Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [26]
Three of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films have come to be called the ‘Valley Trilogy’ for their San Fernando Valley locations: Boogie Nights (1997) starred Mark Wahlberg as prodigiously endowed porn star Dirk Diggler; Magnolia (1999) brought together luminaries including Tom Cruise, Jason Robards and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a tale of interwoven families; and Punch Drunk Love (2002) saw Adam Sandler’s character overcome serious anger management issues to win a woman’s (Emily Watson) affections.
LA COMEDIES
Tony Richardson’s outrageously sardonic commentary The Loved One (1965), based on an Evelyn Waugh novel about the funeral industry, features Sir John Gielgud and Liberace (as a huckstering mortician). Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe collaborated on Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), which launched the careers of Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicolas Cage and Forest Whitaker among others, as students at a fictional San Fernando Valley high school (emphasis on the ‘high’ in the case of Penn’s Jeff Spicoli). Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) featured Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as time-traveling San Gabriel Valley teen slackers, and Julia Roberts became a screen queen for playing the definitive hooker with a heart of gold in Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman (1990). Steve Martin’s LA Story (1991) hilariously parodies nearly every aspect of LA life, from lattes and colonics to earthquakes. He followed up with the wistful Shopgirl (2005), in which a lonely clerk (Claire Danes) selling gloves at Neiman-Marcus finds herself in a love triangle with a sophisticate (Martin) and a goofball (Jason Schwartzman).
The ’90s offered some classic LA youth comedies. Heckerling returned to direct Clueless (1995) starring Alicia Silverstone as spoiled Beverly Hills teenager Cher Horowitz in an update of Jane Austen’s Emma. Swingers (1996) was Vince Vaughn’s breakout film as a Hollywood hipster, coining the word ‘money’ as the ultimate compliment, and bringing ‘Vegas, baby, Vegas!’ to the lexicon. And Go (1999), an ensemble piece about club kids and a drug deal gone bad, has a cast that reads like a Fast Times for the new generation: Katie Holmes, Sarah Polley, Taye Diggs, Timothy Olyphant, Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr.
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HOLLYWOOD ON HOLLYWOOD
Hollywood likes nothing better than to make movies about itself. Self-indulgent? Maybe, but often very entertaining. To wit, our own subjective list of 10 Hollywood movies that every cinephile should know:
Sunset Boulevard (1950) – The ultimate Hollywood story. Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a washed-up silent film star pining for her return, and William Holden plays the screenwriter she hires to make that happen.
Singin’ in the Rain (1952) – Exuberant musical fairytale about love in the time of talkies, starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) – Filmdom’s all-time classic catfight film. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford play sisters and former actresses undone after a disfiguring accident and the mind games between them.
Silent Movie (1976) – Screwball comedy from Mel Brooks about a director trying to revive a movie studio by producing the first silent film in decades. Silent Movie’s also a silent movie...except for one well placed word.
Postcards from the Edge (1990) – Mike Nichols directs Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep as a mother-daughter pair dealing with stardom’s seamy underbelly.
Barton Fink (1991) – John Turturro and John Goodman have a battle of wits over how to write a screenplay in this dark comedy by the Coen Brothers.
The Player (1992) – In arguably the most accessible film by legendary director Robert Altman, Tim Robbins plays a studio executive who takes his power too far and has to cover for it.
Ed Wood (1994) – Tim Burton directs Johnny Depp as perhaps the worst