I am exactly thirty miles away
from the intersection of Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard
in downtown Los Angeles.
This is part of the boundary of the studio zone,
a thirty-mile circle that sweeps through southern California,
and which explains why a lot of planets in science fiction look kind of the same.
See, if I were filming a movie and I asked my cast and crew
to meet me here, outside the zone,
I'd have to pay them for their time and mileage getting to the location.
But if I just walk a few paces this way, inside the studio zone,
then cast and crew get paid from when they arrive here, from their call time.
Filming inside the zone is significantly cheaper.
The headquarters of pretty much all the movie studios are inside the zone,
and so are a lot of places that you'll have seen in film and television.
Griffith Park and Bronson Canyon are well within the zone,
close to the centre of Hollywood, so that's where Adam West's Batcave was,
along with where the walls fell for Captain Picard, and along with, well,
pretty much any American TV show that's ever needed that sort of landscape.
And Vasquez Rocks, which have been used in so many TV shows, films and music videos
that there is a separate Wikipedia page just listing them,
is conveniently twenty-nine miles from the centre of the zone.
If those rocks were slightly further away from Hollywood, then who knows?
Perhaps Bill and Ted would have been killed by their evil robot doubles somewhere else.
Why thirty miles?
Union rules.
Hollywood is a union town, and long ago, it was negotiated
that thirty miles was "local" and anything outside wasn't,
presumably after many, many disagreements going back and forth
between union reps and the studios.
Now, exceptions have been added over time: the rules are complicated,
and I couldn't explain them all if I tried.
Production coordinators generally have that job.
But in summary: this thirty-mile zone, this TMZ,
and yes, that's where the gossip site got its name from,
this border is why, sometimes, it looks like the crew of the Enterprise
are boldly going where quite a lot of people have gone before.