This is a guest post by Richard Devery, Collections Librarian in the Geography and Map Division.
“Five (5) minutes from the studio, but a million miles from nowhere…”
So says the anonymous cartographer of a hand-drawn map of the Lake Hollywood area in Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles filming locations map collection arrived at the Geography and Map Division late in 2024 and has captivated me ever since. It’s a small collection of about 280 photostats of hand-drawn maps, each showing rough sketches of the vast, endless, snaking, spiraling, swirling, and sprawling Los Angeles streets and highways, with instructions to direct film crews to on-location daily shoots for television and movie productions.
These maps served a practical role to meet a need for the many workers in America’s Dream Factory, where the simulacrum of American life is a storefront just down the road from The Burbank Studios and a million miles away from what constitutes the “real world” that Hollywood recreates. For the crews trying to wind their way through traffic to the shooting location, though, it’s just another day of work. To this end, the anonymous cartographer follows their existential musings on the relation between space and place with advice that’s more to the point: “This location is literally up the hill from the studio. So please, don’t get lost.”
The collection features maps for shoots on more than 56 unique productions between 1983-1987. The maps represent an interesting survey of the landscape of 1980s TV and movie culture, with some instantly recognizable titles like Ghostbusters, Body Double, Karate Kid, The Witches of Eastwick, and The Dukes of Hazzard, but also some of the more obscure productions that lived and died in the ‘80s.
Most maps feature the name of the production, the date of the shoot, and a long list of turn-by-turn navigation instructions to the shooting location(s) from a starting point of “TBS,” The Burbank Studios lot used by both Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures during the 1980s. In totality, the collection’s maps depict locations throughout Los Angeles County and beyond, including many of the region’s easily recognizable cities, streets, parks, and landmarks. Equally represented are dozens of the nameless storefronts, homes, and dusty lots that admirably performed their roles as stand-ins.
The modern reader will be regaled with such Los Angeles navigational jargon as “Connect on to Cahuenga Blvd. via Barham, left on Cahuenga Blvd, follow Cahuenga Blvd. / Highland Ave (south) into Hollywood, turn right (west) on Sunset Blvd. & follow, bare [sic] right on to Doheny Rd. (by Hamburger Hamlet/9000 block of Sunset), follow Doheny Rd. for appx ½ mile, turn right on Loma Vista Dr. (by gate house) & follow, turn left into Greystone Park…” If you were paying attention, you just arrived at Greystone Mansion Park for a day of shooting interiors for The Witches of Eastwick.
The filming location maps in this collection were roughly hewn with pen or pencil, photocopied, distributed to the crew, and meant to be used for a few days at most. The fate of most original copies of these maps can probably be safely assumed to involve various trashcans, impromptu use as napkins for a post-shoot dinner in the car on the drive home, or as litter on the side of the Santa Monica freeway. Luckily for us, an intrepid industry insider collected these maps that now give us a rare look at the minutia of life inside Hollywood – and the innards of Los Angeles car transportation, specifically – one shoot at a time.
The maps in this collection mix both high and low elements of cartographic culture, form, and conventions in several key aspects. The maps, although usually barebones, seemingly quickly composed, and apparently casual, still contain similarities to published maps. Many include rectified street grids, depictions of relief, compass orientations, map legends, inset maps, and more.
On many maps you’ll also see reference to the “Thomas Bros.” followed by an alpha-numeric indicator, which will refer the users to a specific grid and page number of the infamous Thomas Guide road atlases for a more accurate and comprehensive view of the area depicted. Los Angeles and its labyrinthine, perpetually expanding roadways can make an honest claim to helping the Thomas Bros. Maps company become one of the definitive 20th century mapmakers covering California’s vast road network.
All fidelity to traditional cartographic principles aside, other (probably most) maps in this collection also contain a fair amount of levity, casual indifference to convention, and a palpable sense of “eh, close enough,” that one can expect from an overworked, underpaid, and always rushed employee of a Hollywood production.
Taken together, the maps in this collection show a wide breadth of Los Angeles and the greater Los Angeles County area at a specific moment of time, replete with landmarks recognizable to both LA locals and out-of-state Americans alike. They go on to connect many of these landmarks in Los Angeles’ geography to landmarks in American cinema and culture by showing the places used to create the American aesthetic ideal. The collection depicts a city that is at once a soundstage for the world’s consumption and an intimate, familiar, and thriving home for its many citizens.
For the maps in this collection, we see what amounts to bits of background to such monumental manifestations of American culture like Ghostbusters. They provide clear evidence of the human element, tiny though it may be, involved in creating something as thoroughly transcendent of time and place as blockbuster motion pictures. What could be more human than asking for directions?
To view the collection, please visit the Geography and Map Division Reading Room.
- To see the catalog record for the collection, click here: https://lccn.loc.gov/2025190524
- To see the finding aid with a complete list of productions in the collection, click here: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/eadgmd.gm025003.3
The Geography and Map Division holds the following Thomas Guides to Los Angeles during the time period covered by the collection that can be used in accompaniment with the references on the maps:
- 1983
- California road atlas and travel guide: https://lccn.loc.gov/84675053
- 1984
- Los Angeles County street atlas and directory: https://lccn.loc.gov/87675171
- 1985
- 1985 Los Angeles County commercial street atlas: https://lccn.loc.gov/86675072
- Los Angeles County street atlas and directory: https://lccn.loc.gov/86675426
- 1986
- 1986 Los Angeles County commercial street atlas: https://lccn.loc.gov/86675427
- 1987
- Los Angeles County street guide & directory: https://lccn.loc.gov/87675225