One sub-niche of 1960s and 1970s television is the show that demonstrates the studio backlot for what it is. It’s a fascinating snapshot into the state of the backlot at that moment, with little embellishment. The Brady Bunch ends up at a mysterious ghost town with a menacing prospector. Tumbleweeds tumble. But it’s patently obvious… Continue reading Paramount Studios, 1970: Let’s Film on the Studio Today
Category: Themed Environments
Fake Americana With a Topping of Grit: 4 Aces Movie Ranch, Palmdale
4 Aces, located in Palmdale, California, is every Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford and B-Minus-film noir from 1949 to 1960 wrapped up into one, big, delightful fake. The Diner This is where you take the woman hitchhiking in heels with a suitcase and a shady story about her father, in Chicago, kicking her out of… Continue reading Fake Americana With a Topping of Grit: 4 Aces Movie Ranch, Palmdale
Birth, Life, and Death of the Niles Backyard Monorail
Backyard dreamers are those true visionaries who build their dreams at great expense and for only personal reward. They are seized by a vision and they must realize this vision in physical form. If anybody can be called the patron saint of backyard dreamers, it would have to be Kim Pedersen of Fremont, California. In… Continue reading Birth, Life, and Death of the Niles Backyard Monorail
Bars, Nightclubs, and Casinos from Ocean’s 11 (1960)
How bad can a movie be yet look fantastic? Ocean’s 11 (1960) is a heist film famous for its slick Rat Pack, mid-century modern trappings, but altogether a heaping, floppy mess. It’s a movie you want to like but can’t. It has no real highs, no lows, no drama, little humor. Interminable parts of the… Continue reading Bars, Nightclubs, and Casinos from Ocean’s 11 (1960)
The Man Who Built Disney’s Fantasyland in His Basement
Talk about humble and unassuming. A man builds a painstaking recreation of some elements of Disneyland’s Fantasyland in his basement, uploads a less than two minute-long video to YouTube, and all he says is, “This is a short video about my Fantasyland basement.” But there you have it. An as-yet-anonymous maker known only as Travis… Continue reading The Man Who Built Disney’s Fantasyland in His Basement