California Streamin'

Visions of a fragmented state converge and diverge in LACMA's latest film series.

When trying to make broad, sweeping generalizations about California culture, it's difficult not to think of the ridiculous hoopla that went on in the media in the early '90s as soon as it was decided to name the current group of youths "Generation X" (and describe them in broad terms). You'd hear a lot of comments like: "They're called X because...um...they're defined by being...impossible to define." One could make similar claims about "California culture," which is probably more fragmented than that of any other state. Is it to be found in the movie business in Hollywood? The Castro district of San Francisco? The life of an immigrant family who live six to a room and do backbreaking physical labor to try and ensure a better future for their children? The war-zone mentality of the LAPD? What to make of the state that inspired the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'" and Ice-T's "L.A.: Home of the Bodybag"? Can it be summed up in any terms, ever?

The jury's probably still out on that one (though if it's an L.A. jury, chances are it'll return with the wrong verdict anyway), but that doesn't mean people aren't going to try. The latest cinematic attempt, LACMA's California Cultures Film Series, at the very least outs some seldom-seen views of the state up there for all to contemplate. Of the 17 features and two shorts showing, few are widely available, and one has never been seen before by an audience. The general goal of the series, according to film department director Ian Birnie, is to "capture some sense of what films have said about California," though he worries about the commercial aspect of taking on such a wide subject, noting that film series that go in so many directions usually don't do too well. (They aren't at the bottom of the barrel, however. That honor goes to musical revivals.)

The first night is free of charge, kicking off with the documentary Shotgun Freeway: Drives Through Lost L.A. While not necessarily a striking piece of filmmaking, this serves as a good introduction to both the series and L.A. in general, interspersing cheesy, dated documentary footage from years gone by with colorful interviews with the likes of James Ellroy (apparently while sneaking into someone's home), Joan Didion (recalling how she realized that congested freeways were a great communal experience), Buck Henry (in the Hollywood Wax Museum), and John Milius (unapologetically sucking on a stogie in a no-smoking building while recalling his days as a surfer). Following the documentary, stick around not only to meet codirectors Morgan Neville and Harry Pallenburg but also for a second feature, Jacques Demy's only L.A.-based film, The Model Shop (1969), unavailable on video and rarely seen.

The next day is the obligatory film about the movie business, John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust, a film set in 1930s Hollywood and so often referenced in relation to negative Tinseltown stereotypes that one would assume it to be a classic. Not so. In fact, it's damn near unwatchable, mainly a series of vignettes involving uninteresting and unlikable neurotics -- Karen Black as a demented would-be starlet, William Atherton as a straight-arrow set designer in love with her for no obvious reason, Billy Barty as a drunken gambler, Richard Dysart as an uncaring studio executive, Burgess Meredith as an aging vaudevillian turned tonic salesman, and Donald Sutherland as a troubled, unloved rich boy with the amusing-in-retrospect name of Homer Simpson. Much has been made of the climactic riot scene, which may have seemed novel when Nathanael West first wrote it back in the '30s, but it's just plain goofy when viewed today (L.A. trashed by an angry mob? Surely that couldn't happen!), especially since Schlesinger seems so set on trying to shock and disturb that he pushes the absurdity envelope a little too far. Those who can sit all the way through it will be rewarded with the presence of cinematographer Conrad Hall, in an interview with screenwriter Robert Towne.

South Central L.A. is represented in the films of Charles Burnett, whose rarely shown Killer of Sheep, made in the hood when John Singleton was in grade school, is a striking example of Americanized neorealism, and an obvious influence on the recent critically acclaimed surprise George Washington, with its images of railroad tracks, rubber masks, head wounds, and kids at play. Less interesting is Burnett's 1990 To Sleep With Anger, a family drama that only proves that no ethnic group has a lock on mundane, boring lives, and that black filmmakers are fully capable of making equally dull films about them. Also showing that night is a 1995 short by Burnett entitled When It Rains.

But the series isn't all just about L.A. The Bay Area gets represented in a night of "Politics and Protest," featuring the documentaries Berkeley in the Sixties and the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk -- recently restored to a 35mm print -- the latter serving as a reminder of just how virulent public homophobia has been in recent decades. Thieves Highway, set in San Francisco, is the only film noir on the program (probably because LACMA just did a whole series on California noir), chosen primarily because of its heavy emphasis on the plight of immigrant produce workers, according to Birnie. And speaking of immigrants, Latinos get their due with a 20th-anniversary screening of Zoot Suit, in a 70mm print just recently unearthed by Universal.

The two bona fide classics of the series originate with quintessentially Californian author John Steinbeck, who saw two of his best-known books transformed into two well-loved movies. There's John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, highly acclaimed despite being an extremely watered-down version of the book (and in this critic's opinion, featuring an overrated lead performance by Henry Fonda). Then there's East of Eden, which has been unavailable on video for some time because of rights disputes with the Steinbeck estate. LACMA negotiated for nine months in order to obtain permission to show it, and it was worth the struggle. The setting may be California (Monterey), but the theme of the wild child unloved by his father is timeless, and young ladies who fancy Brad Pitt should come and check out James Dean's original model of pretty boy as method actor. For a look at Steinbeck himself, there's a free screening of a made-for-cable documentary about him from Shotgun Freeway codirector Morgan Neville.

Stockton gets seen on the screen in John Huston's 1972 Fat City, which will also feature a special guest appearance by star Susan Tyrrell. Then there's the world premiere of The Legend of Teddy Edwards, a look at the legendary octogenarian jazzman from Central Avenue, which will be followed six days later by a live concert by Edwards at LACMA's main plaza.

Most interesting, however, are the four films that close out the festival, some more recent entries that might be called the "New Classics" if TNT had the creativity or the balls to show them on basic cable. Broken into two double features on the theme of "Living on the Edge," they depict both what Birnie calls the "unusual amount of permissiveness" found in the Sunshine State and the apocalyptic paranoia that has caused prominent Californians as diverse as Charles Manson, Ronald Reagan, and Coolio to talk about how we're living in the biblical End Times. Miracle Mile is in many ways the quintessential L.A. cult film of the late 20th century, using very specific Wilshire corridor locations in its catastrophic tale (Volcano, a megabudget L.A. in-joke, may some day be appreciated on the same level): Anthony Edwards, a resident of Park La Brea, meets the girl of his dreams (Mare Winningham), only to discover inadvertently that nuclear war may be approximately an hour away. Worth watching for anyone who's ever wanted to see a helicopter crash into the La Brea Tar Pits. Playing on the same bill is Strange Days, Kathryn Bigelow's look at L.A. on millennium eve. While amusingly dated (the New Year 2000 street party depicted looks far more fun than anything that actually went down in our Y2K-paranoid town), the film is relatively unseen simply because it isn't that good, starring as it does that gaping void of on-screen charisma known as Ralph Fiennes opposite a flaky and annoying Juliette Lewis.

"Living on the Edge," and the festival, end on a major downer with two films about sickness: Todd Haynes' Safe, in which Julianne Moore suddenly begins developing allergies to everything in her immediate environment, and Kirby Dick's Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, a documentary about a cystic fibrosis survivor who lived about 30 years longer than he should have thanks to such radical therapies as nailing his dick to a board. Believe it or not, his self-torture is actually easier to watch then the montage of phlegm hawking. Both films are highly recommended, though some audience members may find them hard to sit through.