Daniel Knauf created a dystopian tackle the Nice Melancholy with HBO’s “Carnivàle.”
The cult collection ran for simply two seasons, however many fondly recall its premise and non secular themes. The saga earned 5 Emmys and stays a part of TV’s new Golden Age.
Carnivale: One other hidden HBO gem 💎 pic.twitter.com/g4U3WVwdVw
— Stephanie Rosendorf Diaz (@srosendorf1014) October 6, 2024
Now, Knauf is mourning the decline of a really actual realm, as soon as lovingly dubbed the “Golden State.”
The previous Calif. resident, whose credit embrace “The Blacklist,” “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” and “Supernatural,” penned a somber ode to his former house on X.
I used to be born in California. Second era native Angeleno.
For 60 years, it was my house. I vigorously defended it in opposition to all of the trash-talkers. However the sluggish, grinding circle across the drain started round 2005 and inexorably continued till the insane insurance policies beneath Covid…
— Daniel Knauf 👹🌎 (@daniel_knauf) July 7, 2025
The Nice Rotting started in inland Orange County and regularly metastasized till communities that had as soon as possessed distinctive, distinctive cultures merged into a giant, bland, vaguely shitty blob.
To me, the definitive picture of the loss of life of my California was the helicopter shot of bulldozers filling within the Venice skate parks. That was my Tiananmen Sq.—the second I knew that “we” had been outnumbered by “them” and there was now not any vestige left of the Golden State that raised me.
Worse, there was no going again.
My California is lifeless.
As a substitute is a ghastly, shambling, zombie-version of itself; the animated corpse of Gidget, her decomposing, desiccated flesh squeezed right into a teeny-weeny polka-dot bikini dirty with glistening body-fluids…
To those that combat for what was, I salute you and want you nicely. However I cherished California an excessive amount of to inhabit the shell of it.
Veteran actor/director Nick Searcy chimed in on Knauf’s word, detailing his relationship with what seems to many as a failed state.
I concur with @daniel_knauf.
I moved to LA in 1992 to additional my performing profession. It was an thrilling, vibrant metropolis, buoyed by a movie trade teeming with alternative. For about 20 years, I had the time of my life there.
Then it turned bitter. Even in the course of the 2010-2015 run of… https://t.co/z7iRc3cKib
— Nick Searcy, Actor/Director/Producer/Writer (@yesnicksearcy) July 7, 2025
The movie trade is gone. I started saying 20 years in the past that LA would wind up being solely the already wealthy individuals and their servants, for the reason that center class wouldn’t be capable to survive. All that has come true.
I miss the previous LA like a dearly departed buddy. However identical to them, it’s gone without end.
Leftists are locusts. They destroy every part.
RIP, Los Angeles.
Novelist and screenwriter Gigi Levangie (“Stepmom”) echoed Knauf’s lament.
Hello, Daniel! third era, right here. Born and raised in working class, immigrant Hollywood. I’ve lived all over the place from West Adams to Beachwood Cyn to the Palisades and Malibu Colony – I moved however grieve for my house and nonetheless adore it. However the individuals you describe make it unlivable.
— Gigi Levangie (@GigiLevangie) July 7, 2025
Even a number of Left-leaning Hollywood denizens have had sufficient of the state’s hovering homeless charges, wildfire mismanagement and different continual ills.