Orange County, California, in popular culture

Orange County has been the setting for numerous written works and motion pictures, as well as a popular location for shooting motion pictures.

Literature

(Alphabetical by author's last name)

• James P. Blaylock's modern fantasy novel, All the Bells on Earth, is set in Orange, California.
• Several of the stories in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon's collection, A Model World, are set in Orange County. Chabon studied creative writing at UC Irvine.
• Several scenes from Clive Cussler's novels take place in various places throughout Orange County, including Disneyland.
• The classic novel Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., describes journeys along the California coast in the early 19th century and the trading of goods for cow hides with the local residents. The south Orange County city of Dana Point takes its name from the author, as the cliffs around the harbor were a favorite location of his.
• Philip K. Dick's science fiction novel A Scanner Darkly (1977) was also set in Orange County.
• A number of novels by best-selling fiction and horror author Dean Koontz, a resident of Newport Beach, are set in the area.
• The 2018 horror novel Harper: A Collection of Horrors by horror author Gunnar K. A. Njalsson, a former resident of Laguna Beach, is set in both the north and south county and mentions both Laguna Beach and Dana Point by name.
• San Juan Capistrano is the home of pulp writer Johnston McCulley's first Zorro novellas. The first was titled Curse of Capistrano, but was later changed to the Mask of Zorro, due to the popularity of the movie.
• From his first novel, Laguna Heat, to more recent books such as California Girl, mystery-writer T. Jefferson Parker has set many of his novels in Orange County.
• Orange County is the place in which Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias Trilogy is set. These books depict three different futures of Orange County (survivors of a nuclear war in The Wild Shore, a developer's dream gone mad in The Gold Coast, and an ecotopian utopia in Pacific Edge).
• Kevin Yamagata is from Orange Country in Billy Bat.

Films

• In the 2008 movie Iron Man the ending scene where Tony Stark reveals at a press conference that he is Iron Man was filmed at the former Nikken (now Masimo) headquarters in Irvine, CA
• The movie Beaches starring Bette Midler and Barbra Hershey was filmed at Crystal Cove State Park in Newport Coast.
• The film Better Luck Tomorrow was shot and set in the cities of Cypress and Anaheim
• It is the subject and setting of the eponymous 2002 movie Orange County. However, the film was not actually filmed in Orange County.
• The closing scene in Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise was shot at the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center.
• The University of California, Irvine, has been used in many films, most notably Ocean's Eleven; others include Creator, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Poltergeist
• The film Accepted had Harmon University shot in Chapman University in Orange.
• The film Life as a House was set in Laguna Beach, although it was filmed in Los Angeles County.
• The film Brick was shot and set in San Clemente
• MTV's Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County was filmed in the Orange County coastal town of Laguna Beach, California.
• MTV's Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County was filmed in the Orange County coastal town of Newport Beach, California.
• MTV's Life of Ryan is a reality show following the life of pro skateboarder Ryan Sheckler. The title of the show is a play on Monty Python's Life of Brian, filmed in and around the Sheckler household in San Clemente, California.
• A key scene in the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was shot and set at The Block at Orange in the city of Orange.
• The Christian Slater film Gleaming the Cube was set in Orange County and filmed in several cities, such as Anaheim, Woodbridge High School in Irvine, and John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana.
• Orange County was the location of the 1994 Charlie Sheen movie The Chase; the movie, however, was mostly filmed in Houston.
• The Park Place, Irvine corporate mall was the location for futuristic scenes in the 1993 film Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes.
• The 2006 film A Scanner Darkly was set in the city of Anaheim. A freeway scene was shot along the Northbound I-5 in Tustin.
• In the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious, the scene where Johnny Tran and his gang catch up with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker and blow up their car was filmed in Little Saigon, Westminster.
• The shuttle bay scenes for the 2009 Star Trek movie were shot in the Tustin MCAF Blimp Hangars.
• The main character in A Scanner Darkly is portrayed as an undercover narcotics agent for Orange County
• Scenes from Starship Troopers and the Albert Brooks film Defending Your Life were filmed at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley
• A majority of the 2002 Nickelodeon film Clockstoppers was shot in Old Town Orange, CA.
• The action-comedy television series The Aquabats! Super Show!, starring the Huntington Beach-based band The Aquabats, is predominantly shot throughout Orange County, with a private sound stage located in Santa Ana.
• The 2012 film Savages was filmed almost entirely in Orange County, especially Laguna Beach, and South Coast Metro.
• The Old Orange County Courthouse appeared in the 1994 film North.

Television

• The opening scene of Gilligan's Island that shows the S.S. Minnow leaving the harbor was in Newport Beach.
• The best known portrayal is as the setting of the popular 2003 Fox Network television drama The O.C. which is set in the Orange County coastal harbor town of Newport Beach.
• The moon walk scenes of the 1998 HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, were shot in the Tustin MCAF Blimp Hangars.
• In season six of the HBO drama The Sopranos, Tony Soprano has a coma dream in which he is a businessman in Costa Mesa. In another episode, Christopher Moltisanti and Murmur rob Lauren Bacall's gift basket at a shopping center in Costa Mesa.
• In "The Incredible Mr. Brisby" episode of The Venture Bros., Hank and Dean Venture Travel to the fictional theme park Brisby Land, a spoof of Disneyland. During the episode, radical Orange County Natives known as the Orange County Liberation Front launch a full-scale assault on the Brisby Land compound out of revenge for the ever increasing size of the Park. Members of the OCLF are easily identified by their helmets that resemble enormous oranges.
• In earlier seasons, The Real Housewives of Orange County was filmed in Coto De Caza. It now films at various locations in Orange County.
• Costa Mesa is the setting for The X-Files episode "Hungry".
• A plot line in the television drama The West Wing involved a dead liberal Democrat unexpectedly winning a Congressional seat from an Orange County district. Sam Seaborn, a native of Orange County, agrees to run in a special election to replace him.
• Orange County is the home of the late Republican President Teddy Bridges in the ABC drama Commander in Chief.
• Sayid Jarrah from the ABC drama Lost was bound to go to Irvine, where his longtime friend Nadia lives. John Locke, another castaway from the series, is said to have lived most of his life in Tustin. Also Libby told Desmond that she is from Newport Beach.
• It is also the setting of the 2003 sitcom Arrested Development. Most of the series was not filmed in Orange County, but in Culver City and Marina del Rey in Los Angeles County. A running joke in the series that pokes fun at The O.C. is that characters will frequently refer to Orange County as "The O.C.," followed by another character's saying, "Don't call it that" (mirroring the fact that Orange County residents rarely if ever use the term "The O.C.", but rather just, "Orange County").
• The 2004 reality TV series Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County was filmed mostly in Orange County.
• Exterior scenes in the TV series American Horror Story: Asylum were filmed on location at the Old Orange County Courthouse
• The protest scenes in the TV series American Horror Story: Cult were filmed in the Orange Circle
• The entire Bravo series Dirty John takes place in cities across Orange County and is filmed in multiple places in Newport Beach, CA

References

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