In "L.A. 2017," Glenn Howard is on the way back from a top-secret meeting held by a group of top scientists and industrialists discussing the very serious threats the environment (abused by polution) holds for mankind. Howard, a friend of the President of the United States (who happened to be purposefully left in the dark about the meeting), drives along a rural highway outside of L.A. after the meeting, speaking into a tape recording he is making for the President about the meeting. As he drives, Howard opens the air vent to his automobile, letting a healthy dose of L.A. smog and auto exhaust into his car and lungs, which causes him to pass out at the wheel.
Time passes and Howard is now slumped over the wheel at the roadside, where his crashed auto has been found by a squad of men wearing odd uniforms and gas masks. Howard is awoken and transported across a suddenly foreign looking terrain-a desolate wasteland--to an underground facility. As he is revived, Howard finds himself in a new world, forty-six years in the future!
L.A. is now a small underground outpost where survivors of the ecological catastrophe Howard and the industrialists were discussing in 1971 has come true. After being grilled by the police state (run by psychiatrists!), Howard is indoctrinated into the new society by Dane (Barry Sullivan), the leader of the L.A. branch of the U.S., which is now run by big-business.
As Howard learns more about what has become of society, it becomes apparent that Dane and his cohorts are running things as a big-brother dictatorship (in an oppressive future society not unlike "1984," "THX-1138," "Brazil" (both films share 'well-meaning' terrorist bombings), or Spielberg's own "Minority Report"), where personal freedoms, life, and love are no longer a benefit of freewill...
http://www.amazon.com/Los-Angeles-D-Popular-Library/dp/B0006XR6US/ref=topnav_ybh_title_2/103-8751004-9468648
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dhayn_anthony
17 years ago
SPECTRE4 HAS IT RIGHT;BUT IN ESSENCE SINCE PART OF UNIVERSAL STUDIO'S BACKLOT VIRTUALLY BACKS INTO THE WEST END OF GRIFFITH PARK,THE FEW OF US THAT WERE RAISED HERE WILL NOTICE THAT,INDEED THIS IS THE AREA HE'S DRIVING IN,JUST BEFORE THE MEN IN THE NASA EVA SUITS ARRIVE TO RESCUE HIM... IT'S THE EXTREME WEST END OF GRIFFITH PARK WHERE MULHOLLAND DRIVE BEGINS,JUST BEFORE CAHUENGA WEST BOULEVARDE
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vmenigma-1
16 years ago
You have most of the story right except that the way that Glenn Howard passes out is that he is driving on a rural road while ditating notes into his tape recorder (no MP3 recorders then) and swerves to avoid an oncoming truck that cuts into his lane. He runs off the road and hits his head on the steering wheel setting the horn off. The scene then cuts to a close up of the exhauast pipe of his car emitting some smoke and sound of the engine still running, then back to a shot of him slumped over, horn still going, in the car with all the windows closed suggesting that he is succombing to carbon monoxide posioning. It is then he "wakes up" with the men in the Haz Mat suits and gas masks and brought by "ambulance" (black Brinks Truck like) to the underground future L.A. where the rest of the story takes place. He dreams the whole thing of course as the last thing he is thinking about before the car accident takes place is the meeting of the world's scientists and experts on pollution.
What is quite interesting is how far ahead of their time this story was in presenting the dire consequences of the earth's civilization head long plunge to modernization (China and India today e.g.) without regard to the amount of pollution produced and natural resources decimated in the process.
This story predates Global Warming but shows how serious the show's writers were taking the situation at that time in predicting that it would get so bad that humanity would have to eventually live underground and if you recall, limit human reproduction to only the healthiest of men and women so that genetic defects would be eliminated. That is of course unless you were connected then you could do anything you wanted. Big Brother was watching here as well here as every room had a camera and there was a scene when Glenn Howard does bed down a girl that was supposed to accompany him everywhere so he covers the camera lens to keep the security agents from getting a good show.
Yes this series should be made available on DVD as it was some of the finest Television writing and acting that anyone has seen even to this day.
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jzorn
10 years ago
Philip Wylie wrote this episode which I had not realized until tonight looking to see if it was available. Great writer and had amazing forsight into the future. The episode was also directed by Speilberg another interesting discovery tonight.
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bradrowleyaz-68-108477
13 years ago
The memory of reading the novelization of this episode many years ago has always stuck with me. Definitely not G rated! I'd watched a few of the original series' episodes on TV, though not this one in particular, and was surprised at how, um, graphic the writer was allowed to get.
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