From 'Escape From L.A.' to 'Star Trek,' California is sci-fi

In sci-fi movies and the books that serve as their inspiration, the future of the Golden State goes something like this: Ten to 150 years from the present, California has succumbed to natural disaster/economic and governmental collapse/a pandemic, which leaves Southern California a corporate-fascist-military state with gross financial and racial inequality and urban squalor—while Northern California rips up its pavement, learns permaculture, gets spiritual, and models better living through technology and communitarian diversity.

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The Surprisingly Real Los Angeles of Modern Family

The city is not presented as a dystopian hellscape, a gang-riddled slum, or a hedonistic lotus land just begging for its earth-shaking, flame-engulfed comeuppance from a disgusted God. It’s just a place where normal Americans lead normal lives, albeit one with better weather.

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Culver Studios Won't Become Condos, Says New Owner

The studio, located in downtown Culver City with its highly recognizable front lawn and columned mansion (used for the Atlanta fire scenes in Gone With the Wind), was originally created by silent movie pioneer Thomas Ince in 1918. Past owners of the 14-acre studio property have included Cecil B. DeMille, Joseph Kennedy, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, David O. Selznick and Howard Hughes.

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