Wang Chung's "To Live and Die In L.A." soundtrack - C/D

The Driver is a solid one. Night Moves is half-L.A. but it’s pretty great. Very Rockford Files-type location shooting.

Hardcore, Straight Time, The Long Goodbye — all good L.A. films from this period, the former is great if you’re a Paul Schrader fan. The latter two are great, period.

The Hidden is an outstanding eighties L.A. film, great locations throughout Hollywood, works as both a cop thriller and horror/sci-fi flick.

body double? the long goodbye?

and if we’re defining 70s as the era the movies were made in rather than set in, chinatown

two votes for the long goodbye!

kinda feel like die hard counts

Thanks, that's helpful! Haven't heard of and/or seen most of those.
(xp - I've seen Die Hard, ha ha)

Someone on that board suggested "Hickey & Boggs" - never got around to seeing it...

Watched it tonight, been a few years. Yeah. Fucking awesome. The best action movie ever imo. So cool and confident and fun. Still get shocked when Chance is killed 15 minutes before it ends. Omar otm on how his character turns. So many stunning cuts: Masters burning his painting dissolving into clear blue sky, the low angle shot of his eyes gleaming just before he burns to death, Chance's face as the terrorist detonates the vest, the whole highway sequence...

saw this in the cinema for the first time fairly recently, totally great.

re. the question above: Beverly Hills Cop II sticks in my mind, for some reason. Los Angeles Plays Itself of course.

oh god the alternate ending

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3mErQjNX0

not many movies could get away with ending vukovic’s metaphorical movie-long descent into hell with a literal fight in a blazing building but yeah friedkin really is that good

Lmfao when Chance's face is blown out into a black void and Vukovich is just cradling his lifeless body going "talk to me... talk to me... talk to me..."

Dean Stockwell had a mini Cazale run of masterpieces from 84-86: Paris, Texas; To Live and Die in L.A.; Blue Velvet.

best part is Chance doesn't even get the honor of getting killed by the guy he's after, but his hillbilly flunky.

Can you guys name any other great-looking “L.A. in the ’70s/’80s” movies off top of your head?

Into The Night (John Landis, Jeff Goldblum, Bowie, a dozen movie-directors-acting cameos), Echo Park (low budge), maybe Miracle Mile.

Thanks! Several more I hadn't heard of...

the 1982 film Vice Squad w/Season Hubley and Wings Hauser, with the latter as a psychopathic pimp, is really something else. Outstanding Hollywood locations, extremely sleazy low-rent vibe.

Masters burning his painting dissolving into clear blue sky

i think about this shot like once a month

oh yeah miracle mile is a good call - it’s a kind of weird companion piece to this now that I think of it

both have the walls closing in on the main characters until a bummer of an ending

night of the comet is another good la movie imo

MM is an all-time favorite of mine

i think about this shot like once a month

― flamenco blorf (BradNelson), Wednesday, June 20, 2018 3:27 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wrote it into a pitchfork review once lol

miracle mile is a real marvel of genre-mashing, there’s not much else out there in the nuclear-nihilism romance category

Haven't seen it probably since the 80s, but I remember "52 Pick-Up" being pretty good. Finally got around to reading the Elmore Leonard book a few years back and wanted to see it again, but have not re-watched it. It's a pretty grim story.

I'd think you could stretch to include "Less than Zero" for 80s dark and glitzy LA.

It's not LA noir, but for trashy 80s crime movies I have been wanting re-watch "I, the Jury", "Body Heat" and "Year of the Dragon" again. I loved crime movies like that as a teenager. There are a couple of others already mentioned like "Body Double" and "Into the Night" that I would like to see again too.

"Black Rain" is another one that looks really amazing, even if the movie is pretty pulpy too. That movie would be good for people that are doing all that 80s synth soundtrack music to cut up as a video with the big motorcycle sequence and the crazy rain used in that movie.

"Into the Night" is one of my favorite movies that no-one usually knows. The scene with David Bowie and Carl Perkins as hit men facing off against each other is a classic.

52 Pick-Up is a nice choice, that movie is extremely trashy in the best sense. And very sweaty. Everyone in that movie sweats off ten pounds.

It's kinda wild that Ann Margaret is in that role.

The Outside Man is a great 70s L.A. crime film. Jean-Louis Trintignant as a hitman who can barely speak English double-crossed and left stranded in L.A., chased all over the city by a manic Roy Schneider ("Where's Frenchie?!!"). Great locales, lots of funny bits with a surreal edge - Jean-Claude Carrière was co-writer. The climatic shoot-out in a funeral home is memorable, and the final shot, while not as shocking as the climax of TLADILA, is even more agonizing and downbeat.

Ann Margret's in it too!

To Live and Die in LA will always be a classic to me. Pitch black darkness. Touching that brings out interesting shit in a person.

Shifting gears, Mann's Manhunter is good for the toll it takes on someone getting into the heads of psychopathic serial killers. I've had to do that in my own professional work, wouldn't recommend it!

They don't make enough "REAL" movies anymore. Always about fantasy dudes who face no consequences for facing the horrors of life.

Can you guys name any other great-looking “L.A. in the ’70s/’80s” movies off top of your head?

I remember the movie Angel being kind of popular in the 80s. High school honor student by day. Hollywood hooker by night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_(1984_film)

Just saw this movie in the theater tonight. What was the point of the whole subplot with John Turturro's character, Carl Cody? Chance gets him out of jail so Cody will help him get to Rick Masters; Cody tricks Chance and escapes; Chance eventually gets him back... and that's it? Quite a bit of the movie is dedicated to all this, but it doesn't seem to lead anywhere. The person who actually connects Chance and Vukovich with Masters is Masters's crooked lawyer. What am I missing?

I remember seeing 52 Pick-Up on VHS when I was maybe in junior high and being genuinely shocked by how sleazy it seemed. I wanted to see how it held up now that I'm old and jaded, so I bought the recent Blu-Ray edition and...holy fuck, it might even be sleazier than I remembered. John Glover is amazing in it.

this movie doesn't seem to be available to stream or rent online

Not sure if this works for everyone..
https://youtu.be/jAM74dx9u4A
(never saw the film myself, something for tonight :)

Re-watched 52 Pick-Up a few months ago with my wife and I’d say it doesn’t quite hold up the way I remembered. John Glover is still great but the ending is silly and abrupt and the darker strokes about the underworld that really struck me back then seem very tame and drawn too broadly now.

the 1982 film Vice Squad w/Season Hubley and Wings Hauser, with the latter as a psychopathic pimp, is really something else. Outstanding Hollywood locations, extremely sleazy low-rent vibe.

Not sure if this works for everyone..
https://youtu.be/jAM74dx9u4A
(never saw the film myself, something for tonight :)

― willem, Friday, July 13, 2018 12:18 PM (eight months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

willem eh....

Every fibre of my being wants to mention Night of the Comet and Beverly Hills Cop 2 as films that have a particular Los Angeles feel, but I'm months too late. Beverley etc isn't a patch on the original but at the very least it looks awesome. The two films made extensive use of graduated neutral density filters, particularly Night of the Comet, and as a consequence my mental image of Los Angeles is of exaggerated dark red/burnt orange skies. And people wearing mirrored Ray-Bans.

Cobra! Cobra. Mirrored Ray-Bans. Cobra is set in Los Angeles. It was shot at sunset so that everything looked slightly purple. Has there ever been a more iconic single shot in all of cinema than the opening close-up of Sylvester Stallone in Cobra? If there is, I haven't seen it. I've never visited the United States so my only experience of the country comes from films, and when I think of Los Angeles I think of purple sunsets and people wearing mirrored Ray-Bans. I imagine the reality is completely the opposite. Green sunsets and people wearing slippers on their face probably.

Blue Thunder! Another film set in Los Angeles with Ray-Bans. And those storm drains. I will never know how the people of Los Angeles react when they see Los Angeles on the screen. For them it is everyday life whereas for me it is not real.

Happy to find this album is on Spotify...

I've never visited the United States so my only experience of the country comes from films

i live in the states and cobra is basically a documentary.

Just realized how this album and Eurythmics' 1984 (for the love of big brother) relate to each other. Each has a combination of a few pop singles and instrumental scoring.

Also just saw the video for the title song, which makes it look like Wang Chung is editing the movie too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf4x36XKhsM

So the ever great Kaleb Horton posted this yesterday

Finally saw To Live And Die In LA. Robby Muller’s cinematography is astonishing, but more importantly: pound for pound, that car chase in oncoming traffic on the freeway is my favorite car chase ever. It’s every LA driving nightmare I’ve ever had come to life.

— Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) September 20, 2019

Which prompted me to dig out my copy (that Shout Factory Blu-ray is a fine, fine thing) and made me realize that the editing really is unheralded. So many scenes that start abruptly, end abruptly and are exactly the length they need to be.

And that further makes me think of the music because of the shots/edits that brutally cut through the score -- which was a great move.

Every time this thread gets bumped I get excited about watching this movie again

it’s so fucking good

This article made me think of the above discussion.... I hadn’t heard of a number of the movies mentioned.

Envying Jim O’Rourke’s TLADILA tee..

prob my fav soundtrack ever...

Why you chasing me?!
Why you running?!
Because your chasing me!

I love this movie so much. Recently watched Heat which is also a force. But where Heat has some towering moments, LA hits the peak at the start and never lets up.

I saw a 35mm print of this recently and the Wang Chung soundtrack is surprisingly abrasive in spots, I was really struck how in a sequence like the airport chase it was just pounding drum machine clatter.

LA is definitely hot orange, room-temp Michelob, cocaine sweating

Heat is cool blue, Lexapro come-down, cocaine sweating

Yeah my film-induced-narcoleptic wife kept waking up whenever the sound track would kick in just to ask me to turn it down. It definitely comes in hard. Going to be rolling some Wang Chung in the background this next week, stunning soundtrack

every moment of the wang chung soundtrack hits like a knife (in a good way)