Over the weekend on the streaming service Kanopy, in installments, I watched the massive documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself. Released in 2003 and with a running time of nearly three hours (how many documentaries have an intermission?) Los Angeles Plays Itself is a video essay and love letter to the filmmaker Thomas Andersen’s home city.  Utilizing films clips from movies as famous as Chinatown and Sunset Boulevard  but also as obscure as independent art films from marginalized communities and early 70s horror films such as Messiah of Evil  Andersen focuses on the distortion and misrepresentations of his beloved home by the film industry over the decades. The film also carries Andersen’s undisguised feelings about the powers that be in the city and the destruction of local color and communities that the filmmaker mourns in their passing.

One of the amazing things about this film is the sheer size and scope of identifying filming locations from iconic movies throughout the history of cinema. Some are already well know, such as the Bradbury building whose use as a location stretches back to the 40s, but also other mansions and works of architectural art that has severed as the homes of bad guys, corporate raiders, and even as Deckard’s apartment in Blade Runner.

With a sharp eye and sarcastic tone Andersen exposed the illusions of Hollywood and the urban myths about Los Angeles that the movies have spread far and wide. For fans of film this is worth seeing.