For Richard Avedon, as with most significant artists, work and life were inseparable. When the photographer died in 2004, at 81, he was on the road, mid-project — “with his boots on,” in the words of Lauren Hutton, one of the many beautiful people he helped to immortalize over a 60-year career. Hutton and the two dozen or so other interviewees in Ron Howard’s admiring documentary make it clear how much affection the New York native inspired while reinventing fashion photography and putting his iconoclastic stamp on fine-art portraiture.

The profile Avedon paints is that of a relentless seeker and high-flying achiever, and a deliciously unapologetic contrarian. How can you not adore an image-maker who says, “Beautiful lighting I always find offensive,” and, regarding little kids as potential photographic subjects: “I find them intensely boring.” Avedon’s interest in the grown-up human face, in what it conceals and reveals, was his lifelong project, one that he pursued within circles of rarefied fame, on the backroads of the American West, and in a poignant late-in-life connection with his father.

As confrontational as his images could be, the camera was Avedon’s way of experiencing the world, a way of seeking truth through invention. Howard, whose previous doc subjects include Jim Henson and Luciano Pavarotti, and whose fiction movies are designed more to engage rather than to confront, seems particularly inspired here by Avedon’s auteur approach to still photography — it was a narrative impulse, not a documentary one, that shaped his vision, a drive to create moments and mise-en-scènes for the camera.

Avedon built his career at magazines in an era when magazines mattered. He was only 21 when he joined Harper’s Bazaar, where he stayed for 20 years, leaving to follow fashion editor Diana Vreeland to Vogue, where he stayed even longer. And when Tina Brown took the helm at The New Yorker and overturned its age-old no-photos policy, she hired Avedon as its first staff photographer.

When Harper’s sent him to Paris in 1947 with an edict to summon some of the battered capital’s prewar glamour, he turned to movies for inspiration and conjured visions of romantic fantasy amid the ruins. It was his first significant assignment, and a turning point for fashion photography. The doc emphasizes how, at a Dior show, the images he captured of the designer’s voluminous skirts mid-twirl expressed an ecstatic moment after years of wartime rationing. “People were weeping,” recalls Avedon, a vivid presence in the doc thanks to a strong selection of archival material.

The kinetic energy of those shots would become a defining element of his approach. Injecting movement and a theatrical edge into fashion photography, he lifted it out of the era of posed mannequins. To get models into the spirit of his concepts, he often leapt and danced alongside them. It’s no wonder that in Funny Face, the romantic musical loosely inspired by his career and first marriage, Fred Astaire played the photographer. Eventually Avedon shifted to a large-format camera, an 8×10, that allowed him to interact with his subjects directly, rather than through a viewfinder. There would be more scripted and carefully choreographed moments in his TV spots for Calvin Klein jeans and Obsession, collaborations with the writer Doon Arbus (daughter of Diane and Allan Arbus) that took chances (and which, for some viewers, are inseparable from memorable spoofs on SNL).

Fashion and advertising were mainstays, but he also became a notable portraitist. Positioning his subjects against a plain white background, he removed flattery from the equation. It was an artist-subject relationship in which he held all the power, and he didn’t pretend otherwise; on that point, Brown offers a trenchant anecdote. Remarkably, even though his refusal to sugarcoat was well established — not least by his notorious photo of the Daughters of the American Revolution — an Avedon portrait carried such cachet that establishment figures including the Reagans, Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush all submitted themselves to his crosshairs.

The film suggests that a moral imperative was as essential to Avedon’s work as his unconventional aesthetic vocabulary. He threatened to sever his contract with Harper’s when the magazine didn’t want to publish his photos of China Machado, and he prevailed: In 1959, she became the first model of color to appear in the editorial pages of a major American fashion magazine. Howard looks beyond the catwalks and salons to Avedon’s portraits of wartime Saigon, Civil Rights leaders and patients at Bellevue, many of those images collected in Nothing Personal, the book he did with James Baldwin, a friend from high school. A superb clip from a D.A. Pennebaker short of the book launch encapsulates the painfully awkward disconnect between the artist and the corporate media contingent. Most surprising, though, is how hard Avedon took it when the book was lambasted by critics. A later book, In the American West, would also meet harsh criticism; Avedon was, in the eyes of some, a condescending elitist.

Howard’s film is a celebration of a complicated man. It acknowledges Avedon’s naysayers, as well as his struggles and doubts, but this is very much an official story, made in association with the Richard Avedon Foundation, and steering clear of the disputed 2017 biography by Avedon’s business partner. The commentary, whether from models (Hutton, Isabella Rossellini, Twiggy Lawson, Penelope Tree, Beverly Johnson) or writers (Adam Gopnik, John Lahr, Hilton Als) or Avedon’s son, John, can be gushing, but it’s always perceptive.

The connection he sought with his subjects wasn’t about star worship but the instant when the ego lets down its guard, yet at the same time he was more interested in what he called “the marriage of the imagination and the reality” than straight documentation. Without putting too fine a point on it, Avedon links those twinned yet seemingly contradictory impulses to certain formative experiences. There was the devastation of extreme mental illness for Avedon’s sister and his second wife. There was the pretense of happiness in his childhood home in Depression-era New York (the city is captured in terrifically evocative clips). He recalls, discerning and exasperated, the staged domestic harmony — “the borrowed dogs!” — in family photos.

Avedon doesn’t aim to unsettle, like Avedon himself did, but neither does it tie things up neatly. There’s nothing simple or reductive about the emotional throughlines the documentary traces. It embraces the complexities of a man who turned artifice into a kind of superpower, whether he was dreaming up scenarios for fashion spreads or confronting an America as far removed from haute couture Manhattan as you could get.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who serves the 4th District, makes her way across an empty, unnamed backlot, presenting her case to be the city’s next mayor.

“Studio lots like this one used to be filled with people, costumers, electricians, set medics, caterers, thousands of Angelenos making a living,” she says in the video posted on social media. “Now these lots are quiet. Since 2018, shooting days in the city have fallen by half.”

After telling voters this issue is “personal” (her husband is a TV writer and producer), criticizing Mayor Karen Bass’ leadership on the matter and outlining her own plans, Raman proclaims, “I’m running for mayor to make sure Los Angeles stays the film and TV capital of the world.”

Placing the concerns of the entertainment industry at the center of the city’s mayoral race would have been unthinkable even in the last election cycle. But the production crisis, which has rocked Hollywood and pummeled its workforce, has reached a critical juncture. The state of L.A.’s signature industry is now a political flashpoint alongside affordability, crime and homelessness in the upcoming election.

In campaign ads, interviews and the recent televised debate, the top three contenders: incumbent Mayor Bass, former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt and Raman, have made the ongoing production slump a pivotal topic, highlighting their plans to revitalize the industry while deploying the issue to undercut one another.

For decades, elected officials have not had to focus on the film and TV business, let alone turn it into a campaign issue. It was simply a given that local production would continue to play a dominant role in the city’s economy as it has for more than a century.

But the cumulative effects of consolidation, runaway production to tax-friendly states and countries and the end of the streaming boom has caused Los Angeles to lose billions in economic activity, shed some 57,000 jobs over the last four years and led to the closing of more than 80 film and television production service businesses across the city since 2022.

“For us, ‘save Hollywood’ is more than a slogan and more than headline. It is what needs to be done,” said Pamala Buzick Kim, one of the co-founders of Stay in LA, a grassroots campaign aimed at increasing film and television production in Los Angeles.

To be sure, the biggest driver of where studios and producers film are state and federal tax credits, over which the city has no control.

But Buzick Kim and others argue that “there is lots the mayor can do, hand-in-hand with the City Council.”

Mayor Karen Bass, center, walks with Avance Democratic Club President Nilza Serrano, to the right of Bass, during Avance’s politics and tacos event at Ernest E. Debs Regional Park in Los Angeles on Saturday.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

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For starters, say filmmakers and advocates, much can be done to tackle the city’s sclerotic bureaucracy, onerous regulations and a slow and costly permitting process that has pushed filmmakers to flee to friendlier and cheaper locales.

While steps have been put in place recently, including a pilot program offering reduced-cost filming permits for shoots that demonstrate a “low impact” to the surrounding community, many complain such steps have come too little and too late.

Scott Niner, president and owner of Dangling Carrot Creative, checks on woodwork being produced at his shop in North Hollywood.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“The industry is in collapse and people have been talking about fixing things for years, but all we get are incremental little changes,” said Ed Lippman, a location manager of 34 years who lives in Sherman Oaks and has worked on such shows as “ER” and “The X-Files” and movies including “Galaxy Quest.” “And if the city is not being business-friendly, the business will go elsewhere.”

Compounding the problem, the Los Angeles area has more than 100 jurisdictions, many of which have their own set of rules and regulations regarding filming.

“There needs to be universal standards,” said Travis Beck, a location manager for commercials, small films and music videos. “Burbank is different from Glendale, which is different from Pasadena.”

The recent kerfuffle over filming “Baywatch,” the lifeguard reboot at Venice Beach, underscored both the efforts to bring production back to L.A. — enticed by a $21-million tax credit — and the complex, baffling red tape required to film here.

When shooting began in March, the production encountered a number of hiccups, including that it needed nearly double the parking space it had received a permit for, which was not part of the original approvals.

An anonymous crew member claimed on Facebook that government restrictions had forced production to relocate from Venice Beach. Production staff denied they had relocated. However, the incident prompted a backlash, becoming a rallying cry over L.A.’s burdensome filming bureaucracy.

The “Baywatch” team quickly met with city and county officials and resolved the issue, securing an agreement for a 20% parking discount from the city, and the mayoral candidates used it as an opportunity to score political points.

Pratt slammed the city’s permitting problems.

“LA turned its back on Hollywood — now the golden goose needs CPR,” he wrote on his Substack.

Bass highlighted her administration’s leadership on the matter.

“The City of Los Angeles will always clear bureaucratic barriers, making it easier and more affordable to film in the entertainment capital of the world,” she wrote on X last month.

On April 21, the mayor unveiled programs to offer productions 20% discounts on city-owned parking lots and other equipment, reduced filming fees at places like the Griffith Observatory and reopened the Central Library for filming. Last August, she appointed Steve Kang, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, as the city’s film liaison.

Raman has pledged her support for expanding the state’s $750-million tax incentive program, streamlining permitting and lowering fees and eliminating those for small productions. She has also said she will establish a dedicated city film office with a liaison who understands production.

Councilmember and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman speaks to a crowd at the “Families for Nithya” event at Vineyard Recreation Center in Los Angeles on Saturday.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

“Los Angeles is losing Hollywood,” Raman said in a statement. “Not because productions want to leave, but because we’ve made it too hard for them to stay.”

On his Substack and various podcast interviews, Pratt has promised to slash location fees in half, speed up permit approvals, reduce on-set city staff for the majority of productions and waive all fees for shoots with budgets under $2 million.

All three candidates have attacked one another over their approach to Hollywood.

Pratt and Raman have said Bass moved too slowly to address spiraling production and retain film jobs, saying she enacted measures only recently as the mayoral race was heating up.

Speaking on the Monks & Merrill podcast, Pratt criticized Bass’ moves to cut costs to film at the Griffith Observatory, saying, “Who needs that shot right now with the homeless poop all around it?”

The incumbent mayor has defended her administration’s record with the entertainment industry.

Bass and Pratt have taken Raman to task, calling her out for what they say is her lack of advocacy during her time on the City Council.

“She feels very strongly about it. But never offered one motion on the industry, and when motions came up on the industry she either recused herself, or got up and walked out,” said Bass during a debate this month.

Citing a potential conflict of interest over her husband’s work in television, Raman refrained from voting on several motions related to Hollywood.

Many working in the industry would like to see full-throttled support coming from the mayor’s office that will get results. They note how New York City has successfully promoted itself as a leading film destination over the years. (Kang, the city’s chief film liaison, said the city is working on a similar marketing campaign to promote filming that will launch by early fall.)

“For all the talk about, ‘We need to support and bring back filming,’ if they just did basics like lowering the fees and simplifying the process … that would actually help people and get things produced,” said Chris Fuentes, 66, who worked for 30 years as a location manager until he retired last year.

“We’ve heard a lot of great things, but not all things are possible in the mayor’s remit,” said Buzick Kim, noting that tax incentives are a state and federal issue.

Still, she said, “the mayor must understand that Hollywood needs to be made a priority and to find and create inspired thinking to make things easier and cheaper.”

Kang agrees, but says there are limits to what the mayor can achieve.

“We definitely can do a lot to really open up the entertainment industry, but at the same time, we recognize the larger impact needs to come from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., because L.A. just does not have the resources to compete with other jurisdictions in providing millions of dollars in tax incentives,” he said.

For most working in the industry, they just want city leadership that will execute on more than just talking points.

“This is the birthplace of cinema,” Beck said. “It shouldn’t be so hard to film here.”

A stil from ‘Hokum’
| Photo Credit: NEON