Life and death in Hollywood

摘要

"Who would want to live in a place where the only cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light?" Woody Allen once asked of Los Angeles. But in late 2012, English journalist, documentary maker, and self-proclaimed professional observer of American culture Louis Theroux moved to Los Angeles anyway. He uprooted his family from London in order to film a series of documentaries that would peel away the glamorous facade of the city and lay bare its underside of crime, mental illness, life and death. For LA Stories: Edge Of Life, Theroux visited LA's most famous hospital, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, to explore end-of-life care in America, where doctors go further to treat extreme cases than almost anywhere else in the world. As with his previous work, the documentary is very personal. It focuses on the human stories of three patients; Donta (31 years) who has rectal cancer, Javier (29 years) who has acute myeloid leukaemia, and Langston (22 years) who has a traumatic brain injury.