location of the culture industry. «Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome» is something almost approaching a Heimatfilm for Anger, who returned to Los Angeles, (his Heimat for years prior to that), specifically to make the film. The actors were recruited from the bohemian cliques, subcultures, and sects to which Anger belonged and which in turn belonged to the repressed specifics of Hollywood, just as the homosexuality of the leading men and ladies did. «Puce Momet» (1949) anticipates Wilder’s «Sunset Boulevard» (1950) on an underground level. Hollywood has often portrayed itself critically, even in its regular films. However, all of its criticism has persistently been tangled up again with the image of what is, on the one hand, indeed, a hard and career-obsessed milieu, yet one that is entirely preoccupied with producing itself, with cultivating its own talents. Officially, Hollywood has often accused itself of being evil, but always in the interest of its own artistic self-realization. For Anger, Hollywood is a production workshop that is highly dependent upon self-denial. However, Hollywood relies upon these and other thoroughly (so to speak) ‹perverse› human factors. And this is precisely the starting point for

Anger’s work.

4. Jack Smith