In California Dreaming, the strange town of California City is looked at. It is the third largest city in California by area, but only about 14,000 people live there. In the 1950s, it was envisioned as a new city that could compete with Los Angeles, which is only two hours away. Now, it's just a small town in the middle of a much bigger desert ghost town. The movie follows a few locals, like Jean-Paul LeBlanc, a blue-collar worker from Quebec, and looks at how the American Dream has changed over time. It compares the American Dream of the 1960s, when the city was founded, to the dreams of people who live there now.