Focus Features

Los Angeles may be second largest city of the United States, but in our cultural imagination it is so much bigger. In addition to being the city of angels, L.A. has been the city of dreamers. Sometimes those dreams were realized in huge and heroic ways, and other times they are pre-packaged and vacuum-sealed to be sold across the world as corporate intellectual property. And sometimes the dreams turn into nightmares. As Joel Bleifuss’ impressive survey of L.A. stories, “L.A. From Every Angle,” abundantly illustrates, not every dream of L.A. is a cinematic one.

With almost 4 million inhabitants and spreading over a vast area that runs into other towns, cities, and metropolitan areas, LA is a hard place to pin down. In fact for many, L.A. is many places (which may or may not be in the city limits): Watts, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Silverlake, Los Feliz, Highland Park, Mt. Washington, Echo Park, San Pedro, Baldwin Hills, etc. But for others, Los Angeles is best found on those maps that show them where the stars live.

Since its official founding in 1781 by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve, Los Angeles has grown in sudden spurts. The first big rush came after 1876, when the various railroad lines made Los Angeles a destination city. Then the discovery of oil in 1892 brought a new wave of immigration. (By 1923, Los Angeles produced nearly a quarter of the world’s petroleum supply.) But perhaps the city’s most significant event came when Selig Polyscope founded a film studio in 1909. Soon everyone was rushing west to make movies. In 1911, the establishment of Christie-Nestor Studio at Sunset and Gower in the city of Hollywood turned that dusty backwater town’s name into brand for all things glamorous. This ideal found its physical manifestation in 1923, when a sign for “Hollywoodland,” a fancy new housing development, was erected on the side of Mount Lee. In “Interview: Los Angeles Plays Itself's Thom Andersen,” the documentary filmmaker outlines the difference between the symbolic and the real cities of LA and Hollywood.

With one of every six of its inhabitants working in some aspect of the entertainment industry, Los Angeles has rightly been dubbed the creative capital of the world. Movies, television, popular music, art, and the like are created in the city’s sound stages, studios, and office buildings. While the financial structure that once governed production at Hollywood’s famous studios (Warner Bros., MGM, Universal, etc.) has changed, the creative spirit producing that work hasn’t. After making such creative work, Hollywood is the first to slap itself on the back for it. In “L.A. Awards Show Primer,” we review the parade of praise that marches through tinseltown every winter. “Focus at the Academy Awards (and Spirits too)” showcases Focus Features’ own adventures with award shows. And to understand recent changes in the arithmetic of awards look at Scott Macaulay’s “Demystifing The New Oscar Voting System.”

All work and no movie playing would make L.A. a dull town. But L.A. is also ready to dress up for a night on the town. Big movie premieres are often hosted at such legendary venues as Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Cineastes can be found sneaking into places like the UCLA Film and Television Archives, the American Cinematheque or any of the other museums or cultural institutions that regularly screen films. You can find their programs listed in our Film Week. And then there are the less obvious venues, like Cinespia, a summer screening series that takes place inside Hollywood Forever cemetery—yes, among the graves—an event we highlighted in “All the Outside World's a Cinema.”

With so many films shot in Los Angeles, the city can’t help escape showing up in many of them. Often the city––its suburban streets, dry hills, urban center, sunny beaches, etc.––is just the backdrop to a story that could occur anywhere. But sometimes the city is a film’s focus. In our L.A. FiveInFocus, we asked the people who worked on Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg––including the director himself––to tell us which films about L.A. mean the most to them. The choices are as surprising as the town. While a city may be defined by its architectural spaces, natural landscape and cultural history, it can also be simmered down to a simple mood or feeling––an L.A. state of mind.

For many, if not most, of the people living in Los Angeles, the city is just like any other metropolitan area where people live, work and bring up families. People live here not to be discovered, but because they discovered the area’s remarkable weather, the easy access to beaches and mountains, and the city diverse ethnic mix. This is certainly the Los Angeles portrayed in Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right. And it is the Los Angeles that Noah Baumbach wanted to capture in Greenberg. In our video “Greenberg Loves LA,” Baumbach and crew talk about tracking down and filming the elusive real Los Angeles.