It’s actually interesting to think about this commonly used saying. Especially when you are in Los Angeles. There was a film called ‘Los Angeles plays itself’. A documentary about the different interpretations, notions, translations, and creations of Los Angeles in films. Although it’s the most photographed city of the world nobody really knows Los Angeles, different than we know it from other popular pictures like the skyline of New York or similar landmark views of big cities. Regarding Los Angeles the last thing films transform is a focus on such a specific view, widely and repeatedly represented in a matter it turns in a well recognizable feature of the place, a highly visual identity. The lack of identity of this sort is the notion ‘like in the movies’. Our daily live in an environment we are used to is part of our own identity and how everyone of us understands live in the broadest sense. A movie creates another world in its own entity, is it appealing to us or is it rather distracting or somewhere in between, either way it is to a certain degree opposed to ourselves since we look at it from the outside starting from our own understanding. This constant distance between the own mind and observations translated through a movie refers to situations where there is a clear sense, a reality, and therefore it allows adaptation, but something is missing that provokes a kick to a slightly different perception than what leads us usually through life. It’s on the very small edge between the obvious and the absurd. I think in Los Angeles you can develop very strong feelings about these different realities since this city is so hard to find. The documentary ‘Los Angeles plays itself’ revealed a good understanding about this distance and fascination at the same time. Reality doesn’t really exist, but realities.