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Dream State: California in the Movies
An eminent film writer looks behind the curtain of the California dream
It hardly needs to be nothing has contributed more to the mythology of California than the movies. Fed by the film industry, the California dream is instantly recognizable to people everywhere yet remains evasive for nearly everyone, including Californians themselves. That paradox is the subject of longtime San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle’s first book in nine years. The opposite of a dry historical primer, California in the Movies is a freewheeling journey through several dozen big-screen visions of the Golden State, with LaSalle’s unmistakable contrarian humor as the guide. His writing, unerringly perceptive and resistant to cliché, brings clarity to the haze of Hollywood reverie. He leaps effortlessly between genres and generations, moving with ease from Double Indemnity to the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Boyz N the Hood to Booksmart . There are natural disasters, heinous crimes, dubious utopias, dangerous romances, and unforgettable nights. Equally entertaining and unsettling, this book is a bold dissection of the California dream and its hypnotizing effect on the modern world.
It hardly needs to be nothing has contributed more to the mythology of California than the movies. Fed by the film industry, the California dream is instantly recognizable to people everywhere yet remains evasive for nearly everyone, including Californians themselves. That paradox is the subject of longtime San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle’s first book in nine years. The opposite of a dry historical primer, California in the Movies is a freewheeling journey through several dozen big-screen visions of the Golden State, with LaSalle’s unmistakable contrarian humor as the guide. His writing, unerringly perceptive and resistant to cliché, brings clarity to the haze of Hollywood reverie. He leaps effortlessly between genres and generations, moving with ease from Double Indemnity to the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Boyz N the Hood to Booksmart . There are natural disasters, heinous crimes, dubious utopias, dangerous romances, and unforgettable nights. Equally entertaining and unsettling, this book is a bold dissection of the California dream and its hypnotizing effect on the modern world.
- GenresNonfictionFilm
224 pages, Hardcover
Published May 18, 2021
5 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Mick LaSalle
7 books15 followersMick LaSalle is an American film critic and the author of two books on pre-code Hollywood. As of March 2008[update], he has written in excess of 1550 reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle,[1] and he has been podcasting them since September 2005.[2]
LaSalle is the author of Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood, a history/critical study of the actresses who worked in the film industry between 1929-1934. It was published by Thomas Dunne Books in 2000. In his review in The New York Times, Andy Webster called it "an overdue examination of a historic conflict between Hollywood and would-be monitors of morality" and added LaSalle "has an avuncular but informative style, and makes his points with a relaxed economy."[3]
The book served as the basis for the documentary film Complicated Women, directed by Hugh Munro Neely and narrated by Jane Fonda, which originally was broadcast by Turner Classic Movies in May 2003. LaSalle provided commentary for and served as Associate Producer of the project.[4]
LaSalle's follow-up to Complicated Women was Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man, published by Thomas Dunne in 2002.
LaSalle has lectured on film subjects at various film festivals, including those in the Hamptons, Denver, Las Vegas, and Mill Valley and at New York City's Film Forum and San Francisco's Castro Theatre. For several years he taught a film course at the University of California, Berkeley, and now[when?] teaches film courses at Stanford University.
In the late 1990s, LaSalle was the on-air film critic for KGO-TV. He is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle,[5] and was a panelist at the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Venice Film Festivals. He was also a panelist at the 2009 Berlin film festival. In addition to his reviews, he answers film-related questions in the Chronicle column Ask Mick LaSalle.
LaSalle is the author of Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood, a history/critical study of the actresses who worked in the film industry between 1929-1934. It was published by Thomas Dunne Books in 2000. In his review in The New York Times, Andy Webster called it "an overdue examination of a historic conflict between Hollywood and would-be monitors of morality" and added LaSalle "has an avuncular but informative style, and makes his points with a relaxed economy."[3]
The book served as the basis for the documentary film Complicated Women, directed by Hugh Munro Neely and narrated by Jane Fonda, which originally was broadcast by Turner Classic Movies in May 2003. LaSalle provided commentary for and served as Associate Producer of the project.[4]
LaSalle's follow-up to Complicated Women was Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man, published by Thomas Dunne in 2002.
LaSalle has lectured on film subjects at various film festivals, including those in the Hamptons, Denver, Las Vegas, and Mill Valley and at New York City's Film Forum and San Francisco's Castro Theatre. For several years he taught a film course at the University of California, Berkeley, and now[when?] teaches film courses at Stanford University.
In the late 1990s, LaSalle was the on-air film critic for KGO-TV. He is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle,[5] and was a panelist at the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Venice Film Festivals. He was also a panelist at the 2009 Berlin film festival. In addition to his reviews, he answers film-related questions in the Chronicle column Ask Mick LaSalle.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 12, 2021
When I was 15, I joined an exchange student program and moved from Italy to the U.S., to live there with an American family. The randomly selected state of my exchange year was Michigan. The very first day I arrived, my brain had the following striking sensation: “Ohhhh, things finally make sense to me! THIS is how the world is supposed to look like. This is how houses, yards, streets and stores are actually supposed to look like! I am WHOLE again.”
Crazy, right? Especially coming from Italy. And who did I have to thank for that munch-scream twisted perspective, as a young Italian boy?
But Hollywood, of course. And, more broadly, California, even if the two have a very blurred dividing line.
California is responsible for a cultural colonization of the brains of everyone around the world (I would submit, even in the most remote places, where they often can watch tv). Whether we like it or not, this is a fact. Especially true of the pre-internet generation, although this phenomenon is still going on, big time.
Mick Lasalle has written a powerful book where he examines California - as a place, as an idea and as a cultural aspiration - in its cinema representations.
First, I love Lasalle’s style. His voice is, at the same time, colloquial and precise. He reminds me a bit of the DeLillo of White Noise: the intensity is often found more in the individual sentence rather than the paragraph or chapter. And that’s understandable, coming from a very celebrated cinema critic: his work must often hit the reader’s mind with the quickest possible means.
Second reason why I loved this book: it’s written by a New Yorker. I’m so sorry, Californians, but you guys just don’t do depth. Here is a critic who can use the word “deep” while actually knowing what he’s talking about, and I’m sure that, in part, that’s because he is from the East Coast.
Third reason: as an immigrant (from Italy, as I live in L.A.) this book helped me make some sense of the surreal place where I’ve been spending the last years.
Fourth reason: despite showing no compassion for the worst side of California - the spiritual emptiness, the stunning selfishness, the having taken relativism to never-reached-before heights, and the general superficiality - Lasalle writes with a clear love for the place. His conclusion is a heart-felt one, where he says:
“ I feel an imprecise yet distinct desire to thank California itself - the people for welcoming me, the artists who distilled and implanted the California idea into the world’s consciousness, and even the politicians [note of the reviewer: ok, maybe not those ones!!] for making CA a remarkably livable, beautiful and humane place… at least most of the time.”
And this is something that, whether in my future I’ll stay or leave, I feel like I can share with the author.
Crazy, right? Especially coming from Italy. And who did I have to thank for that munch-scream twisted perspective, as a young Italian boy?
But Hollywood, of course. And, more broadly, California, even if the two have a very blurred dividing line.
California is responsible for a cultural colonization of the brains of everyone around the world (I would submit, even in the most remote places, where they often can watch tv). Whether we like it or not, this is a fact. Especially true of the pre-internet generation, although this phenomenon is still going on, big time.
Mick Lasalle has written a powerful book where he examines California - as a place, as an idea and as a cultural aspiration - in its cinema representations.
First, I love Lasalle’s style. His voice is, at the same time, colloquial and precise. He reminds me a bit of the DeLillo of White Noise: the intensity is often found more in the individual sentence rather than the paragraph or chapter. And that’s understandable, coming from a very celebrated cinema critic: his work must often hit the reader’s mind with the quickest possible means.
Second reason why I loved this book: it’s written by a New Yorker. I’m so sorry, Californians, but you guys just don’t do depth. Here is a critic who can use the word “deep” while actually knowing what he’s talking about, and I’m sure that, in part, that’s because he is from the East Coast.
Third reason: as an immigrant (from Italy, as I live in L.A.) this book helped me make some sense of the surreal place where I’ve been spending the last years.
Fourth reason: despite showing no compassion for the worst side of California - the spiritual emptiness, the stunning selfishness, the having taken relativism to never-reached-before heights, and the general superficiality - Lasalle writes with a clear love for the place. His conclusion is a heart-felt one, where he says:
“ I feel an imprecise yet distinct desire to thank California itself - the people for welcoming me, the artists who distilled and implanted the California idea into the world’s consciousness, and even the politicians [note of the reviewer: ok, maybe not those ones!!] for making CA a remarkably livable, beautiful and humane place… at least most of the time.”
And this is something that, whether in my future I’ll stay or leave, I feel like I can share with the author.
May 28, 2021
Mick LaSalle’s new book, Dream State, California in the Movies, is a revealing journey into the psyche of California as it is reflected in cinema. Longtime San Francisco film critic Mick LaSalle has a knack for getting to the story behind the story and this book is full of great perceptions of just what California cinema expresses both intentionally and unintentionally through its film industry.
Dream State is a methodical examination of how California appears in film, from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a wonderfully witty narrative on just how many ways we can see the Golden Gate Bridge being destroyed. With chapters that take on the myth-making behind the Wizard of Oz and the dark underbelly of Film Noir, the reader begins to sense that Hollywood is both vacuous and deliciously full at the same moment, and this moment is a uniquely California moment, made possible at least in part, by a beautiful, mild and changeable climate where life just looks a bit more glamorous before the cameras start rolling.
For those who like to go below the surface of film, Dream State is a must read. LaSalle’s career as a film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle provides him with a steady flow of apt observations and most importantly, the connective tissue that is implied or perhaps hinted at as both cultural and cinematic references. One aspect that emerges as a theme is the dissonance between perception and reality as perpetuated through cinema--not the obvious, but rather the moments that tend to go largely unrecognized but have great influence, which LaSalle is near genius at identifying.
There are dozens of films mentioned, each presented with unconventional rarely discussed viewpoints. The eleven chapters include distinctly different time generations and genres, examining how Pearl Harbor is portrayed then and now, as well as Romance and Utopian visions. This is not a book of reviews or even in a certain sense, the in-depth discussion of individual films, but rather a closer look at what we rarely examine in terms of the culture itself as seen through the mirror of California cinema. LaSalle gives us a bit of American history as well as anthropological insights and a totally unique set of mind-opening perceptions.
In a broader sense, Dream State is about America and the values America chooses to portray through cinema and this too, is cast with an eye to historical context, examining how events like World War II, Woodstock, and 911 have shaped what we see on the screen and how this informs and reinforces that which is permissible and that which either by production code or implication, falls beyond the pale and shifts over time.
Dream State provides unique insights on what it means to be in California and why and who has been drawn to this seemingly superficial oasis of tempting promises fulfilled, along with the implied illusions Hollywood offers that vanish when the theatre lights come back on and the credits roll.
Dream State is a methodical examination of how California appears in film, from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a wonderfully witty narrative on just how many ways we can see the Golden Gate Bridge being destroyed. With chapters that take on the myth-making behind the Wizard of Oz and the dark underbelly of Film Noir, the reader begins to sense that Hollywood is both vacuous and deliciously full at the same moment, and this moment is a uniquely California moment, made possible at least in part, by a beautiful, mild and changeable climate where life just looks a bit more glamorous before the cameras start rolling.
For those who like to go below the surface of film, Dream State is a must read. LaSalle’s career as a film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle provides him with a steady flow of apt observations and most importantly, the connective tissue that is implied or perhaps hinted at as both cultural and cinematic references. One aspect that emerges as a theme is the dissonance between perception and reality as perpetuated through cinema--not the obvious, but rather the moments that tend to go largely unrecognized but have great influence, which LaSalle is near genius at identifying.
There are dozens of films mentioned, each presented with unconventional rarely discussed viewpoints. The eleven chapters include distinctly different time generations and genres, examining how Pearl Harbor is portrayed then and now, as well as Romance and Utopian visions. This is not a book of reviews or even in a certain sense, the in-depth discussion of individual films, but rather a closer look at what we rarely examine in terms of the culture itself as seen through the mirror of California cinema. LaSalle gives us a bit of American history as well as anthropological insights and a totally unique set of mind-opening perceptions.
In a broader sense, Dream State is about America and the values America chooses to portray through cinema and this too, is cast with an eye to historical context, examining how events like World War II, Woodstock, and 911 have shaped what we see on the screen and how this informs and reinforces that which is permissible and that which either by production code or implication, falls beyond the pale and shifts over time.
Dream State provides unique insights on what it means to be in California and why and who has been drawn to this seemingly superficial oasis of tempting promises fulfilled, along with the implied illusions Hollywood offers that vanish when the theatre lights come back on and the credits roll.
August 22, 2022
What an utterly fascinating look at California in the movies. LaSalle doesn't just pick a few recent films that take place in California but compares and contrasts with how many of the same movies would have played out in other cities and states. For instance he talks about how Grease and Saturday Night Fever came out six months apart but one takes place in New York and the other California and how the perceptions, aside from different story lines in different time periods show how we perceive outcomes between the two cities/states. He delves into how we perceive disasters and disaster movies with the Towering Inferno in San Francisco and Earthquake in Los Angeles and how they show the different reactions where in California you live. Most fascinating to me was the first chapter which focuses on the Wizard of Oz and how it is a movie, in reality, about California and the dream of California. As I was reading I soon found myself ordering pretty much every movie he cited from my local library to pretty much watch again although there were a few that were new to me.
It's a super read and a little escapist despite it being a non-fiction. Definitely a fun and at the same time very thought provoking read.
Now I have to start going through LaSalle's back list because of how much I enjoyed this one.
It's a super read and a little escapist despite it being a non-fiction. Definitely a fun and at the same time very thought provoking read.
Now I have to start going through LaSalle's back list because of how much I enjoyed this one.
June 1, 2021
Mick LaSalle has long been my favorite film critic. His new book Dream State: California in the Movies validates my opinion of him whole-heartedly. The book is an examination of films set in California and how the “California” way of thinking and its environment has an intense bearing on them. While reading, I was amazed at the conclusions he draws. Some I understood, others were beyond me, but always they were entertaining and informative. I suppose I was most intrigued when he speaks of a film I have seen, but even when analyzing a movie I have not seen, I found the analysis interesting. Furthermore, the book is filled with humor. LaSalle begins with a description of The Wizard of Oz that is unique and hilarious. Admitting the film is a masterpiece, he then—perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek—begins to deconstruct it, some might say, savagely. Other points of humor in the book are more fleeting but just as savagely funny. And perhaps, if LaSalle had not already won me over, he captured me entirely when he speaks of the film Gidget. I’ve seen the Sandra Dee starrer, from 1959, well over ten times. Most dismiss the movie as a teen beach flick. But LaSalle sees it as a more complex coming of age story that points toward a California and USA culture just beginning—that of the free-wheeling, free-thinking 1960s. To put his seal of approval on one of my favorite movies was priceless to me. All in all, Dream State may not be for the casual reader, but for film buffs, it definitely needs to be on their shelves.
July 17, 2021
In this new look at how movies define California, LaSalle does a great job of defining the two main aspects of this issue - how San Francisco and Los Angeles are defined differently in popular culture. He has great examples but could include a few more to prove his point. Also, he needs to correct the error in the description of "Hardcore;" Season Hubley is not George C. Scott's daughter, she's a hooker who helps him try to find his daughter. Otherwise, it is factual and clear; I also appreciated the use of older and newer films as examples. LaSalle has a nice writing style that is conversational so it is a quick read.
February 24, 2025
Only Mick LaSalle would start a book w/an essay showing the Wizard of Oz to be one of the most depressing movies ever made. i really enjoyed this book. Near the end of it LaSalle connected two events in a way i'd not considered, Woodstock is often called the high point of the 60s and Altamont their end. LaSalle points out that Woodstock wasn't unicorns and rainbows, it was messy, filthy and poorly planned - not a particularly pleasant experience. The best of the 60s was the Monterey Pop Festival with Altamont/Helter Skelter its worst. (Wish LaSalle would have worked a mention of Contra Costa into the book, he did give us credit for Tom Hanks, he could have added Aldo Ray and Katherine Ross and Clark Gable's Sporting Blood filmed in Walnut Creek and Jack Nicholson's early film directed by Harvey Berman, The Wild Ride.)
May 3, 2022
After reading this, I’m definitely going to be paying more attention to how California, and stories set here, are portrayed in the movies. The theories in this book are cynical and fairly bleak, and I can’t help but believe there are more forgiving ways of interpreting the state as an idea in the movies. I would have enjoyed a more in-depth presentation of these theories, particularly some inquiry into the origination and development of what LaSalle argues are the meanings of California in the movies. The writing made it seem as if the directors, producers and screenwriters making these films purposefully set out to portray California in some particular way, which I don’t believe was the intention. In the end, the book was interesting and engaging, but left me wanting more.
May 25, 2022
Mick LaSalle's Complicated Women is one of my favorite books about film, so I thought this would be worth a read. And it was. I wasn't always convinced that everything tied into his "uniquely Californian" thesis, but on a film by film level the discussion was always good. I especially like his takes on The Wizard of Oz (as a film about the movies themselves), the ending of Grease (which he finds as disturbing as I do), and the progression of the late sixties from Montery Pop through Woodstock to its December 1969 destination at Altamont, as depicted in Gimme Shelter. He has also convinced me to seek out and watch Gidget, a film I had dismissed without ever seeing.
August 1, 2022
The San Francisco Chronicle film critic looks at the way movies have defined California -- and vice versa. I have loved so many of the movies he writes about and would love to see those I haven't. Come on, Netflix! Add some of these older movies!
January 1, 2024
I love Mick LaSalle and grew up on his movie reviews. Too bad that Dream State was a bit of a scattered mess, with much of the book having very little to do with California. That said, I did learn about a few films that I definitely will check out.
July 29, 2021
More like State of Boredom
December 15, 2021
Was OK… vaguely reminded me of Mike Davis style writing, but on film and place.
February 5, 2024
While the general themes here are familiar, the book is enjoyable because of its interesting takes on several movies, such as The Wizard of Oz, Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Gidget.
February 24, 2022
Entertaining and insightful. Highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews