It’s always been funny how small Los Angeles feels in movies. Most movies shrink everything about the city, right down to its name, which is almost always shortened to L.A. Yes, the initials are on the many hats and shirts we Angelenos wear but I prefer to spell out the name of the city because it truly captures its essence, its origins, its culture, and its magnitude.
That frame swipe or blur that gets a character from downtown to Santa Monica without their attitude changing even a little, is laughable. If you’re driving between those points, you’re stopping for coffee, planning your day, and getting cut off in traffic; and that’s when traffic is actually moving in. By the time you reach your destination, you’re noticeably different than when you began the journey. This is why distance in Los Angeles affects everything from your social life to your professional life. You may pass on a job, a date, even break up a seemingly good relationship if the distance doesn’t work.
Distance in Los Angeles is relative
It’s not about the number of miles in between two points. Many years ago, a co-worker who’d recently moved to Los Angeles from Arizona heard a few of us complaining about having to drive to another part of town for a work event. He added, “I didn’t think that place was that far away, how many miles is it from here?”
We had not calculated the actual miles but knew how long the trip would take and answered, “It’s at least an hour or more by freeway.” Miles are nearly meaningless in a Los Angeles commute. Depending on the time of day and the direction you have to travel, five miles can take five minutes or 35 minutes. And the longer the trip, the more you learn about the city, the more eventful the drive, and the more pertinent the trip is to the rest of your day.
The drive is the story in Los Angeles
A major part of living in Los Angeles is reacting and adjusting to movement. These days, a car is not as vital as it once was, but you are still required to travel long distances. Car drivers complain about bicycle lanes, bicyclists deal with cars cutting them off at right turn lanes, pedestrians have close calls with cars every day, and scooters, well, scooters frankly ruin it for everyone. Who would’ve thought drivers and bicyclists would find unity in despising scooters.
Movies are about emotion and Angelenos experience nearly everything in a single drive. There’s the anticipation we feel when we get in the car, the frustration from traffic, the joy of music blasting out our speakers or hearing another driver with similar musical tastes. Then there’s the concentration required to pull up mental maps as we abandon the freeway or swing an impulsive right turn to get around whatever is blocking the road.
Of course, I understand that movies must shrink the city to tell a cohesive story. But we know the truth about our city, a city that requires constant movement and where adventure, joy, and character-building, all happen between point A and point B.