“I took my first trip to Los Angeles to visit my older brother, Ken, who was an actor working in Hollywood. I was 16, and he was in his early twenties, which felt like a big difference at that age. One of the first nights he took me to the Sunset Strip. This was the late 1950s, so there were these coffeehouses where people played drums, drank coffee, and read poetry—that kind of beatnik stuff. We walked into a place, and there was a young Marlon Brando—at the beginning of his fame—playing the bongos with people gathered around him. It was one of my first impressions of L.A., and it was quite an impression.”

— Christopher Walken, in Los Angeles Magazine, recalling his first visit to Los Angeles