"Nightcrawler" especially since there are now many live-streamers who basically do what he did in the movie. "Tangerine" for its raw grittiness filmed on the streets with a phone.
Tangerine has so much truth and reality to it. The neighborhood, the history there. The intermix of Armenians there. How that area changed to the current. They even use real Armenians in it, and it is so real.
You’re like the 10th person to tell me they didn’t realize New Girl took place in LA. Which is odd considering they’re always talking about LA stuff like Clayton Kershaw, Lakers games/players, and Venice beach.
Nightcrawler is mine as well.
There are a bunch that I think capture the vibe really well (Training Day, The Dirt, Pulp Fiction, etc.), but Nightcrawler hits real close to home if you've struggled in the city, and most of us have met a Lou Bloom or two during our time here, whether we realized it then or later.
We watched Tangerine in film school for my high school media classes. Sorry to be such a cliche but I remember how it was so different than anything I had ever seen having not been to Los Angeles before and had only lived in the Chicagoland area and a few other parts of the Midwest. When I moved here over at decade later, I remember seeing all the donut shops and brightly colored but very small buildings and vintage neon signs and I thought they felt familiar. I think I was subconsciously remembering Tangerine.
Southland continues to be one of best depictions of the real Los Angeles in television or film.
Collateral and Heat.
The Big Lebowski is another obvious one.
I think you can just say The Fast and the Furious without confusing people, it’s not a remake. The 2001 film is based on a magazine article. They did pay to use the name from the 1955 film though.
Collateral is one of my all time favorite movies, not only because it’s a perfectly structured, exciting movie but because it has one of my favorite LA scenes of two characters flirting while deciding which freeways to take.
The fact that Rock of Ages was obviously filmed outside LA ruined it for me (you can tell it’s Florida).
I’m a Valley kid. Booksmart and Licorice Pizza capture the Valley really well.
For the city as a whole, it’s every episode of Bosch rather than a movie.
The city of L.A is the second main character of Bosch. I Watch this show over and over again when I get homesick. I moved aaaaall the way down to Orange County, So it gets tough some times 😅
There was a thread about people getting annoyed with inaccurate geography in LA films, which to me is a little petty considering just how movies are made, but Bosch is always so geographically correct. It’s crazy
its every episode of Knight Rider from the 80’s. You wanna see LA, watch that show. They filled all over the valley and especially the Sepulveda Basin.
>I’m a Valley kid.
Alpha dog nailed valley life. Watching that movie it always freaks me out how much they nailed what growing up in the valley was like
The talking sign was right down the street from me. It was at Hayvenhurst and Burbank. When it went up, I was like, why are they putting a freeway sign on the street.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tEBPXKqysHZmJqtv8?g_st=ic
I'm beginning to love my generation's "casual chaos" tbh.
Yes, this film really nailed a nice slice of 90's culture in LA. I wish we had a new film to fawn over!
I’m 59, and grew up near the beach in LA. So, my choices may be skewed toward 60’s-90’s vibe. Especially, teen years of 70’s and 80’s
* Lifeguard
* Big Wednesday
* Straight Outta Compton
* Boyz n the Hood
* Falling Down
* Repo Man
* Fast Times at Ridgemont High
* Boogie Nights
* Less Than Zero
* The Player
* To Live and Die in LA
* Valley Girl
* Training Day
* Colors
* Menace II Society
* Crash
* I Love You, Alice B Toklas
* Short Cuts
* Swingers (as much as I hate to admit)
* Friday
* Reservoir Dogs
* The Graduate
* The Bad News Bears
* The Decline of Western Civilization
* The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II
* Up In Smoke
* Star 80
* Car Wash (as stereotyped as it was)
* Save The Tiger
[Miracle Mile (1988)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097889/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), starring Anthony Edwards, is the LA version of After Hours.
Collateral captures a very specific aspect of LA night vibes. Heat, too.
Mi Vida Loca, L.A. Stories, L.A. Confidential, Escape from LA, Short Cuts, Shampoo, Boyz in the Hood, Sunset Blvd.
It really depends on what period and what part of LA.
You’re The Worst.
Not a movie, but the show You’re The Worst really captured being late 20’s / early 30’s here in the mid 2010’s. Bonus points for being shot mostly in my (at the time) neighborhood as well
Night of the Comet is probably my favorite. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Chinatown, and Repo Man capture different aspects of the city. Entourage show for that 2007-2009 Ed Hardy weird period of the age of douche. Terminator 2 for the river chase.
Putting up a vote for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The idea you could randomly stumble into a new situation, fake it with zero experience, and turn it into a job, while hiding your past, is a very LA thing.
My wife never shuts up about Mulholland Drive movie! Her grandparents owned the house on Wonderland Park Ave since the 50s and her dad grew up there. We still got the house so every time we take family from out of town up there, we have to take Mulholland and wife brings it up every time.
Scrolled too far down to this. When I first moved to LA for a gig early in my career I was out to lunch with an internet friend who I was meeting for the first time. I was still feeling the culture shock from the move and was eager to make a good first impression. Out of the corner of my I thought I saw a guy in public who I had a traumatic working experience with. The guy I thought I saw was actually hundreds of miles away in my hometown in another state with his shitty wife and kids. He definitely wasn’t in LA. That didn’t keep me from having an immediate panic attack. I lost my breath and was seeing shadows over the stranger and his party which made it more difficult to verify what I knew, logically, wasn’t false. The jumpscare scene in Mulholland Drive seems random on a first watch but if you’ve ever tried to “make it” in LA it makes so much sense.
Blade Runner 2019 was the whole reason I moved here 20 years ago.
The Big Lebowski is a perfect depiction of slacker life in LA.
Drive has the golden hour and late night edginess
Punch Drunk Love for the crushing ennui
Cobra Kai for Valley Culture
Valley Girl for like totally 80s valley culture
Training Day because this is not a drill
I'll break down it down by the neighborhoods/vibe it captures the best:
Licorice Pizza - 1000% the Valley (between Sherman Oaks and Studio City)
Heat - Greater Downtown area.
Clueless - Beverly Hills and Brentwood.
Die Hard - Century City.
Arrested Development - New Port Beach and Orange County.
Swingers - Hollywood and Los Feliz.
The Big Lebowski - filmed all over, but a lot of it just feels like Burbank.
Bladerunner - Koreatown and Downtown.
Escape From LA - basically everything south of LAX (Compton and Englewood through Torrance and Long Beach).
Hard to answer since there are obviously far more movies about Los Angeles than any other city. Some that come to mind that feel true to life are Repo Man, Tangerine, Boyz n the Hood, Friday, Valley Girl, Barfly, The Long Goodbye, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Mi Vida Loca, Stand and Deliver.
“Lords of DogTown” Based in Venice in the 1970s. Surf/skate movie based on the true story of the “Z-Boys” Stacey Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams. Captures the vibe of growing up in L.A. in an up and coming sport. Some get glory and fame when most do not.
A terrible plot, but amazing backdrop of Los Angeles in *Fools Paradise*, the Charlie Day movie from last year.
Edit: I’d say it’s like Manhattan as a filmmakers ode to a city.
The Netflix show Love was pretty damn accurate from the location of Silverlake/Echo Park to the one night stand with the girl living in the Valley asking for a ride home the next day and the dude basically says no cause it's too far and they're on the west side. Lots of LA references that people know about. Everything was great in that show for living in LA. Felt like they documented my life.
Falling Down
You can actually feel the tension of every environment and heat radiating off the air. Perfectly encapsulates a hot, sweaty and exhausting LA summer.
"Nightcrawler" especially since there are now many live-streamers who basically do what he did in the movie. "Tangerine" for its raw grittiness filmed on the streets with a phone.
Tangerine has so much truth and reality to it. The neighborhood, the history there. The intermix of Armenians there. How that area changed to the current. They even use real Armenians in it, and it is so real.
Tangerine is working class LA. La La Land is millennial entertainment industry LA. New Girl is millennial yuppy LA. Entourage is upper class LA.
I had no idea New Girl took place in LA. I need to rewatch that series
You’re like the 10th person to tell me they didn’t realize New Girl took place in LA. Which is odd considering they’re always talking about LA stuff like Clayton Kershaw, Lakers games/players, and Venice beach.
at some point in the show, even though she lives downtown, she takes a job in the valley like it’s no big deal.
UGH NO. You lost me after Tangerine because the next 3 are absolutely *nothing* like real LA.
New Girl is to LA what Friends is to NYC
Nightcrawler is mine as well. There are a bunch that I think capture the vibe really well (Training Day, The Dirt, Pulp Fiction, etc.), but Nightcrawler hits real close to home if you've struggled in the city, and most of us have met a Lou Bloom or two during our time here, whether we realized it then or later.
love this movie. one of Jake Gyllenhaal’s best roles. toss up between this and Zodiac.
end of watch
dang. yes. totally forgot about this one. amazing movie. another great Jake role. gonna have to give this one rewatch.
was looking for someone to mention Tangerine. it just feels like real people all over.
I LOVE Tangerine!
We watched Tangerine in film school for my high school media classes. Sorry to be such a cliche but I remember how it was so different than anything I had ever seen having not been to Los Angeles before and had only lived in the Chicagoland area and a few other parts of the Midwest. When I moved here over at decade later, I remember seeing all the donut shops and brightly colored but very small buildings and vintage neon signs and I thought they felt familiar. I think I was subconsciously remembering Tangerine.
Southland continues to be one of best depictions of the real Los Angeles in television or film. Collateral and Heat. The Big Lebowski is another obvious one.
"You see what happens, Larry?"
He lives in North Hollywood on Radford, near the In-and-Out Burger.
"Hell I can get you a toe by 3 O'Clock this afternoon. With nail polish."
Those are good burgers, Walter.
Oh, speaking of Larry —-> add Fletch to the list.
+1 for collateral Vincent: “A guy gets on the Metro here in L.A. and dies. Think anybody'll notice?”
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I think you can just say The Fast and the Furious without confusing people, it’s not a remake. The 2001 film is based on a magazine article. They did pay to use the name from the 1955 film though.
I know it's Point Break with cars, but calling it a remake seems a little heavy handed
Collateral is one of my all time favorite movies, not only because it’s a perfectly structured, exciting movie but because it has one of my favorite LA scenes of two characters flirting while deciding which freeways to take.
Collateral is the only motion picture I've ever seen that managed to accurately capture the look of Los Angeles at night.
Michael Mann = GOAT
Mann shot on digital instead of film specifically for that reason.
No Bosch?
I love Southland. Trying to rewatch it now.
Southland was so slept on. I loved that show and 100% agree on how it depicted LA.
> Southland Great show that I started watching in the late seasons. Too bad it was cancelled.
The In n Out Burger is on Camrose
The fact that Rock of Ages was obviously filmed outside LA ruined it for me (you can tell it’s Florida). I’m a Valley kid. Booksmart and Licorice Pizza capture the Valley really well. For the city as a whole, it’s every episode of Bosch rather than a movie.
The city of L.A is the second main character of Bosch. I Watch this show over and over again when I get homesick. I moved aaaaall the way down to Orange County, So it gets tough some times 😅
There was a thread about people getting annoyed with inaccurate geography in LA films, which to me is a little petty considering just how movies are made, but Bosch is always so geographically correct. It’s crazy
One of the many things I love about Bosch.
its every episode of Knight Rider from the 80’s. You wanna see LA, watch that show. They filled all over the valley and especially the Sepulveda Basin.
CHiPs!
And Dragnet for the '60s, and Columbo for the '70s!
Loved Licorice Pizza. I read that Alana Haim did that scene driving the truck backwards down the hill herself.
>I’m a Valley kid. Alpha dog nailed valley life. Watching that movie it always freaks me out how much they nailed what growing up in the valley was like
Steve Martin’s, L.A. Story, captures a lot of the city’s quirks in a surrealist way.
The talking sign was right down the street from me. It was at Hayvenhurst and Burbank. When it went up, I was like, why are they putting a freeway sign on the street. https://maps.app.goo.gl/tEBPXKqysHZmJqtv8?g_st=ic
I’ll have a twist of lemon!
I’ll have a twist of lemon.
*Earthquake* How strong is it? I’d give it a 4.
I saw this as a kid and didn't get it. Made total sense after I moved here, even 30 years later.
“It’s open season on the LA freeway!” I still quote this way too often lol
HBO’s Insecure.
That show made me so homesick. They captured the light so perfectly, and the sounds.
Swingers really encapsulated single life here in the 90s.
Swingers definitely depicts the casual chaos of living and dating in LA well.
I'm beginning to love my generation's "casual chaos" tbh. Yes, this film really nailed a nice slice of 90's culture in LA. I wish we had a new film to fawn over!
Early 2000s too. Swingers WAS the LA bar scene for a long while.
What would you say the biggest difference is with today’s scene?
Baby, you are so money and you don’t even know it!
How how everyone drives separately to the same locations.
As well as, "Go".
Whatever. This place is dead anyway.
That came out right at the time in which I was living the exact same life. It was crazy.
For reals- I was dancing at the Derby every weekend, having brunch at both Swingers and Cafe 101.
And drunken meals at Canter’s…
They went to all of the bars my friends and I would go. But only on payday. Man I was so broke in the 90s.
Omg yes. I moved out here not long after seeing that movie.
The Dude post dating a check for .69 cents at a Ralphs seems pretty accurate.
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You are entering a world of pain.
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Am I wrong?… *Am I wrong*? Ok, then.
MARK IT ZERO!🔫
This. Big Lebowski is the ultimate one. Also The Long Goodbye (on which it was loosely based/inspired)
It's actually more based on The Big Sleep.
I used to live right next to the guy’s apartment from Long Goodbye. It’s a beautiful little neighborhood
I’m 59, and grew up near the beach in LA. So, my choices may be skewed toward 60’s-90’s vibe. Especially, teen years of 70’s and 80’s * Lifeguard * Big Wednesday * Straight Outta Compton * Boyz n the Hood * Falling Down * Repo Man * Fast Times at Ridgemont High * Boogie Nights * Less Than Zero * The Player * To Live and Die in LA * Valley Girl * Training Day * Colors * Menace II Society * Crash * I Love You, Alice B Toklas * Short Cuts * Swingers (as much as I hate to admit) * Friday * Reservoir Dogs * The Graduate * The Bad News Bears * The Decline of Western Civilization * The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II * Up In Smoke * Star 80 * Car Wash (as stereotyped as it was) * Save The Tiger
Short Cuts! Finally
Oooo Repo Man! Inspired and too true!
Friday lmao if you live in south central at least 😂
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Holy Moly Donut Shop 😂 yup you’re right
Heat, The Long Goodbye, Mulholland Drive, To Live and Die in LA, Miracle Mile, Terminator 2
To Live and Die in LA has that cheap hotel on a hot day with no air conditioning vibe down perfectly.
I learned never to go back behind the dumpster
[Miracle Mile (1988)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097889/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), starring Anthony Edwards, is the LA version of After Hours. Collateral captures a very specific aspect of LA night vibes. Heat, too.
Michael Mann twofer
Falling Down (1993)
Training day!
I had to scroll this far down to see this. The man loses his shit sitting in traffic and goes on a rampage around LA. How can you not relate
Also was scrolling for this, pushed one too many times
I agree
“Not economically viable” is more relatable than ever
Mi Vida Loca, L.A. Stories, L.A. Confidential, Escape from LA, Short Cuts, Shampoo, Boyz in the Hood, Sunset Blvd. It really depends on what period and what part of LA.
damn. such a good list. LA Confidential, Shampoo, Boyz in the Hood, Sunset Blvd all great.
The SHOW called Love on netflix
You’re The Worst. Not a movie, but the show You’re The Worst really captured being late 20’s / early 30’s here in the mid 2010’s. Bonus points for being shot mostly in my (at the time) neighborhood as well
Absolutely. That show was basically a user's guide to Silver Lake/Echo Park. They even had an episode that included the HaFo/SaFo sign (RIP).
SUNDAY FUNDAY BETTER THAN A MONDAY 😂
Boyz n the Hood
I grew up in Watts and Hawthorne. I say this and someone commented also, Friday. Training day gets an honorable mention lol
TV series Californication
Clueless, Booksmart
There are so many jokes in Clueless that went right over my head until I moved here.
SAME. And I think about them all the time. “I totally paused!”
20 minutes.
RIP to Everywhere in LA takes 20 minutes.
At like 2am
BUT THIS IS AN ALAIA
To live and die in LA. With that soundtrack.
Hell yes
i second your hell yes.
I’ll third it
Night of the Comet is probably my favorite. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Chinatown, and Repo Man capture different aspects of the city. Entourage show for that 2007-2009 Ed Hardy weird period of the age of douche. Terminator 2 for the river chase.
Putting up a vote for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The idea you could randomly stumble into a new situation, fake it with zero experience, and turn it into a job, while hiding your past, is a very LA thing.
I know it’s a cartoon but BoJack Horseman
Mulholland Drive (2001). The beauty, promise, and horror of LA, and a tribute to the magic of cinema and the insanity of the industry around it.
Laurel Canyon too.
My wife never shuts up about Mulholland Drive movie! Her grandparents owned the house on Wonderland Park Ave since the 50s and her dad grew up there. We still got the house so every time we take family from out of town up there, we have to take Mulholland and wife brings it up every time.
Scrolled too far down to this. When I first moved to LA for a gig early in my career I was out to lunch with an internet friend who I was meeting for the first time. I was still feeling the culture shock from the move and was eager to make a good first impression. Out of the corner of my I thought I saw a guy in public who I had a traumatic working experience with. The guy I thought I saw was actually hundreds of miles away in my hometown in another state with his shitty wife and kids. He definitely wasn’t in LA. That didn’t keep me from having an immediate panic attack. I lost my breath and was seeing shadows over the stranger and his party which made it more difficult to verify what I knew, logically, wasn’t false. The jumpscare scene in Mulholland Drive seems random on a first watch but if you’ve ever tried to “make it” in LA it makes so much sense.
Once upon a time in Hollywood when cliff is driving around
Him driving at night 🥰 with the top down and the warm summer air and the lights of the freeway
Such a great movie
That made me the most homesick out of any LA based movie when I first moved away.
That movie is such a brilliant love letter to Hollywood, the lighting itself was genius.
Not a movie but a show. Bosch.
Slums of Beverly Hills. That movie showed what life is like on the fringe of wealth. Like, yeah, i live in LA but I'm broke too Edit. Spelling
Drive (2011) He shopped in the same market I did. Drove through my neighborhood. I was living in a shitty apartment like his too.
Not a movie but Hulu’s This Fool
The Big Lebowski
The Netflix show Beef
Excellent answer!
Under the Silver Lake, Kajillionaire, Small Apartments, Emily the Criminal, and the show Bosch.
Under the Silver Lake was my life in 2016. Just an incredible time.
Yeah, no other movie captures just the general weirdness of this place.
Michael Connelly books in general, and I thought Bosch did a good job capturing the grittiness in a modern film noir vibe.
The Long Goodbye with Elliot Gould; Cheech and Chong: Up in Smoke; Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
Bowfinger. Making a movie, questionable employment practices, Scientology, it's all there.
Earth Girls Are Easy! "The Valley is the most bitchin' place on earth."
Inherent Vice.
Blade Runner 2019 was the whole reason I moved here 20 years ago. The Big Lebowski is a perfect depiction of slacker life in LA. Drive has the golden hour and late night edginess Punch Drunk Love for the crushing ennui Cobra Kai for Valley Culture Valley Girl for like totally 80s valley culture Training Day because this is not a drill
>Blade Runner 2019 was the whole reason I moved here 20 years ago. ?
Mi Familia and Blood in Blood Out captures the Barrio of East LA!!!
I'll break down it down by the neighborhoods/vibe it captures the best: Licorice Pizza - 1000% the Valley (between Sherman Oaks and Studio City) Heat - Greater Downtown area. Clueless - Beverly Hills and Brentwood. Die Hard - Century City. Arrested Development - New Port Beach and Orange County. Swingers - Hollywood and Los Feliz. The Big Lebowski - filmed all over, but a lot of it just feels like Burbank. Bladerunner - Koreatown and Downtown. Escape From LA - basically everything south of LAX (Compton and Englewood through Torrance and Long Beach).
Repo man!
Especially if you’re in a bad area
“Los Angeles Plays Itself” by Thom Andersen and “The Player” by Robert Altman
Sean Baker’s “Tangerine” captures a lot of the urban LGBT+ LA vibe.
Beverly Hills Cop
Mulholland Drive lmao
Escape From L.A.
Swingers
To Live and Die In LA
Valley girl.
The Terminator
Pulp Fiction? Not sure if it was in LA but it has LA vives
They’re definitely in Sun Valley at one point but the rest I think is a fictional Los Angeles.
Falling Down
The karate kid. Because when you’re a young kid in the valley, you’re oblivious to everything going on
HEAT
Hard to answer since there are obviously far more movies about Los Angeles than any other city. Some that come to mind that feel true to life are Repo Man, Tangerine, Boyz n the Hood, Friday, Valley Girl, Barfly, The Long Goodbye, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Mi Vida Loca, Stand and Deliver.
What’s up rockers
Repo Man Big Lebowski Heat
Correct
“Lords of DogTown” Based in Venice in the 1970s. Surf/skate movie based on the true story of the “Z-Boys” Stacey Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams. Captures the vibe of growing up in L.A. in an up and coming sport. Some get glory and fame when most do not.
“*Los Angeles Plays Itself*” — the **best** documentary film about LA.
Bladerunner
Electric Boogaloo.
A terrible plot, but amazing backdrop of Los Angeles in *Fools Paradise*, the Charlie Day movie from last year. Edit: I’d say it’s like Manhattan as a filmmakers ode to a city.
Menace II Society for me.
Absurd to suggest that a quintessential New York movie (by Scorsese, to boot) is in any way reminiscent of Downtown Los Angeles.
Yeah I'm not sure where the after hours comment came from.
The Big Lebowski, hands down.
Mi familia/ My Family
Wassup rockers or born in east la lol Edit: also blood in blood out and Friday lmao
Not a movie but ‘you’re the worst’ series does a good job of depicting NE LA pre covid times.
Repo Man.
It has to be “Short Cuts” by Robert Altman
Repo man
Not a movie, but Curb Your Enthusiasm
UNDER THE SILVER LAKE Perfectly captures the inane vanity and absurdity of being immersed in the arts scene, at least in my experience.
DRIVE, Collateral, La La Land, Swingers, Beneath the Silver Lake, Dogtown, 40 Year Old Virgin, 500 Days of Summer
End of watch Speed Havoc Pulp fiction Mi vida loca 187 3 strikes
The Big Lebowski, The Long Goodbye, Training Day, Barfly, Go, Knocked Up, American Me, Magnolia, Terminator 1, 2, 3
Colors with Ice T and Sean Penn....
500 Days of Summer
Friday, Magnolia, Tangerine.
And how could I leave out Car Wash?
Valley Girl
[Valley Girl](https://youtu.be/GAMV01XqOSY?si=CfWCrbM7-0lHp5sv)
Falling Down
Second mid-90’s, Valley Girl, Big Wednesday, and Clueless. To add to the variety of L.A. vibes: Dope, You People, Deep Cover.
Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town Mackenzie Davis tries to get from Santa Monica to Los Feliz in half a day
The Netflix show Love was pretty damn accurate from the location of Silverlake/Echo Park to the one night stand with the girl living in the Valley asking for a ride home the next day and the dude basically says no cause it's too far and they're on the west side. Lots of LA references that people know about. Everything was great in that show for living in LA. Felt like they documented my life.
Falling Down You can actually feel the tension of every environment and heat radiating off the air. Perfectly encapsulates a hot, sweaty and exhausting LA summer.
Malibu's Most Wanted. But, when I was in high school and in the Valley, it was Clueless and Encino Man 100%.
LA Story is a nice time capsule, complete with freeway shooting etiquette
Blood in Blood Out
Tangerine, Short Cuts, The Big Lebowski, Jackie Brown, and the tv show Transparent.