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Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
Written and directed by Thom Anderson
Produced by Thom Anderson Productions
Distributed by Submarine Entertainment (2003 original limited release)
The Cinema Guild (2014 re-release)
cinemaguild.com
169 minutes
In Mulholland Falls (1996), police Lieutenant Hoover (Nick Nolte) tells a local mobster, "this isn't America Jack, this Is LA." In a similar vein, John Buntin, author of L.A. Noir, opens his history of the city's war on crime with the description "other cites have histories. Los Angeles has legends." Both suggest that Los Angeles is more than simply "Hollywood"- that there is a dark side to the country's most glamorous city. William J. Mann's Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood interweaves the two. None, however, have managed to fully capture the depth and complexity of the city.
While popular culture products such as these have shown Los Angeles to have many faces, a recently distributed film (which debuted in 2003) takes aim at the impact of this range of representations. Thom Anderson's Los Angeles Plays Itself Is about our collective perception of the city as seen through film. Concerned with how LA is viewed as a result of its popular culture representations, Anderson addresses the many ways LA has been depicted throughout film history. As a journey through the city's history, movie Industry, and personalities; Los Angeles Plays Itself prompts audiences to think about how much of the city's image is true and how much Is "printing the legend." Sometimes it represents a Hollywood-ized glossy version of itself, other times it represents the shadows often overlooked.
Los Angeles Plays Itself opens with a black and white establishing shot of LA,...