Greetings! It’s showtime at What is California? HQ, and this week we’re talking Hollywood with Karina Longworth. The creator and host of the hit podcast You Must Remember This joined me this week to discuss growing up in Los Angeles and her journey to becoming one of our foremost chroniclers of classic Hollywood’s myths, legends, shadows, and scandals.
I go back a ways with Karina, and it was great to reconnect and talk about the ways Hollywood has informed the national perception of California over the years. It was interesting to hear Karina theorize how Silicon Valley has supplanted Hollywood in the national consciousness, and how her own perception of L.A. was shaped on long bus rides through the city as a teen. I really enjoyed the chat, and I hope you will, too.
Meanwhile, thank you for your ongoing listenership and readership! Please continue to share and refer folks to the show, and if you feel like chipping in a few shekels to help keep the lights on and the cat fed at What is California? HQ, you can become a supporter at Patreon. I’d be terrifically grateful.
Enjoy the show, and remember: Keep your eye on the bear! 🐻
Episode Notes
Karina Longworth is the creator and host of the podcast You Must Remember This and the author of the book Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood.
I definitely have memories of being on the city bus for long periods of time. There is something, I think, sort of romantic and cinematic about watching the neighborhoods change outside the window. I definitely spent a lot of time looking out those windows, listening to music on a Walkman, and just sort of thinking about things in a way that you actually can’t if you’re driving. I think I had a romanticism about living in such a vast place where there could be interconnected lives.
Notes and references from this episode:
You Must Remember This podcast, by Karina Longworth
Love is a Crime podcast, by Karina Longworth and Vanessa Hope
Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood, by Karina Longworth
Los Angeles Plays Itself, directed by Thom Andersen
“Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman,” You Must Remember This
The Last Picture Show, directed by Peter Bogdanovich
“Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper,” You Must Remember This
“She's Done Everything (except direct),” by Rachel Abramowitz, Premiere
“Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon,” You Must Remember This
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