Books and movies exploring the "seedy underbelly" of LA/Hollywood

June 26, 2024 9:14 AM

[Recommendations filter] I have a fondness for books, films, and other media that either explore or are immersed in what I'm going to call (for lack of a better term) the "seedy underbelly" of Los Angeles and Hollywood. Particularly those set in the 1960s and 1970s, but I'm open to other eras. Seeking your recommendations. Examples of what I already enjoy below the fold.

Shawn Levy's history The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont is one of the best examples of what I mean. It's packed with stories about the secret lives of celebrities as they moved in and out of the Chateau Marmont hotel.

Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is a strong recent cinematic example of exactly what I'm talking about, as well as Sofia Coppola's Somewhere and PT Anderson's Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, and Licorice Pizza. (Honestly, PT probably captures this mood/aesthetic better than anyone - the only movie of his I still haven't seen is Inherent Vice, but I've been told it's right up my alley.)

I've seen the vast majority of the films on Time Out's 57 Films That Best Capture LA but feel free to mention any standouts.

Probably looking for books more than anything else. Both fiction and non-fiction, including biographies and autobiographies.

Thank you in advance!

posted by nightrecordings to Media & Arts (42 answers total)

Tinseltown...
The Day of the Locust..
posted by Czjewel at 9:23 AM on June 26

None of these are exactly right, but maybe-
The Changeling (Based on true story of a kidnapped boy in 1920s California. Not LA but the cop stuff feels relevant)
The Black Dahlia (True crime event: the 1940s murder of an aspiring actress. There's a movie and some docs)
LA Confidential (Noir cop film, set in 1950s LA)
Mulholland Drive (Surreal story of aspiring actress, unclear era - maybe late 1990s? but feels pretty timeless)
Reading about Nicole Brown Simpson's murder and OJ Simpson's trial kind of has that feel too - LA glamour + crime.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:24 AM on June 26 [1 favorite]

I really love the Michael Connelly books (Lincoln Lawyer series the most, but Bosch also) because he makes the Los Angeles, a city I don't care about at all, feel like a participating character in the story. He does a really good job of capturing both the glamor and the decay of LA.

Off the top of my head (I am missing several I'm sure), some books that intersect with Hollywood/movie studio shadiness specifically are: Trunk Music, The Brass Verdict, The Fifth Witness (less so maybe?)

Content warning: these books are very much of the quote unquote Dad Lit genre, so if legal/cop procedural thrillers rub you the wrong way, Connelly is not for you.
posted by phunniemee at 9:26 AM on June 26 [1 favorite]

That Time Out list has the essentials, would add Under the Silver Lake (which narrowly out-Pynchon's Inherent Vice despite not being a Pynchon adaptation.
posted by remembrancer at 9:27 AM on June 26 [3 favorites]

Hollywood Babylon, vols 1 and 2.
posted by essexjan at 9:27 AM on June 26 [4 favorites]

The 1973 movie The Long Goodbye. It's Robert Altman's version of the Raymond Chandler novel, with Elliot Gould as to the detective Philip Marlowe. The story is translated from Chandler's sleazy 1940s LA to sleazy 1970s LA. It's exactly what you are looking for.
posted by JonJacky at 9:27 AM on June 26 [8 favorites]

Death By Hollywood is also a pretty good read, a sort of updated noir novel set in Tinseltown. It's a novel by Steven Bochco, legendary showrunner of Hill St Blues, LA Law, NYPD Blue, etc.

One of the characters is allegedly based very closely on a leading actor from NYPD Blue who left the show to because he thought he was too big for the show and should instead be a movie star ...
posted by essexjan at 9:34 AM on June 26

Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays.
posted by johngoren at 9:35 AM on June 26 [6 favorites]

Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz. Look into her other works as well.
posted by greta simone at 9:36 AM on June 26 [3 favorites]

Inherent Vice, the 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon is set in 1970s LA: a burned-out detective prowls the post-hippie underground. There is a 2014 movie of the book.
posted by JonJacky at 9:38 AM on June 26 [2 favorites]

On the Chandler front, The little Sister is a classic, though a bit earlier than your ask.
posted by Alensin at 9:44 AM on June 26

Doesn't get much seedier than Barfly
Drive
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 9:54 AM on June 26 [1 favorite]

The Nowhere City, the 1966 novel by Alison Lurie. Straitlaced couple from back East moves to 1960s LA and both their lives are transformed by encounters in glitzy Hollywood and bohemian Venice Beach.

Seconding Joan Didion and Eve Babitz.
posted by JonJacky at 9:59 AM on June 26

I really love the Easy Rawlins series of novels by Walter Mosley. The film “Devil in a Blue Dress” was based on the novel of the same name. Mosley captures an LA that isn’t written about much - that of working class African-Americans in LA in the late 40’s through the 60’s. It helps that Mosley is a terrific writer,
posted by dbmcd at 10:09 AM on June 26 [3 favorites]

Full Service, by Scotty Bowers and the doc about him from Matt Tyrnauer.
Nobody's Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood By J.E. Smythe (not “ seedy” but underreported)
posted by Ideefixe at 10:15 AM on June 26 [2 favorites]

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind has quite a lot of this kind of stuff - in amongst insightful discussion of a lot of the great movies from that era.

Also maybe Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell by William Goldman.
posted by rd45 at 10:26 AM on June 26

It doesn't get any more "seedy underbelly of Los Angeles" than James Ellroy's L.A. books and the movies based on them. They are set in earlier eras than the 70s for the most part, however.

These include (in publication order):
- Blood on the Moon
- Because the Night
- Suicide Hill
- The Black Dahlia
- The Big Nowhere
- L.A. Confidential
- White Jazz
- Perfidia
- This Storm
- The Enchanters
posted by slkinsey at 10:33 AM on June 26 [2 favorites]

Chinatown
Sunset Boulevard
Babylon (I recommend watching this back-to-back with Singin' in the Rain)
posted by adamrice at 10:34 AM on June 26 [1 favorite]

Camp Hollywood
posted by credulous at 10:36 AM on June 26

Parts per Million: the Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School
"An unsettling and timely investigation into the ties between Beverly Hills, its oil wells, and a local cancer cluster." [LA public library]
posted by HearHere at 10:37 AM on June 26

To Live and Die in L.A. fits this bill nicely, I think. I also regard it as William Friedkin's best film.

I also just rewatched Dark Blue (based on an Ellroy story), which holds up reasonably well and seems to be what you're looking for.
posted by Dr. Wu at 10:38 AM on June 26

You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, the autobiography by Julia Phillips, a top producer in the 70s although there is some skepticism that someone who ingested as much drugs as she admits would be able to remember conversations so clearly. At any rate, career-ending.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 10:46 AM on June 26 [2 favorites]

The podcast “You Must Remember This” focuses on Hollywood and film history from 1900-2000. Personally, I think the latest two seasons on sex in movies in the 80s and 90s (and its preamble chapters on the late 70s that provide context) are absolutely fascinating social histories of LA. She also has a season that is framed around the Manson family but more broadly discussed 70s LA.

Give yourself an episode or two to adapt to her speaking style. What starts off as maybe a little unusual will quickly grow on you.

The podcast host Karina Longworth is also an author - I haven’t read her work but I’d absolutely trust her as an authoritative source and writer, based on the podcast.
posted by samthemander at 10:53 AM on June 26 [4 favorites]

If you haven't seen Los Angeles Plays Itself (13th on the Time Out list), I recommend doing so as soon as possible. The Time Out listing is wrong: it is available for rent from most of the major online places and looks like it may be available through Kanopy as well. It rules and I should rewatch it soon.

That Time Out list has the essentials, would add Under the Silver Lake (which narrowly out-Pynchon's Inherent Vice despite not being a Pynchon adaptation.

PTA's Inherent Vice only really adapts the first half of the novel, while Under the Silver Lake does a superior job adapting the weirder, more Pynchonian second half of the book. I highly recommend it.
posted by thecaddy at 11:07 AM on June 26

City of Nets is a great book about 1940s Hollywood
posted by Chenko at 11:22 AM on June 26 [1 favorite]

On your list already, but … Ed Wood
posted by credulous at 12:06 PM on June 26

A little off-the-wall, but Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The death of the LA Red Car trolley and the rise of the freeway at the hands of real estate developers was a real thing.
posted by SPrintF at 12:10 PM on June 26 [2 favorites]

We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story Of L.A. Punk, by Marc Spitz, gives a great view into the punk/underground culture of late 70's/early 80's LA.
posted by pdb at 12:11 PM on June 26

The podcast "Heidiworld" by Molly Lambert, about the Heidi Fleiss sex ring (mostly 80s/90s)

Seconding Hollywood Babylon, Full Service, and You Must Remember This

I also like Star 80 and Dancing at The Blue Iguana
posted by CancerSucks at 12:28 PM on June 26

It doesn't get any more "seedy underbelly of Los Angeles" than James Ellroy's L.A. books and the movies based on them

Came here to make the same recommendation
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:43 PM on June 26

Not a book or movie, but the PBS series "Lost LA" is great for some of the reality of all that glitz and glitter and Babylon, including how the Red Car rose and fell.
posted by lhauser at 1:02 PM on June 26

wonderland avenue

foxes there's a novelization but it's not on the internet archive and paper copies are pricey.

Cherie Currie's Neon Angel
posted by brujita at 1:37 PM on June 26

The Nice Guys

In 1977 LA, two private detectives, each down on their luck for different reasons, are pulled into the mysterious death of a porn actress.

If you like Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, precocious preteens, and/or are comfortable laughing at slapstick violence, then this movie is for you.
posted by billjings at 2:18 PM on June 26 [1 favorite]

Perry Mason HBO This series is set in Los Angeles and covers some actual historical events that impacted the city such as the rise of Aimee Semple MacPherson and the Angelus Temple. The sets, acting and writing are really well done.
posted by effluvia at 2:23 PM on June 26

+1 to LA Confidential, book and movie both. If you like that one, you can go further with Ellroy, but I think LA Confidential is his best LA-focused story.
posted by Mid at 3:05 PM on June 26

The Late Show, a 1977 movie with Art Carney and Lily Tomlin as an aging detective and his young client who navigate the LA underworld.

I was reminded of this when I saw the new movie Thelma which is set in LA today and has some of the same elements.
posted by JonJacky at 5:48 PM on June 26

Hollywood Babylon, vols 1 and 2.

Just so you know: most of the stuff in these books is false or wildly exaggerated. You Must Remember This covers both volumes in detail starting July of 2018:

Longworth first came across Hollywood Babylon as a student at art school. At first blush, she was thrilled by its determination to puncture Old Hollywood iconography... “Also, obviously, I was watching Kenneth Anger’s films in art school, so Hollywood Babylon came to me at the right age.”
... Now, with nearly two decades of Old Hollywood research under her belt, she’s completely changed her mind about the book, deeming it an often misogynist and dangerous document.
“His general distaste for women is all throughout Hollywood Babylon, so I certainly don’t think he’d be happy to know a woman is deconstructing his work,” she said.
posted by oneirodynia at 6:37 PM on June 26 [3 favorites]

You definitely want to check out Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series of novels. Note that the page linked to says they are in order, and they are, but they are in reverse order - the first novel is at the bottom. These start in the late 1940s but progress through the years so they do fit your criteria
posted by TimHare at 6:39 PM on June 26

I'd just been putting together this link for the blue. Probably earlier than you're really looking for, but tells a real life story of corruption back in the day.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:18 PM on June 26 [2 favorites]

Can’t believe I’m the first to mention Mike Davis’s City of Quartz, a very leftist history of LA. I guessI can understand because I failed to read it in paper numerous times. But when I checked it the audiobook it really flew by.
posted by xueexueg at 10:01 PM on June 26 [1 favorite]

also I think some of what scotty bowers wrote in Full service has to be taken with a handful of salt: he claimed he called the Duke of Windsor Eddie when it's been well documented that his intimates knew him as David
posted by brujita at 3:23 PM on June 27

Several references to Pynchon have already been made, but nobody has so far mentioned The Crying of Lot 49, perhaps because it's not an exact match for your ask - your write-up suggests that the Hollywood element is important.

If you're willing to relax that, though, The Crying of Lot 49 is worth a look. It's not very involved with Hollywood but it is a memorable book that explores a Southern California underground of a sort different from the other books likely to show up on this list.

As a bonus it's also a quick read, albeit one you might find yourself returning to over time..
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:47 AM on June 28