In the days before the Gene Autry Museum, Arnold, and the Big Blue Whale, L.A. had orange groves, Bugsy Siegel, and jazz clubs on Central Avenue. As irreverent as the Town Tattler and as sprawling as the City of Angels, Shotgun Freeway resurrects lost Angeles, not in a fit of nostalgia, but in a sarcastic, full-choke blast. Dreamy promo films of the utopia-that-never-was are interspersed with interviews with devilish Angelenos Joan Didion, Buck Henry, John Milius, James Ellroy, and Elaine Young, O.J.'s real estate agent. Dividing the film into categories like "The Valley," "Crime," and "The Beach," Shotgun takes us through tawdry, sun-baked and forgotten episodes from Tinsel Town's past: the razing of the barrio in Chavez Ravine, the infamous Black Dahlia case and others. Standing in the dry-bed of the L.A. River, urban theorist Mike Davis is particularly incisive as he recounts the city's native beginnings. Shotgun Freeway brings us the edenic L.A. you could only find in a (sur)real-estate brochure, an eden rising "from pueblo to condo."-Steve Seid