto-Epstein. The balls on these guys to make Dudley a twist villain rather than the audience knowing from the start he's the Dark Prince of Los Angeles.

Gwenda Deacon as Mrs. Lefferts – the old lady who IDs her call-girl daughter. Bill: 'Looks like David Letterman in drag. Just a zero the entire time.' Andy agrees: 'When she's identifying – that's my girl – you're like, wow, that was really memorable.'

• Curtis Hanson wanted unknowns so the audience didn't have preconceived notions. Andy: 'Who are the other 30-year-old people that they may have been trying to put in this movie?'
• Matthew McConaughey turned it down and later regretted it (said so in 2018). Russell Crowe initially turned it down too.
• Isabella Scorupco was offered Lynn Bracken. Basinger was Hanson's first choice – every interview says she was 'just the best person, really cool.'

• Bill: 'We have a ton.' David Strathairn as Patchett – 'one of my favorite IMDBs including the best Miami Vice episode ever.' Andy: 'Come on, Strathairn is so good in this movie.'
• Ron Rifkin as DA Ellis Loew – 'definitely that guy.'
• Matt McCoy (the dad from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle). Andy: 'Who I will always think of as the replacement for Steve Guttenberg in the later Police Academy movies.'
• CR: Tomas Arana – one of Dudley's henchmen. 'He's the guy at the end of Hunt for Red October, Russell Crowe's homie in Gladiator, and he's in Limitless.'
• Andy: John Mahon, who only plays chiefs of police. 'He's in The American President, Armageddon, Zodiac, and Austin Powers.'
• Sean: Paul Guilfoyle – 'the guy driving the armored truck in Heat' is one of the guys in the prison fight.
• Bill: Alan Graf as the wife beater in the beginning – stunt coordinator and second unit director who 'has been killed in 74 Rewatchables.'

• Simon Baker as Matt Reynolds. Sean: Stensland is a great example of a character who, when he's in the scene, he's the star of it.
• Andy: Apex mountain of guys getting shot in the heart – 'the dude watching the cartoons will live rent free in my head forever because of the noises he makes, and the attention paid to Spacey's post-heart-shot is very good.'

• Bill suggested Larry David or Billy Crystal as Sid Hudgens.
• Andy: 'Spielberg would have cast Dreyfuss as the Hush-Hush editor.'
• CR did a Zane Lowe interviewing Dudley and Matt Reynolds bit for 'Better With.' Also suggested Shams Charania as Sid Hudgens.

• No building in 1950s LA could be taller than City Hall, so the cinematography had to carefully avoid modern buildings in every shot.
• The Pearce/Crowe fight scene was shot four months after principal photography wrapped – Pearce had to wear a wig because he'd changed his hair.
• Daryl Gates, the actual former LAPD chief, cameos as the cop who congratulates Exley at the end.
• The Victory Motel was built specifically for the film on location near the Inglewood oil fields.
• The Frolic Room bar where Jack goes for a drink is still there, right next door to the Pantages Theatre, which shows The Bad and the Beautiful on its marquee – one of the key inspirations for the movie.
• Jerry Goldsmith based some of the score off of Leonard Bernstein's On the Waterfront score.

• Kevin Spacey: Bill says it's either this or American Beauty, 'but I like this because it sets up American Beauty.'
• Guy Pearce: Bill says Memento, 'although it didn't really turn into anything after Memento like we thought.' Sean argues post-The Brutalist it might be now.
• James Cromwell: The group discusses his career – 3.5 years after Babe, Succession, Star Trek, a Jack Ryan movie. CR and Bill both love him in this.
• LA noir / crime movies: 'Chinatown. Apex mountain. Got to be, right.'
• Kim Basinger: Bill doesn't think this was her Apex Mountain – 'I think it was in the 80s during that 9 1/2 Weeks stretch.' Her next movie was Eight Mile, five years later.

• Bill: 'Clearly Scorsese.' CR thinks Spielberg could do an interesting version that excises the gross stuff and sands down the characters even more.
• Bill: 'Spielberg would have cast Dreyfuss as the Hush-Hush editor.' Andy: '100%.' CR: 'Dreyfuss, absolutely.'

• Bill: No gambling in this movie – surprising for a 1950s LA setting.
• Bill: Basinger is prettier than Veronica Lake – 'You're the first person in five years who didn't tell me I look like Veronica Lake' is a stretch.
• The ending drags – Bill: 'There's a case that this movie could just end at the hotel and we don't even need the last scenes.' The Psycho-style explanation to all the cops feels unnecessary.
• Craig had trouble following all the last names being thrown around. Andy agrees a couple lines are clunkier than remembered, like 'Are you ready to pay the consequences?'

• A 2020 sequel with Chadwick Boseman set in 1974 fell apart when Boseman got sick. Two TV pilots: 2003 on Trio with Kiefer Sutherland, 2019 on CBS with Walton Goggins as Vincennes.
• Sean: If it was Matthew Weiner or Vince Gilligan taking on James Ellroy, he'd be more open to it. Bill vetoes it – 'If the movie's at a certain level, I don't think you can do it. It's off limits.'

• CR did Zane Lowe interviewing Dudley and Matt Reynolds.
• CR also suggested Shams Charania as Sid Hudgens.

Dante Spinotti for cinematography – the movie was nominated but lost to 'Titanic'.

• Sean: What was Bud White going to do to support Lynn in Arizona? What was Lynn going to do – 'the dress store'?
• Bill: Is it a better movie if Bud just dies? Craig agrees – showing him in the car at the end 'kind of deflates it a little bit.'
• Bill: Is Exley maybe interested in Lynn only because of some weird Bud thing? 'It's the only time he's interested in that the entire movie.'

• Bill: The Night Owl coffee mug – 'If I just had a Night Owl coffee mug and you were like, is that L.A. Confidential? It's one of those you almost have to get it.'
• Sean: Jack Vincennes' tortoiseshell sunglasses.
• Andy: 'Rollo Tomasi' – we could each share it, and if one of us is killed...

'Some men get the world, others get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona.'

• Chinatown (unanimous).
• Sean: Who Framed Roger Rabbit – 'similarly a movie about this period in history, post-war detectives trying to solve a big cover-up, also a parable about the building of the highways and who controls the ways and means of the city.'
• Andy: In a Lonely Place.
• CR: Touch of Evil.

• Sean and CR: Curtis Hanson. Sean: 'The movie won Curtis Hanson.'
• Bill and Andy: Russell Crowe – 'it sets up 10 years of Russell Crowe being one of the biggest stars we have.' Andy: 'You go to a movie and you don't really know this person. You leave the movie only talking about this person.'
• CR also gave credit to the writers – 'an unadaptable book and they made a great script out of it.'

• Craig liked it but didn't love it. 'The lead three actors were great, the story was really interesting,' but the dialogue felt 'a little cheesy' – 'I had trouble kind of fully getting my hands dirty with it.'
• Craig then read about the Library of Congress preserving the film: 'Oh, maybe I'm missing something. I need to watch it again.' Bill: 'It's a second-watch movie.'
• Andy: 'My relationship with this movie has deepened because of what it sent me back to' – hadn't seen the noirs it was influenced by when he first watched.