Aviator screenwriter John Logan sees the young Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) as a symbol of Los Angeles glamour.

The dream sequence that should have been in The Aviator -- at least by documentary filmmaker Thom Anderson's tastes -- is Howard Hughes walking into the Art Deco Los Angeles landmark Bradbury Building. Beneath its expansive skylight and past its classic elevator, Hughes would slip into a secret apartment, one more private than any Beverly Hills Hotel cabana, for a rendezvous with Ava Gardner or any number of beautiful actresses.

Anderson's mesmerizing Los Angeles Plays Itself is a 169-minute documentary about how the Southern California metropolis has been represented in movies, using clips from over 100 films. It's fair to assume that, if Anderson hadn't finished the film in 2003, director Martin Scorsese's acclaimed Howard Hughes bio-drama would have received a prominent place in his film.

Some of the included films are recent: L.A. Confidential, Swordfish and Heat. Others are familiar classics: Double Indemnity and Laurel and Hardy struggling with moving a piano up hillside steps in Silverlake in The Piano.

Los Angeles is a leading character in countless films, whether the current supernatural action movie, Constantine, which treats Los Angeles like Manhattan with a focus on gritty downtown streets and storefronts or the old-fashioned glamour of The Aviator.

Anderson divides filmmakers into those who take "high tourist" and "low tourist" treatments of the City of Angels. In Anderson's vernacular, Scorsese is clearly a "high tourist."

Anderson would take pleasure in witnessing how a New York City director like Martin Scorsese celebrates Golden Age Hollywood landmarks such as the Coconut Grove and Grauman's Chinese Theatre instead of busy downtown streets and classic high-rises that resemble Manhattan.

Extra attention in Los Angeles Plays Itself is paid to the Bradbury Building -- easily one of the most recognizable Los Angeles landmarks -- and its numerous film appearances, including Blade Runner, and the now demolished Bunker Hill neighborhood. Bunker Hill, situated on hills adjacent to downtown was the home to Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross and Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly and the post-apocalyptic wasteland of The Omega Man made at the end of the neighborhood's demolition in 1971.

Anderson makes some comic insights throughout his sprawling film, including his summation that modern architecture is the haven for villains.

Rule No. 1 regarding Los Angeles on film is this: Los Angeles always looks best from a distance.

Past spaces include the Pan Pacific Auditorium, which was damaged by fire in 1983 and burned down in 1989, but not before becoming the location for the roller-skating musical, Xanadu.

Like all cities, Los Angeles has its pockets of haves and have-nots. The Aviator, true to most L.A. stories, is a tale about such people. The money comes from Hughes (played with verve by Leonardo DiCaprio), and he controls a piece of Hollywood and a larger piece of the aviation industry.

John Logan, a nominee for Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his Aviator script, says the film is a story of a man's life, but he chose to avoid the older Hughes with the Kleenex box shoes and the long fingernails.

Speaking recently by phone, Logan, 43, says the more he researched Hughes, the more convinced he became that Southern California's aviation industry and Los Angeles itself were the themes.

"What he (Hughes) accomplished is mind-boggling and astounding," Logan says. "Imagine a plane that could fly coast-to-coast and an airline that could fly you around the world."

"Remember," Logan says, "Hughes was just 19 when he came to Hollywood. He was high on ambition."

If there is to be an anti-tour of Los Angeles, a view away from Hughes-level glamour and wealth, it occurs in Los Angeles Plays Itself.

"The City as Background" segment in Anderson's film focuses on the old downtown working-class neighborhood of Bunker Hill and other neighborhoods, Watts, South Central, the City of Industry, homes to the majority of Angelinos, the immigrants and working class people -- those not employed by the movie industry who would never set foot in Hughes' favorite hangout, Coconut Grove.

Similar to Mike Davis' 1990 book, City of Quartz, and Otto Friedrich's 1940s Hollywood book, City of Nets, Los Angeles Plays Itself is a movie of analysis, images and storytelling. It is a diary film, tailored to Anderson's memories of old Hollywood pioneers and rebels and arguably, by The Aviator's score, Hughes was the biggest rebel because he clashed with the studio system.

'This kid (Hughes) never made a movie before when he started his World War I picture, Hell's Angels," Logan says. "It was a dramatically large endeavor, huge and grandiose. Remember: He gambled with his own money."

The subject at large in The Aviator -- as important as Hughes himself -- is the Hollywood Golden Age and the 1930s through the war years and the shimmer of Los Angeles and the nightclubs and Benny Goodman performing and a city that was beautiful.

Look at the sweep of Los Angeles' history, Logan points out, and the person of Howard Hughes represents the city like no other. Hughes chose to come to Los Angeles when he was young to visit an uncle who worked in the movies. He owned many houses and knew the city backwards and forwards -- something Anderson would admire.

"I am new to Los Angeles, and I am still excited to go to movie premieres and drive through the Paramount gate," Logan says. "But I have learned that it is an unfair city, and it was very unfair to Howard Hughes."

"After Hughes made Hell's Angels," Logan continues, "he became a celebrity movie producer, then decided to pursue aviation. The Hollywood community resented him for that. Now the emphasis for many movies is on decay and the dark underbelly that is Los Angeles. It is the town of MGM and the town of Charles Manson and the town of Irving Thalberg and the town of the Black Dahlia murders."

There are plenty of L.A. stories equal to Hughes': The Owens Valley scandal of how a rural California county was swindled out of their water was brought to life in Chinatown. The cartoon adventure Who Framed Roger Rabbit? took its core plot from Detroit automakers who created an auto-necessary metropolis by buying and destroying L.A. streetcars.

Movies re-create myths, and the same is true for The Aviator. When it comes to L.A. stories, the myths are forever changing, alternating between race riots and urban renewal, between darkness and light. But L.A. fades into hazy brightness every morning, much like a movie after the projectionist switches on the cinema house lights.