Disney California Adventure Design: Hollywood Pictures Backlot

HOLLYWOOD PICTURES BACKLOT

Oscar Levant once famously said, “Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.” That seems to be the central design guiding principle behind the Hollywood Pictures Backlot. Disney realized it would be tough to compete with the real Hollywood just up the freeway but they gave it a shot anyway.

What many people don’t realize is there used to be a real Hollywood Pictures owned by The Walt Disney Company. They produced such hits as Encino Man, Tombstone, Quiz Show, and Arachnophobia. That studio stopped producing films in 1996.

Once you pass under that gateway you step on to an idealized version of the famed Hollywood Boulevard. The elephants on top of the gateway are from D.W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance. The original elephants stood 50-feet tall and sat at the corner of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles. The Disney version are 11-feet tall.

Like Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards at the Disney Hollywood Studios and the World Showcase at Epcot in Florida, the Imagineers use a technique called ‘shrink and edit’ that takes a real building for inspiration and then changes the scale, color, or detail to support the story.

The Hollywood Pictures Backlot uses the same technique. For example, there are versions of Hollywood landmarks such as the Owl Drug store (1933), the Baine Building (1926), the Max Factor Building (1931), the ABC Radio Studios (1937), and two buildings that are actually on Hollywood Boulevard, the Pantages Theatre (1930) and a piece of the Crossroads of the World (1936).

Other buildings represented include the Feature Animation Building (1995) at the Disney Studios in Burbank, the Beverly Wilshire Hotel (1928) in Beverly Hills, plus the Bullocks Wilshire (1929), Chapman Market (1929), and the Los Angeles Theatre (1931) all in Los Angeles. Even the restrooms get into the act with a tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Storer House (1923).

However, when you turn the corner you discover that the facades are all fake set pieces and you can see the industrial structures that hold everything up. It is like they are peeling back the curtain to show you that the movies really are all just an illusion. Just like a real backlot.

Ironically, there is currently no backlot at the Burbank Disney Studios. Most productions are shot on location, at the Golden Oaks Ranch or over at Universal Studios.

To try and infuse some life into the Backlot area, Disney tried to implement a “placemaking” program and added gateways and a fountain in front of the Monsters, Inc. façade and the Pueblo Deco inspired Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Pueblo Deco blends elements from the Southwest, Mission, and Art Deco styles.