FRN 13: Los Angeles Plays Itself, Weekend Edition
Can you guess Thom Andersen's favorite recent Los Angeles movie?
Hello, Los Angeles! We missed you. Apologies for the hiatus. It’s been quite a couple of weeks. But we’ve heard your calls and we’re back with updates. Here are just a few events for this weekend.
Thom Andersen, the director of Los Angeles Plays Itself, gave a talk last Sunday after a PRS screening of his cult classic 2003 documentary. The 82-year-old was very funny, as expected, but he also seemed very tired and more than a little melancholy.
He wondered aloud why people were not being “more ambitious” in their resistance to Trump, arguing “If you want to stop his raids and his deportations, you stop them, instead of talking about how horrible they are.” He said he found it “discouraging” that the city’s leftwing elected officials “hadn’t gone farther in what they’ve tried to do to reform aspects of the city,” particularly banning political contributions from companies that do business with the government.
And he said he had made Los Angeles Plays Itself “at the best possible time, at the end of the 1990s,” before “run-of-the-mill thrillers” stopped being filmed in the city.
It was striking to hear Andersen noting, correctly, that Los Angeles no longer plays itself as often as it used to. It’s not even the actual city of Los Angeles that’s now being used or, as he argues, abused as a film backdrop: instead, Toronto, or Vancouver, or some other city is playing LA.
Andersen did name one film in the two decades since his documentary debuted that he thought did a superb job of depicting the city: Licorice Pizza, the 2021 Paul Thomas Anderson coming-of-age comedy set in 1970s San Fernando Valley.
“It’s a film that’s historically accurate,” Andersen said. It “talks about real people and real politics in Los Angeles at a certain time and the relation of citizens, particularly young people, to those politics.”
We’re tired, and so are you, and this summer is just getting started, but anyway: events.
Saturday, June 28: Getty Villa Archaeologist Talk on the Warrior-Princes of Pylos, 3PM
The Getty Villa has reopened to the public, so don’t miss a chance to celebrate the dying days of empire at LA’s best faux-Roman fantasia. Its current exhibit,The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece features recently excavated remains from an ancient tomb. The husband and wife team who led the excavation, archaeologist-classicist couple Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis, will talk about their discovery at 3PM today. Expect fun anecdotes, like Jack explaining why Sharon had to do most of the excavation (he claimed he was too big to fit into the ancient grave site). ($20 for parking, also on Zoom)
Kamasi Washington Live at the David Geffen Galleries, 7PM
This event, organized by LACMA CEO Michael Govan as a way to “bless” the newly constructed museum before any art is installed, is sadly *sold out*. If you’re going tonight, let me know what you think of the performance–and the verrrry controversial new Peter Zumthor-designed building. Having been to the first of these performances on Thursday, I can say that it was occasionally magical, often cacophonous, and definitely a scene. I recommend finding an empty gallery and lying down on the floor. It’s a totally empty, $720m art museum–and this is your one chance to be the art.
Pink Narcissus at Vidiots, 7:45PM and 9:55PM
Hypnosis! Desire! Obsession! More chances to see this sumptuous new 4K restoration of surrealist erotic queer pulp photographer James Bidgood’s masterpiece Pink Narcissus. ($11)
Annie Dorsen’s Prometheus Firebringer at RedCat, 8:30PM
An exploration of our current moment of art and AI anxiety, “Each evening of this performance, the predictive text model GPT-4 generates speculative versions of the lost final play of Aeschylus’ Prometheia trilogy. Performed by a chorus of AI-generated Greek masks.” ($27)
Sunday, June 29: 10 Things I Hate About You at the Academy Museum, 6:30PM
I (Lois) first saw Bring It On earlier this month at the Academy Museum, and, honestly, it was transcendent. Give yourself the joy of another classic teen movie in the Academy Museum’s absurd velvet theaters this summer, maybe with a cocktail beforehand if that’s your thing. ($5 and up)
Cleopatra (1963) is also playing Sunday at 2PM at the Academy Museum. It’s almost certainly the worst film I’ve ever seen by almost every metric – SO boring! ASTONISHINGLY boring – but maybe that’s just what you need?
Monday, June 30: XOIR, a non-ulitarian vocal workshop with Colin Self, 6PM
“The goal of XOIR is to foster a generative environment for individuals to connect with voice and vocality on an individual and collective level. This evening in Bronson Canyon, we’ll move through a series of vocal exercises and prompts for collectively-authored improvisations, meditations, and games.” ($11-$33)
Much Ado About Nothing, Vidiots, 7:30PM
The most bisexual movie ever made, Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing is a joy, a delight, a glorious tribute to the incredible Shakespearean talent of Denzel Washington–and a warning that your artistic career will go downhill forever if you cheat on Emma Thompson.
Also on our radar:
If you missed the delightful Getty screening of The Dyke Show by JEB (Joan E. Biren) earlier this month, you can now watch the mini documentary online thanks to the New Yorker. Before there was social media to post memes about “how historians thought those two women were just friends,” JEB toured the country in a broken-down van with a physical slideshow of photographs of lesbians and her very zesty commentary. Best viewed in an auditorium crowded with dykes of all ages, but you can also view this mini doc at home.
Short films with thematic natural wine pairings? Count us in! We missed this past Friday’s VinoVideo screening with FRN Sue Ding, but there will be more wine-films soon. ($15 for films + $20 for wine pairing)