No Rock N’ Roll Fun
Last night, Alex and I went to see Los Angeles Plays Itself at the Royal. It’s about how the movies have affected the way LA (the most filmed city in the world) is perceived.
I’d seen most it a couple of months ago in class, and even wrote an essay that covered (kind of) similar ground, but I’d missed the ending, and I thought Alex would dig it.
He did, and I’m glad we went. However, Thom Anderson’s frustration at the willingness of filmmakers to turn LA into Everytown and any town played differently in Toronto than it might in other cities. So much stuff is filmed at U of T that we too have grown used to seeing the long trucks of location shoots.
Fittingly, we’d seen one yesterday in front of Trinity-Bellwoods park, shooting something apparently called “The Knights of South Bronx,” which imdb doesn’t know anything about. We walked by the trailers, many with their doors open now that the rain had stopped and lo and behold, saw Ted Danson sitting near the doorway of one, expounding on something.
We both kind of looked at him, then walked on toward juice. “So that was Ted Danson.” “I was pretty sure that was Ted Danson.” “Yep.” “Yep.” “This must be why people like filming things in Toronto. We just don’t care.”
In my essay, and upon seeing the film again, I found myself disagreeing with Anderson on some fundamental issues. (i.e., He’s obsessed with a certain literal realism that really doesn’t have much place in cinema.) But more than that, I found myself totally unable to relate. Sure, Toronto has been more misrepresented and underrepresented than LA, but you don’t hear us complaining. Why does he care so much? I realize that movies are a bigger part of life and the fabric of LA than other places, but Anderson himself points out that the vast majority (something like 1 in 40) people in Los Angeles county work outside the industry. He’s at his best pointing out the ways movies actually write the history of LA (the original sin of the water scandal in Chinatown and at his worst complaining that this car chase skips 30 blocks. Silly geography makes for silly movies, he says.
For all his complaints about Chinatown’s mythologizing of the water scandal (valid), but it still says something about LA. Even Anderson paints a picture of LA as run by shadowy figures with shadowy motives.
And, saints be praised, there’s always the social problem film. As an example, Crash, which we also just saw, wasn’t half bad.
That’s all. I’ve gotta go home and see if my cable came back on so I watch Project Runway.
Celebrity sighting aside: My dad and I saw Jon Cusack at a Flames game once. It remains my Best Celebrity Sighting Ever. (Except for the time when Mark McKinney recognized me back.) Anyway, we were at my dad’s company’s behind-the-penalty-box seats in the Fancy Section of the Canadian Airlines Saddledome, as it was then called. (I was in my teens and had been dragged against my will. Remember, this was in the Flames’ long period of Sucking Hard.) The Cusack was in town filming The Jack Bull, a particularly boring HBO Western with John Goodman as the villain.
I made Dad come with me to get some ridiculous food, probably pretzels or ice cream, because those are my top hockey game foods and we had to walk all over the VIP section to find them. We were walking through a narrowish part when the Cusack appears out of nowhere, in a black trenchcoat and stubble, looking about 800 feet tall. My dad, in what is possibly his only Cool Dad Moment ever, nods at Cusack in a friendly but politely distant way. Very “Hey, I know who you are, good to see you way.” Cusack nods back.
I stood there and gaped. I was a teenager and the man was about ten times my height. Also, this wasn’t that long after High Fidelity. I was running into a minor deity.
(Note: I am still more or less internet-less. I’m not really sure when I won’t be, so posting will be intermittent until then. I’m trying to keep my brain working even though school is over. Email still works.)