It is 4,000 kilometers or so to New York and the city is usually depicted as the opposite of New York. Most known by this nickname "L.A", it is the the horizontal city, with cars (no pedestrians), sun (not rain), cool attitude (not intellectual) and Hollywood. Here it’s the Pacific coast, the end of the frontier, terminus of dreams. Welcome to the land of Terminator 2, 24, Collateral, Sunset Boulevard, Larry Flint, Barton Fink, NCIS Los Angeles, The Player, True Romance, Magnolia, They live, Baywatch, Newport Beach, Strange Days, Training Day, King Street, Rebel Without a Cause, Transformers, Last Action hero or Pretty Woman. In American Dreams you will become an actress and a star, in American Nightmares you will be drugged and lost. David Lynch understands this tension and created a movie about: Mulholland Drive.
An urban desert
If your first step is in LA, you seem unlucky! Do you remember the Terminator ? Everybody he's lost in the city of dreams because it's a giant city without a heart (the financial district doesn't have any soul). Horizontal City, heroes are moving by car on unlimited speedways in Chinatown, 24, Face Off or Leathal Weapon. Roads and crossroads are strangely an identity in Collateral, Speed or Mulholland Drive. It's the place where heroes will have to face the situation by driving or chatting. Actually, the city isn't one and L.A doesn't exist, it's a lot of cities in the city (or close): Bel Air, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Financial District, Observatory, Hollywood, Anaheim, Watts etc. L.A is the lands of contrast, but in the vision of the cinema it's also a place with a high standard of living.
A Pacific cocktail: sea, sun, sex and violence
To make the audience aware that L.A is funny, filmakers are filming specific lands of pleasures. At first: The sea and sun in Baywatch, Point Break, Fast and Furious, heroes are cool and live on the beach (remember Mel Gibson's house in Leathal Weapon). Secondly, sex activities are debatable points in Pretty Woman, Larry Flint, Mulholland Drive or Strange days. L.A is a city of the vices and violence and catastrophes appeared in Volcano, The day after tomorrow, 2012, Heat, Collateral or, the well name, To live and to die in LA. Really, Los Angeles is said to be plagued by many problems!
Cinema city
At last, filmakers notice it's the movie factory! From Sunset Boulevard to The Player or Scream 3, American studios are part of the plots and that's why the city is full of actors in restaurants (remember the waiter in Garden States played by Zach Braff). It's a "mise en abime", where cinema is dealing with itself: with dreams and nightmares, with reality and myth, with fun and money, with Los Angeles and L.A.
