Christmas LA Setting Lethal Weapon (1987)
The film's seasonal setting — Christmas week in Los Angeles, palm trees and 75-degree afternoons under blinking holiday lights — is one of its most-imitated structural choices. Every exterior in Lethal Weapon is decorated for the holiday. Donner, Black, and cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt use the Christmas-LA paradox as a continuous visual counterpoint to a film about a man who has lost his wife and is auditioning to die.
The palm-tree Christmas
Los Angeles at Christmas is the seasonal incongruity that powers the film's visual register. Donner (in Lethal Weapon) has said the choice was specifically about not letting the audience read the season as snowy or East-Coast-cozy. Goldblatt's cold open at beat 1 — Amanda Hunsaker's high-rise, the city block strung with lights, the body landing on a parked Cadillac — is the establishing frame.b1 Bobby Helms's Jingle Bell Rock runs over the title sequence in deliberate counterpoint to the act it scores.
"I didn't want a movie that looked like Christmas. I wanted a movie that looked like Los Angeles in late December — which is the same as Los Angeles in late June, except every store has lights in the window. The contradiction is the picture's whole texture." — Richard Donner, The Hollywood Reporter (2017)
Shane Black's Christmas signature
The Christmas-LA setting is also a Shane Black (see also) signature. Black has set six of his subsequent screenplays in Christmas-season Los Angeles: The Last Boy Scout (1991), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996, set at Christmas in suburban New England but with LA locations), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Iron Man 3 (2013), and The Nice Guys (2016). The choice has become the writer's calling card.
"Christmas is the time of year when bad things look worst. A guy alone in a trailer eating his gun in summer is sad. The same guy at Christmas is unbearable. I write Christmas because the contrast does the work for me." — Shane Black, interview with Creative Screenwriting (2013)
The Christmas-tree lot
Beat 7 — Riggs in narcotics-cover work, meeting dealers selling cocaine out of a Christmas-tree lot, drawing his gun and shooting his way out of the deal — binds the cop's job to the Donner-Christmas frame.b7 The image of a man in undercover hair pulling a gun on dealers behind a row of Douglas firs is the picture's clearest seasonal joke. The structural function is to put the lethality on the same set as the holiday — the Christmas tree is the cover for the cocaine, the cocaine is the case, the case is the war.
The Christmas-tree-lot bust is also the film's first demonstration that Riggs's procedural mode is the suicide approach being deferred. He goes alone. He draws fire on purpose. The dealers shoot first; he shoots better. The audience reads the seasonal incongruity (the lights, the firs, the carols) over a man who is trying to make the day cost him something. The Christmas frame puts the cost on credit.
The cemetery and the doorstep
The picture's emotional payoff scenes are also Christmas-staged. Beat 37 — Riggs at his wife's grave on Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas, Victoria Lynn. I love you — is the wind-down's first move.b37 Beat 39 — Riggs at the Murtaugh doorstep, handing Trish the hollow-point bullet on Christmas Eve — is the connection plot's structural close.b39 The Christmas frame puts the closure on the same calendar as the equilibrium; the film's structural arc is the eight days between the cold open and the doorstep.
What Goldblatt does with the lights
Stephen Goldblatt used practical Christmas lights as a continuous visual through the film's exteriors. The cold-open block, the residential street where Dixie's house explodes, the Murtaugh lawn at the climax, the cemetery at the wind-down — all are dressed with strings of incandescent bulbs that pull warm orange-yellow into a frame that the film otherwise lights blue. The orange-blue palette is the picture's signature. The lawn fight at beats 35-36 — Christmas lights on the house in the background, blue-red strobes from the LAPD cordon in the foreground — is the most-cited demonstration. See The Lawn Fight.
"Goldblatt makes Christmas lights into a structural element. The orange of the bulbs against the blue of the night sky is the entire palette of the second half of the picture. He found the look in the cold open and held it through the doorstep." — American Cinematographer, October 1987 issue, retrospective paraphrase (2017)
The Donner Christmas template
The Christmas-LA setting Lethal Weapon established became one of the most-imitated seasonal frames in American action cinema. Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan) — which Joel Silver also produced — repeated the choice the next year. Die Hard 2 (1990), Trapped in Paradise (1994), Reindeer Games (2000), and the four Lethal Weapon sequels carried it forward. The Christmas-action-picture is now a recognizable subgenre, and Lethal Weapon is its foundational example.
"Before Lethal Weapon, Christmas was a children's-movie season. After Lethal Weapon, Christmas became the action-movie season. The visual idea — palm trees, Santa hats, gunshots — is one of the durable inheritances of 1987 cinema." — Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com retrospective (2017)
What the season is for
The Christmas frame is doing emotional work the dialogue does not do. The audience is meant to read the season as the calendar of family — Murtaugh's birthday, the Hunsaker memorial, the doorstep, the dinner. Riggs's loss (Victoria Lynn, dead the previous year) is being staged against the day of the year that most-foregrounds family attendance. The trailer scene at beat 4 — Riggs alone with the dog and a beer — is the seasonal isolation in its purest form. The doorstep at beat 39 is the seasonal absorption. The arc the film stages is the eight days that move a man from the first to the second.