The USA Film Festival, one of the nation's foremost cultural organizations dedicated to the recognition of excellence in the film and video arts, will honor author James Ellroy in conjunction with the publication of his new book “Perfidia: A novel” on October 8, 2014, at the Angelika Film Center Dallas. The evening program will include an appearance from the author, a reading from his new work “Perfidia: A novel,” followed by an on-stage conversation with the audience and book-signing. Following the signing, Mr. Ellroy will introduce a screening of the neo-noir classic film L.A. Confidential, adapted from his novel.
The evening is co-presented by the USA Film Festival and the Angelika Film Center and will be hosted by Chris Vognar, film critic for The Dallas Morning News.
“The Festival is honored to host author James Ellroy to celebrate his latest work,” said the Festival’s Managing Director, Ann Alexander. “For crime fiction fans and anyone who loves film noir, this will be am very special night.”
JAMES ELLROY — A master of noir crime fiction, James Ellroy has up close and personal knowledge of the world of crime. His life has been shadowed by a gruesome event: the unsolved murder of his mother when he was a child. In 1958, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy's body was dumped on a roadway in El Monte, California, a seedy L.A. exurb. Her killer was never apprehended. Her murder unleashed a force that has propelled Ellroy's work. Ellroy channeled his anguish and transformed himself into an outsized public persona: an audacious, uncompromising, and unapologetic chronicler of humanity's dark side. As a young man haunted by his mother's death, Ellroy became a thief, an alcoholic, a drug abuser, and a peeping Tom. He served time in jail. Much of the first thirty years of his life was consumed by homelessness, alcoholism, drug abuse, petty crime, and a period of insanity. Ellroy eventually found steady work caddying at Los Angeles country clubs and joined AA. As he walked the golf courses while he worked, he harnessed his narrative passion to his fascination with crime and began to daydream a novel. In 1985, he began The Black Dahlia, an explicit attempt to marry his mother's murder to the famous case that had so obsessed him in his youth. The novel appeared in 1987 and was dedicated to his mother. As a novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and memoirist, James Ellroy is more closely identified with Los Angeles than any writer since Raymond Chandler. Nearly all of his writing is set in Los Angeles, in the rough, racist, pre-Miranda Los Angeles of the decade following the Second World War. Four of his novels –The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz — are collectively known as the L.A. Quartet. They comprise a dark and obsessive 1950s anti-history of his hometown. His novels American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover form the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy.
ABOUT THE BOOK — It is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans, but now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins. The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police Department. He’s superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious, liquored-up, and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith, Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the L.A. cop payroll. Kay Lake is a twenty-one-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm center that brilliantly illuminates these four driven souls — comrades, rivals, lovers, history’s pawns. Perfidia is a novel of astonishments. It is World War II as you have never seen it, and Los Angeles as James Ellroy has never written it before. Here, he gives us the party at the edge of the abyss and the precipice of America’s ascendance. Perfidia is that moment, spellbindingly captured. It beckons us to solve a great crime that, in its turn, explicates the crime of war itself. It is a great American novel. Perfidia is published by Knopf and released in September, 2014.
ABOUT THE FILM — Curtis Hanson directed the blockbuster film adaptation of L.A. Confidential (1997) in which (as in the book), everything is suspect, everyone is for sale, and nothing is what it seems. The modern classic garnered nine Academy Award nominations (winning two) and stars Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Ron Rifkin, David Strathairn and Danny DeVito.
EVENT DETAILS — USA Film Festival honors author James Ellroy in Dallas
Schedule of events for the Evening with James Ellroy:
6:30pm – Pre-show author meet-and-greet and book-signing.
7:00pm – On-stage reading with Mr. Ellroy from “Perfidia: A novel” followed by Q&A with the audience and
book-signing.
8:00pm – Film screening of L.A. Confidential with introduction by James Ellroy.
Location: The program will take place at the Angelika Film Center, 5321 E. Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, Texas.
ADVANCE TICKETS on sale beginning TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2014.
Ticket information for the Evening with James Ellroy:
AUTHOR EVENT ONLY $24 advance ($30 at door)
Includes copy of “Perfidia: A novel,” reading with the author and book-signing;
Copy of “Perfidia: A novel” included in ticket price.
AUTHOR EVENT & FILM $32 advance ($38 at door)
Includes copy of “Perfidia: A novel,” reading with the author, book-signing, and screening of L.A. Confidential (introduction of film by James Ellroy); Copy of “Perfidia: A novel” included in ticket price.
FILM SCREENING ONLY $7
Includes screening of L.A. Confidential with introduction of film by James Ellroy;
Book not included.
Pre-sale reservations are not available for the movie-only; these tickets only will be available at the
theater box office beginning at 10:00am day of show.
To purchase advance tickets and guarantee your seat, please contact the USA Film Festival
by telephone at 214-821-6300 or via email at [email protected].
Tickets available at the door (based on availability).
This program is made possible with support from Knopf. Special thanks to Barnes & Noble
Booksellers Lincoln Park for providing books for the program.
