IQ

"We had to come back to LA. All the other books we’ve looked at have been post- World War I or post- World War II . What’s so fun about IQ is that it uses a lot of the tropes of these older books that we’ve discussed and sets them in present day. It centres around Isaiah Quintana, also known as IQ: a high school dropout turned unlicensed private investigator in East Long Beach. Okay, so it’s not technically Los Angeles, but it’s pretty close and Joe Ide, the author, is from South Central LA, so I’m going to count it. Every once in a while, you see someone write a modern noir, but not in a setting like this. So it’s really refreshing and from a different perspective. IQ is the first book in the series. I think there are six books so far and they’re all worth reading, but the first couple are really special. Isaiah takes it upon himself to help solve crimes in his community, crimes that are either too small for the police to worry about or crimes that take place in a community that the police don’t care enough to worry about. Isaiah only charges his clients what they can afford, and usually that is not a lot. IQ is similar to Raymond Chandler in that there is some little crime that Isaiah gets involved with, and that leads to a much bigger, more intricate storyline. Well, if you’ve never seen Chinatown , that’s the number one recommendation, without question. What’s funny is that, when you ask that question, all of the films that immediately come to mind are set in LA. It’s clear that Los Angeles is a draw, although it’s not true that noir can’t take place elsewhere. So: LA Confidential, Chinatown , The Long Goodbye —the Robert Altman adaptation, which feels almost like you’re just wandering around Los Angeles in a dreamy haze, bouncing from place to place—plus the first movie by Rian Johnson, who does the Knives Out series now, which was called Brick . He took a present-day high school mystery and put in these fast-talking noir characters. That’s a really special one. He’s doing something fun with the genre that’s out of the ordinary. Brick was a big influence on us when we were crafting We Gotta Get Out of This Place . It came out almost ten years ago, and XYZ Films just picked it up and is re-releasing it. We Gotta Get Out of This Place stars Jeremy Allen White, who has had a lot of success with The Bear recently, and Mackenzie Davis, who’s in Halt and Catch Fire and the Terminator series. It’s really exciting—it’s rare to get a second life with these projects, and it’s wonderful that people will get to see the movie again."