INVENTING LA: THE CHANDLERS AND THEIR TIMES, a documentary by Emmy-winning filmmaker Peter Jones, tells the story of the Los Angeles Times and the city’s most powerful family.
For four generations, the Chandlers wielded unique influence through their newspaper. In their pursuit of personal agendas and civic ideals, they built the city of the future, but also exposed the dark side of the American dream.
Inventing LA employs unprecedented access to the family and the Times’ archives which span the century that Harrison Gray Otis, Harry Chandler, Norman Chandler, and Otis Chandler stood at the helm of the newspaper and at the center of the city’s economic, social and cultural growth. A character-driven film, it traces the ruthless, ingenious and often self-serving methods by which four publishers used the newspaper to turn a tiny town into a world metropolis.
Inventing LA was supported by California Humanities through the California Documentary Project and was broadcast nationally on PBS in 2009.
