“RUOK?”

“With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a wacky weatherman tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter, who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early 1990s Los Angeles,” description of LA Story from IMDB. Starring Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant and Sarah Jessica Parker, this movie came out in 1991. I would’ve been about ten years old then, but I don’t remember whether it was the first of Martin’s work I’d seen or whether I’d already watched him in The Three Amigos or Roxanne. LA Story is a satire, but to my ten-year-old brain it was wonderfully whimsical and silly.

The Silliness of a Story in LA

Several times throughout the film, there are shots of miles-long lines of traffic, which I appreciated as exhausting and unnecessary, maybe because my mom would often pile all of us into the car to drive from Queens into lower Manhattan to pick my dad up from work. It took hours, so I really appreciated how ridiculous it was that Harris K. Telemaker, (Martin’s character – what a name!) would pull out of all that endless traffic to talk to a billboard sign.

Martin has a style of comedy that bears silliness well, while still being entertaining for adults. He’s attributed as the developer of “anti-comedy,” or comedy that is so consistently unfunny it builds an awkward tension until the audience has to laugh to relieve the pressure. He has tons of corny jokes in his movies and SNL performances, which of course remind me of my dad, making Martin an extra familiar funny guy.

The jokes in LA Story aren’t yet anti-comedy, but they are dry in a way that carries the movie, addressing the seriousness with which Angelenos go about their fussy, difficult lives so that you’re observing what life is like but also getting a wry commentary on it. There is a scene where Telemaker is out with a group of acquaintances, whom he complained about before meeting, and then enthusiastically mimicking their annoying behaviors. During the dynamic lunch, the camera pans around the table, giving us the perspective of the waiter trying to get all of their ridiculous coffee orders:

“I’ll have a half-caff with light foam; make mine a double caff caff with  decaf on top; Can I have that coffee ice cream thing?” It was customized ordering a la Starbucks, before Starbucks even existed! Very sophisticated & chic, ahead of its time.

The movie shows Martin in a series of endearingly ludicrous activities, meant to keep him entertained but that are so vacuous you’d wonder how they could be entertaining; perhaps because they provide him a break from all the over-seriousness of LA life, things like roller-skating through an art gallery or talking on a payphone while hanging out of his car by his hips. Even the way he delivers the weather is nonsensical, throwing magnetic suns at the map, when it’s pouring rain the next day. In another scene, the magnetic clouds fall entirely off the map, after which a colleague asks Telemaker, “Didn’t you have a PhD in Arts & Humanities? Lot of good it did you.”

Relationships in LA

The opening voice-over, done by Martin, introduces us to Telemaker, who’s “had seven heart attacks, all of them imaginary. That is to say…I was deeply unhappy, but didn’t know it because I was so happy all the time…” and he goes on to mention “her,” Victoria Tennant, with whom he falls in love during the film. I didn’t know it at the ripe old age of ten, but his description of being deeply unhappy was a poignantly accurate description of what is sometimes simply a state of being an adult.

The heart in the film comes from Telemaker realizing how deeply unhappy he is with all the flash and superficiality of LA life, once he meets the odd but genuine Sara McDowel, played by Tennant.

Telemaker is paired up with Marilu Henner’s Trudi at the movie’s opening, but she is the quintessence of LA frivolity, with loud outfits and judgmental pronouncements, obviously using Harris for status but lacking real feelings, contributing to his lack of fulfillment. Eventually Harris finds out that Trudi is sleeping with his agent, which frees him up to pursue Sara.

It is in the car with Trudi when Telemaker meets the signpost, which asks for a hug, and then tells him LA wants to help him. Telemaker suspects he’s being filmed for a gag, but hugs the signpost, which then tells him that he’ll know what to do when he unscrambles “how daddy is doing.” Sara helps him at the film’s close, once they have realized they want to be together and share a real, meaningful relationship. They go to the signpost to tell it thank you, and Sara unscrambles the letters to “Do Wah Diddy,” a song she earlier played on her tuba in the movie, signaling that perhaps she is, indeed “the one,” for Harris.

Finale

On one of Harris’s earlier visits to the signpost, he asks out of aggravation whether it used to be an oracle. The signpost replies with a sad attempt at expressing some bagpipe sounds. LA Story closes with a full salvo of bagpipe noise, triumphant and hopeful. It’s pretty memorable, regardless of your age.

You can buy LA Story to watch from Apple, Amazon or YouTube, or maybe if you’re lucky you have a copy of it at home. I hope you do give it a try; it’s a very different style of movie than what tends to be made these days, but it’s intelligent, funny and has heart.