Gone With the Wind
Robert Towne’s romantic valentine to a bygone L.A.
Ask the Dustwas filmed on location in South Africa, and the re-creations of 1930s Bunker Hill and its surroundings, all built from the ground up by production designer Dennis Gassner (Bugsy, Barton Fink) with the aid of digital effects and matte paintings, are stunning. As for those who’ve been wondering whether Towne (and his cinematographer, Caleb Deschanel) would be able to accurately reproduce the quality of Los Angeles light on those foreign shores, rest assured that he’s done a fine job, but perhaps an even better one at re-creating the inimitable howl of the Santa Ana winds and the dust that they carry — a reminder that the streets we walk upon were desert not so long ago. But what seduces most about Ask the Dustisn’t its verisimilitude, but its gloriously old-fashioned backlot sheen — the L.A. of old Hollywood movies and of our collective fantasies. For this isn’t merely a dream project, but a dream — Towne’s belated valentine to his city and Fante’s adopted one and, in the words of Bandini, all the people who came there from someplace else.
ASK THE DUST | Written and directed by ROBERT TOWNE, based on the novel by JOHN FANTE | Produced by TOM CRUISE, PAULA WAGNER, DON GRANGER and JONAS McCORD | Released by Paramount Classics | At ArcLight, AMC Century City and Monica 4-Plex
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