Los Angeles Plays Itself

In the film, Andersen argues that the influence of Hollywood overshadows Los Angeles, and is one of the reasons the city's name is frequently abbreviated.^[4] He makes the case that directors have a distaste for modernist architecture, which is regularly used for villains' homes.^[4]

The documentary also explores the early history of Los Angeles in film,^[5] often as a stand in for other cities like Chicago that were bigger in the 1930s, as well as how cinema managed to capture long-gone immigrant enclaves that were razed to make room for downtown skyscrapers in the 1960s and 70s.

Andersen stated that the film idea occurred to him after a lecture he gave at the California Institute of the Arts, where he talked about his objections to L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson's 1997 Academy Award-winning neo-noir adapted from James Ellroy's novel about Los Angeles in the 1950s.^[4]

Consisting almost entirely of clips from other films with narration, the film was not initially released commercially as it was only seen in screenings presented by Andersen, occasional presentations at American Cinematheque and copies distributed via filesharing and other person-to-person methods. In 2014, it was announced that the film would finally be released officially by Cinema Guild.^{[6][7][8][9][10]}