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Language: en

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I am exactly thirty miles away

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from the intersection of Beverly Boulevard
and North La Cienega Boulevard

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in downtown Los Angeles.

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This is part of the boundary
of the studio zone,

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a thirty-mile circle that
sweeps through southern California,

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and which explains why a lot of planets in
science fiction look kind of the same.

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See, if I were filming a movie and I asked
my cast and crew

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to meet me here, outside the zone,

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I'd have to pay them for their time and mileage
getting to the location.

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But if I just walk a few paces this way,
inside the studio zone,

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then cast and crew get paid from when they
arrive here, from their call time.

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Filming inside the zone is significantly cheaper.

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The headquarters of pretty much all the movie
studios are inside the zone,

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and so are a lot of places that you'll have
seen in film and television.

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Griffith Park and Bronson Canyon
are well within the zone,

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close to the centre of Hollywood,
so that's where Adam West's Batcave was,

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along with where the walls fell for
Captain Picard, and along with, well,

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pretty much any American TV show that's ever
needed that sort of landscape.

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And Vasquez Rocks, which have been used in
so many TV shows, films and music videos

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that there is a separate
Wikipedia page just listing them,

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is conveniently twenty-nine miles from the
centre of the zone.

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If those rocks were slightly further away
from Hollywood, then who knows?

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Perhaps Bill and Ted would have been killed
by their evil robot doubles somewhere else.

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Why thirty miles?

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Union rules.

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Hollywood is a union town, and long ago,
it was negotiated

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that thirty miles was "local"
and anything outside wasn't,

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presumably after many, many disagreements
going back and forth

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between union reps and the studios.

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Now, exceptions have been added over time:
the rules are complicated,

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and I couldn't explain them all if I tried.

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Production coordinators generally have that job.

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But in summary:
this thirty-mile zone, this TMZ,

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and yes, that's where the gossip site got
its name from,

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this border is why, sometimes, it looks like
the crew of the Enterprise

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are boldly going where quite a lot of people
have gone before.