
Los Angeles Plays Itself
(4.78 / 18 votes)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...
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"Los Angeles Plays Itself" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2022. Web. 25 May 2022. <https://www.scripts.com/script/los_angeles_plays_itself_12828>.
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