10 Film Characters Who Suffered Horrendous Fates In Other Media
5. Dudley Smith And Leland "Buzz" Meeks - L.A. Confidential
Curtis Hanson's masterful adaptation of James Ellroy's novel is another example of streamlining done skillfully, removing subplots from a nearly 1,000-page book. There were several never even considered to be part of the film.
Adapting Ellroy's novel was made even more difficult as it was intended as a standalone film, not the third in a four-part series, as the novel was. Opening with The Black Dahlia and concluding with White Jazz, Ellroy's L.A. Quartet offers an alternative history to the city spanning over two decades from the late 40s to the early 60s.
By the time L.A. Confidential was written, James Cromwell's Dudley Smith was long established as a dirty cop. The film treats his reveal as the villain as a twist, with the Captain suddenly shooting lead detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) toward the end of act two.
But Dudley actually survives L.A. Confidential, with surviving cop Edmund Exley vowing revenge. The same can't be said of ex-cop and mob bag man Leland "Buzz" Meeks, who is one of the three leads in The Big Nowhere only to get shot in the prologue of Confidential. He is briefly in the film, only to be found under a house later.
As for the elusive Dudley, he gets his comeuppance at the end of White Jazz, with a demented serial killer brutally mauling him and leaving him in a vegetative state.