The L.A. Riot Spectacular [USA, 2005]

I don’t know why, but it seems to me the best films about race are always comedies. “CSA: Confederate States of America”, “A Day in Black and White”, “A Day Without a Mexican” and now this extremely edgy comedy, all tell the truth. Not a surface truth like glossy crap such as “Crash” that makes it look like every member of the cast (no matter what their ethnic background) lunches at Pinot regularly. There’s an intrinsic truth here that looks at racism for what it is, which is madness and power, whether it’s cops or gangs or any fearful citizen trying to balance that power with a gun. When it comes to stuff like that, there’s really no better way than to reveal it than with humor. It’s like taking Rambo and revealing the fact that his true soul is a tiny monomaniacal ‘Mini Me’ jumping up and down to get attention. The tough guy must be revealed! We all know all bigotry stems from insecurity, so what better way than to reveal it through humor? If we try to reveal it with sober deliberation or maudlin sentimentality, people just get cynical. If the cynicism is already there though, we have no choice but to laugh at ourselves. We are ridiculous; all of us.

I lived through the riots and it was not – in any way – funny. Three years earlier I’d lived at a Buddhist center in Koreatown and I watched in horror that night on April 30, 1992 while the entire block next to it went up in flames. I knew those people; I visited their shops and ate in their restaurants. When I say ‘those people’ I mean around 45% Hispanic, 40% Korean, 8% Thai, 5% black and 2% White. We had all always lived in perfect harmony. But that night I sat and watched the workers at the Korean supermarket two blocks away lying behind sandbags on the roof of their store armed to the teeth. They were taking pot shots at black kids who tried to run beyond the orange cones that they had set up in their parking lot in order to stop looters and arsonists. I saw the produce guy I used to talk to all the time taking pot shots at black kids! I saw my friends at the Buddhist Center in the back yards of each house helping the firemen hose down the fire that was creeping toward their fence. There was an enormous gong in the backyard of that center that had survived 500 years of wars in Vietnam, but because of the fires that had raged just a few yards away, it became permanently charred on one side.

The effects of the riots were not funny, and the film doesn’t laugh at that. But it does laugh at our human nature, which is always dispensable, and at the one target that can never be lampooned enough; the media. One of my favorite lines in the film: 

TV Announcer (as arson fires are breaking out all over the city): Mayor Bradley praises gang members for offering free heating to the homeless.

It’s that kind of humor. If the Abrahms/Zucker team that made “Airplane” had an edge, this would be the film they would make. The film was shot in DV, but that was a wise choice because it makes it actually difficult at times to separate their footage from the real news footage. The film sports a surprisingly big-name cast; Snoop Dog, Emilio Estevez, Ronny Cox, Charles Dutton, Christopher McDonald, TK Carter, Ted Levine, Ron Jeremy (!), and the guy with possibly the funniest lines in the film; George Hamilton. The fact that the film never saw a wide release and practically went straight to DVD I think is a sign of a fearsome political incorrectness that has the Hollywood community writhing in discomfort. Their films like “Crash” perpetuate all the stereotypes and myths that those ‘limosine liberals’ who live in the hills want to believe are true. This film shows the reality, and the reality is insane. I forget who said it but a quote that gets a lot of mileage is: “if we don’t laugh we go insane”. I’m all for a lot more movies like this! My grade: 9