Before "L.A. Confidential", there was "Shotgun Freeway" -- the groundbreaking 1995 documentary about Los Angeles coming to grips with it's own history. Against a backdrop of never-before-seen archival footage, Shotgun Freeway presents a diverse group of "Angelinos" who guide the film through their own past as well as the city's. We get crime scribe James Ellroy reliving his youth as a burglar, Actor/writer Buck Henry's tour of Hollywood fakery, Jazzman Buddy Collette's trip down Central Avenue, Historian Mike Davis' tour of LA's eventual Armageddon, and writer Joan Didion's take on LA's own ephemerality. From the Beaches to the Valley, "Shotgun Freeway" will show you a Los Angeles you never knew existed.
Direction
Neville's patient, anthropological eye before he got Oscar-shiny.
Editing
Archival footage that feels excavated, not curated.
Writing
Ellroy's confessions hit like a confession booth demolition.
Director
Morgan Neville
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This predates Morgan Neville's glossy docs (20 Feet from Stardom, Won't You Be My Neighbor) by decades—raw, uncelebratory, almost hostile to its subjects' celebrity.
Harry Pallenberg never directed again; Neville has said this was 'film school by fire' funded by PBS and sheer spite toward boosterish LA docs.
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