White Jazz

WHITE JAZZ Screenplay and Current Revisions by Matthew Michael Carnahan & Joe Carnahan 9/16/07 Based on the novel "White Jazz" by James Ellroy Legend: Recife, Brazil, 1983 1 INT. HILLSIDE VILLA - MORNING 1 Stare at my broken face in a gilded mirror. The breaks occurred a lifetime ago, healed uneven. I wear a white tropical button-down, a Republican-gold Rolex, a pirate-patch over what was my left eye. ME (V.O.) I’m old. And all I have left is the will to remember... I reach into a dresser drawer, pull out a yellowed black & white picture of HER: this beatific blonde, sleeping. Below me is a week-old L.A. Times with the headline: Matriarch of Television Series, Empire Ridge, Retires. The Matriarch’s picture in the middle. * ME (V.O.) (CONT'D) ...and the fear I’ll forget... Slide HER over the Matriarch’s picture: the Matriarch 30 years younger now. Lift my eyes back to my reflection. ME (V.O.) (CONT'D) I killed innocent men. I betrayed sacred oaths. I reaped profit from horror. The names are dead or too guilty to tell. The events so brutal they beg to be re-told... Legend: Los Angeles, Fall 1958 2 INT. OLYMPIC AUDITORIUM - FIGHT NIGHT 2 The battered face of an Irish Pug. Same guy? No. A hard jab bashes the Pug out of frame. And there I am: next to the ‘Ring’ Magazine Reporter chewing the ass out of his cigar. ME (V.O.) Lieutenant Dave Klein, Vice Division. LAPD. That’s what my face looked like before.