James Ellroy: "write what you know," they tell you in creative writing seminars, and with a life that seems taken straight from film noir, that's exactly what James Ellroy has done. Now, as the film version of his novel, The Black Dahlia, is set to hit theaters, Ellroy reveals the sometimes miraculous convergence of art, life, and geography

Just under 20 years ago, James Ellroy turned his considerable yarn-spinning skills to one of the most intriguing, mystifying, and ultimately sensationaiized crimes of the first half of the 20th century: the Black Dahlia murder. The slaying of 22-year-old aspiring actress

Elizabeth Short captured the public imagination. If ever a crime seemed made for a big-screen adaptation it was this one, but it is only now, nearly 60 years later, that it's making its way into theaters. The film, called The Black Dahlia, was directed by Brian De Palma, and stars Hilary Swank, Scarlett Johansson, Josh Hartnett, and Aaron Eckhart, but it's the voice and vision of Ellroy--his book forms the basis of the screenplay--that hovers over the enterprise. Here he speaks with Dana Delany.

DANA DELANY: You ready?

JAMES ELLROY: I was born ready.

DD: [laughs] All right. Let's start with your mother, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy. One thing I got in going back and reading the prologue of The Black Dahlia [1987] was that you could be talking about your mother. Were you conscious of that connection while you were writing it?

JE: Not when I wrote the prologue, but what The Black Dahlia is, more than any single thing, is a treatise on being woman-haunted. There's my mother, there's Elizabeth Short in The Black Dahlia, and there's many women since. Helen, my recently divorced ex-wife and dear friend, once said to me, "You've got the prophecy thing going, and yeah, you believe in God, but more than anything else you believe in woman."

DD: She's right. It's the obsession. It's always been women who have informed your work. Now, after writing The Black Dahlia, it took you another 10 years to really deal with your mother's death. I want to talk about that, because you've gone on record saying that once the film comes out, you will never talk about your mother publicly again.

JE: That's true. Every interview with me, every television performance, every journalist's piece written contains references to my mother and often to The Black Dahlia and their symbiosis. And what I've determined is that this summer and fall is my farewell tour to all of that because I write political books now that are set outside of Los Angeles, and I'm tired of telling the story, and I would like to grant my mother and Elizabeth Short a piece of denied disclosure.

DD: Well, I find it interesting that you are now moving back to Los Angeles for the first time in how many years?

JE: Twenty-five.

DD: So there really is some kind of full circle there. Do you feel like you're ready to come back to L.A.?

JE: I've learned I only feel safe there. I'm always driving down to L.A. Every year for the past few years, when my recent ex-wife and I did our taxes, I'd be astonished at all the money I'd spent driving to L.A., buying gas, staying in hotels, and going to dinner. I've spent a fortune.

DD: In a way, you were born at the right time there. You had the perfect postwar macho father; your mother was murdered; you descended into drugs and alcohol; you were redeemed through the love of a strong woman--it's right out of a film noir movie.

JE: It is. And I got lucky. Geography saved me. I just want to be here now. This is the only place that feels organic to me. I got a pad in a historic building. I have a decorator coming in and doing it up to the nines. It looks great. I bought a sports car. I probably overstepped, given I'm splitting the money with my ex-wife, but that's that.

DD: Are you going to have a dog?

JE: No, but my very good friend Josh Friedman has a cat. Josh Friedman is the guy who adapted The Black Dahlia.

DD: How do you feel about your novels being made into movies?

JE: I'm happy for the money. I'm happy for the exposure. Every once in a while there's lightning in a bottle like with L.A. Confidential [1997], so we'll see what happens with The Black Dahlia. Even bad movies create substantial readership for your books.

DD: It's all about your books, right?

JE: It is. The disjuncture between the writing person and the performing person is that to apply your craft, the performing person needs other people and technicians, or at the very least, a stage. And in a couple of steps, I get to go away and do it on my own. Is that tough for you, waiting for material?

DD: Yes, it is. But as the cliche goes, it's a collaboration. I mean Kidnapped, the TV series I'm working on now, has really talented people writing it and acting in it, and that becomes a cohesive whole. But let's get back to obsession. Do you find that that obsession for unsolved cases is still part of you? Or in your writing now, do you find that you just move on to the political fiction that you do?

JE: Political stuff drives me, though I love a good homicide investigation, particularly in the L.A. set.

DD: It seems there were a lot of unsolved cases from your era.

JE: I think there were actually fewer back then, but they're elegiac with me. And they resonate.

DD: Which is also true about My Dark Places [1997], your book about your mother. Women just love that book because it is so elegiac and lonely and romantic and very much about discovering that your mother is a woman and a human being.