During the time when Shane Black co-wrote the script for Last Action Hero, perhaps he was still somewhat slightly enchanted with Los Angeles. Even if his script for Lethal Weapon 2 had been rejected by the studio for being, what else, “too dark.” Nonetheless, the idea of Los Angeles as a place for one’s escape and sun-drenched retreat is present throughout 1993’s Last Action Hero. After all, it’s where “the movies” are made, so it has to be an inherently escapist milieu itself, n’est-ce pas? For ten-year-old Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien), it most definitely is. Because not only does it serve as the backdrop for all of Jack Slater’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) action movies, but it’s also in sharp contrast to the dreary surroundings provided by New York City.
Being that 1993 was the last year before New York got literally Disney-fied via the Faustian pact the city made with Disney to renovate the New Amsterdam Theater (which would reopen in 1997) as part of the much-talked about 42nd Street Development Project, there is something commemorative about Danny skulking through the still grimy, crime-ridden streets of Times Square in order to get to his favorite rundown movie palace, The Pandora. In actuality, the exteriors are of the Empire Theater and the interiors are shots of L.A.’s own Orpheum theater (proving that, before Friends, L.A. did know how to make New York look “realistically shitty”). And it’s largely his favorite theater because of the paternal projectionist who works there, Nick (Robert Prosky), an elderly man who shares a similar enthusiasm for film. In any case, Danny’s commitment to cinema despite having to face the mean streets of NYC is just further proof of how much he genuinely needs it.
Like Cecelia (Mia Farrow) in The Purple Rose of Cairo, it is his lone source of escapism in an otherwise bleak existence. Not just because New York itself is bleak, but because his father has recently died, leaving his overworked and overstressed mother, Irene (Mercedes Ruehl), with little time to properly look after him. That’s part of the reason why Danny ends up getting attacked in his own apartment just as he opens the door to sneak off into the night to see a special screening of the new Jack Slater movie (Jack Slater IV) that Nick invited him to view at midnight.
Despite the trauma of being handcuffed to the toilet (and subsequently forced to fish the key out of it) after getting roughed up by the robber and then going to the police station to report it, Nick can’t stop thinking about the movie. He has to get to the theater. Emotional fragility be damned—that’s what the movie is for: to forget all about that and become totally wrapped up in someone else’s story, someone else’s melodrama… no matter how ersatz and minuscule in comparison. In this sense, Last Action Hero and Black’s 2005 directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, serve as undeniable homages to film and what it means to people. What’s more, both movies showcase Black’s ability to dance circles around the meta genre with his plot-within-a-plot framework.
Before the movie-within-a-movie concept reaches a peak in Last Action Hero, Danny heads into the theater where Nick will project the new print. Nick even makes the event more special by presenting Danny with a “magic” ticket because “you gotta have a ticket” to go to the movie. One that, according to him, Harry Houdini gave to him, thereby all but ensuring its “legitimate” powers (and yes, Houdini is a big New York icon, what with being buried in Queens’ Machpelah Cemetery). Danny is hesitant to believe in Nick’s lore until, one second he’s in this depressing, dilapidated realm, and the next he’s transported to the glamorous, shiny world of Los Angeles (the meta irony being, the theater he sits in is already in L.A.). Right in the midst of one of Jack’s signature car chases. Naturally, Jack Slater has no idea that everything he’s experiencing is completely made up, and that he can’t fail no matter what he does (or doesn’t do).
But this is something Danny wants him to be made well-aware of as he points out things like how it’s not normal for there to only be attractive women everywhere all the time, commenting, “Where are the ordinary women? Nowhere. This is a movie.” Jack counters, “No, this is California.”
A rebuttal that’s not entirely without veracity, as Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) comes to find out in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Indeed, Harry, too, begins his hero’s journey in some grim corner of New York (the East Village) in the midst of robbing a store before the alarm gets triggered and he and his partner are forced to flee from the police pursuit (it also being a running joke in Last Action Hero that only in movies do the police immediately show up to apprehend “the bad guy”).
Although his partner gets shot, Harry ends up accidentally walking into an audition with producer Dabney Shaw (Larry Miller). And, luckily for him, the dialogue just so happens to perfectly correlate with the guilt he feels over losing his crime partner, leading him to get “method acting”-level emotional. Consequently, Dabney invites him to L.A. to do a “right proper” screen test. So it is that we see him at a quintessential “industry party” looking out-of-place near the pool and giving us voiceovers like, “Now that I’m in L.A., I go to parties. The kind where if a girl is named Jill, she spells it J-Y-L-L-E, that bullshit.”
And yet, it beats still being in New York, where he’s a wanted man. That is, until he gets involved in helping his high school crush Harmony Faith Lane’s (Michelle Monaghan) “case.” For, believing he’s a PI after seeing him at the party (she’s an actress, obviously) with a “renowned” investigator named “Gay” Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer), she thinks Harry can help her solve how her sister, Jenna, really died. Although reported by the police as having killed herself, Harmony can sense in her gut that she was murdered.
Wanting to have a reason to spend more time with her, Harry goes along with her assumption and feigns being able to assist her in her case. And perhaps Harmony mistaking his identity all plays into their exchange when she runs into him for the first time in many years at the party, calling him the “Amazing Harry”—for he used to perform magic shows when they were kids. Harry corrects, “Harold the Great.” But the fact that Harry was associated with magic early on in Harmony’s life is another reason why she so blindly has faith in him. Much the same as Danny in Last Action Hero, she also came to L.A. in search of “movie magic” to escape into, with her own home life as a youth in Indiana being even grimmer than Danny’s. For the only thing worse than having no father is having a father who abuses you.
As he continues to dig deeper into Harmony’s case, it doesn’t take long for the tide of L.A. favor to turn against Harry, soon targeted by two goons of Harlan Dexter’s (Corbin Bernsen), one of whom warns him, “L.A. don’t want you no more, tough guy.” This is right after Harry makes the declarative statement at the same party where he’s cornered by said goons, “It’s like someone took America by the East Coast and shook it and all the normal girls managed to hang on.” It is through this line most especially that we can see the shift in Black’s formerly “rose-colored” affinity for L.A.—the one that existed in Last Action Hero through the eyes of Danny. Seen through Harry’s eyes, however, the perspective on Hollywood becomes much more jaded. Specifically, that view of a “jaded New Yorker.” A trope that becomes increasingly less relevant as New York becomes increasingly more populated with trust fund babies who can never be jaded as a result of all that “rose-coloredness” money can provide.
And yet, for all of Black’s cynicism about L.A. as funneled through the characters of both Harry and Perry, it’s evident that, with each of these films, the writer’s point seems to be to show that each city embodies two sides of the same coin. That one cannot exist without the other, that “good” cannot exist without “evil.” Depending on whether you’re Team NY or Team LA, the city representing “good” is at one’s discretion. However, if it gives the viewer any indication, Danny goes back to the “real world” (New York) reluctantly and under duress while Harry stays in L.A. to work for Perry.
