Coachella Valley - Pop Culture References

Pop Culture References

Noteworthy and memorable pop culture references include the animated Looney Tunes short, Bully for Bugs. In it, Bugs Bunny requests directions to the Coachella Valley "and the carrot festival therein." An annual carrot festival is in fact held just outside the area in the Imperial County town of Holtville.

The generation defining novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland describes the angst of those born between roughly 1960 and 1965 (Generation X-ers usually those born from 1960 to 1982), and is set in the Palm Springs of the late 1980s.

A second classic 1980s novel Less Than Zero, a tale of disaffected, rich teenagers of Los Angeles, has its climactic scenes of excess and despair set in Palm Springs. The film Less Than Zero was made in 1987, directed by Marek Kanievska and starring Andrew McCarthy, Robert Downey Jr. and Jami Gertz.

Another famous movie filmed in the Coachella Valley is arguably It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. This film even includes the former Desert Air airport, now the site of the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa in Rancho Mirage. The airfield escape scene in A Night in Casablanca was filmed at present-day Palm Springs International Airport; Mount San Jacinto is clearly seen in the background.

Tex Avery made a brief reference to Palm Springs via a sight gag in his 1948 animated short for MGM, The Cat that Hated People. In the showroom of the "Moonbeam Rocket Company", a tiny rocket ship with a sign showing its intended destination of Palm Springs is shown among a series of large rockets also displaying signs indicating not terrestrial but rather their galactic destinations.

The early 1960s would see the movie Palm Springs Weekend filmed on location. A humorous situation involving four drunk LAPD policemen in a rented aircraft attempting to reclaim a Palm Springs golf course in the name of the local Indian tribes can be found in the 1975 novel, The Choirboys.

An episode of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show titled "The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam" announces the upcoming second installment of the episode as "Rimsky & Korsakov Go to Palm Springs, or Song of Indio".

In the 1984 music video by Tears for Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World was shot on location in the Coachella Valley. The rock video features scenes of a few local landmarks: the dinosaur structures near Cabazon, the windmill farms, scenery along Interstate 10 and state route 111, a scene of two dancers appear in a gas station on state route 86, and the shores of the Salton Sea.

In 1988, "The Race" by Swiss dance band Yello featured a fictitious sportscaster talking about the "thirty-first annual formula race" in Palm Springs. While Palm Springs did briefly host an annual Grand Prix, it ran for considerably fewer than thirty-one years.

In the 1990s two television series shows P.S. I Luv U and Phenom, the characters and plots were set in Palm Springs.

In 2006, The CW television network had a teen drama series Hidden Palms is set in a gated desert community near Palm Springs, although there is a real Hidden Palms in Palm Desert. By irony, the real gated community is adjacent to Palm Desert High school.

In local Tyler Hilton's song "When It Comes", he references Palm Desert's strip of high-class fashion and dining singing, "When I'm cruising El Paseo / In my off-white coup back '65."

A majority of the 2007 film Alpha Dog was shot in Palm Springs.

The helicopter scene in Mission Impossible III was filmed in the windfarm outside of Palm Springs.

The city was mentioned on an episode of Comedy Central's Reno 911! by sergeant/lieutanant Jim (Doug) Dangle, an openly Gay character of the show. He would hang out in Palm Springs, as well in San Francisco and West Hollywood, but he eventually chose Reno as his hometown.

In an episode of the animated comedy Family Guy On the Road to Rhode Island, baby Stewie and his friend, Brian (a talking dog) figured a way to return home from vacation in Lois' parents home in Palm Springs.

On American Dad Season 2, Episode 4 - Lincoln Lover, Stan Smith said to a speech in the Republican National Convention when representatives of the Gay Log Cabin Republicans were present: "Invite half of Palm Springs...oh, invite everyone in Palm Springs..." based on a belief based on a survey by a demographic think tank on about Half of the city's population are Gay or GLBT people.