A public headland trail and beach below a private residential peninsula.
What Point Dume looks like
Point Dume is a headland at the north end of Santa Monica Bay, a sandstone bluff that drops in cliffs to the water. About a square mile of private streets sits above and behind it, low homes behind hedges and privacy walls, laid out mostly after World War Two. A few, like , have a locked gate to their own beach. California State Parks says there is no parking on those streets.
The only public land on the headland is the , 34 acres reached from a cul-de-sac on or by climbing up from . A trail runs from the cul-de-sac over an old dune to a boardwalk and two overlooks, with Catalina Island visible on a clear day. Below, Westward Beach curves northwest toward . , a small cove east of the main beach, is reachable only over the rocks at low tide.
Gray whales pass offshore from December into April. The rocks past the main cove have tidepools with crabs, urchins and mussels. Coyotes, skunks and rabbits live on the scrub above them. The point has a few easy, single pitch climbing routes, often used to bring beginners up on top rope.
Shot in Point Dume
Point Dume's cliffs and beach have appeared on screen for decades. The credits run from a 1956 war film's beach landing to a contemporary superhero franchise.
Planet of the Apes, 1968
The ending of Planet of the Apes
Played a future Earth beach, an unspecified future
The same rocks are where the original Planet of the Apes staged its ending, in 1968. Charlton Heston's Taylor finds the ruined Statue of Liberty on a cove east of the main beach, a spot a Malibu real estate guide calls Pirates Cove. The desert scenes earlier in the film were shot separately, in Arizona.
The Iron Man films, 2008 to 2013
Played Tony Stark's mansion, 2008 to 2013
Tony Stark's mansion in the three Iron Man films is a CGI building added to real plates of this same clifftop. Every interior was shot on a soundstage far from Malibu. The first film used Playa Vista Studios. The third used a lot in Wilmington, North Carolina. Iron Man 3 gives the house a fictional address on screen, 10880 Malibu Point.
The Big Lebowski, 1998
The beach party in The Big Lebowski
Played the beach party where the Dude meets Jackie Treehorn
In The Big Lebowski, the Dude is summoned to a bonfire party on this beach to meet the pornographer Jackie Treehorn. Treehorn's house afterward, up in the hills, is a different house. It is the real Sheats-Goldstein Residence in Beverly Crest, about thirty miles away.
What Point Dume can double for
Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, France
The 1956 film D-Day the Sixth of June filmed its beach landing sequence at Point Dume. The invasion it depicts is a fictional Special Force Six commando raid, described on screen as a Pointe du Hoc type assault on a coastal gun emplacement. Point Dume's own sandstone bluffs above the water give the same kind of headland terrain as the real cliff at Normandy, without a production traveling to France. Point Dume's chaparral and cactus look distinctly Californian in a wide shot, so a tight frame on the rock face and the drop to the water holds the illusion better than a view that includes the scrub above. Try searching headland beach landing now.
The Point Reyes headlands in Point Reyes Station, California
Point Reyes National Seashore has its own sandstone headland, dropping in cliffs to the Pacific with the same coastal scrub cover as Point Dume. Both are protected land with no visible development in a wide shot, so a production that cannot get the access Point Dume's private beach approaches require could use Point Reyes' own public bluffs instead. Point Reyes runs foggier and greener than Point Dume, with grassland where Point Dume has drier chaparral and cactus, so a shot that lingers on the ground cover would give away the difference. Point Reyes' own lighthouse and Chimney Rock would need to stay out of frame. Try searching sandstone headland coastal scrub now.
Vicente Bluffs Reserve in Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Vicente Bluffs Reserve has its own coastal sage scrub bluffs above the Pacific, about 130 feet up, with a trail along the top the way Point Dume's own preserve does. It is public land with no locked gates, so a production that cannot get the access Point Dume's private streets require could use these bluffs instead. The Point Vicente Lighthouse, built in 1926, is visible from most of the reserve's trail and would need to stay out of frame to avoid naming the spot. The black basalt rock at the shoreline here also reads differently from Point Dume's own sandstone in a close shot. Try searching coastal sage scrub bluffs now.
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