They told me stories, took me to movies, and encouraged me to read books. They force-fed me narrative lines. I grew up in the film noir era in the film noir epicenter. I read Confidential, Whisper, and Lowdown magazines before I learned to ride a two-wheel bike. My father called Rita Hayworth a nympho. My mother wetnursed dipsomaniacal film stars. My father pointed out the twoway mirrors at the Hollywood Ranch Market and told me they were spy holes to entrap shoplifters and disrupt homosexual assignations. I saw Plunder Road and The Killing and learned that perfectly planned heists go bad because daring heist men are selfdestructive losers playing out their parts in a preordained endgame with authority.
Johnnie Ray was a fruit. Lizabeth Scott was a dyke. All jazz musicians here hopheads. Tom Neal beat Franchot Tone halfdead over a blonde cooze named Barbara Payton. The Algiers Hotel was a glorified “fuck pad.” A pint-size punk named Mickey Cohen ran the L.A. rackets from his cell at McNeil Island. Rin Tin Tin was really a girl dog. Lassie was really a boy dog. L.A. was a smog-shrouded netherworld orbiting under a dark star and blinded by the glare of scandal-rag flashbulbs. Every third person was a peeper, prowler, pederast, poon stalker, panty sniffer, prostitute, pillhead, pothead, or pimp. The other two-thirds of the population were tight-assed squares resisting the urge to peep, prowl, poon stalk, pederastically indulge, pop pills, and panty sniff. This mass self-denial created a seismic dislocation that skewed L.A. about six degrees off the central axis of planet Earth.
I knew an inchoate version of this at age 9. I knew it because I came from L.A. and my parents told me stories and lies. I knew it because I read books and went to movies and eschewed the gospel of the Lutheran Church in favor of a scandal-rag concordance. I knew it because my mother was murdered on June 22, 1958, and they never got the guy who did it.
My mother’s death corrupted my imagination and reinforced my sense that there were really two L.A.’s. They existed concurrently. I bebopped around in the cosmetically wholesome Outer L.A. I conjured the Secret L.A. as a hedge against Outer L.A. boredom.
The Secret L.A. was all SEX. It was the shock and titillation of a child slamming up against the fact that his life began with fucking. It was my father’s profane laughter and scandal-sheet deconstructionism. The sheets rendered beautiful people frail and somehow available. Common lusts shaped and drove them. Their pizzazz and good looks made them more and less than you. If the wind blew a certain way on a certain night, you could get lucky and have them.
The Secret L.A. was all CRIME. It was Stephen Nash and the kid he slashed under the Santa Monica Pier. It was Harvey Glatman and the cheesecake models he strangled. It was Johnny Stompanato shanked by Lana Turner’s daughter two months before my mother’s death.
CRIME merged with SEX on 6/2 2/5 8. My Secret L.A. obliterated the Outer L.A.
I’ve been living in it for thirty-nine years. I’ve reconstructed L.A. in the ’50s in my head and on paper. I did not come on vacation or go home on probation. I lived in the literal L.A. and dreamed my own private L.A. I left the literal L.A. sixteen years ago. It was simply too familiar. I left the Secret L.A. one book and one memoir ago. I made a conscious decision to drop L.A. as a fictional locale. I had taken it as far as I could.
I’ve been jerked back to L.A. ’53. A man made a movie and reinstated my L.A. life sentence.
Curtis Hanson is serving life himself. His sentence carries binding permanent-residence clause and a work-furlough waiver. He’s got ten five-year hash marks on his jail denims and the beach pad characteristic of all successful L.A. lifers. He splits town to make films and comes back to L.A. rejuvenated. He’s serving his life sentence voluntarily.
He made Losin’ It in Calexico, California, and Mexicali, Mexico. He made The Bedroom Window in Baltimore and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle in Seattle. He made The River Wild in Montana and Oregon, and Bad Influence in present-day L.A. It’s the Faust tale retold for yuppies and hipsters and a symphony in bold colors and smog-kissed pastels. It doesn’t look like any other L.A. film.