You don’t know what to expect. He’s a larger-than-life figure in the literary world as much for his work as his opinions and more-than-occasionally abrasive attitude. I knew he was a decent person from my friend, producer Clark Peterson who connected the two of us. But Clark gets along with everyone - he’s that nice - I do not, and I frequently rub people the wrong way for whatever reason.

I sincerely hoped that Mr. Ellroy and I would not be gasoline and a match.

 Since I always over-prepare for any Q&A I’d done a lot of research reading, watching videos of his previous interviews. I’d seen him garrulous, argumentative, impatient, snide and dismissive. To be fair, he was always bright, incisive and intriguing also. And what...charming? Yeah. You really don’t expect that. I didn’t.

He walked up to the front entrance of The Regency South Coast Village Theater, the venue site, with OCSWA board member Sterling Vozenilek who had been charged with picking him at the hotel. I took a breath and went out to meet him.

He’s initially soft-spoken, formal. Rigid even. In bow-tied sport jacket and casual pants, carrying a hard-edged briefcase he looks a little like a school teacher - if your teacher was Mr. Talk-Shit-Get-Hit. At a rangy six, three he carries himself with a definite “do not mess with me with attitude.” Substitute the word “mess” with the four letter word that begins with “f” and you’ll have a better idea of his actual first impression. He also somehow appears to be above it all as if he watching from a high, removed distance. As if he’d always rather be somewhere else.

“Hello, My. Ellroy,” I said. “I’m Mark Sevi.”

“Hello, Mr. Sevi,” he said with a photoflash smile. “Call me Dog. It’s an old nickname.”

I smiled too. I immediately felt like his friend.

His handshake is strong and firm and his quick smile real, albeit more like an after-imaged memory than a true event. My touchstone was my friend, Sterling. She’s got an astounding intuitive sense. She seemed relaxed and at ease so I knew he hadn’t said anything to her that made her uneasy. Not that I really expected that to be the case - but you never know with men and women of celebrity. I’d been surprised before.

“We’re happy you’re here,” I said.

 “And I’m am thrilled to be here.” And he sincerely seemed to be.

He wasn’t demanding, dismissive or damning. His only request was to be isolated until I introduced him which I would have done anyway. I do like it when guests make an entrance. I left him in Sterling’s capable hands and attached board member Victor Phan to be the fast-twitch muscle to Sterling’s far-ranging intuition. I didn’t expect anyone to give him a hard time - or for him to do so to anyone else - but again, you never know. I didn’t want to be the guy who had caused this American literary legend to be hurt.

Victor would be more than capable of handling any physical threat that came his way; Sterling would handle the rest. But even if they had to switch roles, I knew that Sterling could fight like a cornered wildcat and Victor could charm the panties off a nun if he had to. They are two of the many reasons that OC Screenwriters is the outstanding organization it is.

 I’d left the format of the Q&A up to him. He was gracious in allowing me to question him for about thirty minutes after his opening welcome to our group.I always try not to be trite with my questions unless it’s purposeful. I discovered that with Ellroy, with such a complete writer who had done both the internal and external work necessary to be great, my questions ranged naturally from the mundane to the esoteric. Even though I knew the answers I felt like the audience would want to know the same things I did when I started to learn about him. That they would have the same hunger for this man’s unique insight into writing and the painful, deep forays he had made into his psyche to bring that writing to the page.

What is your process? How did you come to writing? Why didn’t you finish high school? How did your mother’s death affect you? Simple, almost declarative questions blended with: You’re a man of enormous hungers and passions - why is that? If you look at both sides of your face in isolation you see the human dichotomy writ large - why with you more than with others? Do you believe in God - and if so, why, since your work is at times so nihilistic? He doesn’t like that “n” word much by the way. He also proclaims not like liberals much (don’t believe him) and he says he doesn't believe that the LAPD suffers from an inbred corruption but rather that situations like Rodney King and the Rampart scandal are only aberrations.  In this I think he’s being deliberately simplistic and disingenuous.  No power structure exists without corruption in this world and he's too bright and has used the theme too much to dismiss that concept.

As the Q&A progressed I knew I might be walking some lines. I never wanted to bring Mr. Ellroy in to challenge him. He’s too accomplished, too brilliantly opinionated to play games with. I honestly just wanted to know, to understand him as a writer. He could be a “peeper, prowler, pederast, panty-sniffer, punk or pimp” in his private life - I only wanted his process, his quest for perfection, his writing soul.  

 Admittedly, I was/am also interested in the man. He is, after all, someone who had suffered untold emotional carnage at the hands of his mother, both directly and indirectly, when she was found dead in 1958, the victim of a brutal murder. No one that I could think of has been so painfully open and honest about the inner demons than Mr. Ellroy. That, in and of itself, drove my curiosity to places that I normally reserve for serial killers and science.

As he talked to the audience and to me, I grew more convinced that this was a man unique in our time. I was already in love with his work being a fan of his fiction for many years. But as you grow as a writer, you also grow less tolerant of other writers. You come to a point, perhaps, when you think nothing anyone writes anymore will impress you. But that’s wrong here for me. Ellroy’s work still had the power to challenge me - although perhaps not in the same fashion as before. But the man was a different story.  I knew, sitting in that chair next to him, that I could never be to be lackadaisical or dismissive of him as a person. His kung-fu is verrrry strong.
 

 Why? Because he isn’t a writer trying to impress you about anything. He’s a writer trying to kill himself piece by bloody piece and there is no garbage or dishonesty in that process that ultimately finds its way into his prose. He needs to deconstruct himself - it is the only way perhaps that he can find surcease from the unending terror of the young boy who lived a guilty nightmare and grew to be a wholly dysfunctional man. 

I don’t think anyone can truly appreciate the cost of what Mr. Ellroy has done and continues to do. As writers, we all “soul search.” Boo-hoo, when I was five my dad said he hated me. Sob, I’m so misunderstood because I was fat when I was a kid and it left scars. Don’t look at my darkness - it’s so ugly and it makes me ugly. Shit, shit and shit. All shit. Try going several dozen levels lower than that to “I had a lustful relationship with my mother and constantly tried to see her naked when she peed.” Or - “I cursed her to die and she was murdered.” Or - “I had a childish illusion that my mother was killed for refusing sex. More likely she was killed for demanding more sex.” Now that’s take-no-prisoners inner examination.

Most people with Ellroy’s dark depths do not make great writers. If they go that deep into who they are, they don’t want to dwell in it. What sane person wants to wallow in bloody stool? Even less-likely, report back about it? People who have to, do go down to those depths, breath the fetidness but then pop back up to the surface as quickly as possible. Ellroy did not, does not. The guilt he’s carried around for decades - self-imposed or not - has created his unique voice and being the quality and honest man he is, he won’t report about that darkness from a quick memory or from the sidelines. He dives into and swims in that rank mess staying there to bring that foul, retching odor and those vomit-inducing thoughts to his readers. Maybe he’s feeding his ego. Maybe he’s just astounded that we all don’t do this. I don’t know and I don’t care.

 But imagine the cost. Imagine living in unending pain for your craft. Say...having your fingers scream in agony every time you type the letter ‘E’ but you do it because it’s the only way to make words that make a sentence - it’s the only way to communicate how and what you know you have to.

What an inordinately brave and insane creature this man is. What comes out of his mouth and his mind is the lunatic that runs around inside there with him that has set up semi-permanent residence. And since he doesn’t own a computer, a cell phone, a television or any other mass-communication device that I could figure, he is at times completely alone with that pazzo demonoid in his head. Nothing mitigates that voice which screams at him from the terror in the soul of the young boy who believes he willed his mother to death but felt good about the fact that she was gone.

He tried to drown out its voice with drugs and alcohol and continues to try to assuage it with his search for love and completeness, but he’s only partially successful. The nightmare that haunts is also the nightmare that informs and creates. I think he’s somewhat afraid to put it rest. Or maybe he just can’t.

He has a quote: “Closure is bullshit and I would love to find the man who invented closure and shove a giant closure plaque up his ass."

  I can understand why - or at least I can because Mr. James Ellroy has helped me understand why. There is no cloture for him although there must certainly be moments of peace. The transformation on his face when his Other, writer Erika Schickel walked in, would have shown you that.  In her he seeks and finds peace and a sense of completeness.

Ellroy talked and answered questions - any and all without reservation - for almost two hours. Then he signed books until everyone who came to visit with him was fulfilled.  He stripped off his jacket and tie to do the signing like the California boy he is - casually, hanging ten, shirt out and linen pants wrinkled.

I watched him on stage and as he interacted happily with his fans. I hate to bust the illusion but he really is a people person at the end of it all.  I came away with such a deep appreciation. I didn’t expect to be moved by him. Amused, entertained, informed - yes. Moved...? No. That was a complete and thrilling surprise

I really like James Ellroy - as a person. He’s not asking for pity or understanding or anything at all. He likes making money; he enjoys writing, and he continues to do both well. He knows he’s been given a gift and a curse. One does not necessarily negate the other - to both good and bad effect in his life. And I do understand that dichotomy if only from the perspective of my own life.

If you toss aside the way the message is sometimes disseminated - dismissively, with an impatient growl, or with apparent defensive hubris, you can always hear the truth inside James Ellroy’s thoughts. A pineapple is both the outer skin and the sweet flesh inside. Ellroy may scowl and growl and prowl the auditorium, but underneath is the voice of a dark angel who is telling you that he knows your pain, he understands your fears. He brings them up from his stinking depths, vomits them forth, so you don’t really have to. He is our darkness, and he is our joy at times because there is an underlying message of redemption to his voice be it his incredible prose or the poetry of his measured speech and thoughts he freely shares in a live venue.

In my opinion if you take offense at him or any of his message you’re not really listening to what he’s saying. On Saturday, November 13, 2010, that message was in full force: Be honest. With yourself, with your writing. It’s the only way to truly be at peace.

Thank you, James. We are the more fulfilled and fully informed for that simple and profound thought that you live each and every day.

If you missed this event, punch yourself in the face for being so short-sighted. But if you get a chance to see James Ellroy speak, do not repeat that mistake.

Thanks to Mr. James Ellroy, his assistant Lisa (I’ll reserve her last name,) my friend super-producer Clark Peterson who is also a friend of Dog’s and the staff of the Regency South Coast Village Theater (especially Larry Porricelli.) And of course, the Orange County Screenwriters board of directors who do the scut work necessary to bring these events to you - like Toby Wallwork who headed up the subcommittee for this event.

 “Rampart” written by James Ellroy, produced by Clark Peterson and Lightstream Pictures is filming now in Los Angeles.  

“James Ellroy’s L.A. - City of Demons” is filming now and will premiere on Discovery Channel in January 2011.

 “The Hilliker Curse” is James Ellroy’s latest book, a non-fiction examination of his life after giving up the quest to find his mother’s killer on sale everywhere.