L.A. Blues (DVD)

A story about guys and the way they communicate, through insults, trash talk and usually burying their true feelings but still, when needed, manage to be there for one another. As the narrator says, “Women share; guys bitch.”

The movie opens in a Hollywood parking lot on New Years’ eve as a crowd gathers around an ambulance watching a guy being loaded in on a gurney. The story is told in flashback by one of the characters to a female detective who comes on the scene of what may have been an attempted suicide and he unravels the story of a year in the lives of 6 guys who hang out in a blues bar in Hollywood, watch sports, talk trash, and bitch about their lives, as they go through problems ranging from divorce to construction nightmares to gambling addiction, alcoholism, child custody fights, and all the headaches and heartaches men go through in the course of their lives. As the story unfolds, the audience is left wondering which one of these guys ended up in the ambulance, and why.

The blues soundtrack is true to the nature of the music itself, and to the movie, as it’s about heartache and longing, loving and losing, striving and failing, and all the hell in between. And just like the blues, the movie is about joy and sadness, humor and sorrow, and ultimately about hope and killing your demons and, as one of the characters says in the end: “having a few friends around to watch your back as you do it.”