World Film Locations Los Angeles

By Gabriel Solomons

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-485-8

Contents

Maps/Scenes,
Scenes 1-8 1923 - 1955,
Scenes 9-16 1955 - 1977,
Scenes 17-24 1978 - 1991,
Scenes 25-32 1991 - 1994,
Scenes 33-40 1994 - 1997,
Scenes 41-48 1998 - 2007,
Essays,
Los Angeles: City of the Imagination Michael S Duffy,
California Slapstick: On Location Film-Making Gets Rolling Nicola Balkind,
Black Dynamite: Film Noir and Los Angeles in the Shadows Andrew Spicer,
Getting Played: Hollywood, South Central and the Space Between Benjamin Wiggins,
Welcome to Hell-A Martin Zeller-Jacques,
Living in A Mann's World: Michael Mann's L.A. Wael Khairy,
Eurovisions: Alternative Views of the Hollywood Landscape Michael S Duffy,
Backpages,
Resources,
Contributor Bios,
Filmography,

CHAPTER 1

LOS ANGELES

UPFRONT

City of the Imagination

Text by MICHAEL S DUFFY

LOS ANGELES IS INDEED a "city of the imagination," but in its population it has engendered feelings equally ambiguous and dogmatic. In cinema, as in life, it remains at odds with itself, its local cultures, and the portrayal of its landscape on screen. But Los Angeles has one thing that no other film location does – it is the creative and spiritual center of the Hollywood filmmaking industry. Since Thomas H. Ince established assembly line production and the first fully functioning studio in Culver City, Hollywood has been the place where mainstream American cinema is formed and fabricated, art is transformed into a commodity, and casting couches are broken in – and these days, given points on the gross.

Hollywood's "imagineering" has visualized Los Angeles as both the destination of dreams and a psychological dead end, Heavenly port (City of Angels, 1998) and a literal Hell on Earth (Constantine, 2005), and in studio back-lot terms, "virtually" everything in-between. From science fiction conspiracy (Blade Runner, 1982) to contemporary urban menace (Training Day, 2001), Los Angeles continues to be utilized as a complex cinematic destination, with real-life locations made iconic through the imaginings of filmmakers. Just a few of the many local landmarks creatively captured by Hollywood cinema include Griffith Observatory (Rebel Without a Cause, 1955), the Vincent Thomas Bridge (To Live and Die in L.A., 1985), and Zuma Beach (Planet of the Apes, 1968). In the early years of Hollywood, location shooting encouraged the development of silent slapstick comedy and gave the burgeoning local film industry a unique "claim" to the surrounding land. With wide-screen technologies, landscape photography became an aesthetic and thematic counterpoint to the dense urban sprawl featured in many downtown L.A.-set films. The bustling backlots of studios like Paramount and MGM were occasionally featured on screen in variously successful attempts to comment on Hollywood's inside machinations (The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952). Lest we think that the industry was sustained entirely through falsified spectacle, the simple, uncomplicated location of the diner has never seemed as spacious or iconic as it is in the Los Angeles of Pulp Fiction (1994).

In the 1940s and 50s, film noir encouraged directors (many of them European immigrants) to artistically enhance their treatment of the Los Angeles landscape; the ambiguous angels of city life were given dirty faces through low-key lighting and ominous shadow-play. As David Bates notes in this volume, The Big Sleep (1946) – shot entirely on studio lots – is a "tribute to the L.A. of the imagination." Kiss Me Deadly (1955), considered by many to be the creative climax of first generation film noir, ends apocalyptically, and many L.A.-set films continue to harbor the underlying notion that Hollywood's dreams can ultimately end with the destruction of everything within, whether in physical or, more interestingly, psychological terms. Sunset Boulevard (1950) deconstructs the life of an aged actress desperate to hold onto her privileged existence, and reveals just how much hold Hollywood's "glamorous" life has over the rich and powerful – "boulevard of broken dreams," indeed.

Alternatively, film can perform an interesting archival function in movies like The Exiles (1961), which memorialized a number of Los Angeles-area locations and residential communities that were later razed for skyscrapers and stadiums. For relics of the past that do remain, cinematic Los Angeles seems to have the unique ability to bring to life stories from the past, future, and alternative dreamscapes. The barren banks of the Los Angeles River in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) helped usher in a contemporary cultural distinction and voice for black audiences, while in Chinatown (1974), water supplies and family corruption highlighted a neo-noir set in the 1930s, but never aging in lessons or meaning. Even an obscure genre sequel like The Crow: City of Angels (1996) has value, as the city's subcultures are played against each other in a dark physiological war of strikingly beautiful, artistically manipulated local iconography. On the bright side, Woody Allen manages to be as observant about Los Angeles in Annie Hall (1977) as he is about Manhattan (1979), giving a lighter touch to the often dense and desolate material which populated American cinemas during the 1960s and 70s. Similarly, L.A. Story (1991) is one of the few contemporary portrayals of the city that manages to be both loving and satirical, while also avoiding the obvious trope of involving the film industry in its narrative.

Los Angeles and Hollywood continue to be at odds in form and function. 2011's Battle: Los Angeles reiterates Hollywood's fascination with appropriating more "gritty" material for its own purposes; the film replicates the visual and audio aesthetics of contemporary war epics like Black Hawk Down (2001) and the innovative science fiction of 2009's District 9 in its hand-held narrative and fractured editing, but ultimately delivers familiar pleasures in an intense but frequently hollow blockbuster attitude. Analyzing Los Angeles as a "city of imagination," one usually finds it much more ambiguous, dense, and rich with complexity than most perceive. David Lynch's Mulholland Drive includes perhaps the most raw, revealingly sub-textual audition scene ever committed to a feature film, and his follow-up Inland Empire (2006) is truly apocalyptic, with a unique vision of Los Angeles and the psychology of contemporary filmmaking that dwarfs any other fiction or "reality." For Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), filmmaker Thom Andersen masterfully combined aesthetic appreciation and cultural criticism in a nearly three-hour visual and audio treatise on how the industry both celebrates and misrepresents the city of Los Angeles on screen.

These days, it's acknowledged by industry veterans and scholars with a hint of irony that Los Angeles and its sound stages are known more for their ability to digitally replicate expensive locations such as New York City – yet Hollywood continues to struggle as a production entity, with steady competition (in the form of attractive tax rebates) from Canada, Eastern Europe, and the Australasian region. That the Los Angeles film industry has survived a century later amidst "runaway...