L.A. Story

I used to live above the shimmering intersection of Broadway and Taylor, with its IMAX-like view of the Bay Bridge, as seen in The Princess Bride, Monk, and, coming soon, the Will Smith vehicle that recently infested downtown. Admittedly, I felt a little cool about it. No more! Los Angeles Plays Itself, a critical cinematic essay on how Hollywood has used and abused L.A., strips away the glamour the industry seemingly bestows upon film locations. Director Thom Andersen's exhaustive three-hour flick leaves you woozy with feeling that Tinseltown, along with its other faults ($10 ticket prices, Rob Schneider), has shamed its home.

Similar to an Oscar night movie-tribute montage (albeit featuring a staggering 200 films, from the 1930s on), the documentary is elevated by the sheer bad attitude of narrator Encke King, channeling a derisive Billy Bob Thornton and keeping things humming as he rips into Hollywood's "betrayal of the native city."

The picture tackles a number of topics, such as how the city moved from a stand-in for other locations to becoming the main act (Chinatown, L.A. Confidential), the inevitable geographic shortcuts (a door in Deathwish 4 opens to a plaza 10 miles away), and the abbreviation "L.A.," which Andersen believes is the dirty work of Hollywood ("Only a city with an inferiority complex would allow it"). One nice bit features cinematic crimes against modern architecture, in which the town's legendary homes become nothing more than "dens of vice" for criminals, pimps, and pornographers, and Lethal Weapon's Mel Gibson, doing his maniacal-laughing thing, yanks a modernist beast off the hillside with a pickup truck.

Plays Itself's mammoth length may test even an ideal audience, such as L.A.-born film scholars who grind their teeth when car chases leapfrog neighborhoods. "As a smoker, I hate long movies," Andersen says in his director's statement. "I regard this movie as an homage to the double feature." Meaning that, as when you live in L.A., you're free to leave at any time.