Global Courant 2023-04-25 23:36:28
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Early in the second season finale of “Perry Mason,” which aired Monday, the main character pulls up on his motorcycle to Los Angeles City Hall and pauses for a long time. He stares up at the building, as if measuring an opponent, before walking inside, hoping to intercede with a judge on behalf of his clients.
While the scene contains no dialogue, the shot of City Hall is pregnant with meaning, almost taunting the maverick lawyer for having the audacity to think he could bring about justice within such a corrupt system.
It’s one of many scenes in the Emmy-nominated HBO drama, based on the books by Erle Stanley Gardner and a sort of prequel to the long-running show starring Raymond Burr, Where 1930s Los Angeles is a star in its own right through the use of the makers iconic settings, public landmarks, terrain and racial and class divisions.
Matthew Rhys, who plays Mason only became aware of how much attention to detail went into shaping “LA as that kind of different character” after being “invited to the adult table” as an executive producer for the second season.
And although the Welsh actor and alum of “The Americans” had previously lived in Los Angeles for six years, he said the experience made him fall in love with the city in new ways.
“They really had to figure out where those little special places were left in LA for us to photograph. Seeing some of those last kind of hold-ons of yesteryear…” he trailed off, smiling as he reminisced about filming at long-standing institutions such as Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. “It was magical.”
Show runner Michael Begler echoed Rhys’ comments about the production team’s diligence, claiming that their commitment to understanding L.A.’s complex history was not superficial, as evidenced by their reliance on a group of historians from the University of Southern California.
“Any question I would have would say, ‘Well, have you researched this?’ And then that would send me down, you know, to do a deep dive,” Begler said.
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Those questions could be about anything from class tensions and racial segregation to the way people talked and the shoes they wore. historian William Deverell, one of the professors who worked as a consultant on the show.
“Los Angeles grew at a remarkable rate,” he said of the Depression period in which the show is set. “The big details just give an insight into a place that has exploded in international perspective in a very short time.”
But beyond those big details, Deverell said he and the other historians also focused on detailed details about what life in Los Angeles was like at the time, as many of its residents had been relegated to Hoovervilles as a result of the city’s changing economy.
“People are both excited to be here, but also trying to figure out the place. And then that chaos exacerbates all sorts of class and racial tensions as well,” Deverell said.
One aspect of 1930s Los Angeles that he wanted to make sure was portrayed accurately was its complex racial landscape, especially as it related to black communities. played by Chris Chalk — and the influx of migrants as a result the Mexican Revolution.
The second season revolves around the murder of an oil scion – its profession symbolic only who made up the city’s elite in the economy of the 1930s – and the two brothers of Mexican descent were accused of it. The prosecution and press gleefully refer to the brothers as “savages” and use “us versus them” and other racially coded rhetoric to paint the Southern California-born young men as “others.”
“Here. We’ve always come from here,” Rafael, the younger brother, says to Mason during a conversation in prison.
In episode five, the brothers reveal their personal connection to the victim, Brooks McCutcheon, when they tell the tragic story of their sister’s death while the family is forced from their home so McCutcheon can build a stadium in its place. The story is loosely based on the Chavez Ravine evictions, which took place in the 1950s to pave the way for what would eventually become Dodger stadium.
“Racial restrictions are increasing in more expensive neighborhoods. So neighborhoods around the LA River are just going to be remarkably diverse during this period,” Deverell explained. “That’s a rich, complicated story that could lend itself to caricatures and sort of stock images. And I think they’ve moved away from that.”
When told correctly, Rhys says, those complicated stories make for good TV.
“It was one of the few cities in America that had this huge influx of wealth because of Hollywood, but also in the middle of this huge depression,” he said. “That background would just help set up any sort of story, especially in season two, where it’s just about that, those who have and those who don’t.”
But the role of the City of Angels in ‘Perry Mason’ can be attributed to more than just ripening the landscape for interesting stories, given that the American noir genre has become almost inseparable from her frequent setting in Los Angeles.
This became apparent to Begler, who considered himself “noir illiterate” before signing on as showrunner for season two and trying to learn as much as he could. He compared his journey to that of Mason, who begins the series as a bruised private investigator and becomes a fully-fledged lawyer in days, thanks to desperate circumstances and not-quite-legal Della Street conspiracies ( Juliet Rylance, playing an updated, ambitious version of the secretary ).
“I had what Perry has this season, which is imposter syndrome,” Begler recalled of his inexperience with the genre. “I really wanted to get into it. And honestly I’ve probably seen 100 since then and I just love the genre now.
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