Los Angeles Plays Itself Page #5

at Eighth and Broadway...

...the Bonaventure Hotel at

Fifth and Figueroa...

...the Beverly Hills Hotel

at Sunset and Rodeo,

...the Paradise Motel at

Sunset and Beaudry...

Clayton Plumbers at

Westwood and LaGrange...

Circus Liquor at

Burbank and Vineland...

...Pink's Hot Dogs at

La Brea and Melrose...

...the Memorial Coliseum

in Exposition Park.

With hard wooden seats for all,

...the Coliseum is the most

democratic American stadium...

...and the last of its kind to survive.

As a place where thousands

of people congregate,

...like the enigmatic sniper

in Two-Minute Warning...

...with a perfect aim

for aging movie stars,

...or the "Invisible invaders"

in Edward L. Cahn's 1959 film...

...who utilize a zombie to commandeer

the public-address system...

...and deliver one of their

laconic ultimatums.

"People of earth..."

...this is your last warning.

Unless the nations of your

planet surrender immediately,

"...all human lives will be destroyed."

And, of course,

there's the Hollywood sign.

Since it marks quite literally the ascendancy

of Hollywood over the rest of Los Angeles,

...I should despise it,

...as I despise the Hollywood Walk of Fame,

...where the stars cost the honorees

or their sponsors $15,000,

...where the Hollywood

Blacklist still lives.

There are stars for the enforcers...

...and the informers,

...but none for those they informed on.

It should be called the

Hollywood Walk of Shame.

But actually, I find the

Hollywood sign ressuring.

Maybe I find it poignant that a decayed

advertisement for a real estate development...

...could become a civic landmark.

Or maybe it's just that

we have to love it...

...because it's such a fat

target for outsiders.

Like that expatriate

Englishman David Thomson,

...who loves everything about America...

...except what's worth loving.

He loves Hollywood, but

not the Hollywood sign.

He once wrote:

"That HOLLYWOOD sign is so

endlessly funny, and dreadful...

...and L.A. is proud of it."

These are the landmarks that are

destroyed in disaster movies.

Whenever the legitimacy of

authority comes into question,

...Hollywood responds with disaster movies.

And whenever there's a disaster movie,

...there's George Kennedy.

"Rosa, let's go."

"Better not,."

"Come on, Rosa. Come on,

settle down will ya?"

"Earthquakes bring out the worst

in some guys, that's all."

Disaster movies remind us how foolish

and helpless we really are...

...and thus demonstrate our

need for professionals...

...and experts to save

us from ourselves.

They define the sources

of legitimate authority.

We must depend on specialists,

...but which ones can we trust?

"I got through..."

"...Can you get me a jack

hammer and a bolt cutter?"

"Use a jack hammer and then

the roof will fall in."

"Look, I think there are some

people alive in there..."

"...and I'm gonna try and get them out."

"Well, nobody else is and

you can't do it all alone."

"I won't be alone..."

"...he's coming with me."

A priest can be useful.

"We're gonna crash, we're gonna be

killed, I know we're all gonna be..."

But not a politician.

"Like the mighty fist of God..."

"...Armageddon will descend upon

the city of Los Angeles..."

"...the city of sin, the city of

Gomorroh, the city of Sodom."

"...And waters will arise and

separate this sinful, sinful city..."

"...from our country."

Mike Davis has claimed that Hollywood takes a

special pleasure in destroying Los Angeles,

...a guilty pleasure shared

by most of its audience.

The entire world seems to be rooting for

Los Angeles to slide into the Pacific...

...or be swallowed by

the San Andreas fault.

In Independence Day,

...who could identify with

the caricatured mob...

...dancing in idiot ecstasy... to

greet the extraterrestrials?

There is a comic undertone

of 'good riddance'...

...when kooks like these are vaporized by

the earth's latest ill-mannered guests.

But to me the casual sacrifice

of Paris in Armageddon...

...seems even crasser.

Are the French being singled out for punishment

because they admire Jerry Lewis too much?

Or because they have resisted Hollywood's

cultural imperialism too fervently?

In a sense, Hollywood's frequent destruction

of Los Angeles is just as crass,

...but it's more often a case of

economic expediency than of ideology.

Hollywood destroys Los

Angeles because it's there.

Our film-makers don't really believe

the Los Angeles City Hall is...

...a more resonant civic symbol

than the Empire State Building.

But they are well

aware that it's closer.

"This used to be a hell

of a town, officer."

"Yeah."

In disaster movies,

...at least Los Angeles is

finally there as a character,

...if not yet as a subject.

James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler...

...had made Los Angeles a

character in their novels,

...and it became a

character for the movies...

...when Chandler and Billy

Wilder adapted Cain's novel,

...Double Indemnity.

The sense of place was so precise that

Richard Schickel would later claim,

..."You could charge L.A. as a co-conspirator

in the crimes this movie relates."

Departing from Cain's text,

...Chandler and Wilder created

a protagonist-narrator...

...who has ideas or at least opinions

about the city around him,

...and his voice-over commentary is addressed to an

esteemed colleague whose opinion he cares about...

...and whose intelligence

he tries to emulate.

"Office memorandum..."

...Walter Neff to Barton

Keyes, claims manager...

...Los Angeles. July 16, 1938.

Dear Keyes.

I suppose you'll call this a

confession when you hear it.

Well, I don't like

the word "confession".

I just want to set you straight about something you

couldn't see because it was smack up against your nose.

It all began last May.

Around the end of May it was.

I remembered this auto renewal

near Los Feliz Boulevard.

So I drove over there.

It was one of those California Spanish houses

everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago.

This one must of cost

somebody about 30,000 bucks,

..."that is, if he ever

finished paying for it."

"I'm Walter Neff, Pacific All-Risk."

Like Chandler and Wilder,

...Walter Neff is a smart aleck and a snob.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"The insurance ran out on the fifteenth."

I'd hate to think of your having a smashed

fender or something while you're not...

"...fully covered."

"Perhaps I know what you mean, Mr. Neff..."

"...I was just taking a sun bath."

"No pigeons around, I hope."

And a bit of an a**hole,

...although less of one

than the man he murders.

"Next thing you'll tell me I

need earthquake insurance,"

"...and lightning insurance,

and hail insurance..."

"If we bought all the insurance they could think up,

we'd stay broke paying for it, wouldn't we, honey?"

"What keeps us broke is your going out

and buying five hats at a crack."

"Who needs a hat in California?"

And less of a monster than

his partner in crime.

"Ok. This has got to be fast..."

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