Palo Alto in film and TV

For a city of under 70,000 people, Palo Alto turns up on screen a lot. Its name has become shorthand for Stanford, startups and suburban privilege, so writers drop it into scripts the way they once dropped Beverly Hills. The catch is that very little of it is filmed here. Most productions are based in Los Angeles, which then stands in for the Peninsula.

This guide sticks to documented facts from studio records, reputable press and the city's own reporting. For each title we note whether it is set in Palo Alto, whether any of it was shot here and what local places it depicts. For the real history behind several of these stories, see our pages on Facebook's Palo Alto years and Theranos.

At a glance

Palo Alto (2013)

The best-known film with the city's name is Gia Coppola's debut. She wrote and directed it from James Franco's short story collection Palo Alto, published by Scribner in October 2010, adapting the stories "Jack-O," "Emily" and "April." Emma Roberts, Jack Kilmer, Nat Wolff and Zoe Levin play teenagers drifting through parties, school and bad decisions. Franco plays a soccer coach and Val Kilmer has a small role. Margaret Qualley made her film debut in it.

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 29, 2013. Tribeca Film released it in U.S. theaters on May 9, 2014. Despite the title, it was not shot here. Filming began on Halloween 2012 in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles and ran about 30 days. The city in the film is a mood more than a map: tract houses, high school hallways and the empty streets of a comfortable suburb.

The local link is Franco himself. He was born in Palo Alto in 1978 and graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1996, where he acted in plays. Wikipedia notes that the stories drew on his own teenage memories and on memories submitted by Palo Alto students. Our guide to Palo Alto in books covers the collection.

Palo Alto (2007)

Six years earlier a smaller film with the same name came from three local filmmakers. Brad Leong directed it and wrote it with Tony Vallone. Daniel Engelhardt, a Menlo-Atherton High School graduate, produced. It follows four friends home from their first year of college on the last night of Thanksgiving break, with storylines that cross at parties and diners until sunrise. Engelhardt described it as an update of American Graffiti. The cast included Aaron Ashmore, Autumn Reeser, Ben Savage and Tom Arnold.

It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 29, 2007. The cinematographer was Rachel Morrison, who later became the first woman nominated for the Academy Award for cinematography, for Mudbound. According to a 2006 Palo Alto Online report, the producers wanted to shoot on "authentic Palo Alto streets" and asked the City Council to waive city filming fees, which were estimated at $1,195 to $2,780. The council first agreed to reconsider the fees at a later meeting. A follow-up posted with the story said the subsidy was approved.

The Social Network (2010)

David Fincher's film, written by Aaron Sorkin from Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires, opened in U.S. theaters on October 1, 2010. The second half moves from Harvard to Silicon Valley, with high-drama scenes set in the rented house and the early Facebook offices in Palo Alto.

None of that was filmed here. The Silicon Valley scenes were shot in Los Angeles and Pasadena. Harvard was played by locations in Massachusetts and by the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore. Southern California suburbs stood in for the Peninsula, a reminder of how easily Los Angeles can fake a leafy college town.

The real story is easier to find. Facebook spent the summer of 2004 in a rented house in town and its 471 Emerson Street office from 2005 to 2006 is confirmed. The rented house is a private home, so we do not list it. Our Facebook in Palo Alto page and downtown guide cover the addresses that are public.

Silicon Valley (HBO, 2014 to 2019)

Mike Judge's comedy about a small compression startup ran for six seasons and became the most quoted satire of the local tech industry. Palo Alto did get some screen time. CBS San Francisco reported that HBO began filming the pilot in Palo Alto on March 12, 2013. Local reports at the time said University Avenue between Waverley and Webster streets would close at times during the shoot.

After that the production mostly stayed south. Cast members told the San Francisco magazine 7x7 that the majority of the series was shot in Los Angeles, with a couple of trips north for exterior footage. So when a character walks into a Palo Alto office or house, it is usually Southern California with a Peninsula street sign.

Based on real Palo Alto events

Several productions dramatize real events that happened in or near Palo Alto. We list them for their subjects, not as filming locations.

• The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015). Kyle Patrick Alvarez's drama, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, retells Philip Zimbardo's 1971 study in the basement of a Stanford psychology building.
• The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (HBO, 2019). Alex Gibney's documentary on Theranos, the blood-testing company that had its headquarters in Palo Alto.
• The Dropout (Hulu, 2022). A miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, based on the ABC News podcast of the same name.
• Pirates of Silicon Valley (TNT, 1999). A TV movie about Apple and Microsoft that includes Steve Jobs's famous visit to Xerox PARC, which sat in Palo Alto. Our Xerox PARC page tells the real story.

Real locations nearby

If you want to stand where cameras actually rolled, look just outside town. Filoli, the estate near Woodside, appears in the opening credits of Dynasty and in films including Heaven Can Wait, The Game and The Wedding Planner. Our Filoli guide covers visiting. San Francisco, about an hour north by train, has its own long list of famous locations.

Where to watch films in Palo Alto

The best way to enjoy film here is in a seat, not on a set. The Stanford Theatre at 221 University Avenue opened in 1925 and shows only classic Hollywood films, usually as double features with a Wurlitzer organ played live between shows. Our movie theaters guide covers first-run screens nearby.

Frequently asked questions