Drawing its title from a dream encounter I had with Joe Pesci, Like a City begins not with a map but with an orientation, with a moment in time, a truth in turn of phrase, a facade. The fabric of Los Angeles is designed and upkept by the people inside of it, in the way that Hollywood is a city within the city built on fiction. As a place, it is as real as it is made up, constructed by casts and sets, those who build them, and those who grow and sell the food on the verdant landscapes that cradle the county. The line between reality and reality in its own image is thin.

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