The 32 inch city.
I recently have come to the realization that I like films and T.V. shows that are shot in and around Los Angeles. Not films or T.V. shows about Los Angeles but things that have been shot using actual locations in and around Los Angeles. I feel like a detective when I’m watching a t.v. show like… Charlies Angels. Recognizing the familiar locales of the city. Seeing places long gone preserved on film as something else. I was watching the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS a few weeks ago. Several locations in that film were within walking distance of my childhood home. The Beachwood Market doubled for the fictional city of Santa Mira in one long shot. The stairs leading from Beachwood to Hollyridge were also seen as Becky and Miles try to outrun the inevitable republican menace that threatens them. The Beachwood market is still there. It looks much different now that it is the weekend hang-out of the valley transplants that have invaded the hills. The great drug store that used to be next to the market is now the Beachwood café. The old soda fountain counter is still there. A feature of the drug store that refused to be removed. The one feature I can still recognize from my childhood. I remember that drug store and I remember that Market with its pavement to ceiling vertical windows. I remember those damn stairs going from the street below to the street up that hill. It was a public stairway that was sandwiched between two private homes. It seemed like an invasion of privacy to use them because you could see all of the property belonging to these folks. I have no pictures of that market or those stairs but I have my memory and the brief shots in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS to remind me. Everytime I see the Bronson caves I chuckle. It's like some sort of inside joke only I know. I find myself looking at the passing scenery during scenes that take place in cars to see if I can recognize the street. Plot means nothing to me if I can glimpse a familiar place. The Los Angeles I knew and loved is gone. It existed briefly and its soul was captured on film. It's stll visible, you just have to look beyond Faye (my sister, my daughter) Dunaway's fat head to see it.
Each generation has it’s landmarks. It seems the only way these landmarks are preserved are when they are substitutes for some other location. It gives me great joy to see a location that is familiar to me in an episode of a tv show. Its just like seeing an old friend that somehow snuck into an episode of Kojak or The Rockford Files. Its wonderful the see the Los Angeles of the 70’s. That seemed to be the decade the erased the early history of Los Angeles.
Old studios torn down. Red car tracks pulled up. Places like Beverly Park and its pony rides fade into memory to be replaced by the Beverly Center to be replaced by the New Bevery Center Soon to be replaced by … who knows. The Pan Pacific in its fading glory was silently closed. Eventually the façade is pulled down without fanfare. No one alive really cared that the charred façade was the best example of deco architecture. . Los Angeles ignores and re-writes its own history. The 70’s is the decade that wiped the slate clean. We lost so much in those years. Remember The Pike? It was the amusment park that was the location for a few Lil Rascals episodes. In its seedy junkie filled twilight years it was featured in an episode of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. The LB amusement park has moved on to a different world. A world made of light. A world that is for me 32 inches measured diagonally.
posted by Gavin Elster at 2:12 PM
9 comments
