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GELFAND’S WORLD - The 2026 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books happened over the weekend. Except for one little faux pas that may be more indicative of modern reality than grift, it was a joyful affair on the usual warm and sunny southern California day. The attendance was in the zillions (well, thousands at least) and there were more panel discussions, performances, and book sales pavilions than it was possible for any one human being to experience.
So, as previously, I chose a few panel discussions that fit my own interests. Here’s one that ought to catch your interest: 101 Best L.A. Movies.
The panel consisted of 4 L.A. Times staffers including Times film editor Joshua Rothkopf, along with Amy Nicholson, Mark Olsen, and Glenn Whipp. They all participated in a contest among 17 critics and authors to determine the 101 movies that best exemplified an L.A. film.
What is an L.A. film? Nicholson explained that it could be a film about L.A. or just a film made in L.A. In practice, the films that got chosen seem to be both in L.A. and about L.A. and typically about some aspect of our history, culture, crime, or vices.
You can find your own version of the list online right here, although it counts down from number 101 instead of starting from number 1.
So what movie did this august panel choose as the number one film?
Chinatown
I have a couple of thoughts about this choice. My first thought is that this film has been lauded for the Jack Nicholson performance and for its allusion to the water wars (see an account here) and the story of William Mulholland but I found it a bit icky and frankly a bit dull. It’s just not my idea for the ultimate Los Angeles film. On the other hand (and my second thought on the matter), I happen to live a couple of blocks from one of the shooting locations, and we like to mention this fact to visitors.
OK, it was necessary to get the first place winner down on paper. What comes next? Let’s just list the next group starting with number 2:
Sunset Boulevard
Mulholland Drive
Blade Runner
Clueless
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Boogie Nights
Singin’ In the Rain
Double Indemnity
Killer of Sheep
Two quick observations and then I’ll get on to a less wordy discussion of the next two panels I attended at the festival.
My first thought is to comment on what L.A. isn’t. It isn’t the movie industry, anymore than Chicago is hog butcher to the world or New York is just Broadway. Even a cursory history of Los Angeles would reveal that lots of other things have happened here and continue to happen here. The invention of commercial aviation occurred in the brain of Donald Douglas and developed in Long Beach and El Segundo and eventually all over the southern end of the state. And while this was going on, Los Angeles County held its position as the number one agricultural county. And while this was going on, the city was instrumental in theoretical physics and medicine and an amazing level of aerospace engineering. Remember the Apollo capsules and space shuttles we were celebrating a week ago?
But for some reason, directorial reminiscing on the disappointments of starlets just off the bus from Des Moines are what caught the eyes of these critics, presumably because the topic is what caught the eye of Hollywood writers and producers, not to mention the directors who (once in a while) made some particularly good movie.
What was missing from this list, at least through my eyes, were the movies that took Los Angeles from a small settlement and made it into an internationally recognized location that was dubbed “Hollywood,” even though no such place existed as a real city. And that moment was occurring from roughy 1911 through the ‘20s, just at the moment when the Dominguez Hills airshow stimulated the development of aviation, and shortly before Walter Knott opened his berry stand.
So here’ my little sermon. I’m sick to death of the idea that human perversity and men taking advantage of young women is somehow peculiar to the movie industry of Los Angeles, California. I once wrote up a french film from the 1920s (about a new department store) that included each and every theme about males harassing females as in any modern film. Or I could just type the words Eric and Swalwell, and round them off with two other words, Trump and Epstein.
Still, there are a lot of good movies on this list, and I expect that a movie marathon showing all of them would be worth the price.
By the way, the panel did allow as how there were lots of movies that couldn’t make the list due to the limit of 101, and somebody mentioned Crash, which was made two blocks in the other direction from where I live. (Basically, San Pedro is a relatively cheap place for productions to do location filming.)
To continue with what was missing: There is nothing in the list by D.W. Griffith, even though he shot lots of one-reelers right here along the sea cliffs and at the missions and up in Sierra Madre, and going up the road that we call the California Incline in Santa Monica, even as he visited the old homes and one notable resort hotel in Pasadena. There are several reasons that the center of the film industry moved from New York City to New Jersey to Los Angeles early in the 20th century, but Griffith is identifiably the one who took advantage of all those different kinds of scenery.
Here are two sci-fi classics that belong in a list of Los Angeles films, both from the 1950s:
The War of the Worlds (alien spacecraft destroy downtown L.A., including the City Hall)
Them (giant ants infest the L.A. River and the storm tunnels that feed the river)
By the way, it’s a small thing but there is a sub-genre of films and television which celebrate the California Institute of Technology, including the aforementioned War of the Worlds and of course the television comedy The Big Bang Theory.
To finish this section: Nothing by Mary Pickford or Douglas Fairbanks? How about Laurel and Hardy, working the laughs in the neighborhoods surrounding Culver City? How about Chaplin in The Kid? Harold Lloyd hanging from the hand of a clock, high above the city streets of Downtown Los Angeles?
An anecdote: I got off an airplane in Munich and took the shuttle train to the downtown station. There in that station was a bookstore, and on the wall of that bookstore was a poster showing that very same scene of Harold hanging from the clock. I seriously doubt that a lot of Munich residents have seen the whole film, but everybody knows that image. That my friends, may be the most iconic image of Los Angeles on film.
By the way, these words have not been put here to attack or even criticize Saturday’s panel. The panel and its audience were enthusiastic about their own movie favorites and everyone had a good time whispering loudly at each other. It was kinda sorta intellectual fervor coming to life. Everybody was having fun and enjoyably disagreeing.
Curiously, or maybe not so curiously, I went to a second discussion on film – or in this case filmmaking – that was moderated by the very same Times film editor. He interviewed a celebrated cinematographer (that’s the guy who determines the lighting and determines which lens is to be used, and finally how the camera is to be pointed, turned, and focused.) In brief, the cinematographer makes the film, except for the sound acquisition and editing parts. The gentleman in question seems to have been knighted somewhere along the line, because he was listed as Sir Roger Deakins.
He also has a remarkable list of movies to his credit, which you can find here.
Or to put it another way, “HE MADE FARGO?”
Also 1917, Blade Runner 2049, and No Country for Old Men
This was one of the better interviews, possibly because Deakins has a lot of stories to tell, and the moderator asked the right questions and let the storytelling go.
Deakins has done a book which includes on-location stories combined with descriptions of how some of the more original shots were made. By the way, Deakins likes to operate the camera himself, unlike the majority of modern day cinematographers. His new book, Reflections on Cinematography, can be found here.
All in all, this was a fun discussion.
But you can’t do a Times Festival of Books without a panel on the history and future of government. (Well you don’t, but I have to.) There was a chance to see the esteemed reporter Michael Hiltzik chair a panel called “Not all that Glitters,” which included authors Brittany Friedman, Danny Goldberg, and Eric Lichtblau. They talked about the history of racism in these parts, particularly in the LAPD, and in the LAPD, chiefs Parker and Gates. Friedman talked about a doctor who worked for the California prison system and got away with experimenting on prisoners.\
And what would the Festival of Books be without wandering the USC campus and visiting some of the (hundreds) of tents full of books and their authors? And in that final trek, I ran into author and historian Nathan Marsak, whose recent book on Bunker Hill and the Angel’s Flight railway was on display. You can find an article about Marsak and the making of the book here, and you can find the book Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir here.
Finally, that little faux pas. When I drove up to the campus area and approached the place I used to park, there was a sign, “Event Parking $40.” That’s about twice what it was merely a year ago, and about twice what it was when I visited the Shrine for another even only a month or so ago. This is some serious price gauging. So I drove on and eventually found an entrance to the USC campus, where there was parking available in one of their giant parking structures. It was $25. Maybe this is now the going rate in the downtown area, but it certainly has gone up quite a bit in a short period of time.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
