The great imposter<\/p>\n
As a latchkey kid who watched hour after hour of television in the afternoons, I took pride in spotting my city despite the camouflage. The errant palm tree in the English countryside manor. The quintessentially black L.A. traffic lights and blue signage in a bustling \u201cManhattan streetscape.\u201d The distant San Gabriel Mountains behind what was supposed to be a Midwestern city. <\/p>\n
The magic act was part Hollywood craftsmanship, part perfect location. Back then, it was smoggy so much of the year that the cityscape seemed to fade away after a few blocks into a gray screen, creating a pollution-fueled soundstage. <\/p>\n
We\u2019ll fake Manhattan!<\/p>\n
Today, Los Angeles struggles as productions flee<\/a> to places including New Jersey, Georgia, London and Albuquerque, which are taking their turns as urban shape-shifters. But it was L.A. that pioneered it.<\/p>\n The promise of year-round filming is one reason the entertainment industry moved to Hollywood in the first place. There is that famous 1927 Paramount Pictures map<\/a> of California suggesting how different locales could be used for filming: Palos Verdes as Wales, Santa Barbara as the Spanish Riviera, the Mojave as the Sahara, the Sierra as Switzerland. <\/p>\n The downtown Los Angeles of the 1970s, \u201980s and \u201990s really felt like a back lot. The city center was famously run down, vacant and filled with neglected architectural gems perfect for any project. The Times chronicled the intense competition for downtown filming space in a story titled \u201cWe\u2019ll Fake Manhattan.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt serves for just about anyplace, USA,\u201d a location scout said in 1998. \u201cA great deal of downtown L.A. not only looks like New York but other major cities.\u201d<\/p>\n During those boom days, productions were lining up to take over the prime spots. Spring Street for the Art Deco look. Broadway for its movie palaces and Manhattan street scene. Certain alleyways were favored for chases and gangster murders. Figueroa or Flower streets for the corporate look. What is now the Arts District for industrial grit. <\/p>\n Downtown was still hot a decade ago when I wandered out of The Times\u2019 old newsroom to see the side of City Hall transformed into Washington, D.C. A few blocks away on Spring Street, a real-life-scale Manhattan subway station emerged (on closer examination, the staircase down ended after two steps).<\/p>\n An uncertain future<\/p>\n Downtown Los Angeles is still a hub for filming, but it\u2019s just not the same. As my colleagues Samantha Masunaga and Stacy Perman reported, film shoot days in L.A.<\/a> have fallen nearly 50% since 2019, while the motion picture industry has shed around 57,000 jobs in four years. Increasingly, we hear about places such as Atlanta and Vancouver filling in for Los Angeles. (Don\u2019t get me started about HBO shooting a 2011 miniseries version of the L.A. crime classic \u201cMildred Pierce\u201d in Long Island!)<\/p>\n In 2003, filmmaker Thom Andersen produced an influential and highly entertaining documentary about how film portrays the city called \u201cLos Angeles Plays Itself.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019d love a companion film called \u201cLos Angeles Plays Someone Else.\u201d<\/p>\n It could include some of my favorites, starting with the unassuming apartment building on New Hampshire Avenue in Koreatown that became the home of the ultimate Manhattanite: Jerry Seinfeld.<\/p>\n And it would end with \u201cFriends With Benefits,\u201d starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis.<\/p>\n The 2011 romantic comedy intentionally mocks L.A. <\/a>as a location for so many New York movies. Dylan (Justin) and Jamie (Mila) are getting cozy watching a faux New York rom-com on TV. It\u2019s clearly filmed at L.A.\u2019s Union Station as a highly unrealistic fill-in for Grand Central Station. Dylan calls it out, just as the couple on screen embark on a Central Park horse-drawn carriage through a sea of L.A. palm trees. <\/p>\n Southwest of Eden<\/p>\n So now, New Zealand has its chance to play California. Steinbeck\u2019s book takes place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Salinas and Monterey. Portions of the 1955 Elia Kazan movie were shot in Salinas and along the Mendocino Coast. The director of the new miniseries, Zoe Kazan, made a fair point about picking New Zealand, telling Netflix that \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of unspoiled landscape in a way that would be much harder to find here. The actual Salinas Valley doesn\u2019t look the way that it did anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n It turns out her grandfather felt the same way. Elia Kazan believed the Salinas of the 1950s was way too modern for many key scenes, according to a detailed story<\/a> of the production in American Cinematographer that originally ran in the publication in 1955. So he filmed a good deal back at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, painstakingly re-creating Salinas down to the detailed carvings of the wood and the products on the store shelves. \u201cThe Research department heads spent several weeks in Salinas gathering old photographs and information from the citizenry about the town as it was prior to our entry into World War I,\u201d the article said.<\/p>\n And Salinas didn\u2019t seem to mind. When the movie came out, Steinbeck himself penned a piece for the Salinas Californian, declaring it \u201cprobably the best movie I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Top stories A kayaker watches waves crash into barriers and homes along the boardwalk on the Long Beach Peninsula on Saturday.<\/p>\n (Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n The threats that remain from storm RachelHow L.A. became a turtle smuggling hot spotBattle over transgender rightsFor the second election cycle in a row, the rights of transgender people<\/a> have taken center stage politically, despite their accounting for only about 1% of the U.S. population.Many voters identify other issues<\/a> as far more important, yet the issue of transgender rights has split Republicans and Democrats, and it\u2019s split Democrats among themselves and put the party on the defensive.More newsCommentary and opinionEditor\u2019s pickMore picksThings to do \u201cFire and ice\u201d combination of berbere and cardamom ice creams made by Russell and Yvette Platoff at their Eagle Rock restaurant Aunt Yvette\u2019s Kitchen.<\/p>\n (Bill Addison \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Today\u2019s recipe More adorable than spooky, these Halloween treats are nothing more than homemade marshmallows<\/a>, using just a handful of ingredients. Although the recipe does require the use of a candy thermometer, the hardest part is probably piping the \u201cghost\u201d shapes just right.<\/p>\n Question for you<\/p>\n What is your favorite Halloween candy?<\/p>\n Jody S. says, \u201cI\u2019ll shamelessly admit this. The most maligned Halloween candy out there is my all-time favorite: candy corn!\u201d<\/p>\n Glenn C. says, \u201cNestle Crunch are my favorite Halloween candy.\u201d<\/p>\n Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com<\/a>, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.<\/p>\n Photo of the day (Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Games Here\u2019s today\u2019s mini crossword<\/a>, plus our other free, daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games<\/a>.<\/p>\n Have a great day, from the Essential California team<\/p>\n Jack Dolan, investigative reporter![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791813488_985_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\""Fire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791813488_672_.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"Homemade](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791813489_486_.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"Waves](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791813489_918_.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"Mini](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/21\/ec\/25146a67473fbc80fa9a6e5bdb82\/minicrossword-kyle.svg\")
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Hugo Mart\u00edn, assistant editor, Fast Break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters<\/p>\n