L.A. story: ‘Dorfman’ screenwriter pens a love letter to her city
Source: @jewishjournal
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““I would like to share the story of how ‘Dorfman’ came to be, in the very location where our mini-miracle occurred,” screenwriter Wendy Kout e-mailed last week. She insisted on meeting at the tiny block on Industrial Street, a revitalized strip in the Los Angeles Downtown Arts District that inspired her to write a movie.
Just a few blocks east of the Midnight Mission, where hundreds of homeless camp on the sidewalks, is a gentrified stretch that seems like another world. Between Mateo and Mill streets, where twisting train tracks serve as a kind of neighborhood border, lies a quiet, medium-scale block spotted with art galleries, chic restaurants and fashion boutiques, a little urban oasis in an otherwise industrial landscape.
“You know the old adage, ‘Let’s put on a play, my dad has a barn’?” Kout asked as she opened the door to a high-ceilinged, two-story condo owned by the film’s producer, Leonard Hill. “In my case, it’s, ‘Let’s make a movie, my friend has a loft.’ ”
Almost every scene of “Dorfman,” a romantic comedy starring Sara Rue and Elliott Gould, who plays Rue’s father, was shot in Hill’s Toy Factory loft, named for its history as a manufacturing site. Hill and his real-estate partners purchased the building in 2002, as part of a preservation project, and converted the space into live/work lofts. Kout was so taken by the building and its role in downtown L.A.’s urban renewal that she wrote the movie around the setting. For a self-described “Valley girl,” it was L.A.’s promised land: Soho meets SoCal, bohemia meets Hollywood.
Indeed, one star of the movie is downtown L.A. itself. When the film’s protagonist, a nebbishy Jewish girl named Deb, gets an opportunity to spend a week at her unrequited love’s downtown loft (she plans to woo him by cat sitting), her ensuing saturation in the new culture becomes a catalyst for her self-realization. In this L.A., people do astonishingly urban things. They walk! They take the Metro! They dine on rooftops! Not a chain store in sight, they buy everyday items at specialty, artisan shops. A trip to the Los Angeles Flower Market, where luscious orchids sell for $10 a pop, bursts on screen in bright, beautiful colors, giving away one of L.A.’s best-kept secrets. Deb’s transformation from an aimless single gal into the self-assured, made-over Deborah, mirrors the transformation of a newly revitalized city, from something known, mundane and expected into a place that is alluring, exciting and new.
Truly being seen, whether it’s cityscapes, other people or even for oneself, is a leitmotif in the film, but it’s also the central challenge for a little independent film like this one (Hill wouldn’t say what the budget was): Will anybody actually get to see it? It screens here on May 10, the closing night of The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by The Jewish Journal, but beyond the festival circuit, where it has been doing the rounds for several months now and has even won several awards, the film does not yet have a distributor.
“Look at this; is this crazy?” Kout said from the Toy Factory’s rooftop pool, admiring its panoramic view of the downtown skyline. I recognize the spot from a scene in the film. “Basically, I tried to use every square inch of this building,” she added. “I knew the locations before I wrote the script — it’s the repurposed, revitalized city.”
Kout had just about given up screenwriting when she ran into Hill, a veteran television producer, across the street from the building, at the restaurant Church & State. They had worked together decades earlier on one of Kout’s pilots that was never picked up, but had since lost touch. “I said, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ And he said, ‘Well, I kind of own the block.’ ” Next, Hill invited her for lunch and a tour. “He was all excited and twinkly, showing me his world,” she recalled of that propitious meeting. Then she got twinkly, too, seeing a side of Los Angeles she had never known existed……..”