Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Movies Go to the Movies: Fade to Black

As I mentioned in my review of Fade to Black, one of the enjoyments of watching the film as a Los Angeles resident is to see how familiar locations looked thirty years ago. Including, nay especially, movie theatres.

Here are some screenshots of the many theatres (some of which are no longer with us) from Fade to Black featuring a large contingency of films released and playing in 1980:

The Mann Westwood 4 (now a Whole Foods)


The Village


The Bruin


The Avco Center



The Mann Plaza--which was torn down to build, you guessed it, condos in 2005.

The Chinese Theatre--the setting for the film's final sequence. Notice that Little Darlings is opening there soon!



Some other Easter eggs that I thought people who live or have lived in LA might get a kick out of:

Ships Diner--this Googie style diner chain was long gone by the time I moved here in 2002, but I remember that a sign for the La Cienega/Olympic Blvd location still stood for years after the restaurant itself was demolished.


The Brown Derby

New Beverly Calendar--of course, as any respected film geek, Eric Binford has a calendar for the premiere Los Angeles repertory theatre on his bedroom wall. The second picture reveals some of the programming, including Rock N Roll High School and The Last Waltz

Left foreground, next to Marilyn Monroe poster.



To the extreme right

4 comments:

Mummbles said...

Thanks for the blog, keep up the good work!

le0pard13 said...

Excellent post! I give away my age by saying I've been to every single one of these locations. I dare say I miss Ships Diner the most -- stopped there many a time during the late night hours. Prior to 2002, where were you located, Colonel? Thanks.

Colonel Mortimer said...

Hi Leopard--That's awesome that you went to all of those theatres, I remember coming to Westwood as a child and being blown away by the lights of the Westwood marquees.

I grew up in San Jose, CA and went to San Francisco for college before moving to LA, a California guy through and through

Unknown said...

Greetings Col Mortimer...I love your photos from FADE TO BLACK, which happens to be a favorite of mine. It also happens to be a blog topic on my film fan site entitled CINEMA: COUNTERPOINT. We are here on blogger and would love your take on our site and topics discussed. You can find us at cinemacounterpoint.blogspot.com
Thank you for your time and for an excellent topic!

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