LA Confidential (1997) - 7 questions

Question: How did the corpse Bud finds wind up in the woman's basement, and whose body was that?

Answer: The corpse under the house is the ex-cop named Meeks. He was working with Dick Stensland to deal drugs - things turned sour and Stensland killed him, hiding the body under the house belonging to his girlfriend's mother.

Question: What is up with the corpse in the woman's basement, and how did it get there?

Answer: The corpse under the house is the ex-cop named Meeks. He was working with Dick Stensland to deal drugs - things turned sour and Stensland killed him, hiding the body under the house belonging to his girlfriend's mother.

Question: What is Lynn's connection to the Nite Owl killings?

Answer: She doesn't really have one - not directly, anyway. The only link is that Susan Lefferts died at the Night Owl, and Bud saw Lynn with Lefferts when he was buying the alcohol for the party. Lefferts had the bandage on her nose at the time, which sparked Bud's curiosity and prompted him to seek out Lynn after Lefferts was murdered.

Question: Why did Dudley order the killings at the Nite Owl in the first place?

Answer: To get rid of Stensland and take over the drug racket. Dudley knew if he killed Stensland seperately the police would start looking into why they would want to kill a cop. Killing him and everyone at the Nite Owl then making it look like a robbery would just make it look like Stensland was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as we find out later it was set up to look like that and also could easily be placed on the black criminals.

Question: Was Dudley Smith written as an Irishman, or was the accent something James Cromwell just did for kicks?

Answer: Yes, Dudley Smith was Irish.

Question: Sid Hudgens uses the phrase "Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush." What does "q.t." stand for?

Answer: "QT" is slang which literally means "quiet" and it is also used as a police radio term which means "secrecy required regarding location."

Question: About 3/4 of the way through the film, Vincennes finds the body of the actor he arrested early in the movie, with his throat slit. Who killed him and why?

Answer: Reynolds has been sent by Sid Hudgens to sleep with Loew, the District Attorney. Dudley Smith and Pearce Patchett, who are trying to take over everything, have been threatening Loew, who initially refused to play along. They set Loew up, probably in much the same way that Hudgens tried to, with the intention of blackmailing him with photos so that he couldn't prosecute them. According to Loew, who spills the details while Bud's dangling him out of the window, Reynolds overheard all this - presumably Smith and/or Patchett followed Loew to the motel room to do the blackmailing - so they killed him.