A Walker in the City

March 3, 2023 4:01 PM

Falling Down explores the ways that we imagine cities, Los Angeles in particular. Foster is a character who considers himself displaced, evicted from what he assumed was the promise of Southern California prosperity. And most obviously, he is out of place because he is out of his car. To complete his cinematic arc, he must experience, at three miles per hour, the reality of Los Angeles, a city he has previously known only as an abstraction. from Fatal Flâneur: On Joel Schumacher’s “Falling Down” and the Sidewalks of Los Angeles

Falling Down previously and on FanFare

posted by chavenet (22 comments total)

The larger idea about Los Angeles and film and how people are in different worlds based on how they get around is interesting. Michael Mann's Heat and Collateral came to mind. The stories are based in LA, where the narratives are set up by characters getting around by car, truck, helicopter, subway. Once they leave those cocoon-like enclosures and are on foot in the city itself, that's when conflict occurs.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:31 PM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Except Speed - where the freeway is literally life.

I'm still of mixed opinions about Falling Down. I think it was trying to be more ambitious and messaged than the film's framework could handle.
posted by drewbage1847 at 4:54 PM on March 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

Agreed, drewbage. I think that film is very interesting, especially as a historical document to subject to critical scrutiny, but usually when I meet someone that loves Falling Down, it’s because they identify with the antagonist… similar problems to Starship Troopers in that regard.

Edit- basically the topic of the previous post, good stuff!
posted by q*ben at 5:39 PM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

I hate Falling Down, though I've only seen it once, probably the week it came out. It's a nasty, racist, pointless movie.

I also love walking in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. I lived there 3.5 years as a dog sitter, living in houses all over the place in stints lasting 3 weeks to 3 months — Santa Monica, Venice, Mar Vista, Culver City, Hollywood, West Hollywood, North Hollywood, Bel Air, City Terrace, DTLA, Studio City, Larchmont Village, Pacific Palisades, Echo Park, Los Feliz, Woodland Hills, Beverly Glen... I never had a car for any of it and probably only got in a car 15 times in all those years. Mind you, all my time there was lived after 2009. To my mind it is absolutely a better walking city than my home town, Toronto. No question at all. My only complaint are the lack of sidewalks in some places, which make dog walking a pain in the ass.
posted by dobbs at 5:57 PM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Dobbs, it's a great city and intimidates the hell out of people. (sometimes me too even through I've been here for nearly 30 years)

From what I've read in the past - that lack of sidewalks in some places is intentional and in other places just weird historical gaps.
posted by drewbage1847 at 6:29 PM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Now I'm trying to remember how many movies I've seen where they walk around LA, and... it's not a lot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:13 PM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

...and also in the Terminator films: one of the first things that the Terminators (and Kyle Reese) do is steal some motorized transportation, something that they do multiple times. Mostly that just facilitates Cameron's fast-paced action, but they only really go on foot in the films' final desperate scenes.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:19 PM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

usually when I meet someone that loves Falling Down, it’s because they identify with the antagonist

I got tailgated on the highway by a guy with a D-FENS license plate once. I’m not sure that guy really got what the movie was about. But it’s an effective way to get people to move out of your way, I guess. I sure wasn’t trying to brake check him.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:22 PM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

usually when I meet someone that loves Falling Down, it’s because they identify with the antagonist


If you're a white male approaching middle age, you're supposed to identify with the antagonist, and then take the story as a warning.

That latter part fails with entirely too many people, because half of us are below average.
posted by ocschwar at 8:06 PM on March 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

I'm in a weird "giving movies I'd written off another chance" mood this weekend. I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time all the way through and found it much less prurient and predictable than I'd always imagined.

I avoided Falling Down for the same reasons identified above but I'm giving it the same treatment basically since I saw this thread. I'm about halfway through and noticing a few things:

1. The main character is presented as literally scared and intimidated by non-white people from the first minute. The film knows this guy is a racist and presents it in bold lines.

Interview from 2018 with the writer - don't go looking for deep insight but he acknowledges:

The Wrap:
‘Falling Down’ Turns 25: Screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith on Whether D-Fens Would Vote Trump

Q: To what extent do you think D-Fens’ rage was specifically a white male rage, as opposed to a reaction to frustrations that anyone might experience?

A: I’ve always thought that D-Fens was racist, but that he kind of didn’t know he was. I don’t know exactly how to put that … More like privileged, you know? He was privileged. And he felt that would be taken away from him.

2. The racial stereotypes and shorthands are present but not as lazy as I'd recalled. There are lazy stereotype gang members and such, there are also a diverse variety of cops (along racial, competence, and asshole /confidante spectra) occupying almost a different film. There is an immediate confrontation of Asian stereotypes (while, of course, still trafficking in them). I'm not attributing this to some secret high mindedness in the script, mostly acknowledging that I only recalled the loudest notes.

3. The main character's unhinged journey also starts in minute one, to the point where the scene by scene escalation could read (charitably, I won't lie) as magical realism wish fulfillment (with built in devil's bargain) trapped in an early 90s hangover from 80s cliches.

4. There's a whole untreated trauma/menopause/cop's wife in need of mental health support that the script can't seem to imagine exists (so far) in this world plot that is.. unique I guess? I'll see how it turns out.

I think to some degree the diabolical hand of trailer and HBO advertising editors championed the disservice to the film's actual themes by focusing on the "I want breakfast" type moments of outage that feel familiar to a wider audience who might not immediately see their own privilege at play.
posted by abulafa at 8:07 PM on March 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

Oh you can blame the marketing. There s a whole class of movies like this.

Be thankful that they didn't make this into a video game
posted by eustatic at 8:52 PM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

We can't have a thread about walking in LA without revisiting Walken in LA.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:31 PM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I blame the marketing.

I finished it - got to see him face a mirror of his own hatred and reject it, but still get a taste for murder and try to discover his mission as a vigilante only to realize he's about as good at that as making missiles.

Robert Duvall's experienced cop trying to not really save the day so much as honestly get everyone home alive was a real high point (most of the time). I'll go look for more criticism about the implication of a more than professional relationship with his partner and interpretations of the constant buzzing of flies unremarked on by the characters.

Definitely glad I resampled.
posted by abulafa at 10:32 PM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

A slight derail but I really enjoy LA and also walking and biking in LA. It’s such a fascinating city but really a tough nut to crack and love. My wife was living there for work for about half a year so I would spend a lot of time there exploring. I found I could walk from LAX to Playa del Rey where she was living. You can walk for a long time and discovered how huge the city is. I took the city bus from downtown to Culver City and it was like 76 stops. But that’s mostly because I’m cheap and didn’t want to pay surge rideshare prices.

If you visit LA take time to walk, ride the bus or subway, rent a hike. Get out of the car and experience the city.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:04 AM on March 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

I blame the marketing.


I remember the trailers for Falling Down and they presented the movie like it was a romp featuring justified violent catharsis against the typical indignities of the time.

Which is why you get the people who identify with it the wrong way.
posted by ocschwar at 10:40 AM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

We can't have a thread about walking in LA without revisiting Walken in LA.

Not to mention the obligatory Missing Persons mention. (For those who want the non-US Festival studio version, click here)
posted by gtrwolf at 11:22 AM on March 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

My best friend and I were psyched to see this when it came out, for the most prurient geeky 8th grade boy reasons. I remember finding it a tedious disappointment at the time, as if my rapidly maturing brain could partially sense that vigilante power fantasy wasn't enough to hang a story on.
posted by HeroZero at 1:46 PM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Walking to Hollywood is a phantasmagoric interpretation of flaneur Will Self's experiences walking across Los Angelos.

Falling Down was a provocative film, and not meant to be likeable. There's a long tradition of annoying conflicted anti-heroes that proceed it.
posted by ovvl at 7:53 PM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Scarface being the highest representation of this kind of cultural communications failure, I believe.

Another pattern that i see, which I think is just the other side of the same coin, is the cultural resistance to black or women characters having the same kind of "she's fed up and won't take it anymore" stories.

On fanfare, there was a lot of backlash to a black character taking revenge on the 'Lovecraft Country' show, even though there was only one violent act, placed in context of continual violence and Injustice suffered by that character.
posted by eustatic at 8:58 AM on March 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

The film is too in love with D-FENS for the "I'm the bad guy?" to land; all his badass, righteous moments against the most cartoonish caricatures of villains (The Gangs, The Nazi, Judge Smails) and idle daydreams realized ("stuck in construction? blow it up, lol") have all the impact of a halfhearted 'we're very disappointed in you' delivered with a smile and a wink. It'd be more effective if his antagonists were actually people; pulling a gun on a restaurant full of people because you can't get a McMuffin is some sociopath shit.

It might be possible to do that turn effectively, but Joel Schumacher isn't the director to do it.
posted by theclaw at 6:20 PM on March 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Nostalgic for all the payphones and landlines.
posted by ApplAuD at 11:37 PM on March 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Duvall is the other side of D-FENS, an emasculated man who's seen as a wimp by his coworker and who emerges as a hero by shooting a man who'd already decided to die and immediately puts his wife in her place. The impression I got was that the film wants us to see that as a triumph for him, which is pretty gross.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:29 PM on March 7, 2023