Foreword by Stan Lerner: I’ve heard people are dying to get into this place. Thanks for checking it out Sumner!
It took a while to convince her that relics of the underworld would not haunt her for the next week, but my girlfriend finally agreed to accompany me to a Sunday night movie showing at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The idea had come up more than a few times once summer arrived and the days got longer, but at no point did she show any signs of relenting, instead insisting, especially since the defection of her roommate to San Francisco three weeks ago, that three hours of lying between the headstones of Los Angeles’ most prominent luminaries would send her into a deep, dark, schizophrenic abyss.
Luckily I don’t succumb easily to girlie hyperbole, so I lobbied for last weekend’s showing of “Dazed and Confused” as much as possible and even managed to excite her a bit about the adventure. We asked a few friends that had already seen screenings there what to expect, and they provided rave reviews as well as a fairly detailed recommended packing list: blankets, sweaters/sweatshirts, lawn chairs, $10 per person for entrance, food, coolers and however much booze we desired. For such a morbid setting, it certainly seemed as though the event coordinators knew how to lighten up the mood.
We got to the corner of Santa Monica and Gower at 6:30 – an unheard-of thirty minutes before the gates opened – and found a line of pedestrians curled around the block with an auto queue just as long. Continue reading Sunday Night at the Cemetery