Lawrence Kasdan says his L.A. story 'Grand Canyon' would be 'eliminated' today
Using the very L.A. audio-visual motif of helicopters continually overhead, Kasdan crisscrossed between these characters and their desires and fears — divorce and eternal loneliness, losing kids to college or to gang violence, earthquakes, homelessness, even taking a left turn in an L.A. intersection. He highlighted the fact thatIt’s Simon who brings up the Grand Canyon after his chance encounter with Mack, as they discuss the hardships of making a life in Los Angeles.
Despite its modest success and social urgency, the film has been somewhat forgotten. Glover suggested that’s because people don’t like it “when the truth stares you in the face . I don’t think the industry embraced that movie in the way in which it should have.” “‘You trying to cheer me up?’” Kline said, quoting a line he says to Glover. “Yeah, it’s got Larry’s voice for sure.”
But race is definitely one of the film’s major concerns. Woodard, Glover and Lifford all praised the Kasdans for their circumspection and collaborative spirit in how they wrote the Black characters. That was the key line Malone used to find his character. The actor grew up in a small Texas town, “but I’m still Black,” he said, and laughed. “I was one of six Blacks in my graduating class. And the difference between where I’m from and out here: Where I’m from, they would call you [the N-word] to your face, you know. They weren’t trying to gladhand you ... and then say it behind your back. Here, it was more on the DL, you know — more subtle racism.
Part of his score, then, is full of dreamy saxophone solos. Howard, who grew up in Hawthorne, was battling Epstein-Barr Virus at the time — which can cause heavy fatigue — so “maybe that was singularly my experience,” he laughed. “But that’s one of the undercurrents that exists in L.A. There are many other undercurrents — one of them is very scary. And then some of them are very beautiful.”