Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland adapted the third novel of James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet, and the adaptation is known for how much it threw away: the novel runs for years and across dozens of characters, and the film keeps three detectives and one case. What it preserves is the quartet's argument about Los Angeles in the early 1950s. The police are an organised criminal interest, the press is paid, and the city's image of itself is a product being sold. Ellroy has said publicly that he regards the film as a success on its own terms rather than as a faithful rendering.