Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly's Los Angeles [DVD] [CD-ROM]

Michael Connelly (Author), William Petersen (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2004

The city of Los Angeles has been at the heart of all Michael Connelly's best selling novels. In this limited edition DVD, Michael Connelly himself provides an insider's tour of the places that give his stories and characters their spark and texture. Directed by author and filmmaker Terrill Lee Lankford, Blue Neon Night brings Michael Connelly's Los Angeles ot life and captures the essence of a writer's relationship with the place that inspires, frustrates, and ultimately fulfills him. This limited edition DVD contains several added features, including book summaries, an inside look at The Narrows, and Michael Connelly's thoughts on the music mentioned in the books. Excerpts from Connelly's 14 books are read by William Petersen, star of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Manhunter, To Live and Die in LA.

Product Details

• CD-ROM
• Publisher: Hieronymous (2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316156523
• ISBN-13: 978-0316156523
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #713,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lays Out a Nice Michael Connelly Itinerary in L.A., May 8, 2007

By 

Stephanie DePue (Carolina Beach, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly's Los Angeles [DVD] (CD-ROM)

"Blue Neon Night," a limited edition DVD about author Michael Connelly's Los Angeles, was recently distributed free with purchase of his LA-set book, "The Narrows." Like many others, I got hold of it by waiting on a long line to buy that book, then waiting on a longer line for the author's autograph: he's a really smart, shrewd man, as you might expect, and I've devoted myself, four or more times, on both coasts of the U.S., in New York and at the Los Angeles Times Book Fair, to hearing him speak, and/or getting that esteemed autograph.

But back to the DVD: it can function as a handy introduction to the city of Los Angeles, and lays out a nice Michael Connery itinerary that I've actually followed on recent trips out. The DVD hits many of the city's famous streets and spots, the freeways, Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, the downtrodden Los Angeles River, around which his book "The Narrows" is centered. Also, the lovely seaside town of Venice; the Bradbury Building, with its intensely intricate interior; the immense mural of Anthony Quinn known as the Pope of Broadway, from its location. Furthermore, and most beautifully, Angels' Flight, a former tramway connecting Bunker Hill, once a fancy Victorian district, then a red-light district, now a high-gloss high-end business district, to the city. Connelly has centered a book, of the same name, on Angels' Flight, and tells us his protagonist Bosch once lived up there with his mother, a prostitute.

Connelly loves his adopted home town, and is eloquent on the subject. He calls it a "sunny place for shady people." He says he writes about its dark side, but also wishes to celebrate it, and that he loves it best at night, when the city is most itself, and gives a good sense of the "random nature of the chaos and danger that lurk within." He's lucky to work in LA, he says; it gives him "a palette overflowing with paint of many colors," and he adds that he likes to "paint to the four corners of the canvas." He adds that LA continues to be a destination city (with a net ingress of migration), functioning as a big casino, to which many people are dream-drawn, though few achieve their dreams. That's what comes of building a gigantic city, based on false hopes and ideas, in the desert, without water, he says. The desert reclaims all. Urban tumbleweeds drift through the streets, predators hide behind the rocks.

Connelly also explains how he came to call his detective Harry Bosch, after the painter Hieronymus Bosch. The painter, he says, painted to all four corners of the canvas, and documented a conjured world of sin, pain, demons and darkness. Connelly is interested not only in how a cop works on a case, but how a case works on a cop. A good detective, he says, must be at home in the world, wherever the world is, and must be able to move fluidly through all layers of society; that, he says, is one reason people enjoy detective fiction, because it takes them places they could not otherwise go.

The video, in addition to Connelly, features William Petersen, star of television's "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," reading excerpts from Connelly's previous 14 books, and several interesting extras. It has an evocative, moody jazz score, written by George Cable and played by Frank Morgan. Connelly's thoughts about his craft are as absorbing as the video travelogue; it's worth getting this DVD if you can, though I doubt standing on line for it will work any more.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael Connelly's L.A., December 6, 2009

By 

Linda Poole "lindablue" (salisbury, md) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly's Los Angeles [DVD] (CD-ROM)

This video is a must for all Michael Connelly fans. It reviews many of his books and takes the viewer on a tour of the L.A. areas he writes about. Of special note is the Narrows. I saw the video BEFORE reading the book of that title and it helped me visualize the scenes in the story, although they were written in great detail. I plan to watch this video again and bought a copy as a gift for my brother and sister-in-law who are both Connelly fans.