From Westwood to the Valley: How ‘The Shards’ re-creates 1981 L.A.
The article explores the production design and stylistic choices behind the FX series 'The Shards,' based on Bret Easton Ellis's 2023 novel. It highlights how the creative team, led by Ryan Murphy, aimed to capture the specific atmosphere of 1981 Los Angeles through a lens of glamour and underlying danger.
Why it matters
It provides insight into the adaptation process of literary works into prestige television and the role of visual aesthetics in period storytelling.
In the opening scene of “The Shards,” a teenage Bret Easton Ellis (Igby Rigney) cruises down Mulholland Drive in his black Mercedes-Benz, cigarette in hand, blasting the Cars’ “Moving in Stereo,” to catch a Saturday matinee of “The Shining.” Not only does the sequence evoke the eerie opening of Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1980 horror masterpiece, it transports the viewer into a hyperspecific world — sunshine and cigarettes, prep schools and predators, where turning 17 means receiving a slick car from absentee parents. We’re entering Los Angeles, circa 1981, and just like the Overlook Hotel, danger lurks beneath a glamorous facade. Ryan Murphy’s 1980s coming-of-age thriller, which premiered Wednesday on FX and Hulu, is based on the 2023 novel of the same name by L.A. literary provocateur Bret Easton Ellis, of “Less Than Zero” and “American Psycho” fame.
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