The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Los Angeles is a series of books concerning this city, namely an airport novel from my adolescent years that tells the tale of a French journalist come to L.A. to do a news feature. She gradually loses her reference points to ultimately discover that, despite the city's toughness, she can live nowhere else but in the megalopolis.
It is also impossible for me to separate Los Angeles from the history and evolution of skateboarding. 
Since its appearance in France (and in my life) in the mid-70's, this sport has never ceased to enthrall me, to such extent that it has even worked its way into my artwork. 
I shouldn't forget to mention the alternative music from the West Coast that has followed me around up to today, at any time of day or night.
Finally there is the deep cultural shock literature provoked in me when, as a student, I discovered two books that would greatly impress me and consciously engage my work as an artist in a direction that might find its roots in a city of Angels as of yet unknown.
In effect, "Less than zero" and "Rules of Attraction" by Bret Easton Ellis, made up a written, cultural and conceptual preparation for a better approach, integration and interpretation of two of my favorite cult films : "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland  Drive" by David Lynch.  Parallel to these two films, I also feel obliged to mention "Boyz N the Hood" by John Singleton, "Dogtown and z-boys" by Stacy Peralta,  "The Johns" by Scott Silver, "Short cuts" (Carver/Altman) and "Magnolia" (Paul Thomas Anderson) which equally molded an atmosphere in my mind that seems indissociable from L.A.
Going beyond my accepted and always reasonable attraction for the "urban folklore" inherent to a place I've never visited, the fantasy I project onto this city gives me the impression that there lies beneath the surface
a "hidden reality" that is simultaneously magic, neurotic, trans-cultural and unexplainable, something that makes  all forms of heroism necessary for daily survival, but something devoid of glitter in the Hollywood sense of the word.