How many times has Modesto been mentioned in pop culture? See the latest reference
Modesto may not be as big as Los Angeles or New York City, but that doesn’t stop the Central Valley city from popping up frequently in music, movies and television shows.
Adele name-dropped Modesto three whole times in her 2021 song “Wild Wild West.” Rapper Macklemore shot a music video there. The Stanislaus County city has even inspired a couple of “Saturday Night Live” skits.
Modesto made its latest pop culture appearance on the new celebrity-panel comedy game show “After Midnight,” which premiered Tuesday night on CBS following “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
In the “Hashtag” segment“ of “After Midnight,” host Taylor Tomlinson invited fellow stand-up comedians Whitney Cummings, Aparna Nancherla and Kurt Braunohler to come up with the names of “lesser known” fictitious TV shows.
“For example, ‘Bottom Chef’ or ‘NCIS: Modesto,’” Tomlinson said.
Here are more than 40 times Modesto has been mentioned in pop culture over the past six decades.
Modesto pop culture mentions
1963: In the movie “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” Jonathan Winters’ trucker character drives the Modesto-to-Yuma run.
1965-1969: “The Big Valley,” a Western TV series starring Barbara Stanwyck and Lee Majors, is set in and mentions the Stockton/Modesto area.
1972-1977: In the TV series “The Streets of San Francisco,” Michael Douglas’ character, Detective Steve Keller, was from Modesto.
1972: The song “Holiday Hotel” by pop duo Loggins and Messina includes the lyric “destined for Modesto.”
1973: The movie “American Graffiti,” native son George Lucas’ ode to cruising, is based on Modesto but filmed in Petaluma. The city of Modesto is mentioned by name only in the epilogue.
1980: The first line of Merle Haggard’s song “Make-Up and Faded Blue Jeans” mentions working in a “downtown Modesto” Holiday Inn.
1982: A TV commercial for Oregon-based brewery Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve shows two employees in the cab of a delivery truck, driving through a California city. The guy in the passenger seat marvels, “Boy, Los Angeles is a big place, isn’t it?” To which the driver replies, “This is Modesto.”
1985: In the movie “Murphy’s Romance,” Sally Field plays a divorced mother from Modesto.
1994: Beck’s song “Modesto,” featured on the album “Stereopathetic Soulmanure,” makes vague references to “contaminated lawns” and “browsing through the supermarket town.”
1996: In the film “Larger Than Life,” Bill Murray’s motivational speaker character misses his Modesto speaking date while on a cross-country trip to deliver an inherited elephant.
1998: Courtney Love’s rock band, Hole, used a black-and-white photo of the Modesto arch in the liner notes for its album “Celebrity Skin.” The altered image includes the arch’s words “Water Wealth Contentment Health” but removes “Modesto.”
2001: In the film noir movie “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” Billy Bob Thornton’s character goes with his wife to a wedding reception for a cousin who just married a “vintner out near Modesto.”
2002: In the season premiere of sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live,” actor Matt Damon appears in a skit as a park ranger from “the Shawndale Ranch in Modesto, California.”
2003: An episode of the animated TV show “The Simpsons” finds Krusty the Clown running for Congress and blackmailing a fellow congressman. A character says he’ll be ruined if “they hear about this in Modesto.”
2003: A mockumentary included with the DVD release of cult classic comedy “Animal House” reveals that Bruce McGill’s D-Day character is living secretly in Modesto.
2004: The TV movie “The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story” stars Dean Cain as the man convicted of murdering the title Modesto woman and her unborn child. It was set in Modesto but was primarily filmed in San Diego.
2004: In the crime series “CSI,” lead character Sara Sidle looks up a court case on her abusive mother and the records are from Modesto.
2004: The song “Modesto is Not That Sweet” by Brooklyn-based indie band The Hold Steady has some bitter lyrics about an ex-love interest who wound up in Modesto.
2004: In the song “Retro Dance Record,” Oakland hip-hop artist Mac Dre raps “For you, I’d walk to Modesto.” It’s featured on his album “The Game Is Thick, Vol. 2.”
2005: A character’s “uncles from Modesto” are introduced in the pilot episode of the series “Supernatural.”
2006: In the show “7th Heaven,” one of the stars must decide between attending college or playing minor-league baseball with the Modesto Nuts.
2006: The song “Jeez Louise” by Modesto indie band Grandaddy includes a lyric about being “shacked up at Modesto Inn.”
2007: “Zodiac,” David Fincher’s drama about a real-life Bay Area serial killer, includes a scene set on “Highway 132, near Modesto” and shows The Modesto Bee on screen.
2008: An episode of the CBS show “Criminal Minds” opens with a murder in Modesto. A team of FBI profilers travels to the city to capture The Highway 99 Killer, who was murdering victims across the Central Valley along the railroad tracks.
2008: In the science-fiction series “Jericho,” The Modesto Bee becomes the “second-largest paper in California” after a nuclear apocalypse.
2008: The song “St. Modesto” by Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla features lyrics that include references to the Valley and Altamont.
2008-2014: The FX crime drama “Sons of Anarchy,” which follows an outlaw motorcycle club, is set in the fictitious Central Valley town of Charming but makes reference to happenings in Modesto.
2009: The Dreamworks animated movie “Monsters vs. Aliens” opens with a meteor strike in Modesto.
2009: In the film “Up In the Air,” George Clooney’s corporate downsizer says he is in “Newark on the 12th, Modesto on the 13th” when trying to coordinate schedules.
2009: The comedy “Janky Promoters,” starring Ice Cube and Mike Epps as a pair of inept music promoters trying to pull together a Young Jeezy concert, is set in Modesto.
2009: In “The Mentalist,” a Sacramento-based crime procedural on CBS, the lead character chides a Modesto city councilman’s wife that she is in “the big city” now.
2009: “Entourage,” the HBO show about the ins and outs of Hollywood, mentions “40 idiots from Modesto” who didn’t like a TV pilot.
2012: In the series “Up All Night,” Maya Rudolph’s TV-host character shows a somewhat positive review (“They said they’d seen far worse.”) from The Modesto Bee on screen and says, “Thanks, Modesto Bee.”
2013: In the movie “The Internship,” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, characters visit an old-age home in a city called Modesto Colony.
2015: “Looking,” an HBO show about a group of gay friends living in San Francisco, has characters take a road trip to Modesto for a family funeral. Some scenes were filmed in town.
2015: The ABC series “American Crime” is set in Modesto and uses a few background images of the city. Most filming was done in Austin, Texas.
2017: Rapper Macklemore came to Modesto, where his grandmother lives, to shoot his music video for the song “Glorious.” It shows her in and around the city.
2019: Characters from the Syfy fantasy series “The Magicians” wind up in Modesto when there’s a terror attack on the Modesto Valley College Library. They also walk into a convenience store selling “Famous People of Modesto” jar candles with images of “Deadwood” actor Timothy Olyphant, ”Buffy the Vampire Slayer” villain James Marsters and “Star Wars” mastermind George Lucas.
2020: Modesto made its second appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in a skit called “The Sands of Modesto” featuring guest host Daniel Craig in a soap opera send-up that spoofed the early COVID-19 outbreak.
2020: The Paramount+ show “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” the first animated comedy in the “Star Trek” universe, features the character Ensign Brad Boimler (voiced by Jack Quaid), who hails from Modesto.
2020: In “Ratched,” the Netflix drama based on the character Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” star Sarah Paulson makes a pit stop in Modesto while on a road trip to watch a puppet show called “Lew Klassen’s Marionette Theatre.”
2021: Adele name-drops Modesto in a bonus track on her album “30.” The song “Wild Wild West” is about the acclaimed British singer moving from London to Los Angeles.
2022: Two of the main characters in the latest installment of the horror film franchise “Scream” hail from Modesto. The characters, played by Melissa Barrera and Jack Quaid (again!), start out in the Stanislaus County city before heading to the fictional California town of Woodsboro, where mayhem unfolds.
Former Modesto Bee reporter Marijke Rowland contributed to this story.
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