 7 o'clock, and we thank you all for being here tonight and joining us for our author talk, Mick LaSalle, Dream State, and talking about his new book. And we want to thank Hay Day for being such an amazing partner with us. This is part of our Summer Stride series. Summer Stride is not just for kids, it's for all ages. So do your 20 hours reading, get the iconic San Francisco Public Library tote bag with the beautiful art from Kailani Juanita. We want to welcome you to the Eloni Tribal lands and acknowledge the many Ramiutish Eloni Tribal groups and families as the rifle stewards of the lands in which we reside. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations with whom we live together. The library encourages you to learn more about first person culture and land rights and are committed to hosting events and providing educational resources on these topics. And you could find a great resource list and reading list in that link that I put in the chat box. And some upcoming library news. We have more of the Chronicle Total SF team. Peter Hartlop and Heather Knight will be joining us on August 24th for the book, The End of the Golden Gate. And also joining us that night will be Daniel Handler and Gary Kamaya. And this is a new book series, literary series that we have at SFEL. It's going to be quarterly curated by us and Total SF. Another literary campaign that we have is called On the Same Page. And this one has been going on for many, many years. So please join us. It's a bi-monthly read for July and August. We're encouraging you to read Red at the Bone. Again, Total SF. We love the Chronicle. They are putting on a film series. And it is our Thursday, it's Thursday at noon film series. Also a series that has been going on for so many years. I think it's our longest running program as San Francisco Public. So Thursday at noon film series, San Francisco in the movies. And August 25th, I thought you all in attendance might like this one. This is a partnership with SF, Neon and the Tenderloin Museum. And we'll be talking about Neon in the cinema. And a program I really want to promote and get a lot of folks out for. I don't know if many of you know that San Francisco Public Library has a jail and reentry services department. I am always proud of the work that they do there. So they serve San Francisco prisons in person, providing books and resources. And then we have reentry services as well. So in alignment with that department, August 29th, the amazing Redessa Jones will be talking about her work she does with women's prisons. And then October, September, October on the same page, the undocumented Americans. All right, here we go. So without further ado, tonight we have Mick LaSalle, the film critic from San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. He is the author of Precensorship Hollywood, Complicated Women and Power in Precode Hollywood, and Dangerous Men, Precode Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man. Both books were books of the month on Turner Classic Movie. And Complicated Women was the basis of a TCM documentary narrated by Jane Fonda. His book, Dream State, his new book, Dream State, California Movies, is out now. And you can pick that up at your local library or your favorite independent bookstore or order directly from Hay Day. So tonight we're going to open it up to Mick and, you know, any questions. He's open to taking those at any time and I'll be helping to facilitate that. So you can use the question and answer function or you can put them in the chat and I'll try to keep up. The Q&A is your best bet. And our YouTube viewers out there, we welcome you as well and encourage you to also put those questions out there. All right, Mick, all you. All right, it's all me. Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining me. I see that we have 252 participants. That's that's a lot and it's much appreciated. This this book is about California and the movies. And it's not about it's not about every time everybody ever mentioned California in a movie or anytime California appeared in the movie or anytime California was depicted in a movie because that would be the history of the movie. So it's about it's about specific things. It's about the California ideas that have made their way across the United States. And it's about what the idea of California has meant across the United States. So it's about sort of the impact of California through movies on American culture. So that's what the book is about. And it it was it was kind of a difficult book to write. I don't know if you're interested in this, I'll just tell you. By the way, just to the point of whether you're interested in this and not. It is very easy to to shift the conversation to something you're interested in. You just ask me a question. As soon as you ask a question, boom, we just change the subject. OK, because that I much prefer to do that. I think it's just better to interact. And I think that a lot of what I want to say will probably just happen naturally over the course of a conversation. So and I can't see you and I wish I could. But by you participating in that way, you know, I could I could kind of get into contact with you, which is what I would prefer. OK, so this was a hard book to write. And it was a hard book to write much more. It was hard psychologically than it was the actual writing. I said, I'm not sure you're interested in this stuff, but I'll just tell you because I find it vaguely interesting. The other books I've written, two books about pre-coded and then I wrote a book about French actresses called The Beauty of the Real about came out nine years ago. They were books of advocacy. They were books where I became really obsessed with a subject and really desperately was intent on putting it over. I wanted, you know, when I got my my publishing deal for complicated women, my first book, I got it after four years of getting rejected, four years. And in fact, it was four years and four months. And the way publishing is, it's sort of like pulling up. It's like pulling a slot machine. You know, if you stop after four years and two months, you've got nothing. You know, you either hit it or you don't. But when I finally got that deal and I thought how well-placed I was writing for a major newspaper, TCM already wanted to do the documentary. And still I was having so much trouble getting public, getting a publishing deal. It occurred to me that I had just tremendous responsibility towards these women. And so that I had to make the book good because, you know, with nonfiction, I don't know if you know this, but you write the book after you get the deal. You write a few chapters, you tell the book and then you get the deal. And I thought I have to do it by these women because if I couldn't get a book published, nobody's going to be able to get a book published. So it was really like that. And that's feeling of having to put other people over was the guiding principle in my first three books. This wasn't like that. And this book wasn't a history in any way. This book was a book of ideas. And with ideas, you can't. You it's kind of like trying to walk across the desert. You can't possibly bring enough water for the whole trip. You have to have enough water to get started. And then you have to have some kind of faith and maybe some kind of plan to get more water as you go along. And in this case, water is ideas. I would start every chat. I'd start the book and then I'd start every chapter, not knowing where it was going to go and counting on the possibility that I would continue to get ideas. And, you know, horrible. That is like thinking, am I going to get an idea? It's it's pretty awful because you never know when you're going to run out. And and so and then and if you run after five thousand words, that's fine because then you have a nice big fat article. And if you run out after 30,000 words, you're dead because you don't have anything. But if you run out after 60,000 words, which is what I did, I ran out after 60,000 words, that's fine. I have a book. And so when I got to it, OK, I got a book now. We're done because it was so. Mentally stressful to write the book because it was just like when, you know, when will I go dry? I also wasn't sure if any of the chapters were any good. Like all my other books I've I've rewritten many times because I I think they're great. And then I read them and I realized they're not that good, you know? And but in this case, when I went and I was thinking of like not even finishing the book, I thought I have to I said, I got to stop. This is going nowhere. But then I reread it and I thought it was OK. I thought this is actually pretty good. And I have my wife read it. She liked it. And so I kept on going and I was glad I was glad I did. And so I think it turns out OK. But, you know, it's not one it's one of those things. If I'm talking like about precode movies, I could say to you this book is really good because it's a book about precode movies. But if it's a book of my own ideas, my ideas about how good my ideas are is pretty useless. So I would much more believe anything anybody wants to say about the book than what I would say about it. But I talked about things that I found interesting, at least. And I and and I hope you will, too. By the way, Anissa, just jump in if anybody has a question that you think that would be in any way vaguely interesting. And I have a couple of questions already. Yeah, I did put in the chat box if anyone wants to raise their hand and actually ask the question in person, please do. So I have some New York questions. One is, was California or New York the first place where movies were made and what would it how much different would it be? If you think do you think California would be now if the film industry had been based in New York? Oh, well, OK. So I guess I mean, I guess movies were I mean, movies were invented simultaneously in in a couple of different places. I mean, you had the Lumiere brothers in France had their own camera that they invented. And and but you also had Edison. I guess I suppose Edison was working out of New Jersey. And then when he set up his studio, he set it up in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In fact, one of the reasons why the movie business went to California. Is because Edison was a very litigious guy and he had had this idea that because he invented this is like an amazing, this is like incredible. He had this idea that because he invented the camera and invented the projector, he invented movies. Therefore, every movie that was made by somebody other than him was an infringement on copyright, which is kind of insane, right? But as a result, just to get get away. I mean, you know, they would do things they would say, OK, well, he has sprocket holes here in the film. We're going to put sprocket holes there in the film and try to evade his copyright that way or his patent that way. But the best thing to do was to just get away from the guy because the country was smaller. It was bigger, you know, transportation being what it was. So going to California, which was like as far away from New Jersey as you can get, a good way of getting away from Edison. Eventually, the courts, you know, ruled in favor of of of the independence. But that's one of the reasons. How would movies have been different? It's hard to say. But certainly, I suppose just the landscapes of California have just have influenced the kinds of movies that get made. I mean, you could wonderful thing about Los Angeles, especially Los Angeles in that period is that you had urban settings. But you also you also had the countryside very nearby. And that countryside was just excellent for coming up with westerns. And so there were a lot of possibilities. I think movies would have been more visual if they stayed in in New Jersey. Now, eventually, of course, the movies would have made their way anywhere. But it's true that the movie if the movie business had been grounded in the East Coast, it probably would have looked a little different. Anything else, Anissa? By the way, you just have to ask me about the book. You can ask me about anything because I'm here. We're hanging out. Anything you want to ask is fine. The same person asked, were movies actually made in France first? Oh, well, I get some of the oldest films. I mean, I I don't I don't think they will put this way, the Edison experiments. There were Edison Edison has experiments going back to like 1889. They're actually moving to look at because you see like very blurry images of something that looks like a human being. And this is like the first human being trying to be born on move in film. This is like the first human being who is trying to be seen after they're dead moving. But they look like protoplasm and they're not really there yet. By Iran, I think 1892 or so, you you do have movies that look like movies. The Lumiere brothers were in France, and I'm not sure when their earliest films are. I know that they were up and running definitely by like 1895. And you get these films like the train pulling into the station or or all the people leaving work. By the way, one interesting thing as just a side note, you might you might find interesting is that. From the beginning, American cinema and French cinema were different. And I mean, from the beginning, Edison, what he would do when he was up and running with his own studio. When we're talking about 1895, 1896, he would have two people kissing. He would have a woman doing a dance. He would have a half naked, strong man doing, flexing his muscles. He they would be killing an elephant. We're still kind of sick, killing an elephant with electricity. Whereas the Lumiere brothers will be showing a mother feeding her baby, people frolicking on the beach, people leaving work. So from the beginning, French cinema was about life as it's lived. And American cinema from the very beginning was about sex and violence. So this is the American personality, kind of kind of interesting, I think. All right, these questions are rolling in now. So let's see. How about are there any kinds of movies you don't like, like sci-fi genre wise? I'm not in love with sci-fi as a genre because also I get I get much more than I need of them because it's the most popular genre right now. However, there are a lot of sci-fi movies that I like. And so I can't say as a genre, I don't like it. There are genres that I tend not to like. But even then, because I'm forced to see them, I wind up seeing movies that I like, probably the only kind of and also to there are a lot of movies that I maybe am not crazy about generically, but I can tell whether they're good or not and write about them as saying, OK, this is a good movie. The one genre that I'm a little bit not so sure about is animation. That is, I'm not so sure. I necessarily know on a gut level or an intellectual level, certainly on a gut level with the movies that because most animated films, I just I put it this way. If I were not a film critic and I live to be a thousand, I would not ever watch an animated film, not ever. And in fact, if I were if all the non animated films of the world blew up and all was left were animated films, I would still not watch an animated film because to me, animation has nothing to do with what I find interesting about movies. Somebody asked me about Spirit of the Way. I never saw it because they didn't review it. So if I didn't see it, there's no there's no way I would like in my free time say, hey, I want to watch an animated film. It's like inconceivable to me because all I'm interested in with regard to movies is is looking at people. That's all I want to do is look at people. So if I'm looking at a cartoon, I said, OK, what, you know, I mean, actually, some animations are some of the Pixar stuff I find moving and I really like, but I would never go see it on my own. But I think that animation is better like in five to ten minute bursts. I mean, I see five minute, ten minute animations that are absolutely wonderful. And I actually I would watch these kind of artsy animations that are made by the animated film festival. So I would watch those. But like these feature films that go on 90 minutes and some animated young woman wants to, you know, save the animated kingdom from the animated bad guys. It's like I just want to I wish I went to law school when I see things like that. All right. How about what visions or ideals of California became manifest in Hollywood? And to what degree has the geography of California found representation in film? Well, the geography of California is all over film. I mean, it's all over film. It's the the the you have, I mean, from the silent days where you get the Los Angeles and as depicted in chaplains, movies and Buster Keaton's movies. I mean, L.A. in those years, they look like you see like a you feel like a really tall 13 year old. That's what it looks like. It looks like this kid's going to be huge and this kid's big already. So that's that's how L.A. looks in those films that you get in like the 1910s. And then the landscape, of course, the the the mountains, you know, you get them in Westerns. So that's it's all over the place, the California. And also, I mean, even the Orange Groves and W.C. feels a movie about a guy who wants to buy an Orange Groves. That's there. The idea is about California. California is a place of of of aspiration. It's a place that the cities of California are pretty. They're kind of beautiful. And they create a sense that life should be beautiful. And they create a sense of spiritual confusion when life isn't. And I know that when I see people, I sometimes would see people walking along the Marina Green, you know, face towards the Golden Gate Bridge. And and and you know that they're they're thinking, oh, I finally finally lived here. I'd be really happy. And I think that a lot of people in California who live here feel like, oh, finally lived here, I'd be happy. You know, it's it's it's a place that that breeds a feeling of aspiration. I think it also breeds a little bit of feeling of envy. It breeds feelings of of a kind of wonderful. Oh, OK. Like, I'll give you a story, for example, I talk about in the book when my first documentary was getting made and before it was getting made when I was meeting people about it when. But we already signed the deal, so it was getting made. And I went down to Los Angeles, which I love, by the way, I love L.A. I absolutely love, absolutely love L.A. Love it, love driving in L.A. Of course, I don't like the traffic jams, but I love it. I love the smell of of of Star Jasmine. I like the movie history of it. I like I grew up on a lot of TV shows. So when I see a palm tree, I feel like I have money. You know what I mean? It's like it's like if you're living around palm trees next, all you need is a pool and it means that you're a success in the United States. Anyhow, so I was down there and they told me that I was going to be an associate producer on this documentary that we were making. And I don't know if everybody knows this, but associate producer means absolutely nothing. I mean, it means nothing, nothing, nothing. It's like any called commendatory in commendatory in Italy. It means zero. However, being called an associate producer is it just feels cool. And so it was that night I was driving. I was driving down one of those wonderful boulevards like Wilshire or something in in L.A. And I was feeling really happy. I was having that nice feeling you have. You know, the feeling you feel like you're in love with life. This was the other feeling. This was the better feeling. This is the feeling of life being in love with you. That's the really good feeling. And so I was feeling like life was in love with me and everything was really great. And part of my happiness in this moment was also because I was now officially a Hollywood producer, which is something that in the moment of feeling satisfied and happy about it, I knew wasn't true. But it still made me feel kind of good to be a Hollywood producer. So what do we got here? We have a superficial response to something absolutely, patently false, producing real happiness. I think to an extent that's the essence of California. I mean, that is California where you could be really happy about something that's like not there because especially L.A. Much more than San Francisco, but L.A. is sort of like in love with an illusion. But it's a beautiful illusion. It's kind of like what I call in the book, I call it junk food for the soul. You you get happy from these things and you know it's junk food. But the truth is, if you get enough junk food, you can live on it. You can live on junk food and it feels pretty good. So to me, that's part of what California is. Anissa, how are we doing questions? We have questions. I think that's all we're going to be doing tonight. And actually, we have a hand raised if Mr. George Zepka would like to talk. I am allowing that to happen right now. Oh, cool. I like that. George, we'll give it a 13 seconds. OK, and on to the next question. OK, let's see. How about tell us a little bit about movies influence on a little East Bay town of Niles? Oh, I don't know much about Niles, unfortunately. I mean, I know Niles, they made some I think they made some Westerns there, right? Is that what they made there? I'm asking like somebody's going to answer me. Yeah, but I think that's a place of Westerns, but I am not an expert on Niles. I know that I think Bronco Billy worked there. So and but I am not an expert on Niles. Sorry about your chapter headings, a hint about one of the ideas. I'd like to know something about the chapter headings. OK, well, I'll tell you the chat. I'll tell you all the chapters, OK, with like a sentence about which has that so first you get the introduction, which is amazing. Then you get chapter one, which is it's called The Wizard of Oz is a movie about Hollywood and it's an interpretation of the Wizard of Oz that nobody has ever had. But it's very obvious to me. It's like incredibly obvious. If you want to talk about that, we can. The Glory of Youth is about the phenomenon of the one great night movies, which you get a lot of set in California, movies like American graffiti, modern girls, bunch of movies and they're different from the one great night movies that are made outside of California like the before movies with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Then fame, California's relationship with fame. Then chapter four is about the difference between San Francisco and L.A. as depicted in movies. And it's called The Wonderful Past and The Nightmare Present in San Francisco. San Francisco is this weird place where everything was great 30 years ago. But, you know, it's it's too corporate now. But 30 years ago, all was amazing. People have been saying this since 1880. I'm not kidding. San Francisco is just a nostalgic place. L.A. is about now. And in fact, it's so about now that it makes now even feel nothing because everybody knows that now is only going to last two seconds. Hollywood and Pearl Harbor is about the is about the treatment of the Japanese, but then gets into treatment of Asians in in Hollywood cinema, but a pivot point being Pearl Harbor. Romance in Hollywood, you know, romance, I mean, romance in the movies in California. That's pretty obvious. Hey, this crime, difference between crime in California and crime as depicted in New York. A movie like Serpipo is a movie that you get in New York to move with. Things are really horrible, but one guy maybe can make a slight difference. California is about just like spiritual desolation very often. It's about it's about crimes that don't make sense. Crimes that are almost designed to make you feel like you're losing your mind, like the Manson family in real life or or it wasn't in California, but it was of California, like the the Jonestown stuff. But also this is reflected in the movies that you get. I mean, you know, you get like in Psycho, you get a very normal crime. You know, like anybody can identify with she needs money. She steals forty five forty thousand dollars. It's this normal crime in Arizona. And then she goes to California wrong direction and goes to a place where crime is insane. And of course, that happens to heart with Psycho. I hope I'm not giving anything away. Then real noir is California noir. We talk about noir as a product of California. And then also within that, I talk about the difference between and nobody has ever talked about this, and I don't know why anybody's not noticed this. I really don't because the people have been talking about noir forever. There's a difference between LA noir and San Francisco noir. San Francisco noir is usually like movies like like Maltese Falcon or or Dark Passage or even Decor. There's a lot of movies and bad, bad, bad things happen. But eventually the world makes sense. Los Angeles noir, the world doesn't make sense. The whole point is that the world doesn't make sense. And basically in noir films, San Francisco doesn't care if you live or die, but LA actively wants to kill you. And that's the difference in the noir. Then we get to a chapter about natural disasters, a lot of earthquakes, but other things and then also the final chapter before the epilogue is a chapter about the utopias, utopia as presented in in films by California and the dangers of utopia and how the utopia is the title I wanted for my book, this book, which I regret to some degree that I did not hold out for. I want but it was not to be commercial. Everybody I know says it was my title was no good. OK, so I admit I'm going to tell you the title, the original title of the book and you're going to say, yeah, that's a stupid title. But it was my title because it actually meant what the book was about. But I wanted the book to be called the scary utopia, California in the movies. I want because that's what the book is about, that it's a scare. It's utopia, but it's scary. Dream state to me doesn't mean anything. I know it means like there's a lot of dreams and everything. But there's a guy named Kevin Starr, who wrote like seven or eight books about California, and he fits the word dream into almost every title. So to me, it was like, you know, I admired it. And and and they wanted to go with it. And, you know, it is when everybody tells you you're wrong, it takes about three months to figure out that you were right. But in the moment, you figure that they must be right. I think scary utopia is better unless I unless I find that this book sold like tons of copies, you know, that I have like a bestseller. And then anything that anybody did meant to try. Anyway, and then there's an epilogue. And so that's that is the book that is that is a year and a half for my life. I like it. I don't like scary utopia. I think it could have gone either way, really. So people are asking about the Wizard of Oz. What would you think about the end of the Wizard of Oz in this context? And how long have you been sitting on the unresolved aspects of Toto's fate? Exactly. OK. All right. Exactly. All right. So the Wizard of Oz is this guy, right? And he's this guy who comes to town. And I guess because everybody's really short or something, he decides that he's going to be boss. So he goes to he stays in this palace and he becomes all powerful by telling everybody that he's all powerful when actually he can't do anything. Now, now the man has white hair at the point that we meet him. He's probably been running the scam for decades. OK. Then one day, Dorothy and her friends show up and they say, we have we want you to do us a favor. I want a brain. I want this. I want that. We have a which problem. I want to get back. And he says, OK, yeah, I'll do anything you want. But first, bring back the witch's broom. Now, in the book, he says, kill the witch. The witch's broom amounts to the same thing, because how are you going to get out of the way from it? So now we see what his scam has been. What happens is every time somebody comes to him and we know people do come to him because we know from the the munchkin singing, right, you just go to him, go to that guy. He's the guy. He's the guy who can do things. So he's been, you know, getting people, people have been showing up. And so we know what his scam is, because we know he has no power. So what he does is he says, yeah, I'll do anything you want. But first, go and get yourself killed and then I'll do you a favor. OK, so now Dorothy and her friends, though, Dorothy and her friends have insane luck and they come back and they say, hey, we killed the witch. Lay it on us. We want to think and he has nothing to give him. Now, here's the key. This is why it's a California. This is very much a California story. In the book, he gives them he gives them fake artificial like artificial versions that they want, like a fake heart, a fake brain, that kind of thing. Oh, a courage metal. No, a courage potion. But in the movie, what he does is he gives them evidence that they possess that which they absolutely and most emphatically do not possess. He gives the guy who has no courage, a medal. He gives the guy with no brain, a PhD, and he gives the guy who doesn't have a heart, a testimonial that says he has a big heart. In other words, he gives them proof that they have, that they are what they are not. He gives them lessons in fraudulence. He teaches them to be just like him, a big, amazing phony. To me, this is like Hollywood. This is a movie about Hollywood. He's saying you don't need anything, but you need a big front. Now, another thing that makes about Hollywood, which the questioner alluded to, it's this, everybody remembers the end of the movie. Everybody loves the end of the movie. Even knowing better, I watched the end of the movie and I feel there's no place like home. Oh, there's anti-M. There's no place like home. There's no place like home. Does anybody remember the beginning of the movie? In the beginning of the movie, Dorothy is very upset about something. And she's upset about the fact that they want to kill her dog. OK, they want to kill. And she has even a court order to kill Dorothy's dog, Miss Gulch. OK, now, then Dorothy leaves home because of this. She experiences a head injury and has a whole fantasy about Oz. Now, in the in the book, Oz is real. But in the movie, Oz is not real. Oz is fake. It's just a dream. So she wakes up in her bed the next day, presumably the next day. And and she's, oh, you were there, you were there, you were there. And I'll never going to leave. I'm never going to leave. There's no place like home. They're going to come in five minutes later and kill this girl's dog. Nothing has changed. The witch is dead. But Miss Gulch is alive. I mean, you know, Professor Marvel could have stuck his head through the window and said, oh, she's really awful. A house landed on Miss Gulch. You know, that sucks. No, that's not what happens. So she's alive and somebody, you know, they're going to bust through the door and give total as soon as they clean up the rubble a little bit, they're going to bust through the door and give total couple of highly unwanted injections. So what is the point of that? The point of that is that home is awful. They say it's like it's 1939. They feel like they say it. But the people who are saying it, even if they don't, even if they intend for you to believe it, they don't believe it themselves, these are people who loved home so much that they moved across the country to be in the picture business. And every one of them made it because they're working on a major release. You know, the home is the home is this is not about no place like home. This is not a place about home being any good. It's about Hollywood. Hollywood is Oz. You know, Hollywood is terrible. Oz is terrible, but at least it's in color. At least you have adventures. And and at least the one person in Oz, the one person wants to kill your dog is dead. The point of this movie, the real point of this movie is not that there's no place like home, the point actually is that there's no place like Hollywood. All right. Yeah. Anything else to add to that? Did I write? Somebody wants to know if I wrote about the movies Chinatown. I alluded to the movie Chinatown, but I didn't go big on the movie Chinatown. Basically, this is the deal. I had a set I had. Eventually I had a certain number of ideas, right? And I could keep illustrating the same ideas with an example. After example, an example, I make the book 20,000 words longer with plots and opsies and stuff like that. It just didn't seem like the point. Basically, I was using the examples of the movies to illustrate the points that I had and testing them also against other movies and not mentioned in the book because my my my fear with the book. In addition, my my my fear with my major fear with the book is that I wouldn't finish it, but my fear that went along with it was that it wouldn't be worth finishing because there are certain kinds of books that I think sound good, that make arguments that sound good, but that actually don't make sense. You know, like and that I'd like they say things that sound true, but aren't true. And I mean, like I always feel that way. Honestly, I feel like that when I read and I'm probably like Jim Diddy and I read her books about California and I don't like believe anything she says like everything she says. Everybody else believes that she's probably great. But I mean, I was like, no, that's not true. That's not true. I didn't want to write one of those books. So I wanted to test what I said against other movies, but basically to use as few movies as I could to still convincingly put across the PCs of it. And for some reason, I didn't need Chinatown as much as I probably should have just to meet people's expectations. Do you have a favorite film that was filmed in San Francisco? A favorite movie that was filmed in San Francisco. Well, I was going to say a free soul, the Norma Shera movie, but I think that was set in San Francisco rather than filmed in San Francisco. I would say that that the most San Francisco movie, which is a little bit of a different question, is the movie San Francisco, which still holds up 1936 movie and interestingly, because it was a movie now that came out 85 years ago, still has some some of the essence of San Francisco in it. You really feel that the personality of the city is expressed. I mean, San Francisco is a basically good natured place. It is it is it's it's it's a basically good natured city. It really is. I mean, there's like a people people try to make it nice. They believe that life could be nice and they try to make it nice. Somebody said sudden fear. That's a good one. That's that's in San Francisco. And Marin actually a film more my favorite film more set in San Francisco is called Born to Kill with Claire Trevor, which I who I really like. Claire Trevor is kind of great. So that's that's a noir that I particularly like. Cool, cool. We have a stand up. Would you like to talk, Stephen? All right, Stephen. Yeah, hey there, Mick. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. All right, love it. Appreciate you being here. That's fun. Yeah, yeah. So I love film criticism. Of course, love film. It's why I'm here. And I love a lot of the platforms that have made it more accessible. So things like Metacritic, you know, as far as like simplifying and distributing criticism and things like Letterboxed in terms of making it more, you know, broadly achievable for people like myself. But I'd be curious, your thoughts as a professional film critic, how you feel about, you know, what might be simplification of criticism via platforms like Metacritic. Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't bother me at all. You know, to me, it doesn't bother me at all. I'll tell you why. People have a right to use the product in any way they want. And if all they want is, should I go see this movie? I mean, there's three ways to approach it. Some people are saying, should I go see this movie? And so they'll look at a bunch of different critics. Some people will say, will enjoy an argument made, you know, just a point of view. Just enjoy a point of view being expressed in print. And enjoy just the working of somebody's mind on a subject that the reader finds interesting. And then some people, rare, but there have been cases, just enjoy, you know, you just enjoy the writing. And for me, I. Yeah, it's I'm not really being modest here when I say that I don't care if people use the product, because my my honest feeling is, is that the writing should be fun enough that it's worth reading irrespective of what the opinion is, you know what I'm saying? So that so that, you know, I would think I'd read other film critics to just figure out what they think and read me just to enjoy yourself. You know, I mean, I hope, you know, that, you know, I'm saying. So that's how I think. But I think of what I'm doing is a piece of writing. And if I really want to be self-aggrandizing, I could say that basically, the movies are just mere pretexts for me to work my invention. In other words, people are spending fifty hundred million dollars to give me something to write about, which is the real artistic product that is coming out as the review. It's not really true. But in other hand, there are some movies that are so bad that the reviews actually will be in some ways better than the movie. You know, they won't be as effortful, but actually it will be better. Yeah, I appreciated your piece on black black widow. So you'd say then you don't mind having little like sound bites taken out of context. No, no, no, they're like, you know, they they might be teasers, you know, for people to I mean, I don't like the idea that maybe some who knows. I mean, some people may have lost their jobs as a result of these platforms existing, I mean, it's possible. And in that case, that's sad. But I haven't lost my job. So it hasn't passed from sad to tragic. You know, I'm saying so. Yeah, it hasn't reached that level. But yeah, it would be it would be sad if that happens. But I don't think that it's that way. I think that that news like a lot of critics have disappeared from newspapers just because newspapers started really taking a bath in in the middle of the not the last decade, but the decade before the 2006, 2007, and I think that theater critics were thought to be expendable, which is sad. Appreciate it. All right, I have another question about your, you know, critiques is when you wrote the article about your thoughts on the prevalence of grizzly violence in movies and the possible influence on American culture, did you give much pushback? Did any others join you in considering this issue? Oh, you're talking about you're talking about several years ago, I think. I got. I got one critic, actually, who was mad at me and was like enraged and stopped talking to me based on that article. He wasn't like a friend or anything. But, you know, so he had to he had to tell me he wasn't talking to me from me to even know it. But but he told me that he wasn't talking to me and and and I felt so deprived. But mostly I got really nice response. I guess you're talking about the long article I wrote after. The the horrible thing in Connecticut, I forgot the name of the place. But I think that's that's what it was. And if that's the case, yeah, the response was very, very positive. It's surprising, sometimes, the things that are positive that get a positive and the things that get a negative response. Like, for example, my article I wrote about the scholar, he hasn't got a lot of negative letters. People really are sympathizing. It's like, hey, you know, she has 20 million, but she should go for 30. And Sandy Hook, yeah, thank you. Thank you, Jimmy. Yeah, that I thought everybody would agree with me. But then other things I thought that I would just get slammed for it. And it's like just a deluge of people saying that that was great. And also, too, it's another weird thing, the things that people read. Like, I think something's going to go off the charts. Everybody's going to read this tons of clicks, nothing, you know, test pattern, silence. And then I wrote something by Andy Gibb, which I thought nobody would read. Who cares about Andy Gibb? And instead it was like a monster. And I got like 150 emails about you just never know. It's kind of fun not knowing. I'll just read a comment from Bruce and the audience who says, I always enjoy your reviews of movies you hate more than movies you like. Sure. I have a question about a movie that I really love, which is The Day of the Locust. Yeah. Do you think it loses any relevance because it was based on a novel? No, no, no, I think it's great. And it's and I write it better than the book. That's that's a that's a major. It's a major California novel, but it's a major California movie, for sure. Yeah. Sharman, your hand is raised. Would you like to talk? All right. Go ahead. Sorry, I just. Yeah, you muted. Sharman, technology friends. Hey, there you are. Hi, I already pressed that. I was just wondering what you would say is the worst movie ever made. Well, OK, well, there was I guess, too, I would think of I am curious. Yellow is really horrible. Although I found it very disturbing to watch and it was like a nudity in the woman in the movie. I found very disturbing to watch her and then I realized because she looked kind of like me with her clothes off. She actually looked like me and it was like disturbing because, of course, obviously she's a woman, though. And so it was just just very weird. But the movie's horrible. I'm curious. Yellow is just absolutely terrible aside from that. And and then there's a movie called Ghosts Can't Do it with Bo Derek Quinn and Anthony Quinn is this old man. And and he's he knows he's not going to be around much longer. And he tells Bo Derek that when he dies, he's going to come back in another body so he can have sex with her. And so he dies and then and then he comes back in the body of this guy. And and he takes possession of this young man's body so he can have sex with Bo Derek. It's absolutely horrible. And you know, it makes it even worse. It's really funny is Trump is in it. Trump has a scene in it with Bo Derek. He they're negotiating and Trump is just so awful at it. He got a he got a bad review in 1990 for that movie. Oh, do you see that one? Butterflies are free. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Yes, that's a good movie. I write about in the book that is that's a that's a very good San Francisco movie. Absolutely. Plus Goldie Han. We were just talking about foul play. I love that one. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I do have a YouTube question. I don't want to ignore YouTube viewers. But I lost the question. But it was, have you read Quentin Tarantino's book? The Remind Me Viewers, what it's called? Shoot, I lost it. It was maybe it's once upon a time in Hollywood. I think that's it. No, I haven't read it. I've you know, maybe it's good. But maybe maybe it's great. I haven't read it. I just I just I find it hard to believe that somebody could excel in two art forms like that. But, you know, maybe it's possible. There's athletes who, you know, can play these athletes like in the 40s, play baseball and, you know, play basketball in the winter and baseball in the summer. So who knows, maybe it's possible. Do you consider movies, entertainment or art? Well, everything's art. There's just good art and bad art. There's there's utilitarian art. You know, there's just there's all kinds of art. And there's higher forms of art. But every all these movies are to some degree works of art. It's just some of just not ambitious. Some are ambitious to do other things. But so I yeah, everything, every movie is is a work of art. But that doesn't necessarily that's a generic term. It's not doesn't imply quality. But I look at them as though they are works of art, because that's what they are. OK, let's see. People are loving your background. They're wondering about the 3D. OK, I'm in my mother's house. I'm in New York right now. So right now, as far as I'm concerned, it's almost 11 o'clock. And it was I haven't seen my mother in two years because of what do you think? And I finally got on a plane and. And fortunately, I don't care how stupid I look. So I wore three masks. I wore the I did the full Biden, which is an N95 or the mask on top of it. That is the full Biden has to be an N95 two masks. No, it has to be the full Biden is the N95. And then for just for fun, I put on a third mask and and got here. But I'm in the house. I grew up in New York City. This is the paneling from that that was popular in the 70s. We put that in 1973. Mother has a has a three 3D less supper over here. So it's it's kind of fun. And then she has all of that stuff is from my mother's very big on supporting animal animal rights and humane society and all this stuff. And so she then she gets pictures of all the cats that she's fostering and not fostering herself, but, you know, like, you know, ten dollars a month and you can save these cats. So that's where I am. That's the background. That's that's the background in more ways than one background. So since you did bring up the pandemic, there was a question. I wasn't going to bring it up. But folks are wondering how that changed your reviewing and not going to theaters and how you were impacted by this? Well, I mean, the biggest impact on it was psychological. I found it very difficult, found it very, very difficult. I if I had to do it over again, I think I would be a little bit less paranoid. I didn't I never went to a store, for example, for 14 months. I didn't sit foot in a store. I didn't go anywhere so that life became very insulated. The movies, you know, the movies just sort of. It's funny. I if you ask what kind of movies you like, I like, you know, like small independent movies are like small, sincere movies. But it started like like like just subsisting on tofu after a while. You know, it it was you know that those really are the kinds of movies I like. But if you watch like 15, 20 movies or other that are like Nomadland, you start wanting to see a Vin Diesel movie. It just starts getting getting a little bit too much. The movie aspect of it wasn't particularly hard. The thing that was hard was was not seeing friends, not being able to travel, knowing that I couldn't travel. And so that by the by the time, for some reason, by the time I got to January of 2021. It just it was like I started like just I was I was like going through. I think like a low grade depression because I would wake up completely exhausted. And so, yeah, I think I got depressed. I mean, I had I got a blood test to see if there was something seriously wrong because I was and there was nothing wrong. Fortunately, again, I gained weight. I got up to like a hundred and I'm I'm five seven like you saw in a hot day. So it's like five, like six and two thirds. Like unless I do yoga, maybe I can get up to three quarters. But I got up to 180 pounds, which for my weight is, you know, not that great. Now I'm dead today. I weigh myself 162. As soon as I got the vaccine, I started going on a diet. But I was eating constantly. I was just miserable as I was starting to get very, very not very just depressed. So that's the effect. I mean, the biggest effect of the pandemic on me was the effect that maybe had on you was personal. It wasn't it wasn't business, as Tessio would say. Right. We have another head. I'm sorry about the depression. Yeah, I don't think you're alone there. Janice, would you like to talk? I'm going to allow talk. There we go. All right. Thank you. Hi, so good to hear you make I'll start off with non-movie stuff and move to movie stuff. Well, you know, I don't think it's so outrageous to wear two or three masks. You didn't mention a face shield that that's what that's what we do sometimes. But, you know, I like the face shields, you know, three masks and a face shield and gloves is what my partner prefers it. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, well, we're going to we're going to France. My wife and I are going to go to France. How are you going to get that three masks? Maybe I will get the face shield. Yeah, maybe a hazmat suit. And it's also one thing. If you're planning on traveling, one thing to know is then not you can walk on with hand sanitizer. You know, you know, they have that 100 milliliter limit. Yeah. They make the exception for hand sanitizer. They put it through some kind of scan and so you can go on the full bottle up like I did. And I'm just, you know, just pumping that thing constantly. All right. Well, good luck. I'm more worried about the air and I'm a retired nurse. So, you know, I'm totally paranoid about all this. So I'm still on the paranoid spectrum in and out of depression, all of it. But I know it's driving me bonkers, too. Well, my mother, my mother raised me on Pauline Kale. We grew up in New York. So when we moved to San Francisco, you know, then we discovered you. And so Pauline Kale and Mick LaSalle. So I'm just curious if Pauline Kale was at all in influence on you. No, no, she wasn't. And I because I'm not from an economic background that would get the New Yorker. I mean, we were more like we would maybe get the daily news, but not the New York Times, you know. And so so I never read the New Yorker and I didn't know Pauline Kale. And then when I was first chronicle, John Carroll wrote a column saying that all film critics have been influenced by Pauline Kale and and he mentioned me as being influenced by Pauline Kale. And I thought, well, I haven't read Pauline Kale, but if she's that influential, I'd better not read her because she'll just get into my head and screw things up. So I never read her. Then years later, I read a little bit of her. And I think she's good, you know, but I I I don't, you know, writing is not just writing or opinions. Writing is like a personality and I don't like her personality. I like Andrew Saras's personality. He was like her rival. I like his personality as a writer a lot. But Pauline Kale, there's something about her writing personality that just seemed kind of she seemed a little mean to me. But maybe maybe I haven't read it that much. You know, you know, it's something like Joan Didion that when you read people whose work you don't like that much, you become unqualified to talk about it. Because what happens is you stop reading it. You know, you're not an expert on it. You haven't read everything. So it's quite possible that that Pauline Kale I would find delightful if I just kept going, but as much as I've read there's something about her. She just seems kind of mean and so I don't like I didn't like it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we are close to time and Mac is on the East Coast. So let's find a couple more and then we'll let him free. You're my favorite film critic and your wife is my favorite playwrights. Have you thought about a collaboration on a book or play or some other literary endeavor? She wouldn't do it. She wouldn't do it. I don't think she would want to be associated with me because she she's she's I mean, basically I have the the high privilege like like Zelda Fitzgerald of being the less talented member of a two writer household. And this is really the truth. It's a little so I don't think she would. When I was nineteen years old, I wrote a musical. I wrote the book, I wrote the play and I wrote the lyrics. And and my friend wrote the music and we're quite happy with it. In fact, and because he he actually has a lot of money, we just recorded everything, but we just finished recording everything and try to get productions and we finished like in January of 2020. So that was that was that for that's that for now. But I've said to my wife, we should we should get together, the three of us and and do a musical. You write you write the book and me and the other guy write. But no, she doesn't want to do it. So but she I think my wife, honestly, I think my wife is a great artist. I mean, I really do. I think she's I think my wife genuinely is one of the greatest living writers in the United States right now. She's absolutely and she's not here. She's not hearing me say this. I think that she's just one of the greatest writers there are just absolutely hilarious, wonderful writer. OK, friends, I want to end on my wife. So let's give me a couple other questions. How about what is the most uniquely California contribution to film? Oh, uniquely California. Oh, I don't I don't I don't know. Uniquely California. Cheek, I don't know. I'm sorry, I have to pass on that. I mean, I know that's like saying don't read the book. He doesn't even know what the uniquely but I can't think of like that specific thing. Let's see. How about were there any films that got a bad review that you liked? Oh, yeah, all the time, all the time. And I love when that happens. I mean, I feel bad for the movie, but I I I I like it. I like it because I, you know, I know film critics. And I mean, just between us, because we're just talking, they're not that smart. I mean, they really, you know, they don't know about art. I don't know how they became film critics. They don't have a feeling for art. They don't have a feeling for it. I mean, some of them do. The good ones do, of course. But I mean, I think the majority of them don't. And and they put the things that they say don't make any sense. And and and so I'm glad when I'm not in the majority because it makes me feel like I must be doing something right. On the other hand, I'm happy when I'm in the majority liking something because I know that the movie will do better and I want movies. But like, for example, a movie like Terence Malick's movie, The New World, that's a masterpiece. Now, it's the kind of masterpiece that most people won't like because it's it's a difficult movie. But on the other hand, if you are a film critic, even if you don't like it, you should understand how good I mean, I liked it, but you should understand how good it is. You should be able to understand why it's a great film, even if you didn't like it very much. I mean, I'm not like in love with a lot of Antonioni's movies. But there's a few Antonioni movies that I'm not in love with, but I can tell are great films. I mean, you know, they're great and they're boring, they're great and they're boring, but they're still kind of great. You should be you should know these things and some of them don't know it. And so I just I and I think that they're destructive. You know, I think it's destructive. You have 50 percent of the critics in the United States saying that this masterpiece by Terrence Mallick is a lousy movie and so many people won't see it as a result. And and that's, you know, that's sad because the job of the critic should be to say, OK, a lot of people aren't going to like this movie if they watch it in a certain frame of mind. My job is to show you this sort of like take your head and go like this. Look at it from this angle and then the whole thing will open up for you and you'll love it. It's basically to increase your enjoyment of life, of art, but life, that aspect of life, to not steer you away from great things because you just kind of like, you know, a little bit too thick to get it. But, you know, this is this is just me. I may be wrong. So it takes one more. Yeah, one more. That would be nice. How about with California in a supposed decline with the unsubstantiated exodus? Do you have thoughts about the future image of the California psyche and setting or influence in the movies? Oh, I think it's going to I think California is not going anywhere. I mean, we just we lost very little population and we lost it in a in a time of crisis, I think that will I think will probably bounce back in the next sense to some that's easy thing to say we have nine years to prove it. And I think California is so central. I mean, California in a way has given us a way, given people a way of looking at at life in themselves and and and to some degree, it hasn't been a good thing. I mean, and I think to a large extent to more extent it has been. But I think that in a way, you know, we people use movie stars as a way of worshiping themselves. They they identify with the central character, even if the central character is doing something horrific. But because the central character, we're watching the way we watch ourselves in a mirror, which is with that combination of great criticism and and yet mixed with unconditional love. So it's like, you know, we watch these characters in movies because they become us and and then we gravitate to the ones that have qualities that either we want or that we think we have and that we admire. And in this way, I think that the whole history of movies has been a way, the way that we the way people have used movie stars to worship themselves. And I think that what we're seeing now is the movie, the equivalent of the Protestant Reformation with regard to that, because if you think of like basically in the Church of the South, we used to worship ourselves through the surrogates or the proxies of the saints who were in this analogy, the movie stars. Now everybody has their own camera and everybody's their own little movie star. And now people are worshiping themselves directly without needing the intercession of the saints or needing the intercession of the movie stars. And it's a little bit sick. I mean, you see people, you know, taking pictures of themselves constantly, constantly, constantly just watching movies, but set in Hollywood. So these people are not I mean, set in high school, I should say. All these kids taking pictures of themselves and pictures of themselves. I mean, it used to be up to 15, 20 years ago, you got the role of film home developed and you're the only one who wasn't in a single picture. Now, if you're holding the camera, the one you're taking the pictures, the most of is yourself and it's a little bit grotesque. So I think that that we're probably grotesque, but not horrible, you know. So the California ethos, the California, the Hollywood thing has kind of gone, you know, retail. I mean, it's everywhere and and I don't think that's going to change. So I think everything just builds from I think California is the great social influencer of the United States, as far as culture. The way Washington is for the Americas for money and maybe high art. California, popular culture in Washington, of course, for the as a city of the government. All right, thank you, Mick. I think that was a great ending and there was questions about, you know, California's influence on culture, so hopefully that hit it. And, you know, when you're ready, there are so many people here and still so many questions to be answered. You have a spot in person whenever you're ready to come to the library for an in-person event. Oh, I love it. I'd love it. I would love it. I can't wait for in-person events. Like, I mean, this is nice and everything. But, you know, I I really want in-person events. By the way, you probably think if you read my column that I get deltas with questions, I don't. So if you have questions that went unanswered, send it to me as an ask Mick thing and and I can and that would be great for me. I could I could use it using for my column. The only the only questions I I don't use the only comments I don't use in my column is if people say, Mick, you know, I think you're great. I mean, I appreciate those are good things to get. But those I don't use because if I use that, then people feel hostile towards me. Whereas I print the letter saying, Mick, you're an idiot, everybody feels sorry for me. And then that actually advances my agenda. Well, let's make that happen. All right, friends and library users, we miss you. We love you. Make sure you come out when Mick does do an in-person event and let's do it. All right, friends, you have a wonderful night and we'll see you next time. Mick, thank you very much. OK, bye, everybody. Bye bye. Lisa, thank you.