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City in Cameo: The Many Faces of Los Angeles in Cinema

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French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard once wrote that “the American city seems to have stepped right out of the movies”. By this he meant that the experience of visiting an American city cannot be separated from the experience of first seeing it in cinema. For an outsider, trying to form an impression of Los Angeles, independent of this above notion (or from playing Grand Theft Auto V on free roam mode) is very difficult.New York might have Woody Allen, but Los Angeles has its own champions. While there are certain directors, namely Michael Mann, Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Altman and Quentin Tarantino, who’ve proven themselves to be LA specialists, they aren’t the only ones who have implanted the city of Los Angeles as a supplementary character in their films. Following is a selection of movies that celebrate, scrutinize, criticize, romanticize and fictionalize this city of angels, delving into its various moods and personalities.1. DARKChinatown, 1974One film that inspired many films, Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” stands out in Hollywood’s brimming coffers as a masterpiece. Considered by many to be one of the best films ever made, “Chinatown” is as much a stylish neo-noir film as it is a film about the city of Los Angeles. Written by Los Angeles native Robert Towne, this film used actual events from the history of the city and subsequent allegorical references to the same, to deliver a story that was a sharp comment on the politics of the region. Towne wrote in the preface to the screenplay, “The great crimes in California have been committed against the land – and against the people who own it and future generations. It was only natural that the script should evolve into the story of a man who raped the land and his own daughter.”Polanski and cinematographer John Alonzo further painted the metropolis in hues of yellow and brown, as a sunny paradise, that gradually darkens as the story progresses, finally revealing its corrupt heart.Mulholland Drive, 2001More than the physical landscape of Los Angeles that embeds itself into the story, it is the mental landscape of the place and the starry-eyed Hollywood hopefuls that are drawn to this place that defines David Lynch’s psychological thriller “Mulholland Drive”. A voice in the film describes the city as, “Weird skylines, dangerous parking lots.” But it is the murky subconscious world of human desire, aspiration, delusion and obsession that gets superimposed on the tangible contours of the city – its nondescript diners, deserted roads, eerie mansions – and ends up blurring the line between dream and reality. It was also voted by a group of “Los Angeles Times” writers and editors as one of the best films set in Los Angeles that communicates an inherent truth about the L.A. experience.Lynch, who has generously used panoramic shots of the buildings, mountains and lofty palm trees in this film, has said, “The spark for Mulholland Drive was the name. And the name on a signpost in the night and for a moment partially illuminated by the headlights of a car. Mulholland Drive is a road in Los Angeles that goes along the crest of the Santa Monica mountains and it’s a beautiful road in the daytime but also a beautiful road at night giving vistas out to the valley on one side and Hollywood on the other. And at night it’s a road that is mysterious. It’s kind of dark, the road has remained the same through the years. It’s a mysterious road.”L.A. Confidential, 1997Starring Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey and Kim Basinger, “LA Confidential” is a neo-noir film set in the 1950s that looks at the seedy side of L.A. – police corruption, racism and the intense hankering for glamour and money. The film features famous Hollywood watering holes such as the Formosa Café and Frolic Room, as well as an architectural icon, the Lovell Health House in Los Feliz, as the home of the film’s pimp and pornographer.Boyz N The Hood, 1991This was the first film to capture South-Central L.A.’s African-American experience. A coming-of-age drama written and directed by South Central native and USC graduate John Singleton, “Boyz N The Hood” brought into the limelight life and concerns in the ghetto, and local teenage rituals like cruising Crenshaw Boulevard.2. ROMANTICL.A. Story, 1991This film is Steve Martin’s love letter to Los Angeles, just as “Annie Hall” is Woody Allen’s to New York. Martin had once said in a film-promotion interview, “I always saw it as a love story set against a background of Los Angeles. L.A. is the milieu in which the romance takes place. It provides the humor. I can go into surreal gags and elements and kind of push the boundaries of comedy. You just couldn't make this movie in Dallas. On the first page of the screenplay, I wrote: ‘L.A. at its best. No smog, no traffic.’ That other image, the ugly image, has been done so much, there’s nothing new about it. I wanted it to be L.A. through lovers’ eyes.” The film is based on the tidy Westside region of L.A., inhabited by both the old and the new moneyed. It has nicer cars and buses and an ocean. Here, Martin planted French restaurants named L’Idiot, roller-skates on the feet of museumgoers and magical freeway signs that flash love advice. This is Los Angeles seen through slightly loopy, rose-tinted glasses, with bubbly sweetness glossing over all flakiness. Typical Angeleno quirks in terms of eating, shopping and dressing habits are exaggerated to the point of caricature, in true Steve Martin fashion.500 Days of Summer, 2009Romantic films often tend to take the city they’re set in into the magnanimous embrace of new love. This is a film trope that works towards adding a sense of realism to the love story via scenes filmed in actual city streets, real apartments and identifiable urban landmarks.After the release of “500 Days of Summer”, a park bench in a sloped grassy expanse called Angel’s Knoll in downtown L.A., became a tourist attraction. The bench was central to the film’s love story, and even though the location was closed off in 2013 due to state cutbacks, it did its part in romanticizing a bit of the city’s skyline. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays an architect in the film who takes his love interest (Zooey Descanel) to his favorite L.A. spot, the bench overlooking a series of pre-war buildings. Showing Deschanel’s character Summer this view, Tom (Gordon-Levitt) says, “There’s so much beauty here. Sure the street level isn’t much to look at, but if you look up, there’s some exciting stuff going on. If it were up to me, I’d get people to notice!” Tom and Summer’s romantic liaison also plays out in or around other L.A. landmarks such as the almost the two-centuries-old San Fernando building, Hotel Barclay or the Van Nuys Hotel, the Continental building or the Braly Block that is shown as one of Tom’s favorite buildings as it is L.A.’s first skyscraper, the Bradbury building, Million Dollar Theatre, and the Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain.Punch-Drunk Love, 2002Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of “Punch-Drunk Love”, set three of his first four movies in San Fernando Valley, where he grew up. This film is set in the Valley’s Chatsworth area that is speckled with industrial warehouses and small apartments, and the fact that this unpretentious and nondescript neighborhood works for this love story just as Rome works for “Roman Holiday” or New York works for “When Harry Met Sally”, is a nod to Anderson’s storytelling prowess, and his understanding of and love for his hometown.3. ASPIRATIONALSunset Boulevard, 1950Set against a backdrop of the all-consuming film industry, this 1950 classic delivers a grotesque view of the desperate ambition, insecurity, obsession and delusion that drives Hollywood. A deadbeat screenwriter takes refuge from the police in the driveway of a mansion on Sunset Boulevard and as the story unfolds, gets ensnared in the physical and metaphysical confines of an estate that belongs to an ageing silent-era movie star. “Sunset Boulevard” has been called “a narcissistic, consciously self-conscious film about narcissism in a narcissistic city”. This epochal film efficiently renders a visually stunning yet psychologically stunted world that tends to wolf down most everything else about the city.The Player, 1992This is another definitive satire about ruthless ambition and Hollywood. Director Robert Altman takes down the studio system through his film about a studio executive (Tim Robbins) who murders an aspiring screenwriter and unflappably tries to get away with it. Scores of actors, including Julia Roberts, Cher, Burt Reynolds, Harry Belafonte, James Coburn, Jeff Goldblum and Angelica Huston, make cameo appearances, authenticating the vision of Hollywood. The film winds its way around the legendary Rialto Theatre, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Pasadena, Malibu, Brentwood and West Hollywood.Boogie Nights, 1997The Valley has been home to a multi-million dollar pornography industry since the 1970s and “Boogie Nights” is the story of the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler, a boy from the valley whose “one special thing” is the big bulge in his pants. Rowdy, supercharged and buzzing with possibility, Diggler’s world zips from shambolic success to crushing defeat and youthful rebound in Paul Thomas Anderson’s pocket of Los Angeles.Nightcrawler, 2014Jake Gyllenhal’s character, Lou Bloom, in “Nightcrawler” is a product of the light and dark sides of Los Angeles. In this city of opportunity and obsession, Bloom, a cameraman in search of gory footage to sell to the highest bidding news channel, snatches a nook for himself. Filming took place at more than 70 locations around the city, over a period of 29 days and 22 nights. The filmmakers aimed at capturing L.A. after dark, avoiding the more recognizable downtown, and metropolitan-seeming areas in favor of remote, untamed parts of the city. Jake Gyllenhaal said in an interview, “L.A. is vibrating at night in a way that you’d never really know.” Kevin Kavanaugh, the production designer on the movie, says he scouted for locations with this idea in mind, “Each of us has a unique story of why we are here in Los Angeles.... I realized that to understand this city and this film, I had to look past the endless streets in order to find the real fabric of Los Angeles. Re-discovering the neighborhoods, people and places became the spark that ignited the design process. Sometimes you just need to get lost.” Mulholland Drive, the Scientology studios, Venice Beach, Ventura Boulevard and Koreatown all feature in “Nightcrawler”.4. SUNNYClueless, 1995A modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel “Emma”, this Amy Heckerling-directed film sets its heroine in the rich neighborhood of Beverly Hills, which has become a synonym for luxurious living thanks to its glorification in countless films and television shows. As a caricature of the life and lingo of a typical L.A. rich kid, the film ends up chronicling the fashion and lifestyle of the hip teenage crowd in the 1990s. The heroine Cher Horowitz (played by Alicia Silverstone) lives alone in a mansion with her dad; her mother having died from a liposuction procedure-gone-wrong when Cher was a baby. Fancying herself a lifestyle guru to a “tragically unhip” teenager named Tai Frasier (Brittany Murphy), Cher attempts to socially elevate Tai by teaching her to talk, walk and flirt right. “Clueless” is a satirical comedy that pokes fun at both small-minded privileged teenagers and Beverly Hills glitterati. At one point in the film, the character of Josh Lucas (Paul Rudd), Cher’s ex-step-brother and the Mr. Knightley figure, points out to Cher, “You get upset if someone thinks you live below Sunset.” The setting of the film is Beverly Hills, the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Granada Hills and Long Beach.Swingers, 1996Three struggling young actor buddies negotiate life in L.A. as unemployed single men traversing a world of hook ups, break ups, late-night partying and slick living in this hip, indie comedy that propelled actors Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Ron Livingston into the mainstream. The boys live in Eastside Los Angeles and haunt such vintage bars as the iconic Dresden Room and The Derby in Los Feliz, the late-night Hollywood Hills coffee shop (now the 101 Café) and play golf in Atwater Village. In this film, L.A. is a wide open, sunny city buzzing with potential and opportunity, seen through the eyes of young, single hopefuls in search of a fresh start.Beverly Hills Cop, 1984One of the early movies to leave an imprint of Los Angeles as an easy, breezy city where you’re more likely to see Havana shirts than slick suits on the sun-scorched, tree-lined streets is the 1984 action comedy “Beverly Hills Cop”. Think Eddie Murphy cruising down Beverly Drive in a “crappy blue Chevy Nova” flirting with a girl in a Mercedes convertible at a stop sign.The Graduate, 1967A kid graduates from college, has an affair with the wife of his father’s business partner and falls in love with her daughter. The character of this kid, Benjamin Braddock, is very Wasp. The seductress, Mrs. Robinson, is a rich Beverly Hills wife, bored of her sexless marriage, cynical of her wealth, and predatory in getting what she wants. A coming of age story set in posh L.A., “The Graduate” unravels its risqué premise in locations such as the Ambassador Hotel, the Edward L Doheny Jr Memorial Library at University of Southern California, and Beverly Hills.5. LONELYDrive, 2011This film is likely to embed itself in your subconscious, as much for its high style crime story as for its haunting imagery of gritty, nighttime Los Angeles. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn delivers an ultra modern take on the neo-noir genre of filmmaking, preferring minimal dialogue and maximum violence. In Refn and Ryan Gosling’s L.A., you see low rent body shops, indistinct diners, seedy neon lighting, deserted car parks and none of the Hollywood flash. Both the story and the city are stripped down to their honest bones, and yet it is a film that leaves a huge impact on all your senses.Crash, 2004American writer Dorothy Parker famously said, “Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.” Which is perhaps why, while New York can show its one celluloid face to the world, Los Angeles struggles with its schizophrenic personality and reveals different identities in different films. The film “Crash” puts Los Angeles at its center and tackles issues of race, ethnic division and ultimately urban isolation. A point that the film tries to make is that in New York you walk around, brushing into people, but in L.A., you envelop yourself in a car-shaped cocoon of metal and glass and remove yourself from human touch, until someone crashes into you. Directed and partially written by Paul Haggis, the film went on to win multiple Academy and BAFTA awards.A Single Man, 2009This stylish film, directed by renowned designer Tom Ford, is the story of a man experiencing grief and loneliness in Los Angeles, after the loss of a longtime partner. Colin Firth plays the role of the dignified and meticulous English professor, George Falconer, trying to deal with hysterical grief over the death of his lover and disillusionment with society’s attitude to his homosexuality, and contemplates suicide. Ford elegantly renders his film to place it in a specific time and context – Los Angeles in 1962 at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, and the life of the professor over the course of an ordinary day in southern California.6. ECCENTRICThe Big Lebowski, 1998What became the “first cult film of the Internet age” transpired actually from the directors’ friendship with corresponding characters in real life. An absurdist comedy directed by the Coen brothers and loosely based on the works of L.A. novelist Raymond Chandler, the film celebrates the eccentricity of Los Angeles ‘types’ entrenched in the city’s social fiber – Venice Beach potheads, Vietnam vets, porn stars, thugs, loan sharks, an idiosyncratic millionaire with a trophy wife.The character of the White Russian-drinking slacker protagonist ‘The Dude’ was inspired by Jeff Dowd, a freelance publicist that the directors knew personally in Los Angeles. All the other characters are plucked out of a standard Chandler novel. The lives of the Dude and his buddies revolve around a neon-illuminated bowling alley, which was actually the Hollywood Star Lanes bowling alley in East Hollywood up till 2002, when it was demolished to make room for an elementary school. Other city addresses like the Greystone Mansion (which later also appeared in “There Will Be Blood”), Dinah’s Family Restaurant (featured recently in “Nightcrawler”), the Palace Theatre, and houses in Venice Beach, Malibu, Pasadena and Downtown LA, were used in the film.Barton Fink, 1991In this Coen Brothers’ movie, a New York playwright moves to Los Angeles to be a screenwriter. Set in the 1940s, “Barton Fink” is an artistic comment on Hollywood’s penchant for favoring profit over talent. The protagonist Fink, played by John Turturro, on his entry into LA, feels lost in the sun-drenched dreamland of manicured vegetation and shimmering pools, and subsequently turns into a minor cog in the massive wheel that is the Hollywood movie industry. Los Angeles is portrayed as a city of false fronts, dishonesty and exploitation, as Fink’s ideas and idealism is consistently squashed by slick studio execs. However, the contrast between Fink’s dingy room in the seedy Hotel Earle and shots of surf crashing onto rock and a beautiful woman on a beach looking out towards the sea – stereotypical Californian imagery – could be a reference to the fact that numerous transplants come to Hollywood and get ensnared in the claustrophobic cocoon of the film industry. They forget there is a larger landscape made of sun and space that exists beyond the tainted impression of the city, an impression crafted out of broken dreams.Pulp Fiction, 1994Quentin Tarantino’s moviemaking style might be highly stylized and campy, but his love for L.A. and intimate knowledge of its landscape is apparent in all of his early work. Considering most characters in a Tarantino film tend to be smart mouths inhabiting the fringes of society, a native’s view of the scene becomes imperative. “Pulp Fiction” is a gory Valentine to Los Angeles. While promoting the film, which he shot on city streets, Tarantino emphasized, “It takes place in Hollywood – not the industry, but the town”. Follow @ARTINFOIndia

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