Los Angeles Plays Itself Page #13

"I'll be home soon."

"No, say it!"

"I'll be home soon... and I love you.

Okay?"

...and an uncontrollably horny cop,

...a slave to his dick.

"Are you a whore?"

"Maybe."

"Well, I wanna tell

you something..."

"- I like whores.

- Yeah?"

"Oh, I like 'em alot."

"- I bet you know a lot of 'em.

- I do."

"I'll f*** your brains

out for fifty bucks."

"Forget about that burger."

"God, this exciting for me.

Is it exciting for you?"

There was even a New Age

homicide detective,

...usually attired in a

collarless jacket...

...with a string of Tibetan

prayer beads around his neck.

"So tell me, man, what's

up with the beads?"

"These here? It's called a

mhala, Tibetan prayer beads."

"What do you use them for?"

"I use them to calm my mind

and purify my thoughts."

"Yeah? I use Jack Daniels."

"- Shut up!

- What's so threatening about it?"

Then there's the dog-hating motorcycle cop in Robert

Altman's gallery of beautiful, miserable people...

...living lives of noisy desperation...

...transposed from Raymond

Carver's Pacific northwest...

...to southern California.

"All right now. You go run away;

We don't want you anymore..."

"Run away, we don't

want you anymore..."

"Look at this."

"It's a bone."

"All right, go get it."

Introducing a collection of the

Carver stories he adapted,

Altman wrote,

..."The setting is

untapped Los Angeles..."

"...which is also Carver country..."

"...not Hollywood or Beverly Hills..."

"...but Downey, Watts..."

"...Compton, Pomona, Glendale..."

"...American suburbia..."

"...the names you hear about

on the freeway reports."

In other words,

...if you actually lived

in one of those places,

...instead of just hearing their names

on the radio traffic reports,

...you wouldn't be reading this book.

But the cityscapes in his

film don't look like Watts,

...or even Glendale,

...and they're not.

Only one couple lives

in the Hollywood Hills,

...but the others live

closer to Hollywood...

...than to Downey.

Altman's condescension

toward the outer suburbs...

...suggests the difficulties

Hollywood directors face...

...in trying to make a contemporary

film about Los Angeles.

They know only a

small part of the city,

...and that part has

been tapped too often.

A genre film or a literary

adaptation is the safest bet.

Altman's best film is both.

His version of Philip Marlowe...

...turns Raymond Chandler's

Anglo-Saxon white knight...

...into a chain-smoking

Jewish Don Quixote,

...a noble saphead.

"Hi, girls..."

"Have you seen my cat?"

"Well, the other day

he ran away, and..."

"...I'm leaving town for

a couple of days. So..."

"...I'd appreciate it,

if he shows up,"

"...if you could look after him,

or give him a bowl of milk..."

"They're not even there."

"It's okay with me."

"So, you murdered your

wife, huh Terry?"

"She didn't give me any choice."

"You didn't have much choice, huh?..."

"So you used me."

"What the hell, that's what friends

are for. I was in a jam..."

"...what the hell, nobody cares."

"Yeah, nobody cares but me."

"Well, that's you, Marlowe."

"You'll never learn.

You're a born loser."

There's no chance Marlowe will get

the good-bad girl at the end.

He won't even find his lost cat.

It's hard to make a personal film,

...based on your own experience,

...when you're

absurdly overprivileged.

You tend not to

notice the less fortunate,

...and that's almost everybody.

If you ridicule your

circle of friends,

...your film will

seem sour and petty.

If you turn their

problems into melodrama,

...your film will seem

pathetic and self-pitying.

In L.A. Story,

...Steve Martin followed

the path of ridicule...

...and created an honorably

failed romantic comedy.

Of course, it's L.A.,

not Los Angeles.

Martin's L.A. is almost as white

as Woody Allen's Manhattan.

There are two blacks

with speaking parts...

"Uh, yes, you're the

first ones to arrive."

"Right this way, please."

Both restaurant employees.

"I'm gonna tell you

what we got to eat."

"We got primavera pasta, six

diifferent kinds of meat."

You could call

these racist stereotypes,

...but the whole film is

nothing but stereotypes.

"Gee, I'm done already, and

I don't remember eating."

The comedies of

John Cassavetes cut deeper...

...because he had an eye and

an ear for ordinary madness.

"Hey, what time is it?"

Those flickers of lunacy that can

separate us from our fellows.

"Hey, listen. I'm waiting

for my kids at school..."

"You mind giving me

the time, do you?"

"What's the matter

with you, what the...?"

His comedies face up to

tragedy and reject it.

Suffering is self-evident,

...and its promise

of wisdom is illusory.

For Cassavetes, happiness

is the only truth.

So he drank himself to death.

Diane Keaton's Hanging Up

takes the path of melodrama.

An absent mother...

...and a prematurely

grumpy and old father...

...produce an intense rivalry

among three sisters.

"Eve, are you not going to speak to me?

Is that what this is all about?"

"And why aren't you talking to me?

I didn't even do anything."

But the father's

death restores harmony,

...at least long enough to

allow for a happy ending.

The three drama queens babble hysterically

on three-way cell phone hookups,

...transforming any space they

occupy into a pajama party den.

Keaton insists Hanging Up is

a film about Los Angeles,

...but public space is reduced

almost entirely...

...to a tunnel and a bridge allowing passage

through a city stripped of its population.

In Hanging Up, the people are missing.

Lawrence Kasdan tried to find

a middle way in Grand Canyon,

...a liberal version

of the urban nightmare.

Bad things happen to good people,

...and they start to wonder

about what it all means.

"The world doesn't make any

sense to me anymore..."

"I mean, what's going on?"

"There are babies lying

around in the streets."

"There are people living in boxes."

"There are people ready to shoot

you if you look at them."

"And we are getting used to it."

But this metaphysical

turn feels complacent,

...and Kasdan's movie wallows

in its own incomprehension.

A mugging is as

inexplicable as a miracle.

"Why bother trying?

Keep the baby..."

"You need her as much

as she needs you."

If the social fabric has disintegrated,

...can't we at least try to

understand how it happened?

Instead,

...Kasdan finds solace

in the little triumphs...

...and epiphanies of everyday life,

...like a driving lesson.

"Sorry, dad."

"Hey, this is difficult stuff..."

"Making a left turn in L.A. is one of the

harder things you're gonna learn in life."

There's a certain ironic wisdom here,

...but it's impossible to forget that this

particular challenge is a privilege.

But there is another city.

The real downtown,

...full of people who are

appparently invisible...

...to those who say it's

deserted after working hours.

And another cinema.

A city of walkers,

...a cinema of walking.

It begins with The Exiles

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