4 posts tagged “los angeles”

Little Girl: Does your duck do any tricks?
Arthur: No, he's a duck. That's enough.

I liked Duck, although if it had starred anyone but Philip Baker Hall it probably would have been intolerably precious. The year is 2009, Jeb Bush is the president, and social security is a thing of the past. Hall is Arthur, recently widowed and cast to the margins by a callous landlord (Deadwood's Larry Cedar) and, more broadly, by a society that can't be bothered with him. Not only is Los Angeles well on its way to dystopia hell, but the tree that Arthur has come to love as a symbol of his long-dead son is being torn down to make way for condos and a strip mall. He's hit rock bottom, and then Joe appears. Joe being a duckling. Arthur adopts Joe, and as Arthur's life proceeds to fall apart, he wanders around Los Angeles imparting sagely advice to the suicidal (French Stewart), getting wasted at a house party, and befriending a similarly forgotten old blind man.

It's a pleasant movie, and shot on 16mm (hooray!), but it's too long by twenty minutes and the ending feels very saccharine, considering how depressing the film has been up until that point.

Hall is one of the best actors around, and if you haven't seen Hard Eight or Secret Honor, do. Even his small role in Zodiac as a handwriting expert is pitch-perfect, conveying the character's years of developed craft that have transformed into a scary bullheadedness. There's also the great episode of Seinfeld in which he plays library detective "Mr. Bookman". Oh Philip Baker Hall... you are old, you will be dead soon, and that will be sad.

As you may or may not have read in this space last year, I have some limited Los Angeles experience, and plenty of my own impressions on it. Thom Andersen's "video essay" Los Angeles Plays Itself was recommended to me by my brother while I still lived in the titular city. I tried to ignore him, and succeeded for over a year, excusing myself from his invitation to screenings on more than one occasion. But one can only ignore family for so long before things get weird. So tonight, almost nine months after saying farewell to the In N Out Burger, the famously fair weather, the frequent John Stamos sightings, I sat down with Los Angeles Plays Itself with only the modest hopes that maybe I'd recognize a few of the film's locations.

As per usual, I probably should have listened to my brother earlier.

Los Angeles Plays Itself is a literate and moving look at the history of the place through the untrustworthy eyes of its chief export, the movies. You've got your Chinatown, your Sunset Blvd., your L.A. Confidential, sure. At nearly three hours, though, the film also takes a leisurely look at Los Angeles as a character in films like Death Wish IV, Messiah Of Evil, House On Haunted Hill, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, to name a few of the hundreds that Andersen mines. Moving from annoyed reaction to the condescending use of "L.A." as abbreviation (Escape From L.A., To Live And Die In L.A.) to the tendency of Hollywood to destroy Los Angeles in movies like Earthquake and Volcano to examinations of architecture and specific locations like the Bradbury Building, which has a storied movie history going back to the thirties, Andersen has composed the most definitive Los Angeles movie since Mulholland Drive (which he did not include for reasons he expounds upon here).

It's a murky proposition, trying to examine the history of a city solely by looking at the way it mythologizes itself (imagine trying to learn about New York by looking solely at Broadway shows), but Andersen is aware of how limiting his approach is, and when he traces the rise and fall of the Bunker Hill neighborhood through a Laurel and Hardy short all the way to the fascist Omega Man, the distance that you feel from the subject, that everyone who lives there seems to feel from the place itself, is brought into sharp and devastating relief.

That was a long sentence.

Anyway.

Los Angeles Plays Itself easily transcends the novelty clip-show I thought it would be and achieves the most complete portrait of a city caught between lavish Hollywood dreams and banal reality.

I'm leaving Los Angeles. It is not because of the bum who told me he was going to stab me in the throat today, or the fact that my car was broken into last week. Though these things did not help matters.

It's been a nutty year and a half or so, filled with surreal celebrity encounters, evenings at the Arclight (huzzah) or Grove (boo!), some of the best food of my life (oh Porto's, how I shall miss you), and engagements to ladies. OK, one engagement. To one lady. Whatever.

I am apathetic about the prospect of once again picking up my life and taking it elsewhere. Perhaps it is because Los Angeles has brought my ambitions and passions into more vivid focus, that focus having little to do with Los Angeles. While working with the (usually very cordial) folks of reality TV is amusing for a time, it is the bottom rung of a ladder I have no interest in climbing.

That said, I love lots of things about Los Angeles, and by no means subscribe to the notion that it is inherently more shallow than Manhattan or Paris or Austin or Duluth or any place, really. You can find shitheads anywhere you go. It just so happens that our shitheads belong to the entire world.

And so what follows is a list of songs about Los Angeles, most of which are not particulary affectionate.

* Why You'd Want To Live Here - Death Cab For Cutie
Man... they really hate this place.
* L.A. - Elliott Smith
He killed himself here, so... there's that.
* L.A. Is My Lady - Frank Sinatra
Definitely Frank's worst song. Perhaps the worst song. Ever.
* California - Joni Mitchell
Sure. Whatevsies.
* I Love L.A. - Randy Newman
Often used in montages. I don't think those music supervisors ever listened to the verses.
* Heartattack And Vine - Tom Waits
Tom Waits has many L.A. songs. This is the best. Also full of rancor.
"Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk."
* Los Angeles, I'm Yours - The Decemberists
Awww, they love it here. Wait... "an ocean's garbled vomit on the shore?" Oh, it's another sarcastic one.
* Blue Jay Way - The Beatles
Drugs.
* Screenwriter's Blues - Soul Coughing
Hateful.
* California - Rufus Wainwright
Wow, he's composed this really peppy song that feels good to sing along to, but if you listen to the lyrics they're        about how awful L.A. is. Sarcasm, how novel! ...Sorry for getting "meta".
* Straight Outta Compton - N.W.A.
The song that most directly speaks to my experiences here.
* Hollywood Bowl - Adam Green
Quite possibly not about the Hollywood Bowl at all. How could one tell with lyrics like "Leave me alone, Nobody home, You've a new brand blue magic cold wedding gown"?
* Celluloid Heroes - The Kinks
Fine. Kind of easy, but fine.
* Beverly Hills - Weezer
In the tradition of every L.A. song ever, tongue is planted firmly in cheek.
* Hollywood Freaks - Beck
Perhaps the most sincere song on the list, which is saying something since it comes from an album that was           concieved as a post-modern experiment in fakery.

And finally...
* Fuck Hollywood - Quasi

There are more than a few songs about "California", either in the literal sense or as a vaguely inviting concept, the most beautiful of which is Wilco's "California Stars", with lyrics by Woody Guthrie. But, as much as I might wish otherwise, it has little to do with this list.

I refuse to include that damn Phantom Planet song. Ryan Adams has a few L.A. songs, but he's too drunk for them to mean anything. Steve suggests Jackie Green's "Hollywood", Lyle Lovett's "L.A. County", and R.E.M.'s "Electrolite", the last of which he says is genuinely affectionate. I wouldn't know.

Perhaps my favorite song about Los Angeles, or at least that's what I'd like to think it's about, is Neil Young's "Out On The Weekend". It's haunting, and there's something quietly optimistic about it.

But I think it's also about male prostitution.

Consolation arrives in the realization that my car contained nothing worth taking.