Lawrence Weschler Vermeer in Bosnia, Pantheon Books: NY, 2004. (The chapter The Light of L.A. appeared as L.A. Glows in the 23 February 1998 The New Yorker.) 1998, 1900s
The Light of L.A.
"But for all that, the main thing about the light here is its consistency," Bailey continued. "Of course, the early independent producers originally made their way out here, toward the end of the first decade of this century, so as to get out from under the thumb of the Edison Trust." . . . back in New York and New Jersey, Thomas Edison initially attempted to enforce a dubiously broad patent hegemony through the creation of a trust which deployed lawyers, detectives, thugs, and even sharpshooters to upend the efforts of any mavericks who refused to fork over the arbitrarily mandated licensing fees . . . one of the main things that L.A. had going for it at the outset in those early days was its geographic location . . . "from the Mexican border and escape from any injunctions and subpoenas."
"But what they really stumbled upon here," Bailey went on, "was the consistency of the light. So much light, and so many days of it. Back east they'd have to cease production throughout the winter: all those gray cold days when even if the cameras didn't freeze up, they'd barely be able to register anything on film without the use of banks and banks of these incredibly expensive klieg lights." ( . . . such light banks became even more prohibitively expensive during the ensuing decade, when war-inspired shortages seriously constricted the supplies of coal necessary to power them.) . . . But here there were hardly any clouds and the light on any given day stayed consistent pretty much the whole day through."