This paper considers Sarah Morris 2004 film Los Angeles and its potential success as a city portrait, a description encourage by the artists work in both painting and film. The film invokes a number of established cinematic modes both avant-garde and commercial without explicitly favoring any one tradition. Morris thereby appropriates the visual vocabulary of Hollywood while maintaining a distance that reveals her cinematic maneuvers as such. As a portrait of the citys own visual language, I argue that Los Angeles articulates a divide between literal, urban location and Hollywood simulation. Furthermore, a reading of the film alongside the fragmented, commercial form of the feature trailer reveals the inherent ability of the cinematic medium to perpetuate desire and projected fantasy within its spectator.