The film tells the heartfelt story of a number of Big Rock residents, essentially abandoned by the LA County Fire Department and other officials.
On January 7-8, 2025, my home for 47 years in Malibu’s Big Rock community, where my late wife and I raised our twin daughters, burned to the ground in the Palisades Fire. Over 7,000 homes, including 750 or so in Malibu, were destroyed as the 100 mph winds swept from Palisades Highlands to the coast and along the beach through Castellammare, Sunset Mesa, Topanga, Big Rock, Las Flores, Carbon Canyon and Billionaires Beach deep into Malibu.
Less than eight months after the fire, filmmaker David Goldblum (who lost his own Big Rock home in the fire) has released his powerful documentary film “Big Rock Burning”, produced by Mark Hamill, among others. The film tells the heartfelt story of a number of Big Rock residents, essentially abandoned by the LA County Fire Department and other officials, who were left to defend their homes and possessions themselves as the flames furiously bore down on them. Many Big Rock residents lost everything, and several I knew lost their lives.
Goldblum indicts the City of LA, LA County, and state officials such as Joe Edmiston of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (MCRA) for failing to do everything they could to protect the Big Rock community and the rest of Malibu from this devastating fire, as well as the Palisades. These officials even failed to clear the brush surrounding Big Rock before the fire by using goats, controlled burns, and other brush clearing methods, despite pleas from Big Rock residents to do so.
The film was first shown at the Malibu City Hall in a special screening on August 29, 2025, followed by a showing at the Laemmle Santa Monica Theater from September 12-18.
