L.A. 2017

"L.A. 2017" was a 1971 episode of the television series The Name of the Game, written by Philip Wylie and directed by Steven Spielberg. Sometimes referred to as "Los Angeles: AD 2017" or "Los Angeles 2017," this was a science fiction piece, shot for only $375,000, about a publisher, Glenn Howard, (Gene Barry) who finds himself suddenly plunged 46 years into the future only to find that the people of Los Angeles are living underground to escape the pollution and under the thumb of a fascist government run by psychiatrists. The 24-year-old Spielberg used imaginative camera angles to drive the movie-length television episode across and remarked in later years that the show "opened a lot of doors for me."

At the end, Howard wakes up to discover it was all a dream—although there is a chilling final image of dead birds that hint at a troubled future ahead. Presenting the story as a dream was the only way that Wylie's science fiction tale could be fitted into the peculiar format of The Name of the Game, a show about the magazine business set in the present and rotating between Gene Barry, Tony Franciosa, and Robert Stack (and in the third season also Peter Falk, Robert Wagner, Robert Culp, and Darren McGavin).

This was the sixteenth episode of the third season, and the cast included Barry Sullivan, Edmond O'Brien, and (in a brief cameo) Joan Crawford.

Cast

External links

• The Name of the Game: "L.A. 2017" at the Internet Movie Database

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