How long 'dey validate here, d'yknow?
Most great movies, after some fashion, involve the absorption into a new world. Even intentionally naturalistic movie settings like the jury room in 12 Angry Men or the Washington Post office in All the President’s Men elevate the mundane surroundings into an involving version of reality. The rotted American suburbias of Blue Velvet and American Beauty intentionally displace themselves from easy geographical specification – they inhabit our minds not as “places” but as microcosmic experiences.
That said … movies still need to be filmed somewhere, and you can’t point a camera at a microcosm. I gather from looking it up that the American Beauty exteriors were filmed in the Brentwood and Hancock Park areas of Los Angeles. It is a measure of the movie’s success, I would say, that I was unable to identify this fact, despite living here. Upon finding out that I live so close to the neighborhoods that were turned into this famous and otherworldly cinematic stage, I find myself hoping to God I never accidentally drive past the houses used for the Burnham and Fitts residences.
What would it do to my viewing of the movie? How could I ever be ensconced into Sam Mendes’ and Alan Ball’s world in the same way – knowing those are houses with real families, having real dinners and not whipping asparagus plates at each other?
Andrew Niccol’s recent movie In Time was a victim of this for me. It supposedly takes place in an alternate universe-type fantasy world of indigent slums and palatial chrome corporate high-rises. The only problem is, the movie’s “wealthy quarter” is simply Avenue of the Stars in Century City, Los Angeles. CAA’s glorious glassed-in headquarters (arguably the sexiest structure in the city) doubles as the movie’s evil empire stronghold. The southern end of Avenue of the Stars is not shown onscreen, probably because the Fox lot and the “Nakatomi Plaza” from Die Hard were deemed too spottable.
Michael Mann’s Heat also lost a smidgen of its magical aura for me a few months ago when I signed with my new management company. Why? Well, as it happens, new management company shares a parking garage with the restaurant Kate Mantilini on Wilshire Boulevard, which is the setting for when Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley famously called time-out to their dogged chase and made a stop to share their recurrent dreams over coffee. Before I lived in Los Angeles, that movie took place in a scarred dreamworld of gun clips and blood-spattered moonlight. When the cop and criminal paused for a drink, it was like an oasis in a town where everyone is parched from one kind of thirst or another. A ceasefire in an unceasing battle. A crying out for understanding in the madness.
Now … all I’m wondering is how much they’re going to tip the wonderfully attentive valet staff in the garage.
These objections are entirely unfair to the movies. Most people that go to see Heat or In Time will not be people who drive Avenue of the Stars and Wilshire Boulevard on a daily basis, as I do. By the same token, I’ve heard talk that Chicagoans are rougher on the Batman movies, knowing as they do that Wayne Tower is actually the Board of Trade Building, and that the train system derailed by Gary Oldman at the end of Batman Begins is a computer-generated fakery.
It’s also fairly amusing to me that the final scene of The Untouchables takes place in literally the same spot where the Gotham police apprehend the Joker in The Dark Knight – at the end of LaSalle Street in Chicago. Even dressed for a 1930s setting and filmed in brighter hues than the streetlight grime of Christopher Nolan’s Gotham, a non-Chicagoan might still spot the likeness.
Then there are the movies purportedly taking place in alien landscapes. One reason 50s and 60s sci-fi movies have not tended to age well is that the surface of “Mars” (or whatever) is obviously just the California desert. Even the very best of this bunch, Planet of the Apes, reads a little comical today when the astronauts crash land into an alien environment’s lake and deplane without so much as spacesuits. All their talk about “this strange planet, light years from Earth” is impossible to take seriously. Yes, those who have seen Planet of the Apes know the final twist theoretically accounts for this detail … but we don’t get to the end of the movie till the end of the movie, do we?
In the era of omnifunctional CGI, these fabricated worlds tend not to draw so much from earthbound locales (no forests or oceans were harmed during the making of Avatar), but there are still instances when the seams show. The original Lord of the Rings trilogy has long passages set in fantastical forests and shires, but here and there we get wide shots of positively ordinary-looking Australian fields. And viewers sharpened on their architectural history may notice that Harry, Ron and Hermione scoot to class along the south cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral. (I take for granted the Christian imagery is obfuscated, but would need to double check.)
Movies have the ability to transport us to worlds within our own world, and that’s the joy of them. Go see Heat, go see In Time, and enjoy them because they’re marvelous movies.
And then meet me for a bite at Kate Mantilini.
