Netflix's 'Love' finds the sunny side of Los Angeles

Netflix’s ‘Love’ finds the sunny side of Los Angeles

Paul Rust, co-creator and star of Netflix¿s relationship series "Love"

By Glenn Whipp

May 18, 2016 9 AM PT

Yes, Randy Newman, from the South Bay to the Valley, from the West Side to the East Side, everybody loves Los Angeles these days. Television, especially. In this recurring feature, L.A. Stories, we look at what TV is saying about the City of Angels in 2016.

Paul Rust, co-creator and star of Netflix’s relationship series “Love,” remembers going on a Universal Studios tour shortly after arriving in Los Angeles from Iowa.

“The guide was obsessed with how everything in Los Angeles is fake,” Rust says. “‘Those trees? Fake. That rock. Fake. That facade? That’s French for fake.’ He was clearly an embittered actor.”

“Love” sports its share of embittered dreamers, what with one Canadian actress transplant lamenting that Los Angeles isn’t the “friendliest city in the world.”

“The car becomes your best friend,” notes another.

But Rust, who lives with wife and “Love” co-creator Lesley Arfin in Silver Lake (or is it Los Feliz — he’s not entirely certain), believes his series paints a generally sunny picture of L.A.

“Los Angeles can be kind of lonely, but we also try to show that it’s a city filled with other transplants who would make the city feel less enormous and lonely,” Rust says.

Here’s a map of “Love’s” L.A. geography, courtesy of Rust:

United Oil, 1467 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park

The show’s main characters, Gus and Mickey, meet cute in the convenience mart of this Echo Park gas station when Gus pays for Mickey’s coffee and smokes after she forgets her money. The show circled back to the location in the Season 1 finale and will again in the future.

Rust: “I feel bad whenever we’re here at 2:30 in the morning because it’s so obviously the place where people go after a bar when they’re drunk and just want to eat a Hot Pocket. And they can’t do that if we’re filming here. We’re depriving these people of their binge-eating, terrible drunk food. And that breaks my heart. I never want to get in the way of people eating poorly.”

We’re depriving these people of their binge-eating, terrible drunk food.

— Paul Rust, “Love” co-creator on shooting in L.A. late at night

Micheltorena Stairs, Micheltorena Street and Sunset Boulevard, Silver Lake

“I live, like, two blocks from here,” Mickey tells Gus at United Oil, offering to pay him back if he follows her home. What follows is an epic walk-and-talk through Silver Lake, Los Feliz and Echo Park, playing fast and loose with geography but with inspired results.

“I love the wall art and all the great hidden staircases in Silver Lake,” Rust says. “I love the Micheltorena Stairs and the Music Box staircase that Laurel and Hardy used in a short film. Great history there.”

“One thing I think we do different on the show is have the characters actually talk about Los Angeles as a place where movies and TV shows are filmed. So during that walk, Gus mentions, ‘Oh, around here is where they filmed that John Candy and Eugene Levy movie “Armed and Dangerous.”’ I’m a big locations nerd, so I like that self-awareness. If you live here, you know you could go around the corner some day and stumble onto a ‘CSI’ murder investigation.”

The Magic Castle, 7001 Franklin Ave., Hollywood

The private magic club is open only to members and their guests. Gus takes Mickey there on an early date with mixed results.

“It’s a mysterious building,” Rust says. “You drive by and wonder what goes on in there. And because you have to know somebody to get in, it’s like, ‘Are there human sacrifices? Is there some ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ ... happening?”

“The best thing was just getting to spend five days at the Magic Castle and veering off and seeing stuff you might not see if you were there on just a typical night. And I like the idea that our show functions as a way to give people access that might not be able to ever visit.”

American Legion Post, 2035 North Highland Ave., Los Angeles

“Love” used this landmark, built in 1928, in its pilot episode as the locale of the cult-like church Bliss House that Mickey attends. In an odd back-story revelation, it is also the spot Rust and Arfin had picked for their October wedding ceremony.

“We were like, ‘So you think our wedding site would be a good place for a cult?’” Rust says, laughing. “It was weird going back there months later for a different kind of … let’s say, ‘indoctrination.’”