Under the Silver Lake

"You’re living in a carnival, hoping to win a prize. What are you going to win?" "Under the Silver Lake.”

Some of you have been asking what I’ve been working on, so I have decided to open this up to all of you.

Under the Silver Lake (Dir: David Robert Mitchell, 2018).

I’m back in Los Angeles, at another Silver Lake house. The energies are different on this trip: it’s a different time of year, a different environment (although less than a twenty walk from the old place), and houses with Halloween decorations line the streets. I’ve never been in town for Halloween, and it’s something I have always wanted to do. Last time I was here for the TCM Film Festival, to see friends and work, this time I am back in town for Beyond Fest, to see friends and work. I haven't even been here for two weeks and I’m here for four more, yet I am already worrying about not seeing everyone before I return. As I say, a shift in the air from last time. But change is good; nothing stays the same.

---

By the end of the 1940s, the Surrealist group had imploded, but Surrealism, art, and cinema were having their moment in Los Angeles. A combination of clashing egos, the pressures of the war, and shifting attitudes and allegiances saw many artists move away from Paris to establish their new lives elsewhere. For some women (including Maya Deren, Lee Miller, and Dorothea Tanning), their work in the 1940s would come to define their careers. Most Surrealist artists who crossed the Atlantic settled in New York, while Tanning and Ernst set up home in Arizona. Some exiles found a new home in Los Angeles.

‘The Hollywood that attracted these outcasts always remained beyond their grasp, rich and tantalising’, writes Otto Friedrich in City of Nets, his expansive text about Hollywood during the 1940s. ‘West insisted on demonstrating that their city of dreams was nothing more than “the final dumping ground,” a Sargasso of the imagination.’ In a 2020 article for the New Yorker, Alex Ross posits that 1940s Hollywood had energy and community that came to emulate the salons of 1920s Paris and Cabaret Voltaire of the 1930s. ‘Los Angeles has long been a city of emigres, with a wealth of creative history. The decade was significant for Hollywood in terms of production and the City in the aftermath of war’ Ross writes. ‘Seldom in human history has one city hosted such a staggering convocation of talent.’ 

Meshes of the Afternoon (Dir: Maya Deren, 1943).