Episode 774: Cop (1988)

Episode 774: Cop (1988)

Noirvember closes with James B. Harris’s Cop (1988)—the first time James Ellroy’s feverish fiction hit the big screen. Mike teams with Andrew Nette and Rod Lott for a deep read of Harris’s adaptation, where James Woods’s unhinged Detective Lloyd Hopkins hunts a killer across eighteen years of buried violence.

The trio digs into Ellroy’s original novel Blood on the Moon and the wilder, abandoned incarnation that came before it—L.A. Death Trip, the unsold, manuscript that first birthed Hopkins. Using material from Ellroy’s own accounts and critical studies (including the brute-force early drafts, the rewrites demanded by Otto Penzler and Nat Sobel, and the shift to publishable structure), the conversation maps how a doomed finale turned into a tight serial-killer pursuit.

The episode also features a new interview with James B. Harris, who breaks down the challenges of translating Ellroy’s structure, keeping Hopkins’s mania intact, and staying faithful to the narrative rhythms of the novel. What emerges is a portrait of a filmmaker wrestling with source material born in chaos—reforged into the dark, abrasive thriller that helped spark decades of Ellroy adaptations.


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Special Report: TCM Imports

Special Report: TCM Imports

Join us on The Projection Booth as we welcome back Turner Classic Movies host, Alicia Malone, to discuss her latest book, TCM Imports: Timeless Favorites and Hidden Gems of World Cinema. In this episo...

28 Huhti 202531min

Episode 739: La Haine (1995)

Episode 739: La Haine (1995)

Tension simmers in La Haine (1995), Matthieu Kassovitz’s electrifying portrait of disenfranchised youth in the Parisian banlieues. Mike is joined by guest co-hosts Lumi Etienne and Judith Mayne for a ...

23 Huhti 20251h 45min

Episode 738: On the Beach (1959)

Episode 738: On the Beach (1959)

Co-hosts Maurice Bursztynski and Jonathan Melville join Mike to take on a Patreon request from listener John Atom—Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. They dive into both the 1959 Stanley Kramer film and the 2...

16 Huhti 20251h 59min

Episode 737: Two Men in Manhattan (1959)

Episode 737: Two Men in Manhattan (1959)

Film historian Samm Deighan and cult cinema expert Andrew Leavold join Mike to shine a light on Jean-Pierre Melville’s Two Men in Manhattan (1959). Often overshadowed by his better-known crime films, ...

9 Huhti 20251h 19min

Special Report: Remaining Native (2025)

Special Report: Remaining Native (2025)

Mike speaks with director Paige Bethmann and editor Stephanie Khoury about their powerful 2025 documentary Remaining Native. Bethmann and Khoury discuss the challenges of telling a deeply personal sto...

7 Huhti 202531min

Episode 736: Casablanca (1942)

Episode 736: Casablanca (1942)

The Projection Booth wraps up another month of Patreon picks with what might be the most obscure film ever discussed on the show—Casablanca (1942), that little-known wartime romance directed by Michae...

2 Huhti 20253h 16min

Special Report: Head Like a Hole (2024)

Special Report: Head Like a Hole (2024)

Mike talks with director Stefan MacDonald-Labelle about Head Like a Hole (2024), a microbudget psychological horror film about a man hired to monitor a mysterious hole in a basement wall. They discuss...

1 Huhti 202538min

Special Report: Thank You Very Much (2023)

Special Report: Thank You Very Much (2023)

Director Alex Braverman joins Mike to discuss his 2023 documentary Thank You Very Much, a fascinating deep dive into the life and legend of Andy Kaufman. From his genre-defying comedy to his infamous ...

31 Maalis 202527min

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