Los Angeles Plays Itself
1
This is the city:
Los Angeles, California.
They make movies here.
I live here.
Sometimes I think that gives me the right
to criticize the way movies depict my city.
I know it's not easy.
The city is big.
The image is small.
Movies are vertical.
At least when they're
projected on a screen.
The city is horizontal, except
for what we call downtown.
Maybe that's why the movies
love downtown more than we do.
If it isn't the site of the action,
they try to stick its high-rise
towers in the back of the shot.
But movies have some advantages over us.
They can fly through the air.
We must travel by land.
They exist in space.
We live and die in time.
So why should I be generous?
Of course, I know movies
aren't about places,
...they're about stories.
If we notice the location,
...we are not really watching the movie.
It's what's up front that counts.
Movies bury their traces,
...choosing for us what to watch,
...then moving on to something else.
They do the work of our
voluntary attention,
...and so we must suppress
that faculty as we watch.
Our involuntary attention
must come to the fore.
But what if we watch with
our voluntary attention,
...instead of letting the movies direct us?
If we can appreciate documentaries
...perhaps we can appreciate
fiction films...
...for their documentary revelations.
And what if suspense is just
another alienation effect.
Isn't that what Hitchcock taught?
For him, suspense was a means of
enlivening his touristy travelogues.
Then maybe I can find another way to
animate this city symphony in reverse.
Maybe this effort to see how
movies depict Los Angeles...
...may seem more than
wrong-headed or mean-spirited.
Los Angeles, it is said,
...is the most photographed
city in the world.
If you walk around enough,
...you'll start to notice...
...the mysterious temporary signs...
...that direct crew members
to a movie location.
If you walk through the
right neighborhoods,
...you'll see the long
rows of white trucks...
...that mark and fence
off a location shoot.
Los Angeles is where the relation between
reality and representation gets muddled.
[Newspaper headline: 2 Charged in
Murder Like One in Film They Produced]
Their film is about the killing
of a strip club mogul.
Six years earlier,
...the producer and the star
had conspired to murder...
...the real owner of the strip
club where the film is set...
...and take over his empire.
The strip clubs made them rich,
A real movie shoot...
...can create a better
public spectacle...
...than the fake movie studio tours.
In a city where only
a few buildings...
...are more than a hundred years old,
...where most traces of the city's
history have been effaced,
...a place can become
a historic landmark...
...because it was once a movie location.
As it is for people,
...so it is for places:
Getting into the movies becomes
a substitute for achievement.
Actors have head shots,
...buildings get
architectural photographs.
Plaques and signs mark the
sites of former movie studios.
Streets and parks are
named for movie stars.
Even movie writers.
A small bust near the
Griffith Park Planetarium...
...marks the spot...
...where James Dean once played
The inscription claims Dean
wasn't really a rebel:
Those were only roles he played.
But wasn't he more
of a rebel in life...
...than in the movies?
Where he always played
a milquetoast Oedipus,
...trying not to murder but to
please an imperfect father...
...who is either too stern...
...or too soft?
...between Vendome Street...
...and Descanso Drive
in Silver Lake...
...has been named the Music Box Steps,
...after the classic Laurel
and Hardy short...
...filmed there in 1932.
Some buildings that
look functional...
A McDonald's in City of Industry...
...is never open to the public.
Here actors are paid...
...so we can see them smile...
...as they ingest their Big Macs.
A roadhouse...
and 145th Street...
...in Palmdale...
...has never served a regular patron,
...but it appears prominently...
...in Swordfish and Brother.
have lost their purpose...
...can be preserved
as movie locations,
...like the Ambassador Hotel,
...famous since 1968...
...because Sirhan Sirhan...
...assassinated Robert Kennedy there.
Sometimes it works the other way around:
A building constructed as a movie set...
...takes on an afterlife.
Mr. Blandings's dream house,
...fictionally located in the
woods of Connecticut,
...has been preserved as an
administration building...
...at Malibu Creek State Park.
Los Angeles...
...may be the most photographed
city in the world,
...but it's one of the least photogenic.
It's not Paris or New York.
In New York, everything
is sharp and in-focus,
...as if seen through a wide-angle lens.
In smoggy cities like Los Angeles,
...everything dissolves into the distance,
...and even stuff that's close-up...
...seems far off.
New York seems immediately
accessible to the camera.
Any image from almost
any corner of the city...
...is immediately recognizable
...as a piece of New York.
Los Angeles is hard to get right,
...maybe because traditional
public space...
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"Los Angeles Plays Itself" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/los_angeles_plays_itself_12828>.
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