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Leading independent podcast studio Audio Up has reunited with James Ellroy, “the Demon Dog of American Literature,” to adapt his seminal novel of historical fiction, American Tabloid, into a 12-episode scripted series. The book, which forms the basis of his Underworld USA Trilogy, tells the fictional story of JFK's murder from the point of view of those who killed him. The cast of characters is a rogue's gallery of bloodthirsty Cuban exiles, rogue CIA operatives, mafia killers, pimps, shakedown men and FBI agents all chasing money, sex and power. The book blasts a bullet hole into the myth of American innocence and hope that pervaded the Eisenhower years and was exemplified by Kennedy's Camelot. In Ellroy's hands JFK is transmogrified into “Bad Back Jack,” an underhung playboy with a penchant for call girls, amphetamines, and the power derived from his father's money. It's RFK, in Ellroy's telling, who is the moral center, but seals his brother's fate and that of the family by chasing the mob and Jimmy Hoffa. Inserted into this milieu is a morphine addicted Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover, the Chicago Outfit and a low- rent Twist queen who becomes their ticket to blackmail. They all converge in Dallas to rub up against History and watch the world spin. This is American history torched, and served up a la carte as the truth.

QUOTE FROM JAMES ELLROY

American Tabloid has been lauded over the years as Ellroy's masterwork of historical fiction, and has taken on near mythical status alongside Don Delillo's Libra as the best of the genre. But its massive scope and ambition has long eluded Hollywood in their attempts to tame and adapt the book. The list of suitors who have attempted to make American Tabloid, only to be defeated includes David Fincher, Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, and countless studios who were lured by the siren song of the book's rat-a-tat-tat, Rat Pack allure, only to drown in the quicksand of the novel's massive scope. It seemed largely “unadaptable” until podcasting made it viable once again. Now, Audio Up has stepped into the fray to bring American Tabloid to listeners worldwide.

“Audio is the perfect medium to deliver American Tabloid,” says Audio Up's Chief Creative Officer, Jimmy Jellinek, who is set to adapt the series from the book alongside James Ellroy. We can build out the book's massive internal world through sound. Traveling from the jungles of Guatemala to Castro's Cuba, mid-century Chicago, Los Angeles, 1963 Dallas, and the Jim Crow south alongside these characters would be prohibitive – unless you were making a film on the scale of the first two Godfathers. Instead, we're creating what may very well be the first true, scripted epic of the podcast era for what it would cost to feed the grips for half a day on one of these sets. When were finished you'll hopefully know we're the HBO or 70's Paramount of Audio, full stop. The fact that James has entrusted his legacy to Audio Up is enormously gratifying and speaks volumes to the way we work with other people's IP.”

American Tabloid will debut July 4th 2022, and will be executive produced by Audio Up's Phil Alberstat, Jared Gutstadt and Jimmy Jellinek. Casting to begin immediately.

Dig:

It's coming. He's coming. He'll be hot on the heels of his noxious new novel, Widespread Panic, pandemically published June 15 by Alfred A. Knopf. James Ellroy's Hollywood Death Trip is baaaaaaad to the be-bop bone!!! It will lash listeners and lay them low!!!!! El Jefe Ellroy's time-tripping back to hellacious Hollyweird, the delirious demimonde that formed the fount of his licentious literary vision. He'll nuke-bomb narrate his best true-crime pieces. They will surgingly circumscribe mid-century L.A. and set it aflame. Sin-sational murder cases, mellifluous music, and socko sound effects. Man, it's rip-roaring radio at its boffo best!!!!

The Karyn Kupcinet case. The Stephanie Gorman snuff. Winter '76 – Sicko Sal Mineo is slashed outside his Sunset Strip love lair. A lurid leap back to '58, as Ellroy gives us the furtive 411 on his own mother's murder.

“Nothing moves the needle in this medium like true crime. To work with The Master himself to create a first-of-its-kind series that harkens back to the golden age of tabloid radio is a dream come true.” So sez Audio Up's Chief Creative Officer, Jimmy Jellinek.

“James Ellroy's first-ever podcast series is the perfect addition to our growing slate of prestige programming. Ellroy and true crime is a match made in Heaven.” So sez Audio Up founder and CEO Jared Gutstadt.

“Summer '21 is the soil-your-soul season of the Demon Dog,” Ellroy sez. “I'm a rapacious reader of my own work, and I'm here to rip and revitalize radio – and run it raw. And that's no shivering shit, Daddy-O.”

Ellroy's Soil-Your-Soul summer fast approaches. Knopf publishes Widespread Panic early on. The Demon Dog's new novel features legendary Hollyweird fixer Freddy Otash, an ex-cop, shakedown artist, and strongarm goon for Confidential magazine. Panic panders to the sex-singed sinner in all of us – as it toasts and torches ‘50's Hollywood to the ground.

Bad-ass book to rock ‘em/sock ‘em radio – James Ellroy's Hollywood Death Trip debuts a few short weeks later.

“I've had precious few moments,” admitted the novelist James Ellroy, “where I've said to myself: ‘Ellroy, you are the king. You're the greatest crime writer that ever lived.'” A comment like that might be insufferable if it weren't delivered, as it was by Ellroy, with a grin and if it didn't also have a plausible claim on the truth. Ellroy's morally complex, baroquely plotted, sprawling and highly stylized novels — “The Black Dahlia” and “L.A. Confidential” chief among them — constitute a singularly intense body of work. In the 71-year-old's opinion, he has reached a new peak with his latest, “This Storm.” But he's not taking that as an invitation to coast. “The reflex kicks in,” Ellroy said, and it tells him: “You've got more work to do.”

Read the rest at “The New York Times Magazine”

Look alive—all you mofos out in cyberspace!!!! This is El Jefe Ellroy, your lunar-looped literary leader, writing to you from my pulsating pad in delirious Denver, Colorado. AND, I’m here to insidiously introduce my friends John “Son of Griff” Anderson and Grant “Wallflower” Nebel—two recidivistically rogue college professors whom I look upon as my bristling brain trust. This serves as my formal introduction to their dynamic dialogue on my new novel, This Storm. It’s my best book, fuckers, and Griff and Wallflower are feasting on it, like the pustulant pit bulls that they are!!!! Read their piece and gas on their purulent perceptions!!! Go out and buy noxiously numerous copies of This Storm!!!!!!!!!!

READ IT HERE

Ellroy

When do you read?

At night. When the world quiets down. When the hell hounds of my imagination stir in my bed beside me and grant me a few hours of repose.

Read the rest at the New York Times

One of the opening scenes of the 2001 BBC documentary Feast of Death, James Ellroy tells a story about his encounter with an elderly fan in a Kansas video store. She's effusive about how much she enjoyed the movie L.A. Confidential, which was based on Ellroy's bestselling novel of the same name — part of his now-iconic L.A. Quartet series.

Read the rest at Gen

Dear Ellroy readers, enthusiasts, adherents, apparatchiks, and feckless followers worldwide:

Achtung, motherfuckers!!!!! Here's a day-by-day public-appearance itinerary for yours truly – the Demon Dog of American Literature!!! This is my British and U.S. schedule for the simultaneous publication of This Storm, my new novel, and of my L.A. Quartet and Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy – in the prongingly prestigious Everyman's Library perennial hardcover editions.

CLICK HERE TO FEAST YOUR EYES ON THESE GROOVY GIGS

For two weeks in the fall of 2017, best-selling author James Ellroy re-investigated the 1976 murder of Sal Mineo, the Oscar-nominated actor from Rebel Without a Cause who died at 37 in the carport outside his West Hollywood apartment. Together with Glynn Martin — a retired 20-year LAPD veteran — Ellroy pored over seven boxes of files at the L.A. Sheriff's Homicide Bureau that detailed more than two years of painstaking detective work leading to the arrest and conviction of Lionel Williams. “There was missing material,” says Ellroy. “We never saw the crime scene photographs, I put those together from descriptions.” And based on his decades of experience writing about crime in fiction (L.A. Confidential) and nonfiction (LAPD ‘53, co-authored with Martin), Ellroy extrapolated and “stitched together” what was missing to create this immersive version of events, told from the point of view of the detectives on the case.

SHERIFF'S HOMICIDE FILE #079200909-0977-011
Victim: Mineo, Salvatore/WM/37.
8567 Holloway Drive/West Hollywood.
2142 hours/Thursday/2-12-76.

Retrospective file summary and recalled narrative. We, the undersigned detectives attest:

Holloway ran short and cut diagonal, from La Cienega northwest to the Strip. One half mile, tops. Mid-rent apartment cribs and a big Catholic church. Film-biz habitues. Homosexuals and hip kids.

The above-stated address: Apartments. Postwar, stucco, three floors, a south-facing facade. Quick access to an alleyway carport.

An open carport.

The alleyway's narrow. The Park Wellington Towers are built up flush against it.

Read the rest at the Hollywood Reporter

Ellroy signs books for fans in front of the Egyptian Theater prior to his and Eddie Muller’s presentation of L.A. Confidential, as part of the Los Angeles 2018 Noir City Noir Film Festival.