Internal Affairs… by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

March 28, 2012 Whitney Farmer 4 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an M.B.A, and returns to testify on April 17th.   

The entire day was spent at the hearing. We were ordered not to discuss the proceedings or the case. The ‘What’ and the ‘Why’ are forbidden, but not the ‘Where’.

We had been subpoenaed to appear to the offices of the Internal Affairs Department of LAPD.  The offices are housed in the Bradbury Building.  DC Comics used the historic location as a setting for Human Target, and Marvel used it for The Order. Apparently somewhere in the labyrinth of the filigreed interior, they have an office.

The building was also used in “Blade Runner” as Sebastian’s apartment building and the fight-to-the-death location of the final conflict between Deckard, Roy and Pris.  It was visually transformed for the shoot into a derelict shell with the addition of garbage that the production crew might have gathered from the downtown streets outside along with mannequins from the quinceañera dress shop two doors down. A moving spotlight and false rain faked the nightmare vision of a future where a ruined environment had turned L.A. into an acid rainforest illuminated by neon in Asian-language script.

The brochure in the lobby costs 25 cents and says that it was built in 1893 by mining millionaire Lewis Bradbury. He assigned the project to an apprentice architect named George Wyman who accepted the commission only after reportedly hearing instruction from a spirit that communicated through a planchette board and told him that the building would make him famous. Years later, Wyman’s grandson Forrest J. Ackerman was said to have the original note written during this occult event. Interestingly, Ackerman would be good friends with another Bradbury – author Ray – but no relation to his family.

The building rests on Spring Street and Broadway, over a freshwater spring that was discovered during construction. The pure water that might have been seen as a blessing anywhere else in the arid city was viewed as an eminent threat to the integrity of the foundation. Bradbury imported reinforced steel beams from Italy to help establish his building solidly into the future. He died before it was completed. Outside the building now on the way to the parking lot is a fountain that is fed by the spring that could have been welcomed as a friend.

The building inside is populated by real world Deckards, Internal Affairs officers who try to rid themselves of villains who look like them, all the while wondering if the view they have of themselves as good guys has been manufactured.  The building is like a person, the outside a façade that looks different from what is inside. The first floor houses retail stores including Ross Cutlery where O.J. Simpson bought the stiletto that was a point of investigation during his murder trial. Inside, it is the place that Thomas Pynchon wrote in Gravity’s Rainbow where Philip Marlowe “…would feel homesick for the lacework balconies.” The balconies and handrails and elevators are entwined with a lush garden made of wrought iron. The ceiling is made of glass and lets the urban sunlight flood the space of the central atrium and make the metal vines seem to grow.

The Bradbury – similar to others of its kind on the outside – has an inner space that is filled with surprises. For a time and for a movie, it was nightmares. Now it is filled with sunlight and justice, hopefully. It could make a good story. Maybe that’s why Marvel is down the hall.

Quote of the Blog, from the dying ‘Roy Batty’ from the roof of the Bradbury, improvised by actor Rutger Hauer: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhaeuser Gate. All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain…Time to die.”

Photo courtesy of my cell phone.