American Beauty | 20105 Saticoy Street, Canoga Park — Mr. Smiley's and the Job Lester Actually Wanted

"I'm looking for the least possible amount of responsibility." The counter where Lester Burnham says it is a real fast-food restaurant on Saticoy Street in Canoga Park, deep in the west San Fernando Valley — a Carl's Jr. that the production dressed as Mr. Smiley's for the drive-thru scenes.

It is the hinge of the whole film. Lester quits a job that pays for the house, extorts a year's salary out of his employer, and takes the worst job he can find on purpose. Then the drive-thru speaker crackles and it is his wife in the passenger seat of another man's car, and the two halves of his life collide over a headset. Kevin Spacey plays it without a flicker of shame. That is the point: he has already stopped performing.

Saticoy Street is not scenic. It is wide, flat, sun-bleached Valley commercial strip — auto shops, strip malls, a lot of asphalt and very few pedestrians. Nobody makes a pilgrimage here for the view.

Go anyway, and order something at the window. The scene works because a drive-thru is a place where nobody looks at your face, and standing on the other side of that speaker, you can hear how much freedom that anonymity would buy a man who has spent twenty years being seen.

Photo: fast-food drive-thru order point (Pexels, free licence) — illustrative of the location type.