John Wayne he cross-dressed, Burt Lancaster tortured prostitutes in front of Fritz Lang’s camera James Dean he liked other men to put out cigarette butts on his body. Alan Ladd was short and he had it small, but not as small as the promiscuous John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who also liked pills of all colors. Some of these things are true and others are not, he has made them up James Elroy (Los Angeles, 1948) and has told them to Freddy Otash, the protagonist of ‘Panic‘ (Random House, 2022), his latest novel. Otash -the Gossip Chieftain, the malevolent monarch of the Los Angeles underground in the 1950s- was real, he was an ex-cop turned thug chief of ‘Confidential’, the tabloid magazine that uncovered dirty laundry from leftist politicians and of the stars of golden Hollywood.
You got to know Freddy Otash, right? How was he?
A sack of shit. I met Freddy in the last three years of his life, between 1999 and 2002, and in the novel I have made him much better than he really was, infinitely more handsome, elegant and charming and with more moral conflicts. Because fiction is fiction and I do what I want with the characters because they are already dead.
Do you enjoy messing with your characters?
Yes, I love having fun with JFK and saying that his virile member had nothing to do with Freddy Otash’s, who was “el burrooooo” (he pronounces it in Spanish). Jack had a micropenis. fuck him But who I can’t stand is the fucking actor James Dean, the fucking movie ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ and the fucking communist director Nicholas Ray. This book goes against them.
Are there any of the real characters that appear in “Panic” that you like?
Lois Nettleton. No one in Spain asks me about Lois Nettleton. The book is dedicated to two people: retired police officer Glynn Martin, my best friend, and Lois Nettleton, may she rest in peace. I fell in love with her on the ‘Naked City’ show in 1961, when I was 13 years old. She was one of the best actresses of her generation and guys like me who have these kinds of fixations can’t forget the first woman who gave us this kind of ardor while watching TV. And mine was Lois Nettleton. That’s why I made Freddy O’s fall in love with her.
Its protagonists are usually tough men who suffer for love.
It’s just that I love a good affair and a good love story, I realize how beautiful they are. Freddy falls in love with Lois Nettleton, so Lois will be back in the next book.
You are a romantic.
Yes.
You said the other day that you had a girlfriend who now lives in Valencia.
Yes, but it’s a bit of a joke. In 1980 or 1981 I had a girlfriend, but she didn’t go well and she left me for a Spaniard named Juan. They came to Valencia and now they have a couple of children. God bless you.
You are now a methodical, believing and conservative man. Would Freddy O. be very bored if, as he did with the celebrities of the time, he installed secret microphones in his house?
I lead a sober and quiet life, I live in my imagination. I don’t like research and I always have someone do the research for me and take those notes. I try that what I write is similar to the truth, but I am not interested in it being true. And yes, if Freddy Otas had tapped my phone, I’m sure he would have been quite bored.
Is that why you’re a writer, because you lead a boring life now than when you were young and delinquent?
No, I write because I have a wild imagination, and a wild knowledge about crime and delinquency and the human condition. And because my parents conceived me in 1948 in a great place.
What is Los Angeles? But do you like the real Los Angeles better or the one in your head?
The one in my head, because it’s the only one I know. I don’t live in LA anymore and haven’t lived there in 41 years. I really only lived there for 19 years. That’s where the women have divorced me. But I have both my mind and my soul in that Los Angeles from 1941 to 1972. And then the bottom line I basically make it up and make you believe it’s real.
Is your effort to demystify that golden Hollywood that many of us mythologize?
Yes, I follow my instinct.
The actors of before, or those of now, who punch each other in the middle of the Oscar ceremony, were tougher.
Yes, I know the history, but I’m not talking about the present, it doesn’t interest me.
Freddy was a “wicked dog” and you are the “evil dog.” In what else are they alike, besides the dog condition?
I love dogs (grunts). Freddy was a voyeur, like me. I also wandered the streets and hung around the schools to see the girls in their uniforms and I liked to see how they went to the pub and made up stories about them. I did not have good grades in school, it was difficult for me to get involved in social or political issues, but I loved reading. I loved popular novels, and the most popular novels in America are crime novels. And for me it is an honor that God has given me the gift to achieve the professional career that I have.
Is that why you uncover the sins of others in your novels, to thank God?
You have to worship God. On the one hand I show sin and on the other I judge it. But I am also a sinner and I show the pride of the sinner. I am a lost hope because I have a bad temper.
The anger too?
No, anger is perhaps going too far.