Q.  Where is it supposed to be?


0:00:36: This is supposed to be a freeway in Los Angeles, as the day begins and drivers head into the city.  During a stand-still traffic jam, the frustrated drivers honk their horns, and then, one by one, begin to leave their cars and sing about the challenges of trying to make it in Hollywood, and the irony that, despite the constant frustrations, the weather is always sunny and cheerful.

This musical number was actually shot on an L.A. freeway, but which one?

The answer is that it was shot on the high interchange ramp leading from the southbound Harbor (110) Freeway to the westbound Century (105) Freeway.

(The Harbor Freeway runs north/south, between downtown L.A. and the Los Angeles harbor in San Pedro.  The Century Freeway leads west to the airport.)

But in the scene, there's a little Hollywood trickery, because the drivers are actually heading the wrong way on that one-way ramp.

In the movie, drivers are headed north towards downtown.  In real life, traffic on that particular ramp heads away from downtown, curving onto the westbound 105.

Since they closed the ramp to real traffic during the filming, they shot it with cars facing towards downtown, because it's supposed to be a morning scene of people heading off to work. And the morning rush hour naturally is heading into the city, not away from it.