I moved to Los Angeles recently, after 16 years living in New York City. Over the past three years or so, I learned that much of what I had been taught about L.A. when growing up on the East Coast was false. (You know what I’m talking about – “the only cultural advantage of L.A. is you can make a right turn on red,” etc., etc.) My lifelong bias against L.A. started to erode when I realized how much I simply loved being out there, and how much I enjoyed the SoCal attitude.

Over the past few weeks, I have been exploring my new home town, and today took me for the first time to Echo Park Lake — where an important scene in one of the best movies ever made, Chinatown (1974), was filmed. It looked beautiful in the movie, and it looked pretty at first sight in real life, too – but turned ugly within a few seconds. A tall, striking, thin brunette in a blue dress was sitting on one of the benches, and was approached by an LAPD cop with a serious demeanor: “Excuse me, Ma’am.” She got up immediately and glowered at him; they exchanged some words I couldn’t hear; as a result of their exchange, the cop grimly took out his handcuffs and prepared to cuff her – at which point a massive, enraged Latino-looking man charged the policeman, shouting, “That’s my woman you [bleep bleep bleep].” He knocked the handcuffs out of the shocked cop’s hands and started to beat him.

At this point I was still in the process of thinking, Dear God, is this really happening? That guy is huge, I can’t stop him. What should I do? I looked around in a cross between shock and panic, when a young woman noticed my distress and told me, “I think they’re filming.” I looked around and noticed three men sitting motionless on the grassy slope, watching calmly as the altercation continued; they didn’t seem to have much in the way of equipment, but an excellent movie I saw recently was filmed entirely on iPhones, so what do I know? At which point one of the three men got up and sauntered down the slope, where the cop and the huge guy were no longer fighting but were looking patiently at the guy approaching them. Yes, they were waiting for direction.

If any Angelenos among the NRO readership can tell me what project that was that I saw being worked on, please let me know. I want to see that on the screen, because I can testify that the performances in it were utterly convincing.

The actors passed their test – but I failed mine. I should have thought to call 911 the second I thought that “cop” was in trouble; if something like this ever happens in real life, I’ll try to do better. (Better to be the sap who called in a mistaken report – no harm done if it turns out to be a false alarm — than to fail to react in time when life is in imminent danger.)

Another L.A. note: I’m pleased to report that a political conservative got some cheers at Dodger Stadium tonight. I was at the game between the Dodgers and the Angels, and apparently so was Pat Sajak – they showed him on the diamond-cam, to cheers. (I once edited a book review Pat Sajak wrote for NR, and he’s not just a conservative, but a pretty good writer and a modest person.)