Saturday Matinee: L.A. Confidential starring Kim Basinger in her Oscar winning role #book2movies

Seeing that Kim Basinger just celebrated a birthday, I thought reissuing this Saturday Matinee post was apropos.

Twenty years ago Kim Basinger won an Oscar for her supporting actress role in L.A. Confidential. She also won a Golden Globe and a SAG award. 

Screenwriter Brian Helgeland shared a Best Screenplay Academy Award with the film's director, Curtis Hansen. The Golden Globes, BAFTA, Cannes and critics associations around the world called it out as one of the best films of 1997. If you’re into L.A. noir films, L.A. Confidential is at the top of the neo-noir heap. While the film was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, '97 would turn out to be Titanic’s year.

Based on the book by James Ellroy, the author approved of what the director and screenwriter did with his material about three cops—the oh so good guy (Guy Pearce) the brutal (Russell Crowe) and the sellout (Kevin Spacey).

“At the time Helgeland told the Dallas Observer that the plan was “to remove every scene from the book that didn’t have the three main cops in it, and then to work from those scenes out.” The result was a model of streamlining, allowing them to adapt a book that some had deemed unfilmable. Ellroy himself paid tribute to them, saying, “They preserved the basic integrity of the book and its main theme…Brian and Curtis took a work of fiction that had eight plotlines, reduced those to three, and retained the dramatic force of three men working out their destiny.”—Dallas Observer

Let’s stop the chatter and watch. You can stream L.A. Confidential for a few dollars on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, GooglePlay, and YouTube.  When it comes to Netflix, you’re on your own.