Films in peace: cemetery festival finding its audience.SPENDING a Saturday night lounging at a Tinseltown landmark might not sound too offbeat--but what if the attraction is a graveyard? The Hollywood Forever Cemetery Hollywood Forever Cemetery is located at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California. It is adjacent to the north wall, or back, of Paramount Studios, who, with RKO Studios, bought 40 acres by 1920. , resting place of Hollywood legends Cecil B. DeMille Noun 1. Cecil B. DeMille - United States film maker remembered for his extravagant and spectacular epic productions (1881-1959) Cecil Blount DeMille, DeMille , Rudolph Valentino Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor. He was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Italy, to a middle-class family. In the 1920s, Valentino was known as a Latin sex symbol. and Douglas Fairbanks, has become a hip hangout on summer nights. The Cinespia film society, a loose association of classic film buffs, young hipsters, date-goers, friends and families, turn out to watch classic black-and-white movies projected onto the wall of a huge outdoor mausoleum mausoleum (môsəlē`əm), a sepulchral structure or tomb, especially one of some size and architectural pretension, so called from the sepulcher of that name at Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, erected (c.352 B.C. at the cemetery at Santa Monica Boulevard and North Gower Street. Once an Italian-themed film club of about 60 people, Cinespia--which means "film spy" in Italian--transformed the graveyard into a weekend hotspot five years ago when film club founder John Wyatt went looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. new digs for his group. The club had expanded and outgrown its roots, and Wyatt turned up the screening venue in the most unlikely of places. "I had a friend who worked at the cemetery and I remembered how they did a Valentino tribute and projected images on the wall," said Wyatt, 32, a Los Angeles set designer. Wyatt approached Forever Industries, which had taken over the landmark Hollywood Forever cemetery in 1998 when it was in a sad state of disrepair. The cemetery needed a public relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most boost, so the owners decided to give the film screenings a trial run. "From the very first one you could tell it was just going to be amazing," Wyatt said. "There were only about 200 or 300 people and it was just like magic." Since then, Cinespia has screened more than 65 movies at the cemetery, and employs more than 20 people for each screening, from parking attendants to security and technical staff. And the security is needed. These days, a popular film such as Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" can draw thousands. For $10 each, guests munch on picnic dinners, sip wine and cuddle on blankets while watching moving pictures under the stars. It sounds kitschy and somewhat low-tech, but the undertaking isn't cheap: Wyatt said he spends thousands of dollars per screening, on equipment, staffing costs and even portable toilets. Some of the proceeds from each screening go toward Hollywood Forever's restoration fund, which helps defray de·fray tr.v. de·frayed, de·fray·ing, de·frays To undertake the payment of (costs or expenses); pay. [French défrayer, from Old French desfrayer : des-, the graveyard's upkeep. Wyatt estimates Cinespia has funneled more tens of thousands to the cemetery in its five-year tenure. |
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