I was born by a river
But it was paved with cement
I was born by a river
But it was paved with cement
Still I’d stand in that dry river
And dream that I was soaking wet
— Dave Alvin, “Dry River”
*
Drivin’ down your freeway
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars
The topless bars
Never saw a woman so alone, so alone
So alone, so aloneMotel, money, murder, madness
Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness
— Jim Morrison, The Doors, “LA Woman”
Been haunted by LA ghosts the past few days — mostly because I’m anticipating receiving James Ellroy’s new novel, set in LA c. 1942, This Storm. (I delve into Ellroy’s treatment of history over at RunningIronReport.com). Bingeing out on Ry Cooder and Dave Alvin probably has something to do with it, too. Then there’s this: Showtime’s weird tale Penny Dreadful is coming back — in a new form and setting
Here’s the caper from The Hollywood Reporter:
City of Angels begins in 1938 Los Angeles, a time and place deeply infused with Mexican-American folklore and social tension. It will explore pre-World War II Los Angeles, from the building of the city’s first freeways and its deep traditions of Mexican-American folklore, to the dangerous espionage actions of the Third Reich and the rise of radio evangelism.
“In 1938, Los Angeles was facing some hard questions about its future and its soul. Our characters must do the same,” (showrunner John) Logan said. “There are no easy answers. There are only powerful questions and arresting moral challenges. As always in the world of Penny Dreadful, there are no heroes or villains in this world, only protagonists and antagonists; complicated and conflicted characters living on the fulcrum of moral choice.”
The story will involve a young LAPD detective and his family, his veteran partner and a shape-shifting demon.
Given that the shapeshifting demon is played by Natalie Dormer, let’s hope she/it doesn’t change shape too often or too much…
*
Quentin Tarantino will depict apex LA weirdness in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood this summer. I’d really like to see this, but I ain’t sure I can overcome the Notorious Hateful 8 Martin Guitar-smashing Incident to support any of that punk’s work.
*
Los Angeles is a frontier town — always has been. John Mack Faragher’s outstanding book Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles does a fine job of depicting the sordid origins of the ultimate boomtown — a weird and wild vampire of a city that sucked the Owens Valley dry and consumes souls like its got a wholesale contract with the Devil.
Stuart Rosebrook reviewed Eternity Street in True West Magazine and described the City thus.:
From Chinatown to the original Mission Plaza, from the San Gabriel Mission to San Juan Capistrano, Faragher’s 19th-century Southern California is a wide-open frontier region of urban treachery, racial unrest, land barons and business entrepreneurs jostling for economic control of a city ruled on the edge of the law.
One of the multitude of sordid, violent and “soooooo LA” stories told in Eternity Street is the fate of one David Brown, who was hanged for knifing Pinkney Clifford in an LA stable. Davy Brown was one of the historical figures Cormac McCarthy worked into Blood Meridian. He was one bloody bastard, Davy Brown. Just ask Ben Nichols.
Davy Brown. Just another freak in LA.
The idea of the remnants of the Glanton Gang prowling the streets of LA where Jim Morrison would later stagger around looking for an alley to piss in, where James Ellroy’s rogue cops would operate, and where I would drive an ancient Ford glass truck making up songs and tales feels like a ghost story, and it haunts me still.
Paul McNamee says
As a easterner, I find L.A. firmly on my “interesting place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there” list.
I have zero interest in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. God only knows how graphic Tarantino will get with the Manson murders. But for me it’s not that – it’s really about my disgust with the continued fascination & borderline glorification of serial killers. Manson was a piece of shit. Enough is enough.
PENNY DREADFUL sounds worth a look, though.
JimC says
The 1969 killings had a profound effect on my grandparents. They knew the LaBiancas tangentially — friend of a friend or some such thing I’m not entirely clear on. The idea that freaks could murder you in your home changed their sense of the world. I had a kitchen table conversation about it with my grandpa before he died, and he expressed a sense that the events of summer 1969 (my sister had been born in July with severe cerebral palsy) made him feel like the world had gone dark and insane.
Traven Torsvan says
Interesting how that the fact that Manson was a proto Alt Right terrorist gets glossed over in the public memory.
Dave Allen says
“A weird and wild vampire of a city that sucked the Owens Valley dry”. Yep, when they turned on the pumps in the 70’s that tore it for a lot of people here. If someone were to get brave enough to put it down on paper, there is a real good story involving dynamite, sabotage, the FBI, and four pissed off young men all going through divorce at the same time.
The LA model seems to have been used in several Southwest Desert cities, Phoenix and Vegas come to mind.
As far as Quentin Tarantino goes, I think he wants people to hate him. It was bad enough smashing that Martin to bits but what he did to Salma Hyek in From Dust till Dawn is unforgivable.
Dave Allen says
The “they” referred to above is the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power.
Jim, sorry to hear your little sis was born with such a mean disease. I am sure it was hard on your whole family.
JimC says
It wrecked my mom, especially in the last few years. It was my “normal,” so I simply grew up without any illusions about the fairness of life, and that sort of thing.
My parents were downright heroic in their efforts to provide a good life for her and all their children.
VBell says
Amen.
Saddle Tramp says
Quite a lineup here Jim.
First, I am much appreciative of the burden of despair your grandfather and you both felt. I have several such family situations including with my own children. It reminds me that there must be something else for those innocent ones beyond the unfairness of this life. It is my sincere belief that they are here to remind us that this life is not everything. I will never accept that just some draw of the cards explains it all. I guess that is what has always made me side with the outsiders and the unfortunate. However, we are the fortunate one’s for having shared the beauty and innocence of one such as your sister. Never easy.
Right off the bat, I do intend to see Tarantino’s ninth offering. As I do with so many things, I always take the good with the bad. I take it where I find it. Personality wise I don’t care for him, but as an auteur I do. Perfection scares me. Nothing can be done with it. Unforgivable? I leave that judgement to a much higher pay grade. I remember reading the news in 1969 about the Manson murders. I was still a paperboy at the time, so I saw it fresh off the bundles dropped off for me in the wee hours. I was sick to my stomach, especially about Sharon Tate with being pregnant. Monstrous and unexplainable evil. That never left me. I cannot stand even seeing a picture of Manson to this day. As for him being glorified, I have yet to come across that anywhere myself. It may have been something that haunted Dennis Willson to the end with his association with Manson along with other things that he could never cope with. I never try to paint with too broad a brush. Morrison is much maligned and from many accounts I have read, unjustly so. Myth is so overpowering along with history’s often time inaccuracies. Too smart for his own good and of course other influential substances.
As far as L.A. is concerned I have a love/hate relationship with her. It has turned over many times since I first came out here in 1962. The ratio of good to bad has changed greatly. I have been around enough to know the country and what I like and don’t like so it’s not from an uninformed position that I opine on L.A. Where to draw the line? Hell, Napoleon was a hero to Winston Churchill. What does that say about Churchill? You can decide for yourself. Houston is a more or less horizontal city like L.A. but with much traffic and much humidity. I don’t like either one (traffic or humidity) but I will settle for traffic if given the choice. Houston was putting in the widest (most lanes) Freeway in the country when I had to go through myriad detours to get through there. I even went up and over through Austin (no Sunday drive either) to get around it. Small towns bore me to be honest about it, but I’ve done that too. L.A. can be a real pain in the ass to do anything, but it helps a lot to know your way around. Yeah, there’s a lot I no longer relate to, but still plenty of jewels to discover. Personal taste of course. Like I said, I know the country pretty damn good from east to west and north to south. Also, I welcome anyone, and for those that want to leave all the better. We could use with a few less people and cement too. The L.A. River is ugly as hell no doubt, but they are trying to redeem some of it, but they’ve got a long way to go. For the rest of everyone else they can move to Minot, North Dakota and give that a whirl. Had a girlfriend whose mother was from Minot. Ever been to North Dakota? There’s plenty of room for thinking that’s for certain. I last went through there after a whiteout and it was 35 below without windchill. My tractor was about to shutdown in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. I lucked out and limped into Beach, North Dakota and the Flying J Truck Stop where I managed a parked regen to clear the engines DPF. It was too frigin cold to do it passively while going down the road. I’ll say this, L.A. felt damn good when I eventually got back there over a week later. I loved L.A. then that’s for sure!
Great one Jim…
“I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change.”
— James Baldwin
“I don’t believe in villains or heroes–only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.”
— Tennessee Williams
JimC says
Great stuff, ST.
As you know by now, I have a very ambivalent relationship with LA. Had to leave it, but it’s never entirely left me. Never saw a woman so alone.
Brian H. says
yeah, that’s good commentary on a good post.
Breaker Morant says
I have been to the LA area twice for short visits. However, given the prevalence of LA in pop culture I wonder if most of us don’t have Ghosts of LA somewhere in our soul.
The freeway names are still embedded deep here from watching “Emergency” as a kindergartener and later on watching Chips.
JimC says
Reckon so.
Matthew says
Particularly true of private eye novels for some reason. Chandler and Crais a lot of others have the P.I. s prowl around LA.
Saddle Tramp says
Just to add to the Ry Cooder oeuvre he also makes another appearance as a writer in the City Lights published book LOS ANGELES STORIES. Some great noir in there as well. By the way I just finished reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s LITTLE BOY (a novel) which is a stream of consciousness novel of thoughts and memories with nary a period used in all of it. It reads like a bullet train once it breaks it’s moorings. Unbelievable that it was written by a man pushing 100 at the time and was released when he recently hit 100. Tom Waits (no stranger to L.A. stories himself) gives this impression of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and I paraphrase here: He thought when he first heard about Ferlinghetti that it was a geographical area and that turned out to be quite true. It was good fortune that City Lights published the geographical noir LOS ANGELES STORIES. Ry Cooder definitely knows his way around L.A. in both musical notes and literate notes. Ry Cooder strikes again…
John M Roberts says
I, too, am looking forward to the new Ellroy. He’s one of my favorite authors.LA and I go back to the early 50s, when I spent my summers in Pasadena. A family friend was Warren Dorn, onetime mayor of Pasadena and later an LA County Supervisor. I took little interest at the time, I was a kid and not interested in political stuff. Only much later did I learn that the County Supervisors of that era were known as the “Five Little Kings.” They wielded immense power. I’ll bet he had some great stories to tell and now I wish I’d known him better.
JimC says
Summers in Pasadena in the early 1950s were probably as close as it gets to an American paradise.
RLT says
I’ll see the new Tarantino, but after “Hateful 8” I have some severe reservations. The only character in that movie who DOESN’T do something horrible to another character on-camera is Daisy–her bad deeds occur only in backstory. We have to trust the words of others on that.
And yet, she’s casually beaten by the male characters throughout the whole movie, and then a few of those men set aside their differences to lynch her as the movie’s climax. There is a distinct note of triumph in the air.
It’s not the first time Tarantino brutalizes a women in his films, but it stands out more because the movie is generally lackluster.
I just can’t get behind that. In my book the dude is a misogynist, and the fact that there are female heroes in his other films don’t change that.
Saddle Tramp says
I am not attempting in any way to be an apologist for Tarantino. I saw Hateful 8 followed immediately by The Revenant the same day at the same theatre when they both premiered. It was kind of overwhelming. Hateful 8 took it too far in some respects for me. As far as misogyny goes, that runs through the Wild West like a Colt 45. Personally, I am not any huge fan of him as his persona is somewhat off putting to me allegations aside. It’s a mixed bag out there. Some love him and some hate him. I do think Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is going to be very good. There is no doubt that he is serious and passionate about filmmaking and not just cranking them out, and is very knowledgeable about film history.
Here’s an interview that Kim Morgan did with Tarantino for Sight and Sound Magazine. I have a copy of it. I highly respect Kim Morgan’s taste on both film and literature. She is extremely knowledgeable. I would not want to go toe to toe with her on either subjects without fully being prepared. As always, each to their own taste and opinion. I hold Kim Morgan’s in very high regard and also as one not to compromise her integrity in my opinion. Quite formidable. Decide for yourself.
https://sunsetgun.typepad.com/sunsetgun/2016/01/tarantino-the-sight-sound-excerpt-.html
JimC says
Kim Morgan is the real deal.
John M Roberts says
Ditto.
Dave Allen says
Hey Saddle Tramp, my comment about Tarantino was made tongue in cheek. I have seen and enjoyed most of his movies and actually like being shocked out of my seat once in awhile.
Jim has hit the nail on the head with this one. As evidenced by all the comments there are many people out there haunted for good or bad by this city.
Saddle Tramp says
Hey Dave. This may well just end up as a ghost comment, but thought I should stamp the record on it. First, I do hope you get to see QT’s possible last film. Secondly, to set the record straight, let us not forget that from reliable sources the early white settlers in Owens Valley pushed out the Indians to marginal at best areas and stole the land and the water for themselves. I am willing to entertain counter refutations of that claim if anyone can do so. It’s a matter of who stole the water last. Granted, the magnitude is much greater concerning L.A., but try explaining that to those natives of Owens Valley back then. I have been stem to stern geographically and every place has it’s ghosts and skeletons in the closet. It’s all a matter of scale. As far as Mulholland goes, he paid severe penance when the dam broke and became a walking dead man, Incidentally, I also love Owens Valley and have traveled and visited there many times. My favorite outdoor photographer Galen Rowel’s Mountain Light Gallery still operates in Bishop long after the tragic death of both him and his wife. I bought a limited collection book of his that they only allowed looking through with white gloves on. The Eastern Sierra’s are a magnificent place not yet overwhelmingly trampled and overpopulated.
The cork is out of the bottle now, but Mono Lake, for example is recovering thanks to some radical biologists. On a recent trip to the Saugus Cafe in Santa Clarita I stopped at the nearby “CASCADES” where Mulholland famously said “ There it is. Take it.” as the the water was released and tumbled down the mountainside. They are remodeling the turnout viewing area right now.The plaque admits to the transgressions to Owens Valley and efforts to remedy that. It can never be enough. My point is who speaks for the Native Americans. Just more manifest destiny at work.
I even went under the bridge and stood atop the massive pipeline to take a photo from it. If anything it is an engineering marvel. Too bad the same cannot be said of the St. Francis Dam…
Ugly Hombre says
I got “Hateful Eight” at the library and paid to much- if it was mine I would have thrown it in the trash. Turned it off about 1/3 into it- garbage..
Also-
I can’t tolerate Hollywood people who kill more people than the black death in their movies and then holler stupid Anti-Constitutional, Bolshevik chit about the 2nd.
I am done with QT.
Sure that will hurt his feelings lol
VBell says
If I can just get off of this LA freeway
Without getting killed or caught…
JimC says
Hey old friend, good to hear from you.
tom says
heads up! the june, 2019 issue of men’s journal has a 3 page article about james ellroy. he now lives in the mile high city…….
JimC says
Thanks for the heads up. On it.
Saddle Tramp says
Well Jim, I did go and see ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. I decided to do it right by seeing it this last weekend in pre-release at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood in 70mm format. This was even before the actual premier on Monday. The Cinerama showed all nine of Tarantino films last weekend which includes this one, probably his last directorial effort. They even had a Madame Tussaud’s wax image of Quentin in a mock set in the lobby. Before the film there was a trivia quiz contest with prizes given out to warm things up. Then, unannounced before hand, Quentin Tarantino himself in the flesh surprises everyone and comes on the stage to introduce the film and also to join us in the audience to watch it with us. This most definitely livened things up. He swore us all to secrecy as to not revealing the last third of the film and the ending. I would go see it just for Brad Pitt’s part and performance. DiCaprio stretches out and is equally great, but Pitt’s character sends it for me. I was also equally smitten by Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Sharon Tate that reserves a special place in my memory. I guess this was also cathartic for me since it brought back the era to life again, but in a very uniquely presented perspective with QT’s own twist. I liked it. The rest of the cast of characters are great too. I would call the film an allegorical tribute to 1969 and Hollywood with all it’s attendant excesses, blindness that is funny as hell at times. Will have to see it again to see what I may have missed the first go round. Jim, it might be worth forgiving (or overlooking) Tarantino for this one and the stunt double. You never start out a serious historical piece with “Once upon a time…” so that gives a hint as to what to expect here. Incidentally, MUSSO & FRANK’S GRILL turned 100 years old this year…
JimC says
Thank you for this. Marilyn really wants to see this, so I think I’ll choke down my animus over the Martin and get to it.
Saddle Tramp says
Hope you both enjoy it. Don’t choke but rather try to take it tongue in cheek. I would not expect it to be as resonant as it was for me with my memories of 1969 as a teenager. It is my understanding that Martin was not concerned at all about it and offered an immediate replacement. A cloud of mystery for sure though. He did buy a very nice Martin as a gift for Jennifer Jason Leigh. The jury is still out, but I would not put it past him. Sacrilegious to you and me, but other great directors have done worse. He is not by any means always to my personal taste, but I do say he is a great director and most that have worked with him absolutely love working with him. I just wish I had his vintage film poster collection. Several of them are in the film…