Welcome to L.A. (1976)

Director:

Alan Rudolph

Writer:

Alan Rudolph (writer)

Release Date:

28 April 1978 (West Germany)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

City of the One Night Stands.

Plot:

The lives and romantic entanglements of a group of young adults who have achieved "overnight" success in Los Angeles.

Plot Keywords:

Nudity | Christmas | Alienation | Telephone | Female Frontal Nudity

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award.

Cast

Keith Carradine	...	Carroll Barber
Sally Kellerman	...	Ann Goode
Geraldine Chaplin	...	Karen Hood
Harvey Keitel	...	Ken Hood
Lauren Hutton	...	Nona Bruce
Viveca Lindfors	...	Susan Moore
Sissy Spacek	...	Linda Murray
Denver Pyle	...	Carl Barber
John Considine	...	Jack Goode
Richard Baskin	...	Eric Wood
Allan F. Nicholls	...	David Howard
Cedric Scott	...	Faye
Mike Kaplan	...	Russell Linden (as Mike E. Kaplan)
Diahnne Abbott	...	Jeannette Ross

Runtime:

106 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:12 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Lions Gate Films

Trivia:

John Wayne was originally going to play the part of Carl Barber. However, due to budget overruns and delays, Wayne had to be replaced by Denver Pyle.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Welcome to L.A.

Styles of Affluent-Bright Jade in 1970s American Displayed in Welcome to L.A.

When Karen Hood (Geraldine Chaplin) tells Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) "I love Greta Garbo," he responds with the slightly cryptic "Yeah, she's nice when you're by yourself."

Profound, but too offhand to be a predictable rejoinder. It's very striking, one of the most original of the film.

Especially do you get the flavour of the upper-middle-class world-weary young disappointed in Baskin's lyric:

"At first I loved your sweet complexion, your tawny cheeks and lip confections--they photographed you for your style.

your body held me for a while; you could disguise with such beguile

now lying her remembering it better than it used to be is loneliness, but it doesn't really matter now, I never really loved you much, I guess."

That's from the title song.

From "The Best Temptation of all" there is "there's so many bodies and scenes...so many faces and feelings...dreams...wet tasting dreams

when those silky infatuations come, enticin' me...invitin' me..excitin' me.."

The world of "bodies and pleasures" that was Michel Foucault's vision of the future of sexuality in the first volume of THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY was being lived out in L.A. in particular before he even wrote that it would come to this.

At a Malibu party where Carroll and his wealthy father Carl (marvelously played by Denver Pyle) confront each other, Carl's mistress Nona (Lauren Hutton) spends some stylized, posturing time with Carroll up the stairs overlooking the stylized party, the kind of party in stark white stylized modern LA houses where being comfortable must be impossible, and being controlled is an impossible necessity; and he says to her "Do you really care about that old man?" She says, knowing it won't do to say anything "less," "He sure seems to care a lot about me."

Earlier, before Carroll sees Susan (Viveca Lindfors) for the first time since his return, she says on the telephone "don't you want to see me?" and he says "I've seen you." As the older woman, somewhat desperately clinging to an unshared wish, she says "I've seen you too. I liked it."

To the love-and/or sex-starved real estate salesgirl Anne Goode (Sally Kellerman), Susan says, when she makes the arrangements for Carroll's apartment, "I pictured you plump and tiny with curly black hair--AGGRESSIVE. And here you are--soft and blonde and pretty." Anne, always trying to hard to please: "And here you are so beautiful."

Kellerman drives Carradine to his new Silverlake digs.

She says "this is Hollywood. I just love it. I don't know a thing about it, but I love it...(long pause)....does that sound like a line?...I didn't mean it to..I guess everything sounds like a line these days...Shameless, aren't I?...what are you thinking?....

Carradine: "About your shame."

************************************************************************

"People deceive themselves here, don't you think? Yes. And that's how they fall in love. And then, when everything is over, it's the other person that gets deceived. Am I right? Yeah. Van Nuys Boulevard...(long pause)..I don't need to be loved by anyone...I don't mind waiting...it's how you wait that's important, anyway..I think.. but everyone gets deceived...don't they..."

These are the opening lines of the film, which Chaplin intones in a cab going through L.A., riding all over it as she does every day, all dressed up in fur and pearl earrings and hat all for herself's own formality in the anonymity of a taxi ride.

I knew a number of people like this in 1976 and 1977. They were over-sophisticated and living in the strange limbo between the volatile, but vital 60's and the beginning of the carnage and sterization that began to open its fully tarnished flower with the Reagan era and has escalated to the deafening roar we have only 24 years later.

Bars were full of people who weren't on cellphones all the time.

They weren't ever on cell phones--even the ones you can still see.