Los Angeles Department of Water and Power - Media Portrayals

Media Portrayals

Unusual for a municipal public utility, LADWP has been mentioned several times in popular culture, both fiction and nonfiction:

  • The 1974 Roman Polanski film Chinatown sets its story around LADWP's efforts to acquire land and water rights.
  • In 1982 the University of California Press published William L. Kahrl's book Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles’ Water Supply in the Owens Valley (ISBN 0-520-04431-2 ). The book examined the development of water policy in the American West, particularly concentrating on the role of William Mulholland and the LADWP.
  • The 1986 book Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner (ISBN 0-14-017824-4 ) is about land development and water policy in the western United States. The subsequent television documentary of the same name devotes an entire episode to Mulholland's Dream to provide plentiful water for Los Angeles.
  • The 1995 movie Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie makes reference to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The movie takes place in a fictional city modeled after Los Angeles. In one of the movie's scenes, after finding a mysterious object in the ground on a construction site, one construction worker asks another, "what in the world is this?" The other construction worker replies "well it sure as heck ain't DWP."
  • The 1996 science fiction movie Independence Day shows the LADWP headquarters building get destroyed by the wave of explosions when the 15 mile wide alien spaceship obliterates Los Angeles in a couple minutes.
  • In the 2009 ABC television series FlashForward, the exterior of the LADWP headquarters is used to portray the FBI field office building where several main characters are based.
  • In the 2009 movie Obsessed the building was also featured.
  • The 2010 Christopher Nolan film Inception features the LADWP headquarters, though a noticeably taller version. The building was shown in the world created by the protagonist and antagonist during a decades-long shared dream.

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Famous quotes containing the words media and/or portrayals:

    “The media no longer ask those who know something ... to share that knowledge with the public. Instead they ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimate it.”
    —Serge Daney (1944–1992)

    “We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
    —Richard Louv (20th century)