Los Angeles Plays Itself Page #10

Chinatown teaches that good

intentions are futile.

It's better not to act,

...even better not to know.

Somehow this dark vision

hasn't offended anybody.

"All right, clear the area."

"On the sidewalk."

"On the sidewalk."

"Get off the street."

This is history written by the victors,

...but as usual it is written

in crocodile tears.

In fact,

...the truth was always out there.

The public history is the real history.

The insider land deals

were exposed...

...by the Hearst press in 1905,

...two weeks before

the public voted...

...on a bond issue to

purchase water rights.

The bond issue still

passed fourteen to one,

...and no artificial drought was

required to fool the voters.

The Los Angeles Aqueduct wasn't a con,

...and it was less destructive...

...than the water projects New

York and San Francisco...

...were building around the same time.

Los Angeles might have been more generous to the

genocidal Indian fighters of the Owens Valley,

...but if there had been no aqueduct,

...today our city would be

just another Santa Barbara,

...a complacent tourist town...

...where the rich feel no obligation to

acknowledge the existence of the poor.

For locals like me,

...what gives Chinatown

its special resonance...

...is its subsidiary theme:

The struggle to get around

Los Angeles without a car.

Jake Gittes loses his wheels

halfway though the film.

Suspicious San Fernando Valley

farmer shoot out the radiator...

...and a front tire.

For the second half of the movie,

...he's dependent on others,

...and his sense of mastery disappears.

"Curly where's your car?"

"- In the garage.

- Where's that?"

"Off the alley."

"Can you give me a ride somewhere?"

"Sure, soon as we eat."

"Right now, Curly. It can't wait."

"I'll tell my wife."

"Tell her later, Curl, huh?"

He's always one or two steps behind,

...and he never catches up.

The loss of a car is a form

of symbolic castration,

...in the movies and in life.

The best films about Los Angeles are,

...at least partly,

...about modes of transportation.

Getting from place to

place isn't a given.

Cars break down,

...they get flat tires,

...they get towed.

"Hey, what's going on here?"

Or you don't have a car.

You have to catch a bus...

...or you have to walk.

In Sunset Blvd.,

...the action is set off by a visit

two repo men pay on Joe Gillis.

"Joseph C. Gillis?"

"That's right."

"We've come for the car."

Soon they are chasing Gillis's '46

Plymouth convertible along Sunset,

...and a blowout strands him in the driveway

of silent screen star Norma Desmond.

Without a car, he will die.

In Falling Down,

...a hellish traffic jam...

...induces William Fisher

to abandon his car...

...and set off on a long

march across Los Angeles.

He will become an urban

terrorist for a day,

...railing against the

degradation of public space.

"You couldn't let a man

sit here for five minutes..."

"...take a rest on your

precious piece of sh*t hill?"

"Ok.

You want my briefcase?"

"I'll get it for you alright?

You can have my briefcase."

"Here. You want my briefcase?

Here's my briefcase!"

"Hey! Where you goin' huh? Where

you goin'? You forgot the briefcase!"

"You forgot the briefcase!"

But his condescension is so thick you

have to sympathize with his victims.

"Drink, eighty-fie cents.

You pay or go!"

"What's a 'fie'? I don't

understand a 'fie.'..."

There's a 'v' in the word. It's 'fi-ve.'

"They don't have 'v's' in China?"

"I'm not Chinese. I'm Korean."

"Whatever. You come to my

country; you take my money,

"...you don't even have the grace to

learn how to speak my language?"

Transportation is the central

theme in Who Framed Roger Rabbit,

...which offers itself as a

cartoon version of Chinatown.

It updates the downfall

of Los Angeles to 1947,

...with the death of the trolleys

and the birth of the freeways.

"Hey, mister, ain't you got a car?"

"Who needs a car in L.A.? We've got the best

public transportation system in the world."

In 1947,

...many would have disagreed with

Eddie Valiant's endorsement...

...of Pacific Electric's

Big Red Cars...

...and the yellow cars of

the Los Angeles Railway.

Complaints about overcrowding,

...slowness,

...discriminatory pricing,

...and poor service...

...had been endemic for

more than thirty years.

But after the war,

...there was indeed another

kind of trouble.

"Several months ago I had the good providence

to stumble upon a plan of the City Council..."

"...a construction plan

of epic proportions."

"They are calling it a freeway."

"A freeway?..."

"...What the hell's a freeway?"

"Eight lanes of shimmering cement

running from here to Pasadena..."

"...smooth, safe, fast..."

"Traffic jams will be a

thing of the past."

"I see a place where people

get on and off the freeway..."

"...on and off, off and on,"

"...all day, all night."

"Soon, where Toontown once stood,

there will be a string of gas stations,"

"...inexpensive motels, restaurants

that serve rapidly prepared food,"

"...tire saloons,"

"...automobile dealerships,"

"...and wonderful,"

"...wonderful billboards reaching

as far as the eye can see."

"My God, it'll be beautiful."

"C'mon, nobody's going to

drive this lousy freeway..."

"...when they can take the

Red Car for a nickel."

"Oh, they'll drive.

They'll have to."

"You see..."

"...I bought the Red Cars

so I could dismantle it."

The fictional machinations

of the diabolical Judge Doom...

...were modeled on the real intrigues

of National City Lines,

...the public transit company

controlled by General Motors...

...and other automotive interests.

During the forties,

...it bought up interurban

railways throughout the U.S.,

...and replaced streetcars with buses,

...allegedly to sabotage

public transportation.

Another conspiracy to destroy Eden,

...but in this movie...

...there is a counter-historical

happy ending.

There is no need for

words of consolation.

Nobody has to tell

its detective hero.

"Forget it, Eddie, it's Toontown."

Valiant kills Judge Doom

after a protracted duel,

...and we may assume

the Red Cars are saved,

...along with Toontown,

...but once again,

...the people are excluded,

...although the toon characters get

to rejoice in the happy ending.

Actually trolleys had been on

the way out since the twenties...

...when proposals for public

ownership were defeated.

Eddie Valiant himself gets

around town by automobile...

...after a single Red Car ride at

the beginning of the movie.

The real postwar struggle

over mass transit...

...reached a climax in 1949...

...when a proposal for a

new light rail network...

...was narrowly defeated

in the City Council.

An alternative to cars and buses...

...was defeated not by General

Motors and its allies,

...but by the promoters of

decentralized suburban development.

Downtown was doomed.

In the 80's it went vertical...

...and there was an attempt to promote

loft living on its eastern margins,

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