Today is a short film by Julianna Parr (me) about water, pumpkins, and one of LA’s secret havens: The Los Angeles River.
What you can see is pumpkins and the LA River. What you can’t see is the perilous task that is pumpkin wrangling IN the LA River.
It’s slippery, even if you have tread-laden shoes. But it’s beautiful, and it’s our river, and it was great fun slogging about, setting up shots with orange orbs in the middle of the day. One woman asked us if we were scared.
I’m not sure what she meant. Did she mean being in the LA water? Did she mean being scared of the urban environment? Was she inherently uneasy at the site of pumpkins not analogous to the surrounding landscape? I assured her that we were not scared. Maybe she meant flash floods? Flash floods are scary, and I made sure to check the forecast for any rain that would be happening up in Valencia or other places that could send a deluge of water our way, but the coast was clear.
It was sunny, breezy, clear and serene at the river. Pigeons were very curious about the project.