Method Festival 2010

L.A. IS A town where films are coming out at the same rate McDonald's makes fast food in mass production. About 800 pitches about vampires happen a year. There are fifty versions of guy-gets-girl, each done with a new twist. This is a town with a variety of outlooks on the same old topics, with as many vibrant ideas as there are artists.

This weekend, I attended the 2010 Method Festival in Agoura Hills, California as a plus one to director Brett Carlson of Take My Wife. I was thrilled to attend and was given a V.I.P. pass, which allowed me instant access to all of the afterparties and any film I could ever dream of viewing. Seeing as this is one of the top tier festivals, I went out and bought myself a new cocktail dress and spent hours sprucing, hoping to meet the next Woody Allen looking for a Mia Farrow partner-in-crime.

I arrived in Agoura Hills to the Good Night Inn, where the directors for the festival were housed. This place is less than glamorous. It looks very much like place you see at the beginning of bad slasher films where you just know someone is going to die. Brett takes me from the 'Good Night' to the theater where the films would be screening: it's a completely normal theater, selling gross popcorn. A slew of grandmas outside ask me why I'm so dressed up, and I tell them I'm going to the film festival. "Oh, you're fasting?" "Nope," I say, "I'm going to the Film Festival. FILM. FEST-I-VAL."

Half of the films I saw were less than stellar. They looked like a bunch of NYU kids got together that hadn't actually been going to all of their classes and tried to make some low-budget films. The other half were brilliant and cutting edge, combining different forms of media and clearly products of the new, more technologically saavy generation. Overall, I feel I slept a good two out of four screening hours daydreaming.

Brett and I attended two afterparties. The first was at a Steakhouse called Flemings, and we were the youngest people there by thirty years. The second was at a club called Ch. 8, which looked a bit like a brothel in Chinatown. There were only about five people from the festival there: three out of work actors, Brett, and myself. These parties were less than glamorous. I've had more glamourous nights at Brennan's famous turtle races.

I know that festivals like Sundance and South by Southwest do these parties and do them right. When I asked Brett why the parties were such duds, he said that surprisingly, Los Angeles festival parties are the worst parties. People feel more like they're just going to catch a quick film in blue jeans and then head out to some posh little bar on Hollywood Blvd. like they do every other weekend. It seems odd to me that the city that makes these new films doesn't seem to celebrate them to the degree that places like Boston does. In this beautiful city that combines the natural magic of the beach and the creation of so many different art forms, it saddens me that people fail to take a moment to really celebrate new filmmakers that get this town running. It makes me feel that the L.A. film industry gets so wrapped up in creating a marketable product and getting distribution for things that will sell, that it neglects to acknowledge the underdog to the right capacity. There is definitely a class separation from the people making/financing the movies, the writers and directors of big sellers like Avatar and Clash of the Titans, and the writers and directors of the indie/ultra low-budget. At film festivals outside of Los Angeles, all of these categories are forced to blend together and represent Hollywood as a whole, but in Hollywood itself, these distinctions become more apparent and others seem less likely to go out and support something outside of their direct line of vision or personal income.

-- Thea Green

(photo credit: the shopping sherpa, flickr creative commons)

LA Heritage Day

FOR THOSE OF you looking for inspiration -- the intersection where past meets present and converse -- this might be an event for you. This weekend is L.A. Heritage Day hosted by the City of Los Angeles. Admission is Free! And will be held at the Heritage Square Museum, near the Pasadena Freeway. A little bit about the museum from their website:

A living history museum reflecting the settlement and development of Southern California from the Civil War to the early 20th Century, Heritage Square Museum offers visitors a look into the everyday lives of Southern Californians at the close of the 19th Century.

Guided tours of the museum are supplemented by special events, such as Museums of the Arroyo Day®, which take our guests back in time to the era where electricity was a novelty, a trip to the beach was often a full-weekend activity, and manners were distinctly different from those of today.

The eight historic structures located at the museum, constructed during the Victorian Era, were saved from demolition and serve as a perfect background to educate the public about Southern California's early development. From the simplicity of the Octagon House to the opulence of the Perry Mansion, the Museum provides a unique look at the lifestyles of the people who contributed so much to the development of modern Los Angeles.

The event will go from 11am to 4pm at Heritage Square Museum. This event is for anyone who has an interest in Los Angeles, history. Over 75 heritage organizations will have displays and booths set up -- Pink's hot dogs (Sorry, Michael. Sadly, no Phillipe's) will be for sale.

For those who want to go "green": There is a free shuttle from the Gold Line "Heritage Square Station" to the event at the museum, and secure bicycle parking will be provided at Heritage Square. Parking will also be available.

Vanished L.A.: Venice Beach in Cisco Pike

I HAD HOPED to screen this little time capsule of L.A. but we may run out of time before it's all done. But here's a little taste. Take a look at what Venice looked like circa early '70s -- the canals, the walk streets . . .

-- L.G.

"We Tell Stories . . . :" Jean Baudrillard

WE'VE ALL SEEN it from above but what do you see when you look down at the maze of light?

"There is nothing to match flying over Los Angeles by night. A sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching as far as the eye can see, bursting out from the cracks of the clouds. Only Hieronymus Bosch's hell can match this inferno effect. The muted fluorescent of all the diagonals: Wilshire, Lincoln, Sunset, Santa Monica. Already, flying over San Fernando Valley, you come upon the horizontal infinite in every direction. But, once you are beyond the mountain, a city ten times larger hits you. You will never have encountered anything that stretches as far as this before. Even the sea cannot match it, since it is not divided up geometrically . . . . Mulholland Drive by night is an extraterrestrials vantage point on earth, or conversely, an earth dweller's vantage point on the galactic metropolis."

What do you see when you gaze down at Los Angeles?

(photo: los angeles at night; credit, b.mune flickr creative commons)

Psychic Consultants and Spiritual Healers – LA Mysticism

WHENEVER I STROLL along the sidewalk to make a beer run to Bristol Farms, I often pass by a strange little store conspicuously wedged between the oil smeared lot of an automotive shop and an upscale crepe and coffee shop. The neon sign posted on the side mirrors of the store advertises its prophetic claim of what its services can achieve – an insight into your future. When I pass by this shop I’m reminded of David Fine’s comments of the psychics and radical spiritualists that have come to form LA’s unique, if not strange, spiritual landscape and its part in constructing LA’s identity:

“One would be hard pressed to find a Los Angeles novel written between the 1920s and the 1960s without the inclusion of a bizarre cult, spiritualist, prophet, or medical quack. While it is tempting to exaggerate their significance in the city’s history . . . their centrality to the city’s fiction cannot be denied. Spiritualists and ‘psychic consultants’ (Raymond Chandler’s term) have been permanent and conspicuous residents in the fiction about Los Angeles…In the literary construction of the city, the charlatans and cults signal the fusion, or confusion, of reality and illusion, fact and fantasy, that has been one of the recurring themes of Los Angeles fiction.”

This elicits several philosophical questions to debate and consider. Is LA a city that is starved and deprived of traditional forms of spirituality that it indulges itself in the world of mystics? same mystics and spiritualists gave rise to so many different religious cults that prospered in the LA area such as Theosophy movement and the Four Square Gospel? Or is it a city that likes its spirituality peddled to them like everything else is on large billboards and page long ads in the paper? After all Miss Cleo was not the first or the last psychic that offered services to those desperate to seek out an answer, an epiphany, a secure knowledge of their future. This shop is but one among many that are no doubt strewn across the city of Los Angeles as sites that often blur the lines between illusion and reality.

If I was a psychic consultant, I wonder what would my sales pitch be?

“Are you uncertain about life’s big decisions? My crystal ball has all the answers.”

“A doctor can heal your body but I can heal your soul…for a small fee.”

“You want to find the love of your life? No pain. No hassles. No time wasted. I can help you find the one.”

“I can guide you to your utopia.”

--Thomas Kim

Sense Memory: "The Kid"

FEBRUARY 1969. The playground of Franklin Avenue Elementary School. An el niño winter long before we knew the subtropical kid's name. It is cold. Snow has blanketed the Verdugo Hills. Reports of flurries in the basin. I am wearing a jacket of nylon and corduroy. It is not enough to keep me warm. It has been raining for a month. Houses tumble into the ravines of Mt. Washington. Landslide across the Pomona Freeway. We are playing kickball and I'm up. I kick a hard grounder.The ball cleaves several puddles just as the afternoon sun breaks through the clouds, silvering the little fans of water. I run. My breath mists. Faces of kids wheel around me. I am so very much alive.
-- Ruben Martinez

(photo credit: Pink Moose, flickr creative commons)

So What Was It Like For You?

AH, HERE THEY come...
It's the Angeleno ritual:

CNN: "Chandeliers swung and water sloshed around in swimming pools in the Los Angeles suburbs, witnesses reported..."

Hollywood: "What a strange, slow, rolling earthquake that was. Doors and things swayed in our house afterwards for minutes."

Silver Lake: "CNN already in semi-hysterics mode ...."

Leimert Park: "Weeee! Chandelier was swaying this time!"

Highland Park: "Hey CNN! Stop asking people in L.A. if they felt their fannies jiggle, and maybe find out if people in Mexicali are okay. Christ."

The Facts: From Cal Tech -- A strong earthquake occurred at 3:40:39 PM (PDT) on Sunday, April 4, 2010.The magnitude 6.9 event occurred 68 km (42 miles) SSE of Calexico, CA.The hypocentral depth is 32 km (20 miles).

Update: 7.2

And so, what was it like for you?

Sense Memory: L.A. Is a Feeling - An Introduction

L.A. IS A FEELING. A mood.

For many of us, Los Angeles is a place of many parts that can't quite be summed up in one or two sentences. It's a place, we have found throughout the semester, upon which people have grafted their own needs or desires. They've attempted to construct it into the place that they need or want it to be. Arcadia? Utopia? Or somewhere in between.

Through our writing, you could say what we are trying to locate is Los Angeles' genius loci, the city's distinctive atmosphere, or a "spirit of place".

As we ease toward our last two essays, keep watch on this space to read a series of pieces written by a few L.A.-grown writers will be describing their "sense" memory of Los Angeles. What sense triggers their most vivid memory of Los Angeles?

How does Los Angeles shimmer up in your consciousness? Sight? Sound? Touch? Scent? Taste? Feel free to respond here or following some of the other pieces to follow as they inspire you . . .

-- L.G.

"We Tell Stories . . . ": Richard Reeves

MANY DISCUSSIONS about Los Angeles revolve around the elements -- fire, water, the land itself. Disaster is a big subject as well. Earthquakes and floods and fire. The following segment is from an essay written by Richard Reeves, who describes a series of events that force him to ponder why he ever came to Los Angeles. Look carefully at how he "paints" the fire, how he evokes the very feeling of the earthquake. He's not just "telling" us, he's allowing us to experience it too -- with all the wonder and terror.

"It was midafternoon when I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on October 23, 1978, but the sky was already dark. Driving home along the Pacific ocean, I could see black to north and west -- boiling clouds of smoke coming off the Santa Monica Mountains. By six o'clock, I was standing in from of my house, in Pacific Palisades, watching waves of orange flame break over the mountains. Houses in the path of the waves exploded silently just before the flames reached them. I counted eight -- puffs of bright gas, and then the houses were gone. By seven o'clock I was packing the car -- family photograph albums and insurance policies first -- and listening to a radio report of tires melting as people tried to escape the fire in automobiles . . . .
My first earthquake was on New year's Day of 1979. A friend and I were having a late lunch in a little place called the Inn of the Seventh Ray, in Topanga Canyon. There was a heavy jolt, and the floor vibrated. I thought a truck had hit the building. But the floor did not sop vibrating, as it would have if the building had been struck. I was confused. Actions seemed to be taking place in slow motion. People pushed chairs and tables aside, stood up, and began running toward the door. I realized that there was a sound -- a steady roaring, as if a freight train were coming into the room. Outside I still heard the sound and felt the vibration. Stones were clattering down a hillside into the roadway. The next day's Los Angeles Times reported that the quake was 'small' -- 4.6 on the Richter scale. It had lasted less than ten seconds, and there were twenty smaller aftershocks. While it was happening there was no way of knowing that this thing would be judged small by the instruments at the California Institute of Technology.
I had already begun to wonder whether God intended for people to live in Los Angeles."

from "Vulnerable" by Richard Reeves, taken from Unknown California

-- L.G.

(photo credit: Atwater Village Newbie, flickr creative commons)

True Equality Is Just a Flight Away

AS I SQUEEZED my way in between the throngs of people, I looked around the crowded airport and came to a realization that, here there is diversity. Sometimes I feel that in my little bubble of Loyola Marymount University, it seems as though L.A. isn’t diverse, and rather that everyone is quite similar. Yet here, a mere five minutes away, different cultures gather every day, 365 days a year. Los Angeles International Airport truly is a melting pot of different cultures, ages, and ethnicities.

However, I noticed that although diversity is present on the inside there are obvious ways to distinguish people. This can be seen through the different methods of transportation that people take to LAX, be it taxis, cars, shuttles or limos. The differences continue as some passengers tip Skycap just to get their bags on the plane first. Yet it’s inside that the differences fade and people begin to all become equal but not before they frequent their various food establishments, be it McDonalds, Starbucks, or the Sports Bar.

But even though these differences may be present, once people board the plane, every single person on a Southwest flight is exactly the same. Everyone will be offered a drink and peanuts and be told to put up their seat and tray table before landing. This really got me thinking, if cultures can mix this easily, and socioeconomic status can be put aside during flights, where else does this occur? Or is this the only place that truly makes everyone feel equal?

--Emily Day

(photos: LAX Check-in, credit: Slices of Light, LAX Invierno, credit, Antonio Bracani flickr creative commons)