A detective fiction mixed with an essay-documentary about Los Angeles,
Hollywood and the film industry, Angel City is a satiric comedy
with serious intentions. Lead character, Frank Goya (Glaudini) is hired
by conglomerate media mogul, Pierce del Rue, to investigate the death
of his young wife; Goya traverses Hollywood and finds it is del Rue
who did it and is using him as a cover.
Vimeo VOD
1976 | 16mm | Color | Sound | 76 minutes
Producer, writer, director, editor cinematographer
: Jon Jost
With: Bob Glaudini, Winifred Golden, Roger
Ruffin, Kathleen Kramer, Mark Brown
Shown at Edinburgh Festival
1977; Berlin 1978; Sydney, Toronto, L'Age d'Or (Brussels), Florence
1979
In the collections of Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek
(FdK), British Film Institute (BFI), Australian Film Institute, Portuguese
Film Archive.
Broadcast by UK’s Channel Four, 1981
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"Rarely has the city been used to such effect as in Angel City,
a 1976 film made by the 34 year old experimental filmmaker Jon Jost. Jost
works light-years away from the movie mainstream but he clearly knows
the Hollywood standards which he mocks so mercilessly in this brightly
funny and extremely inventive film made for a phenomenal $6000."
- Martha DuBose, Sydney Morning Herald
"Jost's outsider is Frank Goya, a guy with a red shirt, a far-fucking-out-in-the-morning-man
delivery, and a fist full of Polaroid snapshots. Ever-cool Goya peers
into the camera, announces that he's a motel-haunting divorce-dick and
from then on Angel City is kabuki Raymond Chandler. Hired by the chairman
of the world's largest multi-national conglomerate to investigate the
death of his wife (a former Plaything centerfold who only "came after
you hit her"), Goya drives around LA, interviews a bartender, is
seduced by the chairman's mistress, solves the case, and gets beat up
for his bother."
- Jim Hoberman, Village Voice
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