“Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows him his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.” — Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
I do believe Dr. Percy was onto something here; how else to explain the strange thrill one feels upon realizing that Orson Welles used Balboa Park as a stand-in for Xanadu in the newsreel that opens Citizen Kane? (I’m hardly the first person to note this, but I may be the first person to try to recreate his shots, lo these 14 years ago.)