Fritz Brown
Created by James Ellroy

Self-proclaimed crime fiction enfant terrible. James Ellroy's one and only private eye novel to date features morally-ambiguous, Beethoven-loving Los Angeles disgraced ex-cop and low-rent slacker private detective FRITZ BROWN. Fritz admits he wasn't perhaps Los Angeles' finest police officer. In fact, he admits he was "an uneasy, malcontented one at first, until the booze came along and made the low-level administration of power exciting beyond my wildest fantasies." But alcohol and a power trip made an unhealthy mixture, and Fritz began fucking up. Transferred to Vice, he went too far. He took a baseball bat to a known child molester, breaking both legs, unaware the molester just happened to be a favored informant of the Narcotics Division. Fritz was asked to leave the force. Since then he's been on and off the wagon, doing repo work, serving papers, not exactly setting the world on fire, but not starving, either. Then this obese caddy named "Fat Dog" walks in with a proposition. Seems he's worried about his daughter...

Following the success (albeit more critical than commercial) of the film version of Ellroy's L.A. Confidential (1997), Brown's Requiem went before the cameras, as an appropriately low-budget independent offering directed by Jason Freedlands, and starring Michael Rooker (Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Replacement Killers) as Fritz. Nothing spectacular, it's a loose, shambling affair whose ultimate poitlessness may, after all, be the point. Certainly many viewers appreciated the flick for its down-scale but fresh take on neo-noir sensibility, and some strong performances by Barry Newman, Brad Dourif and particularly 23 year-old William Sasso as Fat Dog. Valerie Perrine even makes a cameo. The biggest change was probably Freedlands yanking the musical sub-text, which probably makes sense, given Ellroy's later death-to-subtlety approach.

Then again, Brown's Requiem was Ellroy's first book. He hasn't written another private investigator novel since, although he's dabbled in the genre, in the form of short stories, most notably with forties private eye Spade Hearns and 1950's scandal sheet editor Danny Getchell.

NOVELS

• Brown's Requiem (1981)...Buy this book

FILM

• BROWN'S REQUIEM....Buy this DVD....Buy this video
  (1998)
  105 minutes
  Based on the novel by James Elroy
  Screenplay by Jason Freedlands
  Directed by Jason Freedlands
  Cinematographer: Seo Mutarevic
  Produced by David Scott Rubin, Tim Youd
  Executive Producers: Mark Ezralow, John McDonnell III
  An Avalanche Releasing presentation in association with J&T Productions and Savvy Lad Inc.
  Starring Michael Rooker as FRITZ BROWN
  Also starring William Sasso, Selma Blair, Valerie Perrine, Harold Gould, Barry Newman, Brad Dourif, Tobin Bell, Christopher Meloni, Jane Baker, Jack Conley, Kevin Corrigan, Brion James, William Newman, Jack Wallace, Big Daddy Wayne, Ron Barker, David Labiosa, John Prosky

RELATED KINKS

• Ellroy Confidential
  News, pictures, and Internet resources about James Ellroy. In French and English. All you need to debut your own dirt-digging diversion on the Demon Dog.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.