When I first saw Thom Andersen‘s L.A. Plays Itself at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival (or was it 2005?), I decided that one day I’d see this fascinating cultural-geographical movie-fantasia again with a hip L.A. audience. Here it is six or seven years later with Andersen’s doc playing the American Cinematheque tonight. I have to go. The big screen makes all the difference.
From five or six years ago: “Daniel Plainview (a.k.a., Matthew Wilder) has criticized documentarian Thom Andersen as an ‘inexplicably revered megasnob.’ He also raps him for having said that Point Blank “was liked only by people who hate L.A.” Wilder is alluding to a quote from Andersen’s L.A. Plays Itself, but that’s not the phrasing. The exact line is ‘people who hate L.A. love Point Blank.'”
