1947

Richard Lawrence is a man with a firm grasp on the world and where he fits in it.  He is a man with ideas.  One day he plans to make a film which will elucidate those ideas and educate the people who see it.

If this were that film, and he were a character in it, he would look directly into the camera and say this to the audience:

“I am The Builder.  I look at a landscape dotted with scattered and randomly placed communities and I see a City Of The Future.

“This is how it works.  It starts with a vision.  Then I plan it.  And then I build it.

“We took the water we needed from the Owens Valley and brought it to Los Angeles.  My colleagues and I transformed a cow town into a city.  And then we saw a filthy slum, an opium den, a Chinatown.  I had a vision of a clean replica, a safe facsimile which tourists would travel to see, to shop and to spend money.  And then I planned it.  And then I built two of them, and I called them New Chinatown and China City.  I filled both with happy yellow people dressed in native garb selling exotic food and wares.  And in the place of that old slum, I built a train station, which I named Union Station, to bring more of those tourists to my city.  To bring them faster and fatter and full of money.

“I have a newspaper in our City Of The Future which reports only good news.  No murders or crimes or civil unrest happen here.  Nothing to frighten the people away.  The weather report is always on the front page and the weather is always good.

“I stand outside history.  History is on the wrong track.  The wrong people won the last two world wars.  I am The Builder.  I build things.”

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