David Hunter is a producer in Los Angeles whose films include the award-winning Dinner in America and First Girl I Loved. He also writes about movies at whalespout.substack.com, where his focus is on movies that have been at the center of frenzied internet debate. There he has written about the work of Rian Johnson and Jordan Peele, and the climate change satire *Don’t Look Up. *He’s currently writing the first Tenet explainer that will actually get to the bottom of things.
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More than a decade after True Detective introduced audiences to Carcosa, the mythology surrounding the show’s first season remains one of the franchise’s defining images. The ruined estate where Rust Cohle and Martin Hart (Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson) finally track down the killer they spent years pursuing was unsettling precisely because the series never fully explained how much of Carcosa was real and how much existed in the minds of the people obsessed with it.
When True Detective returned the following year, however, the anthology series left Carcosa — and Rust and Marty — behind completely. Its new story revolved around a sprawling corruption investigation involving police officers Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell), Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) and Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch), along with businessman Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn). At the center of everything was Vinci, a grim industrial city on the outskirts of Los Angeles that seemed almost too corrupt to be believable.
Except Vinci has something Carcosa doesn’t: It was inspired by a very real place. The fictional city has long been connected to Vernon, California, whose extraordinary political history includes a tiny electorate, city-controlled housing, allegations of corruption and a family dynasty that maintained influence for generations. If True Detective’s version of Vinci seemed excessive, the true story behind it might actually be stranger.
“It started out as a vice haven, early 1900s. Went industrial in the ’20s. Pushed out residents for manufacturing zones.” That’s how Vinci is described in True Detective by the state detective attempting to launch a municipal corruption investigation. Vernon itself was founded in 1905 through the efforts of city founder J.B. Leonis, and its original reputation was, indeed, that of a “vice haven.” By 1905 standards, though, vice largely meant the city had plenty of bars, sold alcohol on Sundays and offered places to watch boxing and baseball — usually while drinking.
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re smart enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
But booze and sports were always secondary to Vernon’s real purpose. The city was primarily designed to accommodate industry. The minimum number of residents legally required to incorporate a city was 500, and Vernon once had roughly that many people living there, including families on farms. While it’s unclear whether residents were literally “pushed out,” those farms disappeared over the following decades as slaughterhouses, chemical plants, foundries, and other industrial businesses moved in. By the 2010 census, Vernon’s population had fallen to approximately 100 residents. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people continued commuting into the city for work.
That unusual arrangement created another problem. If very few people actually live in a city, then very few people can vote in its elections. Workers employed in Vernon but living in neighboring communities also have no direct electoral control over a city whose industrial activity can affect those surrounding areas. The environmental consequences have been serious, including contamination associated with the former Exide battery recycling facility.
Things get even stranger when housing enters the picture. For decades, much of Vernon’s limited housing stock was owned by the city and rented to city employees at below-market rates. That meant the same government running Vernon also wielded enormous influence over who could live — and therefore vote — there. For much of its history, that helped keep political power concentrated among a remarkably small group of people.
In 1975, J.B. Leonis’ grandson, Leonis Malburg, became mayor of Vernon. He would remain in the position for more than three decades, often running without meaningful opposition. But the political structure that had endured for generations would eventually begin collapsing spectacularly.
The locations throughout this chapter of True Detective range from hidden tunnels beneath Downtown Los Angeles to a seaside chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes. But one of the production’s most interesting choices was filming parts of fictional Vinci in Vernon itself.
There’s even a movie production taking place inside Vinci during the True Detective storyline, using the city as a post-industrial wasteland. It’s a wonderfully strange bit of layering: a television series inspired by Vernon filmed the fictionalized nightmare version of Vernon inside the actual city.
Most of Vernon’s historic housing was concentrated on a block behind City Hall, forming what looks like a tiny suburban island surrounded by industry. Many of those homes were occupied by city employees, including police officers and firefighters. Farrell’s Ray Velcoro lives in one of these homes in True Detective. In one shot, he can essentially walk from his front door directly to his job at Vinci City Hall. Without knowing Vernon’s history, it’s an easy detail to miss. Knowing the real story makes the choice much more pointed.
The parallels extend to Vinci’s political leadership. The fictional mayor (Richie Coster) is the grandson of the city’s founder, much like Malburg was the grandson of one of Vernon’s founders. And, like his fictional counterpart, Malburg faced legal trouble over whether he actually lived in the city he governed. He instead resided at his family’s mansion in Hancock Park. In True Detective, the Chessani mansion is located in Bel Air, although the production actually used a property in Beverly Hills.
Not every detail came directly from Vernon. Frank Semyon runs much of Vinci’s criminal activity through a poker room called the Vinci Gardens Casino. While California cities can permit certain card games, Vernon does not have a comparable casino. The name appears to draw instead from nearby Hawaiian Gardens, whose casino has faced its own controversies involving money laundering.
The real story eventually reached a breaking point worthy of True Detective itself. In 2006, a group of men moved into an abandoned industrial building in Vernon and attempted what amounted to an electoral coup. Because Vernon had so few voters, a handful of new residents theoretically had the ability to reshape the entire city government — and gain influence over a city with an enormous industrial tax base.
The challengers attempted to run for City Council. Vernon officials disputed their residency, sought to remove them from the building, and attempted to cancel the election altogether. The fight attracted considerably more scrutiny to a city that had spent decades largely avoiding it.
Investigations subsequently exposed longstanding questions about the residency of Vernon’s leaders. Malburg was ultimately convicted of voter fraud after falsely claiming that he lived in Vernon while actually residing in Hancock Park. His conviction helped bring the Leonis family’s extraordinary political dynasty to an end after roughly a century of influence.
True Detective gives Vinci an even bloodier resolution. The city’s mayor is murdered by his own son, who then succeeds him, while the supposedly sweeping state corruption investigation ultimately proves to be largely political theater. Vinci survives, merely exchanging one version of the system for another.
Vernon’s story continued differently. After a series of corruption scandals, California lawmakers considered disincorporating the city altogether. Vernon survived, but officials subsequently agreed to a sweeping reform effort that included changes to salaries, term limits, public contracting and the city’s famously tiny electorate. Privately owned housing was eventually introduced in an effort to bring more independent residents — and voters — into Vernon.
That may be the strangest legacy of Vinci. True Detective is famous for creating places that feel corrupted beyond comprehension, from the mythology of Carcosa to the darkness lurking beneath Ennis, Alaska. But one of the show’s bleakest cities didn’t need to be invented from scratch. The real world had already done most of the work.
