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. Ellis fictionalized his Buckley School years for the novel, originally released as a serialized audiobook on his podcast.
Fans of the novel will be relieved to know that the show retains this autobiographical sensibility, filtering its depiction of early ’80s L.A. through the prism of Ellis’ memory — as interpreted by series co-creator Murphy, whose stylish fingerprints are all over the screen.
That means perfectly coiffed hair, stark white interiors with pops of color and, despite the era’s prevalent greenery, no extraneous plants.
“If you put all those ferns in, it might give the impression that people didn’t have very much taste,” explained “The Shards” production designer Cat Smith. “There’s a sense of glamour to everything that [Murphy] does and a high style.”
Smith, who grew up in the Valley in the ‘80s and attended the private Marlborough School, reflected on her own memories of the era to bring the show to life. But more than anything, Paul Schrader’s 1980 neo-noir thriller “American Gigolo” — another film that opens with an iconic drive — was the creative team’s guiding light.
“It’s interesting to see how things looked in 1981 compared to my memory,” Smith said.
Smith remembered an L.A. that was “dark and cold” — a breeding ground for wealth fetishization, abundant drugs, drive-by shootings and serial murder, all of which are starkly reflected in “The Shards.”
But, she added, “I didn’t realize how much fun it was too.” Without phones or social media, she said, the visuals of the physical world were especially vivid.
“You were basically scrolling through the universe.”
Staging the city
L.A. is undeniably its own character in “The Shards.”
“We’re lucky to have our source material be written by one of the most detail-oriented writers of that particular age,” said Rigney, who portrays the fictionalized Ellis. “Listening to the book while driving the streets that were mentioned in the book allowed me to immediately connect with the world. Living in L.A. was really the key.”
To that end, the show’s characters flit from one iconic L.A. destination to another, including Trumps, a bygone West Hollywood restaurant; the Sherman Oaks Galleria; and Westwood Village.
“The craziest thing about Westwood in the ’80s was how crowded it was,” Smith said. “You never go to a place in L.A. 1785943885 and there are people everywhere. It was the spot; even me, I was from the Valley and I wanted to go to Westwood on the weekend.”
To build the movie palace and surrounding neighborhood traversed by Bret in the opening sequence, the team used the exterior of the Bruin Theater and the interior of the adjacent Fox Theater, now known as the Westwood Village Theater, taking care to “undo” any changes made in the last 45 years.
Across the street, they transformed a Taco Bell into a Hamburger Hamlet and erected awnings for other recognizable former businesses, like the restaurant Mario’s.
One of the most memorable locations for Smith to re-create was the Sherman Oaks Galleria, which, she said, was “basically gutted” in the ‘90s.
“That was where I used to hang out, so I knew exactly what it looked like in my head,” she said.
The most important visuals to get right were the giant skylight and the escalators climbing up from the mall’s center. Luckily, she found both at the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach, which her team covered in red carpeting to stay faithful to the Sherman Oaks mall’s original design.
“When I saw it set up, I was like, ‘This is amazing. This is like time travel, but you’re traveling back to your childhood,’” she said. “I’ve done period before, and you always feel like you’re time traveling to a certain extent, but it’s visceral when it’s yours.”
Styling the era
“The Shards” may be set in the ’80s, but don’t expect any neon leotards.
Instead, the show’s costume department leaned into a “late ’70s, transitional, mauve-y, gray-bluish” color palette, according to costume designer and co-executive producer Lou Eyrich, a longtime collaborator with Murphy.
“That way, when you pop in the pops of color, they definitely stand out,” she said.
As with locations and production design, Ellis’ novel provided much of the raw material the costume department needed.
“There’s this dossier that’s basically an Excel spreadsheet of every single reference to music, movies, fashion [and] cars throughout ‘The Shards,’ so you could always go back to that,” said Josh Marsh, a costume designer on the series.
Music shapes both the series’ tone and its fashion.
“For us, you were influenced by music videos big time,” Eyrich said. “MTV came out in August of ‘81 and the show starts in July. Until then, besides magazines, you couldn’t just go on the internet and see what was happening over in the U.K. or even in New York.”
While “American Gigolo” was still the most prominent reference, Eyrich and Marsh took a bit of a “Breakfast Club” approach to their character design.
“It was about creating the most elevated version of what their character’s archetype might be,” Marsh said. “Class president, the jock, the cultural disruptor, the new wave aesthetic.”
The character Ellis, for instance, had to project “that iconic preppy Southern California look that also evokes desire out of all of these men and women,” said Marsh. His best friend, Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber), is an elegant Brooke Shields type, and movie producer Terry Schaffer (Wes Bentley), one of the show’s few adult characters, was influenced by Lindsey Buckingham, all leather jackets and silk shirts unbuttoned to the navel.
Beyond staying true to the characters and the time period, Eyrich and Marsh had to consider a few practical elements: the disparities in vintage sizing, for one, plus the horror of it all.
“With each look we would get excited about, we’d need to think, ‘Does it need multiples? Do they get murdered?’ Because with vintage clothes, oftentimes it’s just the one,” Marsh said. “We’re either finding the perfect piece and then making more of them, or falling in love with something and shooting it in a very specific way so it doesn’t get bloody until the end of the day.”
Nailing the lore
Beneath the sunglasses, silk blouses and luxury cars, “The Shards” is a story of innocence lost. It’s a theme that resonates intimately for the show’s producers and creative team, many of whom were around Ellis’ age in the early ’80s.
“I really think that this show plays to Ryan Murphy’s particular strengths,” said Rigney, who trusted Murphy to guide his performance as a teen in the era. “He’s bringing so much of himself and his life and his experience of 1981 to the show that I think it’s a very personal show for him.”
Brad Simpson, an executive producer on “The Shards” who, along with producing partner Nina Jacobson, has partnered with Murphy on shows including “The People v. O. J. Simpson” and “Love Story,” said the show united many of his interests and influences.
“I was a teenager when ‘Less Than Zero’ came out, and I was living in Arkansas. That vision of L.A., I saw not as a cautionary tale, but something to aspire to,” he said.
As is typical for the Ellis canon, wealth and privilege are paramount in “The Shards” universe, and Smith called upon her experience as a middle-class teenager attending an expensive private school to help design that world.
“I understand the sphere of these people and the motivations and I’ve been to a lot of these amazing houses,” she said. “I would say it’s helped me in my career because I’m not that afraid of wealthy people. You can’t be in Hollywood.”
L.A. in the ’80s was the perfect setting for a coming-of-age mystery, Simpson said, not only because the city was in a “golden age of serial killers,” but also because the city was on “the verge of a revival.”
President Reagan had just been elected, consumerism was back in vogue and a new wave of Hollywood films memorialized “a sleek city defined by these noirish neon nights and these bright, intense, colorful days.” While the show doesn’t confront it directly, Simpson also said the “specter of AIDS” lurks in the background for the teens who “think they’re invincible.”
He hopes the early ’80s nostalgia will resonate not just for those who experienced it firsthand, but for young people now who romanticize a smartphone-free existence. Though he knows both Ellis’ and Murphy’s work tends to induce “strong reactions,” he also hopes people will see beyond the “movie poster exterior.”
“It really is about friendship. It’s about coming of age. It’s about being closeted. It’s about not knowing who you are when you’re 18 and being afraid to reveal yourself. It’s about the terrors of growing up. And it’s about the power of memory and nostalgia,” he said. “I hope people see that in it.”
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