Camarillo State Hospital in Popular Culture
Due to the hospital's proximity to the media center of Los Angeles, it has been referred to in movies, television, and music. Some famous persons suffering from mental illnesses, tuberculosis, or detoxing from drugs or alcohol stayed there to recover in Ventura County's mild climate. Jazzman Charlie Parker's "Relaxin' at Camarillo", written while he was detoxifying after a heroin addiction, is a tribute to the facility. The song "Camarillo" by punk outfit Fear also refers to the hospital. The band Ambrosia released a song called "Ready for Camarillo" on their 1978 Life Beyond L.A. album. "Camarillo Brillo" by Frank Zappa is also a reference to the institution. It has been rumored that the Eagles' 1977 "Hotel California" was a reference to Camarillo State Mental Hospital.
- Much of the 1948 film The Snake Pit, starring Olivia de Havilland, was filmed here.
- The opening scene from the Wes Anderson film Bottle Rocket was filmed at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital.
- 'N Sync's mental hospital-set video for "I Drive Myself Crazy" was filmed at Camarillo.
- After it closed, Camarillo was a popular destination for ghost hunters alleging that the hospital is haunted.
- During the dénouement of some television episodes of the Dragnet series, there were references to captured criminals being sentenced to Camarillo State Hospital.
- Scenes from The Ring and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were filmed at and around the hospital's grounds.
- Season 4 of the TV show The Biggest Loser was filmed in 2007 when the site was CSU Channel Islands.
- Jonathan Kellerman's 2012 thriller "Victims" modelled its Ventura State Hospital after Camarillo State Hospital.
Read more about this topic: Camarillo State Mental Hospital
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, state, hospital, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life—its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness—conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)