page_title: Griffith Park
section_title: Locations portrayed in media
hierarchical_section_title: Griffith Park / Attractions / Locations portrayed in media
caption_attribution_description: English: Hiking Views at Griffith Park
context_page_description: Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park covers 4,310 acres of land, making it one of the largest urban parks in North America. It is the second-largest city park in California, after Mission Trails Preserve in San Diego, and the 11th largest municipally-owned park in the United States. It has also been referred to as the Central Park of Los Angeles but is much larger, more untamed, and rugged than its New York City counterpart.
context_section_description: Griffith Park was the busiest destination in Los Angeles for on-location filming in 2011, with 346 production days, according to a FilmL.A. survey. Projects included the TV shows Criminal Minds and The Closer. With its wide variety of scenes and close proximity to Hollywood and Burbank, many different production crews have found new ways and angles to film the same spots and make them look different. One would be hard pressed to find a spot in Griffith Park which has not been filmed or taped.
  Griffith Park has many other locations familiar to consumers of such works as: 
  Films:
  It was used for the road scenes in Sunset Boulevard (1950).
  The climatic scenes of War of the Colossal Beast (1958) were shot at Griffith Observatory.
  The tunnel was used as the entrance to the NORAD complex in WarGames (1983).
  It was used as a location in the first two Back to the Future movies. In the first movie (released in 1985) it was used for Marty McFly's starting point when accelerating to 88 mph (142 km/h) in the film's climax, and in the second movie (released in 1989) it was used for the "River Road Tunnel" scene when Marty was trying to get the almanac back from Biff Tannen.
  The tunnel was also featured in a scene in Throw Momma from the Train (1987)
  The same tunnel was used as the entrance to Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
  The park was also featured in the Robert Altman movie Short Cuts (1993).
  The area around the observatory is used extensively in La La Land (2016).
  Music:
  The park was the location for Adam Lambert's music video for his single, "If I Had You".
  Griffith Park was the location used in Ellie Goulding's music video "Guns and Horses".
  The silver Trans Am in the Simple Plan music video for Untitled (How Could This Happen to Me?) is seen driving out of the tunnel just before the head-on crash.
  Television - sampling of television shows filmed here includes:
  An episode of Remington Steele in which Laura Holt is trying to evade the police
  The Nickelodeon show Salute Your Shorts
  Certain scenes of Full House were taped here
  Some specific sites within the park that have appeared in media include:
  Bronson Canyon, also called Bronson Caves, is a popular location for motion picture and television filming, especially of western and science fiction low-budget films, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). The site was also used as the location for the climactic scene in John Ford's classic western, The Searchers (1956). The scene includes John Wayne cornering his niece, Debbie (Natalie Wood), in one of the caves with the apparent intent of killing her. He relents at the last moment, however, and in the film's most famous shot, picks her up in his arms and turns to carry her back home. Many fans of the film are startled by the revelation that this scene was actually filmed in urban Los Angeles, probably due to how well the shot is integrated into the rest of the picture's location scenery. The craggy site of an old quarry, a tunnel in this canyon was also used as the entrance to the Batcave in the 1960s Batman television series, and in numerous other shows. The natural "cave" walls are preserved by the many layers of paint used to make them look like rock.
   The Griffith Observatory, which sits atop the southern slope of Mount Hollywood, was featured prominently in the classic Rebel Without a Cause (1955). A bronze bust of the film's star James Dean is on the grounds just outside the dome. Other movies filmed here include The Terminator (1984), Disney's The Rocketeer (1991), The Majestic (2001), Stephen Sommer's film Van Helsing (2004), and Yes Man (2008). The area of the park around the Observatory also appears as a location in the role-playing video game Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (2004), which is set in Los Angeles. Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory are significant in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Future's End" (originally aired November 6, 1996). The crew are thrown into the past and Griffith Observatory discovers Voyager. The tunnel was also used in the 1960s spy television series Mission: Impos
caption: Views from Griffith Park
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