Bradbury Building - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The Bradbury Building is featured prominently as the setting in a wide range of popular media – particularly in the science fiction genre – including films, television, literature, and music videos. Most notably, the building is the setting for both the climactic rooftop scene of the 1982 cult classic Blade Runner, as well as the set of the character J. F. Sebastian's apartment in which much of the film's story unfolds.

The Bradbury Building appeared prominently in the noir films D.O.A. (1950) and I, The Jury (1953). The 1951 remake of M contains a long search sequence filmed in the building, and a spectacular shot through the roof's skylight. The famed five-story atrium also substituted for the interior of the seedy skid row hotel depicted in the climax of Good Neighbor Sam (1964), supposedly set in San Francisco but filmed, save for some establishing shots and rear-projection footage, entirely in Los Angeles.

The Bradbury Building is also featured in The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), The Indestructible Man (1956), Caprice (1967), Marlowe (1969), the 1972 made-for-television movie The Night Strangler, Chinatown (1974), The Cheap Detective (1978), Avenging Angel (1985), Murphy's Law (1986), The Dreamer of Oz (1990 TV movie), 1994’s Wolf and Disclosure, Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), Pay It Forward (2000), (500) Days of Summer (2009), and The Artist (2011).

Television series that featured the building include the 1964 The Outer Limits episode "Demon with a Glass Hand". During the season six episodes (1963–64) of the series 77 Sunset Strip, the Stuart "Stu" Bailey character had his office in the Bradbury. In Quantum Leap the building is seen carrying the name "Gotham Towers" in "Play It Again, Seymour", the last episode of the first season (1989). The building appeared in at least one episode of the television series Banyon (1972–73), City of Angels (1976) and Mission: Impossible (1966–73), as well as in the "Ned and Chuck's Apartment" episode of Pushing Daisies, which debuted in 2007. The building was also the setting for a scene from the series FlashForward in the episode "Let No Man Put Asunder". In 2010 the building was transplanted to New York City for a two-part episode of CSI NY. The Bradbury Building and a fake New York City subway entrance across the street were also used to represent the exterior of New York's High School for the Performing Arts in the opening credits of the television series Fame.

The Bradbury appeared in music videos from the 1980s by Heart, Janet Jackson, Earth Wind and Fire and Genesis, and a Pontiac Pursuit commercial. Part of Janet Jackson's 1989 film short Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 was filmed in the building as well. The interior appears in the music video for the Pointer Sisters' 1980 song, "He's So Shy". The Bradbury Building was also used for Tony! Toni! Toné!'s "Let's Get Down" music video.

The building was featured in the photography on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 box, while the personal computer game SimCity 3000 shows the building as one of many being built in the so-called Medium Commercial zones.

The Bradbury has been frequently alluded to in popular literature. In Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, the protagonist refers to Philip Marlowe, who would "feel homesick for the lacework balconies of the Bradbury Building." In the Star Trek novel The Case of the Colonist's Corpse: A Sam Cogley Mystery, the protagonist works from the Bradbury Building four hundred years in the future. Other allusions occur in The Man With The Golden Torc by Simon R. Green, and the science fiction multiple novel series The World Of Tiers by Philip Jose Farmer.

DC Comics and Marvel Comics – the latter of which has offices in the real Bradbury Building – both published comic book series based on characters that work in the historic landmark. The building serves as the headquarters for the Marvel Comics team The Order, and in the DC universe, the Human Target runs his private investigation agency from the building.