I didn't just move to Los Angeles. I stepped into a movie

In 1911, a Broadway playwright wrote a snarky missive astir a teenage histrion who had precocious train-tripped from New York to Los Angeles.

“The mediocre kid is really reasoning of taking up moving pictures seriously,” William C. deMille scribbled to his theatre colleague, David Belasco. “So I accidental we’ll person to accidental goodbye to small Mary Pickford. She’ll ne'er beryllium heard of again.”

That gossip acceptable the code for the communicative of Hollywood: adventure, pathos, arrogance, drama and a melodramatic twist ending. Mary Pickford became the astir celebrated look successful the satellite and William and his household rapidly followed her westbound where, successful 1914, his small member Cecil directed the town’s archetypal full-length movie, “The Squaw Man.”

Since then, Los Angeles has produced who knows however galore films. No 1 seems to person counted them. The astir tenable guesses I tin find estimation the tally to beryllium astir 30,000 features, a fig that sounds tiny for the intelligence existent property that Hollywood occupies successful the caput of its planetary audience. Back-of-the-envelope mathematics calculates you could ticker each of them successful a small implicit 5 years — assuming you ne'er slept.

From their ranks, we’ve chosen the 101 L.A.-set movies that champion correspond this metropolis and its inhabitants: actors, scamps, cops, crooks, singers, strivers, slackers and adjacent cyborgs.

In a fitting irony, “The Squaw Man” itself doesn’t number due to the fact that Cecil imagined it took spot connected the plains. But the barn helium utilized arsenic a workplace inactive stands connected Highland Avenue — it’s present the Hollywood Heritage Museum. If you’ve been present astatine all, you’ve surely driven past it connected your mode from Mulholland Drive to Sunset Boulevard and Chinatown, a circuit that references 3 titles that basal gangly connected our list, adjacent if the plots themselves don’t marque america look pretty.

Part of what defines a Los Angeles movie is our city’s willingness to crook the camera connected itself, to prioritize a riveting communicative implicit our ain reputation. We’re anxious to stock our saga with the world. Our glamorous and gruesome past is each determination successful a close-up of “Chinatown’s” Jack Nicholson: a movie prima with a mutilated nose.

Intriguingly for a municipality that popularized the Hollywood blessed ending, galore of the movies we astir place with extremity connected a downbeat note, astir fractional of them. Sunshine aside, this isn’t an casual spot to unrecorded and it’s getting harder. My friends and I gag that Hollywood makes movies similar “Falling Down” and “Death Becomes Her,” successful which postulation jams and narcissism pb straight to death, to support much New Yorkers from flooding the place, similar a Chihuahua proprietor posting a motion connected their doorway that says: Beware of dog.

I arrived close aft college, an Oklahoma transplant whose expectations of L.A. were, naturally, shaped by the movies. The Sunset Strip hairsbreadth metallic bands immortalized by Penelope Spheeris successful “The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years” were agelong since extinct and the “Swingers” bros who ascended afterward were themselves aging retired of the scene. To enactment an nonstop clip stamp connected it, I signed the lease of my archetypal flat successful Little Armenia due to the fact that the bowling alley from “The Big Lebowski” was lone 2 blocks away. A period later, it closed. (Luckily, I did get to spell once.)

Driving west, I’d steeled myself for 2 classical L.A. clichés: seismic earthquakes and shallow people. Instead, I was thrilled to observe a metropolis afloat of fascinating characters and truthful galore yet-to-be-explored corners that it volition ne'er tally retired of material.

Fifteen directors made our database astatine slightest twice, an eclectic radical whose ranks see Amy Heckerling, David Lynch, Charles Burnett, Kathryn Bigelow, Michael Mann and Billy Wilder — the second of whom has two films successful the apical 10. Each filmmaker revealed caller layers successful this ungraded and, upon it, built their ain legacies. (Three different directors you whitethorn beryllium capable to conjecture earned adjacent much than 2 spots.)

Storytellers — the champion ones, astatine slightest — are funny by quality and successful this town, nary substance wherever they constituent a camera, there’s thing worthy seeing, from the hangout vibes of “Friday” to the erotic humidity of “Spa Night.” Sean Baker’s hyperactive “Tangerine,” changeable connected an iPhone astatine a doughnut store connected Santa Monica Boulevard, not lone makes that constituent with gusto, it encourages you to get retired and roam.

These movies are a imperishable reminder that Los Angeles is simply a spot wherever fabrication and world are fused. Right now, you could spell get a acold soda astatine Bob’s Market successful Angelino Heights — an mean associated with laundry detergent and caller lemons connected the shelves — and toast it for cameoing successful 3 movies connected our list: “L.A. Confidential,” “Nightcrawler” and, astir iconically, Vin Diesel’s gasoline-powered 2001 crowdpleaser “The Fast and the Furious.”

To punctuation a needle driblet from a rubric connected this list, I emotion L.A. That Randy Newman anthem blares astatine the extremity of “Volcano” aft Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche successfully divert a lava travel into the Pacific Ocean and the recently formed Mt. Wilshire exhales a suspiration of relief. (Mick Jackson, who directed that disasterpiece, besides helmed the aptly named Steve Martin rom-com “L.A. Story.”)

One summertime soon aft I planted my ain involvement here, a subject nine hosted an outdoor screening of “Volcano” connected tract astatine the La Brea Tar Pits, nestled among the thenar trees it took specified pleasance successful destroying. One section geologist wore a achromatic furniture expanse with orangish and reddish foam noodles sticking retired of her caput — yes, she was costumed arsenic a volcano. As the credits rolled adjacent to the park’s mastodon sculptures, I couldn’t person agreed with Randy more.