Welcome to the serialized fiction podcast of Los Angeles. Each season, The Last We Fake debuts an original LA novel in twelve episodes, along with selected short pieces from West Coast authors, both new and established, whose works take place at the shifting borders of the American Dream. Separately, the episodes stand alone, but together they comprise a novel-length journey, with a cast of recurr
ing characters. Season 1, titled THE DRIFT THAT FOLLOWS WILL BE GRADUAL, by Alan Rifkin, threads together a reporter's cherished past—1980s, Los Angeles—and his mentally ill millennial son’s determination to claim his own season in the sun. Jeffrey Leviton is a fading romantic, twice divorced, with visions of literary grandeur. Beginning in the 1980s, a golden age of magazine journalism and a period of unmatched freedom in Los Angeles, and continuing through the convulsions of the 2010s, Leviton grows through a harrowing crucible of circumstances—romantic chaos, alcoholic recovery, homelessness, and cultural transition—all while attempting to anchor his son Philip’s precarious security. Part father-son drama, part roman a clef of a changing LA, the twelve linked episodes—bittersweet, sometimes funny, deliciously messy—stumble toward redemption through themes both So Cal and global: the ache of cultural drift, the alienation of the awkward and the uncelebrated in the 21st Century, and the timelessness of young dreams. Begins February 2022. Season 2, titled SUNLAND, by screenwriter, journalist and novelist Charlie Haas, unfolds the brief desert flowering of a group of German artists, musicians, and free spirits who come to Southern California, “the America of America,” in 1914 to start the world over. They’re fleeing cops, sexual norms, city life, the oncoming world war, and the Internet of their time — the telegraph, telephone, and movies. They’re making wild new music and practicing naked farming. They worship the sun. Based loosely on history, and told through the rotating voices of a family from Berlin who leave everything behind in hope of a saner life—middling violinist-dreamer Anna, factory worker Gerhard, prototypical flowerchild Lilli, and budding tech futurist Benji—the four main characters branch from the fields of San Bernardino to the real estate tracts of burgeoning LA, at once wrestling with and setting in motion the longings and questions that have continued to beguile and bedevil every American generation since. Begins June 2022. CREDITS:
Alan Rifkin's novels, essays and short stories of Los Angeles have been published widely. Find out more about him at www.alanrifkin.com. Charlie Haas’s screenwriting credits include Over the Edge, Tex, Gremlins 2, and Matinee. His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, New West, The Threepenny Review, and Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, along with many other journals. Haas’s previous novel, The Enthusiast, was published by HarperPerennial in 2009. Follow his Twitter feed at: . Intro music is from the song "Slow," performed by Sally Dworsky. Written by Sally Dworsky and Chris Hickey. Available on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and all other streaming platforms. Closing credits songs for Season 2 are “Lullaby of Sunland,” composed and performed by Ben Rifkin, and “Trapeze Dress,” composed and performed by Dean Chamberlain. News and touring information about Dean are at therealcodeblue.com. Podcast art by Ryan Longnecker. Special thanks to Ben Rifkin, Sarah Fleming, Chip Rice, John Gould, Gary Commins, Sheila Finch, and Brandon Cook.
