[Satire, originally published in New Times Los Angeles]
How renegade movie makers in a desolate patch of Mojave suburbia are building a film empire--and making Hollywood drool about the Next Big Thing
THE CITY OF PALMDALE, by any definition, sucks.
It lies at the edge of northern Los Angeles County, a long 70 miles from downtown, even 30 miles past Santa Clarita, the outermost suburb that most people considered habitable. Those who live out here and work in The Big City spend at least four hours a day on the freeway. Those who don't commute spend 24 hours a day in Palmdale, which is worse.
Sure, the place has a mall and all the big releases play here, just like anywhere else. Sure, Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works will keep people employed building the next-generation space shuttle, the X-33, to be tested at nearby Edwards Air Force Base. And, at least, Highway 41 goes through town so the Denny's does OK. Oh, and there's a Metrolink stop.
But at its core, the town is a mistake, a clear argument that Los Angeles can and will come to an end. Less than a decade ago, city planners heralded Palmdale as the last, great frontier of Angelene expansion, the event horizon of growth, a place where a Ward & June could buy a chunk of America and settle down, a Mayberry in the desert, only hotter. But now the suburban dreamland boasts some of the nation's highest rates of domestic and child abuse, and ranks as the foreclosure capital of America. Entire developments of crisp, new tract homes lay vacant, like seas of silent orange stucco, and every half-empty strip mall has at least one storefront touting foreclosure auctions and HUD homes for a very enthusiastic "Zero percent down!"
To most of Los Angeles, Palmdale is a punch line, a big joke in the sand, which, some say, is what makes it perfect for a youth-born revolution in cinema.
And that's where the Biggs brothers come in.
