DODGE CITY

 I saw City of Gold over the weekend, it's the documentary by Laura Gabbert about Jonathan Gold, the LA Times food critic, and all round good egg.

It’s a good, fun, fascinating movie I think, about the man (and his family), and about the processes of eating, writing and criticism.  And I think it’s a serious and important film too about Los Angeles, and mapping, and the methods by which we come to know a city and ourselves, in this case through eating and writing, and a lot of driving too.  This is, of course a form of psycheogeography.  

  

Mr. Gold powers his Dodge pickup truck all over the city, to high and low eateries, places that in most cases most of us will never go. I don’t imagine anybody in the city goes as far and wide to eat as he does, though some of us try to do some minor version of it, though many of course don’t.

It seems to me that Los Angeles is divided between those people who’ll happily drive 25 miles down the freeway for the sake of a very average pizza, and those other people who won’t go to the end of the street unless they know there’s plenty of parking and the menu features artisanal tater-tots that conform exactly to their tastes.

Fans of foodie movie minutiae will also be thrilled to learn that the Psychogourmet himself makes a half-second appearance, about ten minutes from the end of City of Gold, peering around a bookcase at a Jonathan Gold reading at Skylight books.  Well worth the price of admission.

You can see the trailer here: