L.A. Q&A: Chris Paine
September 29, 2009
Tricia Romano
Chris Paine is best known as the director of Who Killed the Electric Car?, a movie about how the car industry and politics nipped the explosive growth of the electric cars in the bud. But Paine is also a nightlife aficionado who loves the Burner scene and has a new environmentally friendly venue, the Marrakesh House, that he uses as an entertaining space. We gave Chris our usual drill-down.
Where did you grow up, and when did you move to Los Angeles?
I grew up in San Francisco, but I moved here about 20 years ago, so I moved here in the 1990s. … Time goes by too fast. I moved here because some of my friends from theater world in New York, where I had gone to school, were moving to Los Angeles and I wanted to join them here. I always felt more comfortable as an outsider in L.A., as opposed to people in San Fran where there are more environmentalists. I didn’t feel I was in the mainstream here, and I felt like I could really do my work.
When did you become environmentally aware and active?
My parents were big environmentalists. My dad did the Open Space project in the San Francisco Bay Area, where you raise money, buy land, and keep it from being developed. My mother was in a group of environmental volunteers.
What led you to do the Electric Car movie? How frustrating is it for you to live in a city where the car is the main source of transportation?
Where there already was public transportation. It’s frustrating. I wish we had great public transportation—we had great public transportation till the 50s. We had incredible streetcars. The name Who Killed the Electric Car? is an homage to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. The movie’s real theme is about streetcars being removed. There’s a lot of work to be done in Los Angeles, and it’s a good place to try and improve. I think electric cars would make particularly good sense here as opposed to New York City, where you have an established public transportation system. It’s good to have cars stop burning gasoline. So many children are exposed to exhaust from tailpipes. It’s impossible to argue against electric cars—it moves pollution out of the city entirely. So L.A. is the perfect place for electric cars. There are potentially millions of acres of rooftops that are perfect for creating energy to power those cars. It’s potentially a utopia. It was a utopia when my grandmother lived here in the 30s, when cars hadn’t taken over things. The car kind of destroyed things in a way.
I didn’t realize that there had been public transportation in the city and that it had been blocked by General Motors.
There were three factors of the removal of the streetcars. You can see where the streetcars were everywhere you drive. You can see where the tracks used to be. In Culver City where I live, the light rail system is being placed where the trolleys used to go down to Venice. Tons of money is being poured into the light rail extension. If you drive along just south of the 10 freeway, a half mile along La Cienega and La Brea, you’ll see a lot of it—yellow train tracks. The red car went to Long Beach. In the 1900s, the 10 freeway used to be a railroad that took people to Santa Monica. Before air conditioning, people would take the trains out to cool off for the summer. The train would stop at the pier. They’d take the train back to the city for the weekend. We moved from a train and street car-centric world here, to one based on the automobile. Unfortunately the automobiles aren’t as clean as could be, by a long shot.
What was sexy after World War II was a car. Cool people would ride the car; they built the Pasadena Freeway, the 110, and everyone wanted a car, if you were a happening person. Streetcar ridership fell way off. The tire companies and car companies saw it as a big chance. They bought up all the streetcar lines and tore out the tracks; they sold the cities big contracts for buses, which would use tires. There was no resistance … this happened all over the country.
Tell me about how the Marrakesh House came about.
Well, I like getting people together. I don’t like suburban island fortress existences. I like things that bring people together. For 15 years, I lived down on the beach in Santa Monica in a rent-controlled apartment. I’d have parties all the time, and it was very social. We got evicted by a big developer. I thought, what can I do now? Maybe I need to move to Topanga, get a group house. I decided I didn’t want to move away from the city and wanted to stay close. I saw a 1950s house that I could show that you can power your cars off your house, and you can power your house up, have a place you can entertain and have great events. I was little bit tired after the last film … I needed a change of pace and needed another kind of creative project, and that became the remodeling of this house.
Describe your perfect LA day and night.
My perfect L.A. day would be mountain bike ride up Mandeville Canyon. A great thing at night would be a downtown party. I’m a fan of house music. And maybe hanging out at the Marrakesh House later, with people visiting from around the world.
What the best L.A secret you can share?
It’s not a secret—but a secret for our generation. The Los Angeles Philharmonic. We have probably world’s greatest conductor—Gustavo Dudamel, he’s Venezuelan. Most of the audience is 50 years old and over, and this guy is in his 20s or early 30s, max. He’s so exciting. The secret for the Philharmonic—you can get these $15 seats if you call the box office on Mondays at noon. They call them bench seating. When I moved here from San Francisco, it’s the pact with the devil, I said … I might be moving to the “cultural wasteland,” but I’m gonna start going to the Philharmonic. It’s been a great change from Hollywood and the electronic music scene, all the things I really like. The Philharmonic is amazing.
What’s your favorite place to have a cocktail?
Akasha in Culver City. Great bartenders, brilliant organic cuisine, and plenty of ambience.
What’s your favorite thing about Los Angeles nightlife? Where do you like to go?
I prefer nightlife where people are having a good time together, not just checking each other out. Clubs and parties where people dance as much as hang at the bar. The LA Burning Man and Do Lab community does a great job of this. I also like events put on by Create Fixate and Hollywood Hill. Benefits at private homes are great too‚ especially because you meet so many like-minded people. I’ll admit to taking out-of-towners to the occasional show-me experience (Hollywood Roosevelt, Hotel SLS, etc.) but most of the time I’m watching email for cool downtown parties and Westside benefits.
What’s the work of art—film, book, or short story—that best represents Los Angeles?
The book Cadillac Desert. It’s a history of water in the West. It’s one of my favorite books. It’s the real Chinatown story—a fantastic look at Los Angeles and the West’s deep relationship with water.
Which Los Angeleno do you most admire and why?
I admire John Quigley, he’s an environmentalist. He puts himself on the line over and over again. I admire Kiefer Sutherland … he went and did his DUI time without getting star treatment. I thought that was pretty classy. I like to see people who deal with life as it comes and deal with their own issues.
What’s the most annoying cliché about Los Angeles?
The most inaccurate cliché is that L.A. doesn’t have any culture. We have the greatest DJs in the world. Some of the theater is fantastic … it’s not New York, I won’t pretend, but there’s incredible improv and comedy. We have the movie biz, and not a lot of it is high-grade, but some is. Michael Tolkin, he wrote The Player, and he really reminded me that there are so many brilliant writers in the world that live here.
What the most true cliché about Los Angeles?
The most true is that the city could not be uglier to see for the first time from an airplane arriving. Every time I look out the airplane and landing in LAX—smog plus sprawl and not one solar roof to be seen anywhere. It’s really depressing.
What do you think of this quote from Dorothy Parker: “Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.”
I’d say, what’s wrong with that? I would say yeah, they are probably the most exciting suburbs in the country. If you take Hollywood, Culver City, Malibu, and compare that to any suburb in the country, they are amazing. The trick right now is to better connect these suburbs together.
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