Cinespia
Encyclopedia
Cinespia is an organization that hosts on-site screenings of classic films in and around Los Angeles, California. Launched in 2002, Cinespia shows films from the 1930s through the 1990s mostly in open-air settings at historic locations. Its most popular series runs weekly between May and August on Saturday (and occasionally Sunday) nights at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery
. In addition, it screens films, both contemporary and canonical, at other locations throughout the year.
The al fresco Hollywood Forever screenings take place on the Fairbanks Lawn (so named for the adjacent crypt housing both Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Jr.
), and films are digitally projected against the west wall of the Cathedral Mausoleum, which houses the crypt of Rudolph Valentino
among many others. Up to 3,500 patrons per screening bring blankets, pillows, picnic dinners, alcoholic beverages and candles and enjoy screenings under the stars, while a staff of 35 keep things running smoothly. DJs play music before and after the screenings over a portable sound system, and guest DJs have included Carlos Niño, Andy Votel
, Cut Chemist
, the Gaslamp Killer
, Dam-Funk
, Peanut Butter Wolf
and members of the Numero Group
and Dublab
collectives.
Cinespia has appeared in the 2008 Best of L.A. issue of the LA Weekly
and was named on the “16 Best Things in L.A.” by Los Angeles
magazine. According to Vanity Fair
: “Cinespia captures the excitement of a drive-in movie date night of the 1950s but with a decidedly campy twist.”
, Wyatt initially formed an Italian cinema club with friend Richard Petit, of which Cinespia is a natural evolution.
The name Cinespia is a portmanteau word from the Italian cine, or “movie theater,” and the third person singular conjugation of the verb spiare, meaning “to observe,” or more commonly, “to spy.” Conjoined, cinespia was intended to suggest a film enthusiast or “watcher of films,” although the actual term for film buff in Italian is cinofilo. Cinespia, by contrast, means literally “he spies in the movie theater” or “cinema spy.”
After attending a Valentino birthday celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2002, Wyatt approached the owners through a friend who worked there and arranged a screening of Alfred Hitchcock
’s Strangers on a Train
on July 20, 2002 using two 35mm projectors with a changeover mechanism on the back of a pickup truck. Eighty people showed up for the initial screening, and a follow-up screening of Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street
brought out an audience of a thousand. They showed four films the first season, favoring mid-century classics that might be rediscovered by a younger audience, and roughly 25 films every summer thereafter.
The cemetery, located south of Santa Monica Blvd. between Gower St. and Van Ness Ave., shares a common wall with Paramount Studios
, the last of the classical studios still to be located in Hollywood. The concentration of Hollywood talent interred there made it a natural setting for the hallmarks of a century of cinematic achievement. Among the film legends laid to rest within the confines of its 65 acres, as outlined by Matthew Duersten in the LA Weekly on the occasion of the introductory screening, are the following:
“Marion Davies
, who perhaps knew the real secret to how Thomas Ince
died on Hearst
’s boat; Bugsy Siegel
and Harry Cohn
, gangsters of different stripes but of twin hearts; Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer
, who was shot to death in a fight over a $50 dog reward; Col. Griffith J. Griffith
, who blew a hole in his wife’s head after accusing her of conspiring with the pope against the U.S. government; Virginia Rappe
, violated by a Coke bottle that punctured her bladder during a party in Fatty Arbuckle’s suite at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel; and director William Desmond Taylor
, next to the Black Dahlia
, perhaps Hollywood’s greatest unsolved killing.” To that list might be added Barbara La Marr
, Hollywood’s first high-profile drug casualty, and Lana Clarkson
, gunshot victim of Phil Spector
.
Other famous denizens permanently resting within earshot include Jayne Mansfield
(The Girl Can't Help It
), Tyrone Power
(Witness for the Prosecution]), John Huston
(The Maltese Falcon
), Dee Dee
and Johnny Ramone
(Rock and Roll High School), Peter Finch
(Network
), Victor Fleming
(The Wizard of Oz
), Janet Gaynor
(A Star Is Born
), Curtis Harrington
(Night Tide
), Zoltan Korda
(The Thief of Bagdad
), Darren McGavin
(The Man with the Golden Arm
), Adolphe Menjou
(Paths of Glory
), Paul Muni
(Scarface
), Dudley Nichols
(Stagecoach), Maila Nurmi
(Plan 9 from Outer Space
), Nelson Riddle
(Lolita
), Vito Scotti
(The Godfather
), Ann Sheridan
(They Drive by Night
), Constance
and Norma Talmadge
(Intolerance
, Camille), Eddie Little
(Another Day in Paradise
), Eddie Bunker
(Straight Time
), Gregg Toland
(Citizen Kane
), Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour
), Peter Lorre
(Casablanca
), Clifton Webb
(Laura
), William Hurlbut (Bride of Frankenstein
) and Fay Wray
(King Kong
), any number of whose films have screened at the cemetery.
According to Wyatt, “All the people who worked on these films, starred in these films and were the small fry on these films: If there were an afterlife and they are here, I’m sure they would love to be seeing these films and all the people cheering and laughing at their lines.”
; Paul Reubens
for Pee-wee's Big Adventure
; Amy Heckerling
and Drew Barrymore
for Fast Times at Ridgemont High
; Karen Black
for Easy Rider
; Richard Rush
for The Stunt Man
; Charlie Ahearn
, Fab Five Freddy
and Patti Astor
for Wild Style
; Kenneth Anger
for a program of his short films; and the real Henry Hill for Goodfellas
. Michael Mann and Jon Voight
were pictured in the audience in a photo that appeared in USA Today
.
Cinespia showed The T.A.M.I. Show
as the opening night screening of the 2008 Don’t Knock the Rock Festival, the music-themed film festival organized by filmmaker Allison Anders
. The performer Dam-Funk
played a live set before a screening of Purple Rain
. Pilots for the TV series Pushing Daisies
(ABC
) and Ghost Whisperer
(CBS
) were screened for an industry audience. Other memorable screenings have included Sunset Blvd. (filmed several hundred feet away on the Paramount
lot, with Hollywood Forever denizen Cecil B. DeMille
playing himself and references to Fairbanks and Valentino); The Holy Mountain, kept out of circulation for 35 years by the Beatles’ manager Allen Klein
(a benefit for the retiring Jim Hosney); The Wizard of Oz
; Singin' in the Rain
; Chinatown; and logical thematic tie-in Night of the Living Dead
.
In recent years, Cinespia has expanded its screenings to include other venues. A semi-regular series was launched in 2008 at the open-air pool of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard
in conjunction with the Masses, an arts collective and directors agency. A screening of the Werner Herzog
3-D
documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams
was held at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
on April 23, 2011, co-sponsored by Cinefamily and the Silent Movie Theater, as part of the MOCA
retrospective "Art in the Streets.” (The implicit connection was that the 30,000-year-old Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
cave painting
s depicted in the film were ostensibly the first recorded example of street graffiti
.)
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Hollywood Forever Cemetery, originally called Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, is one of the oldest cemeteries in Los Angeles, California. It is located at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in the Hollywood...
. In addition, it screens films, both contemporary and canonical, at other locations throughout the year.
The al fresco Hollywood Forever screenings take place on the Fairbanks Lawn (so named for the adjacent crypt housing both Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Jr.
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. KBE was an American actor and a highly decorated naval officer of World War II.-Early life:...
), and films are digitally projected against the west wall of the Cathedral Mausoleum, which houses the crypt of Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
among many others. Up to 3,500 patrons per screening bring blankets, pillows, picnic dinners, alcoholic beverages and candles and enjoy screenings under the stars, while a staff of 35 keep things running smoothly. DJs play music before and after the screenings over a portable sound system, and guest DJs have included Carlos Niño, Andy Votel
Andy Votel
Andrew Shallcross, known by his stage name Andy Votel, is an electronic musician, DJ and record producer, co-founder of Twisted Nerve Records and the reissue label Finders Keepers Records...
, Cut Chemist
Cut Chemist
Lucas MacFadden , better known as Cut Chemist, is an American DJ and record producer. He is a former member of the funk Latin band Ozomatli, and of hip hop group Jurassic 5...
, the Gaslamp Killer
The Gaslamp Killer
The Gaslamp Killer is a Los Angeles-based DJ who releases material through Brainfeeder, the record label of Flying Lotus. Bensussen grew up in San Diego, California, where he began listening to Too Short, Jimi Hendrix, and Dr. Dre...
, Dam-Funk
Dâm-Funk
Dâm-Funk is an American Modern Funk singer, DJ and producer from Pasadena, California. In 2009 he debuted his five LPs of new material, which were edited and released on two discs as Toeachizown late in the year on Stones Throw Records...
, Peanut Butter Wolf
Peanut Butter Wolf
Chris Manak, aka Peanut Butter Wolf, is a DJ, hip-hop producer and the founder of hip-hop label Stones Throw Records.A native of San Jose, California, He took on the name Peanut Butter Wolf in the late-80s when he realized that a girlfriend’s youngest brother feared the “peanut butter wolf monster”...
and members of the Numero Group
The Numero Group
The Numero Group is an archival record label that creates reissue compilations of previously released music, reissues original albums, and creates album reconstructions from a variety of musical genres...
and Dublab
Dublab
dublab is a non-profit music public broadcasting internet radio station based in Los Angeles. They have also been involved with art exhibition, film projects, event production, and record releases. Their broadcast is open formatted and delivered via recorded sessions that are mixed by their...
collectives.
Cinespia has appeared in the 2008 Best of L.A. issue of the LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
and was named on the “16 Best Things in L.A.” by Los Angeles
Los Angeles (magazine)
Los Angeles magazine is a monthly regional magazine of national stature. Published by Emmis Communications and produced monthly since the spring of 1961, LA Magazine is a combination of award-winning feature writing, investigative reporting, service journalism, and design, the definitive resource...
magazine. According to Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
: “Cinespia captures the excitement of a drive-in movie date night of the 1950s but with a decidedly campy twist.”
History
The series was the brainchild of John Wyatt, a set designer then in his mid-twenties. A student of influential film lecturer Jim Hosney at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, CaliforniaSanta Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
, Wyatt initially formed an Italian cinema club with friend Richard Petit, of which Cinespia is a natural evolution.
The name Cinespia is a portmanteau word from the Italian cine, or “movie theater,” and the third person singular conjugation of the verb spiare, meaning “to observe,” or more commonly, “to spy.” Conjoined, cinespia was intended to suggest a film enthusiast or “watcher of films,” although the actual term for film buff in Italian is cinofilo. Cinespia, by contrast, means literally “he spies in the movie theater” or “cinema spy.”
After attending a Valentino birthday celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2002, Wyatt approached the owners through a friend who worked there and arranged a screening of Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
’s Strangers on a Train
Strangers on a Train (film)
Strangers on a Train is an American psychological thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in the autumn of 1950 and released by Warner Bros. on June 30, 1951. The film stars Farley Granger, Ruth Roman,...
on July 20, 2002 using two 35mm projectors with a changeover mechanism on the back of a pickup truck. Eighty people showed up for the initial screening, and a follow-up screening of Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street
Pickup on South Street
Pickup on South Street is writer-director Samuel Fuller's film noir released by the 20th Century Fox studio. The film stars Richard Widmark, Jean Peters and Thelma Ritter....
brought out an audience of a thousand. They showed four films the first season, favoring mid-century classics that might be rediscovered by a younger audience, and roughly 25 films every summer thereafter.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Hollywood Cemetery, formerly Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, paralleled the rise of the film industry with its founding in 1899, but was in significant disrepair by the time it was purchased by Tyler Cassity in 1998. According to Wyatt, the cemetery was “dilapidated, overgrown, totally closed when the current owners took over,” and money from the screenings helped to restore it to its original beauty.The cemetery, located south of Santa Monica Blvd. between Gower St. and Van Ness Ave., shares a common wall with Paramount Studios
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, the last of the classical studios still to be located in Hollywood. The concentration of Hollywood talent interred there made it a natural setting for the hallmarks of a century of cinematic achievement. Among the film legends laid to rest within the confines of its 65 acres, as outlined by Matthew Duersten in the LA Weekly on the occasion of the introductory screening, are the following:
“Marion Davies
Marion Davies
Marion Davies was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, as her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career....
, who perhaps knew the real secret to how Thomas Ince
Thomas H. Ince
Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...
died on Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
’s boat; Bugsy Siegel
Bugsy Siegel
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American gangster who was involved with the Genovese crime family...
and Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn was the American president and production director of Columbia Pictures.-Career:Cohn was born to a working-class German-Jewish family in New York City. In later years, he appears to have disparaged his heritage...
, gangsters of different stripes but of twin hearts; Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer
Carl Switzer
Carl Dean "Alfalfa" Switzer was an American child actor, professional dog breeder and hunting guide, most notable for appearing in the Our Gang short subjects series as Alfalfa, one of the series' most popular and best-remembered characters.-Early life and family:Switzer was born in Paris,...
, who was shot to death in a fight over a $50 dog reward; Col. Griffith J. Griffith
Griffith J. Griffith
Griffith Jenkins Griffith was a Welsh-American industrialist and philanthropist. After amassing a significant fortune from a mining syndicate in the 1880s, Griffith donated to the City of Los Angeles which became Griffith Park, and he bequeathed the money to build the park's Greek Theatre and...
, who blew a hole in his wife’s head after accusing her of conspiring with the pope against the U.S. government; Virginia Rappe
Virginia Rappe
Virginia Rappe was an American model and silent film actress.-Early life and career:Rappe was born to unwed mother Mabel Rapp in New York City. Mabel died when Virginia was 11, and Virginia was then raised by her grandmother in Chicago. At age 14 she began working as a commercial and art model in...
, violated by a Coke bottle that punctured her bladder during a party in Fatty Arbuckle’s suite at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel; and director William Desmond Taylor
William Desmond Taylor
William Desmond Taylor was an Irish-born American actor, successful film director of silent movies and a popular figure in the growing Hollywood film colony of the 1910s and early 1920s...
, next to the Black Dahlia
Black Dahlia
"The Black Dahlia" was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short is an American woman and the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. She acquired the moniker posthumously by newspapers in the habit of nicknaming crimes they found particularly colorful...
, perhaps Hollywood’s greatest unsolved killing.” To that list might be added Barbara La Marr
Barbara La Marr
Barbara La Marr was an American stage and film actress, cabaret artist and screenwriter.La Marr was known as "The Girl Who Is Too Beautiful", after a Hearst newspaper feature writer, Adela Rogers St...
, Hollywood’s first high-profile drug casualty, and Lana Clarkson
Lana Clarkson
Lana Jean Clarkson was an American actress and fashion model. Clarkson was a native of Los Angeles County. She played roles in science fiction and fantasy movies. She was murdered by songwriter and producer Phil Spector, who was convicted of the crime on April 13, 2009.-Early life:Born in Long...
, gunshot victim of Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
.
Other famous denizens permanently resting within earshot include Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...
(The Girl Can't Help It
The Girl Can't Help It
The Girl Can't Help It is a 1956 comedy musical film starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell, and Edmond O'Brien. It was produced and directed by Frank Tashlin, with a screenplay adapted by Tashlin and Herbert Baker from an uncredited novel Do Re Me by Garson Kanin...
), Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
(Witness for the Prosecution]), John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
(The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)
The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...
), Dee Dee
Dee Dee Ramone
Dee Dee Ramone was an American songwriter and musician, best known as founding member, bassist and main songwriter of the punk rock band the Ramones....
and Johnny Ramone
Johnny Ramone
John William Cummings , better known by his stage name Johnny Ramone, was an American guitarist and songwriter, best known for being the guitarist for the punk rock band the Ramones. He was a founding member of the band, and remained a member throughout the band's entire career...
(Rock and Roll High School), Peter Finch
Peter Finch
Peter Finch was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a...
(Network
Network (film)
Network is a 1976 American satirical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System , and its struggle with poor ratings. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet...
), Victor Fleming
Victor Fleming
Victor Lonzo Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were The Wizard of Oz , and Gone with the Wind , for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.-Life and career:Fleming was born in La Canada, California, the son of Elizabeth Evaleen ...
(The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
), Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor was an American actress and painter.One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven , Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel...
(A Star Is Born
A Star Is Born (1937 film)
A Star Is Born is a 1937 Technicolor romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, with a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. It stars Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress, and Fredric March as an aging movie star who...
), Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films, and episodic television.-Biography:...
(Night Tide
Night Tide
Night Tide is a 1961 thriller film, written and directed by Curtis Harrington and starring Dennis Hopper. It premiered in 1961, but was held up from general release until 1963...
), Zoltan Korda
Zoltán Korda
Zoltan Korda was a Hungarian-born motion picture screenwriter, director and producer.Born Zoltán Kellner, Kellner Zoltán in Hungarian name order, of Jewish heritage in Pusztatúrpásztó, Túrkeve in Hungary , he was the middle brother of filmmakers Alexander and Vincent Korda.Zoltan Korda went to...
(The Thief of Bagdad
The Thief of Bagdad (1924 film)
The Thief of Bagdad is a 1924 American swashbuckler film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Douglas Fairbanks. Freely adapted from One Thousand and One Nights, it tells the story of a thief who falls in love with the daughter of the Caliph of Bagdad...
), Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and his portrayal in the film A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given to bursts of profanity that he never realizes his son overhears...
(The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren, which tells the story of a heroin addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. It stars Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold...
), Adolphe Menjou
Adolphe Menjou
Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies, appearing in such films as The Sheik, A Woman of Paris, Morocco, and A Star is Born...
(Paths of Glory
Paths of Glory
Paths of Glory is a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refused to continue a suicidal attack...
), Paul Muni
Paul Muni
Paul Muni was an Austrian-Hungarian-born American stage and film actor...
(Scarface
Scarface (1932 film)
Scarface is a 1932 American gangster film starring Paul Muni and George Raft, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, and written by Ben Hecht based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail...
), Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols was an American screenwriter who first came to prominence after winning and refusing the screenwriting Oscar for The Informer in 1936....
(Stagecoach), Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress who created the campy 1950s characterVampira. She portrayed Vampira as TV's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space...
(Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 from Outer Space is a 1959 science fiction film written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film features Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson and Maila "Vampira" Nurmi...
), Nelson Riddle
Nelson Riddle
Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...
(Lolita
Lolita (1962 film)
Lolita is a 1962 comedy-drama film by Stanley Kubrick based on the classic novel of the same title by Vladimir Nabokov. The film stars James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Sue Lyon as Dolores Haze and Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze with Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty.Due to the MPAA's restrictions at...
), Vito Scotti
Vito Scotti
Vito Scotti was a veteran character actor who played many roles, primarily from the late-1940s to the mid-1990s. He was known as a man of a thousand faces, for his ability to assume so many divergent roles in more than 200 screen roles, in a nearly 50 year career. He was known for his resourceful...
(The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
), Ann Sheridan
Ann Sheridan
-Life and career:Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, she was a student at the University of North Texas when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a...
(They Drive by Night
They Drive by Night
They Drive by Night is a black-and-white film noir starring George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart, and directed by Raoul Walsh. The picture involves a pair of embattled truck drivers and was released in the UK under the title The Road to Frisco. The film was based on A. I...
), Constance
Constance Talmadge
Constance Talmadge was a silent movie star born in Brooklyn, New York, USA, and was the sister of fellow actresses Norma Talmadge and Natalie Talmadge.-Early life:...
and Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.Her most famous film was Smilin’ Through , but she also...
(Intolerance
Intolerance (film)
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a...
, Camille), Eddie Little
Eddie Little
Eddie Little was a writer most associated with the books Another Day in Paradise and Steel Toes, as well as various articles in the LA Weekly...
(Another Day in Paradise
Another Day in Paradise (film)
Another Day in Paradise is a 1998 drama film directed by Larry Clark, and released by Trimark Pictures. It is based on the novel Another Day in Paradise written by Eddie Little.-Plot:...
), Eddie Bunker
Edward Bunker
Edward Heward Bunker was an American author of crime fiction, a screenwriter, and an actor. He wrote numerous books, some of which have been adapted into films....
(Straight Time
Straight Time
Straight Time is a 1978 film directed by Ulu Grosbard, starring Dustin Hoffman, Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh, and Kathy Bates.-Plot summary:...
), Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, an example of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.-Career:...
(Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
), Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour
Detour (1945 film)
Detour is a film noir thriller that stars Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake and Edmund MacDonald. The movie was adapted by Martin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney from Goldsmith's novel of the same name and was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer...
), Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
(Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
), Clifton Webb
Clifton Webb
Clifton Webb was an American actor, dancer, and singer known for his Oscar-nominated roles in such films as Laura, The Razor's Edge, and Sitting Pretty...
(Laura
Laura (1944 film)
Laura is a 1944 American film noir directed by Otto Preminger. It stars Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. The screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Elizabeth Reinhardt is based on the 1943 novel of the same title by Vera Caspary....
), William Hurlbut (Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein is a 1935 American horror film, the first sequel to Frankenstein...
) and Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...
(King Kong
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...
), any number of whose films have screened at the cemetery.
According to Wyatt, “All the people who worked on these films, starred in these films and were the small fry on these films: If there were an afterlife and they are here, I’m sure they would love to be seeing these films and all the people cheering and laughing at their lines.”
Series Highlights
Numerous celebrities and filmmakers have shown up to introduce screenings: Tatum O’Neal for Paper MoonPaper Moon (film)
Paper Moon is a 1973 American comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was adapted from the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown, and the film was shot in black-and-white. The film is set during the Great Depression in the U.S. states of Kansas and...
; Paul Reubens
Paul Reubens
Paul Reubens is an American actor, writer, film producer, and comedian, best known for his character Pee-wee Herman. Reubens joined the Los Angeles troupe The Groundlings in the 1970s and started his career as an improvisational comedian and stage actor...
for Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Pee-wee's Big Adventure is a 1985 American adventure comedy film directed by Tim Burton in his full-length debut and starring Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman. Reubens also co-wrote the script with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol. Supporting roles are played by Elizabeth Daily, Mark Holton, Diane...
; Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling is an American film director, one of the few female directors to have produced multiple box-office hits.-Early life:...
and Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore
Drew Blyth Barrymore is an American actress, film director, screenwriter, producer and model. She is a member of the Barrymore family of American actors and granddaughter of John Barrymore. She first appeared in an advertisement when she was 11 months old. Barrymore made her film debut in Altered...
for Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a 1982 American coming-of-age teen comedy film written by Cameron Crowe and adapted from his 1981 book of the same name...
; Karen Black
Karen Black
Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...
for Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
; Richard Rush
Richard Rush (director)
Richard Rush is an American movie director, scriptwriter, and producer. He is best known for the Oscar-nominated The Stunt Man. His other works, however, have been less celebrated. The next best-known of his movies is Color of Night — also nominated, but in this case for the Golden Raspberry Award...
for The Stunt Man
The Stunt Man
The Stunt Man is a 1980 American film directed by Richard Rush, starring Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, and Barbara Hershey. The movie was adapted by Lawrence B. Marcus and Rush from the novel by Paul Brodeur...
; Charlie Ahearn
Charlie Ahearn (director)
Charlie Ahearn was born in 1951 in Binghamton, New York, and is a film director and creative cultural artist currently living in New York City. Although predominantly involved in film and video production, he is also known for his work as an author, freelance writer, and radio host...
, Fab Five Freddy
Fab Five Freddy
Fred Brathwaite , more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American Hip hop historian, Hip hop pioneer and former graffiti artist...
and Patti Astor
Patti Astor
Patti Astor is a performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularising of hip-hop.-Biography:...
for Wild Style
Wild Style
Wild Style is a 1983 hip hop film produced by Charlie Ahearn. Released theatrically in 1983 by First Run Features and later re-released for home video by Rhino Home Video, it is regarded as the first hip hop motion picture...
; Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
for a program of his short films; and the real Henry Hill for Goodfellas
Goodfellas
Goodfellas is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese...
. Michael Mann and Jon Voight
Jon Voight
Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie....
were pictured in the audience in a photo that appeared in USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
.
Cinespia showed The T.A.M.I. Show
The T.A.M.I. Show
T.A.M.I. Show is a 1964 concert film, released by American International Pictures. It includes performances by numerous popular rock and roll and R&B musicians from the United States and England...
as the opening night screening of the 2008 Don’t Knock the Rock Festival, the music-themed film festival organized by filmmaker Allison Anders
Allison Anders
Allison Anders is an American film and television director. Anders has directed many independent films, on which she frequently collaborates with fellow UCLA film school graduate Kurt Voss.-Biography:...
. The performer Dam-Funk
Dâm-Funk
Dâm-Funk is an American Modern Funk singer, DJ and producer from Pasadena, California. In 2009 he debuted his five LPs of new material, which were edited and released on two discs as Toeachizown late in the year on Stones Throw Records...
played a live set before a screening of Purple Rain
Purple Rain (film)
Purple Rain is a 1984 film directed by Albert Magnoli and written by Magnoli and William Blinn. Prince makes his film debut in this movie, which was developed to showcase his particular talents, hence, the film contains several extended concert sequences. The film grossed more than US$80 million at...
. Pilots for the TV series Pushing Daisies
Pushing Daisies
Pushing Daisies is an American comedy-drama television series created by Bryan Fuller that aired on ABC from October 3, 2007 to June 13, 2009. The series stars Lee Pace as Ned, a pie-maker with the ability to bring dead things back to life with his touch, an ability that comes with stipulations...
(ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
) and Ghost Whisperer
Ghost Whisperer
Ghost Whisperer is an American television supernatural drama, which ran on CBS from September 23, 2005 to May 21, 2010.The series follows the life of Melinda Gordon , who has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts...
(CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
) were screened for an industry audience. Other memorable screenings have included Sunset Blvd. (filmed several hundred feet away on the Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
lot, with Hollywood Forever denizen Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
playing himself and references to Fairbanks and Valentino); The Holy Mountain, kept out of circulation for 35 years by the Beatles’ manager Allen Klein
Allen Klein
Allen Klein was an American businessman, talent agent and record label executive. His clients included The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.- The accountant :...
(a benefit for the retiring Jim Hosney); The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
; Singin' in the Rain
Singin' in the Rain
Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American comedy musical film starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly also providing the choreography...
; Chinatown; and logical thematic tie-in Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
.
In recent years, Cinespia has expanded its screenings to include other venues. A semi-regular series was launched in 2008 at the open-air pool of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood Boulevard
-Revitalization:In recent years successful efforts have been made at cleaning up Hollywood Blvd., as the street had gained a reputation for crime and seediness. Central to these efforts was the construction of the Hollywood and Highland shopping center and adjacent Kodak Theatre in 2001...
in conjunction with the Masses, an arts collective and directors agency. A screening of the Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
3-D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a 2010 3-D documentary film by Werner Herzog, about the Chauvet Cave in southern France. The film premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and consists of footage filmed inside the cave as well as interviews with various scientists and historians...
was held at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, USA in 1913 as the Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building, with fitted marble walls and domed and...
on April 23, 2011, co-sponsored by Cinefamily and the Silent Movie Theater, as part of the MOCA
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
retrospective "Art in the Streets.” (The implicit connection was that the 30,000-year-old Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
Chauvet Cave
The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave is a cave in the Ardèche department of southern France that contains the earliest known cave paintings, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. It is located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc on a limestone cliff above the former bed of the Ardèche River...
cave painting
Cave painting
Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest European cave paintings date to the Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known...
s depicted in the film were ostensibly the first recorded example of street graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
.)