All right, here we go. And welcome back to the Big Picture podcast, where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday, I put them all into some sort of context, seated across the microphone from me, shaking his head, importantly. As editor-in-chief, Rich Jareese. And seated across the microphone from me, who decided since she's drinking scotch, she's going to talk with a Scottish accent.
For film buff online, contributing editor, and Miss Congeniality, Natasha Wagutski. Thank you. Sorry, I had swallow first. Okay, then, moving on.
Hi guys, welcome back, boys. Yes, unfortunately, I mean, we've been, I mean, for the best reasons, though. We've been busy with film festivals where we've had our short films. So many film festivals, actually.
Short films or screen? You had a short one-act play that was produced in a night of one-ax, which was wonderful. And it was a great, great script. I mean, I had read it from like first draft to what eventually went up on stage, but it was really well executed by you and the rest of that cast.
Thank you. Thank you. That was a rough, that was a rough script. But the time I was done with it, I turned to everyone.
I was like, ah, I think I'm taking a sabbatical. You were exercising some demons. Oh, yeah. You know, I think it's safe to say that without getting into the details.
No, I think I've pretty much stated on this podcast before that my mom can be a cunt. Well, that's... I said can be, not always is. Okay, that's splitting a hair.
That's how I cut my ass. That's okay. Okay. But yeah, let's say we are a minute into this and we are, oh my God.
We said F and C at the start. We are all off the rail. Oh my God. That's safe, Miss.
We are off the rails like a train in a Buster Keaton film. So what you're saying is, Denzel Washington and Chris Pine couldn't stop this. No, no, we're about to slam into that bus with Harrison Ford. Wow, those are two really deep cuts.
Next time, if I go down to North Carolina with you guys. No, I am not doing the track out for the fugitive. I hear so much about Darren's. And I will go and just see that myself if necessary.
Darren's brother was there. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Wait, wait, when they shot it?
I think so. Yeah. Oh, no, Brian. Oh, Brian, okay.
And so I look forward to talking to him about that at some point in space and time. Yes, I think he was there. He wasn't far from it when it was shot. And Darren loves to tell me that every freaking time.
I just watched the fugitive for the first time over the summer. For the first time ever. And of course, that happens. And he's just like, I'm like, yeah, I know.
He wasn't even in the room. He just said, head pops. Oh, no, no, no. He was sitting right next to me and he was quiet.
And it was like the Aragorn broke his toes section of family history. Yeah, he's like, did you not like, yes, I know. Shut up. Let me enjoy the movie because right now I'm not.
That is a great, great way to describe that. It's hilarious. And the Aragorn broke his toe. Yes, of the fugitive in my household.
Yes. Like, did you know? Yes, I did shut up. That's hilarious.
Anyways, that's sort of what we're going to be the topic of today's episode, which I'm going to pretty much know, which I'm pretty much going to call what we did on our summer vacation. Oh, the runaway train got it. Yes. Well, runaway train is a really good movie.
Oh, I didn't know that was a movie. Yes, there is. It's on the Plex server. I can't call the runaway, otherwise, you know, Chris Stewart and Dakota Fanning will show up with Michael Shannon to scream at us.
That'd be cool, though. I mean, I mean, imagine getting screamed out by Michael Shannon. I'm OK with getting screamed out by Michael Shannon. I'm interviewed.
I'm going over Michael Shannon, but I know. Yeah, that's one of my favorite pictures from any New York Comic Con I've ever done. But anyways, as I was saying, what we did on our summer vacation and part of that was going to some filming locations. You went to Paris.
I can't, yes. We I think we briefly mentioned it before in like the one episode we did in July. Yeah, that I had gone or that. No, if it was in July, I had already went.
Yeah, you'd already gone and we're back. We're going. Yeah. Yeah.
So let's start with that. Because you went out of the country and that got me off of my butt to go across country. I'm so proud of you for that. Yeah.
Because for me, it was my first ever vacation. I had taken weekend trips. I'd taken like three, four days somewhere. Like three, I think was the max that I had ever taken in my life, where I wasn't working something like New York Comic Con or or Tri- Track Film Festival or something.
So this was just my first, I'm getting the hell away. My first time in Europe, my first time in Paris, my first ever vacation. I went by myself. So it was, it was a lot of firsts.
And I am so happy that somehow that that inspired you to do something that you wanted to do for almost two decades. That's true. I have some economic anxiety and it was that was really the biggest hurdle for me to, I mean, I've had this file folder here on my desk for years filled with places to go in LA, things I wanted to do, things I wanted to see. And I made it even worse by buying you that book for Christmas.
You bought me a World Film Locations in Los Angeles book, which was great, which went with me, as well as another book that I had about locations in LA. Both of those went with me. And like I said though, I always had economic anxiety of like, oh my god, I'm gonna get out there and something's gonna happen and I'm suddenly gonna be broke and I can't get back and I'm gonna be stuck in LA and I'm gonna have to live on the streets and sell my blood for food. You have friends who would be willing to help you.
And that's the thing that you always got to take into consideration. There are some people who don't have a good support group around them. My family is shit, but my friends are amazing. And so I know that if I was in dire straits, my friends would somehow pull together and turn me into George Bailey.
Yeah, same here, same here, exactly. I know that there's no way that I or Darren would ever leave you stranded in LA. I know that. Yeah, I know that.
I love you guys for that too. But you know, part of me was always like, what if something happens? You know, I didn't want, you know, you don't know me. I don't like to put anybody up.
Okay, you want to talk about financial anxiety first? I got it. I got to mention this. Okay, my car shit the bed this past week.
As in, it needed a whole new turbo engine. And the car was not worth that amount to put a turbo engine into it. When a turbo engine is going to be upwards of five grand. And I turned around in the first words out of my mouth to, to Darren, and once that car had been diagnosed was, I wish I hadn't gone to Paris.
I have a feeling like in the next anything that happens that's going to cost me like more than a grand in the next year. I'm going to be like, Oh God, I shouldn't go to LA. I would have had the money better. Yeah, that's exactly what my reaction.
And he looked at me and he goes, don't do that to yourself. I'm so proud of you for taking that trip and doing it on your own. And I had to put things in perspective for a moment. Yes, I didn't, I didn't have the money to fix my car, but instead we got a whole damn new one, which is even better.
And that one will keep me for at least five years, if not longer, while the other one would have just been shaking and rattling on its last lake. So yeah, it was smart like. And going, I mean, I got to hit a number of things that I'll talk about in a little bit, especially a few locations I have literally saw 40 years ago in the movies. And was like, at some point, I need to go.
The place you stayed was a movie location. That's true, too. That's true, too. I didn't realize how much history the built more in Los Angeles has.
And we'll get to that in a moment. That's going to be 15 minutes alone. And I will just shut up the entire time. As opposed to me sucking now.
No, I just mean, I will shut up and I won't, I'll just let you rant. Thank you. Because you're going to rant. Yeah, I am.
So that was like a hurdle for me to overcome. But I'm glad we both were able to do that. And I mean, you messaged me and called me once or twice from Paris, which was funny because like, it'll be like the middle of the afternoon for me. And you'll be on a video chat or whatever.
And in a taxi. And I'm looking at you, but also behind you, I can see out the taxi window. And it's dark and street lights and everything. And I'm like, it's 1.30.
And for me, I think it was like around 7 or 8 p.m. Yeah, it was a five-hour time. Well, whatever it was for me. But it was like evening and the lights were coming on.
And I was getting to see the parrot. I remember at one point, I was like, you're like, oh, it's really lovely. And you're just like still holding the phone on you. And I'm like, we'll point the phone out the window.
Let me see if we're going to see. So one of my personal favorites was. Terrible documentary director. I know.
Oh, that's why hey, Docs. So the one that I will never forget was I had tried to get to the bacilca the second car for mass on a Sunday. And it sucked. And I wasn't able to get there.
So the next day I had planned to get up early, go over to the beginning of the Shonzalise, walk my way up it. Hit, you know, shot my way up the Shonzalise. And to be honest, the only thing I bought was hand creams from lots of pain. Get to the octopoleum, then walk down towards the Plastitrucadero, which is right across the river from the Eiffel Tower.
And I'm sorry, guys. Don't fucking go to the Eiffel Tower. One, you can get mugged. Two, it's too many tourists, which means you could get mugged.
And three, your best views is going to be from the Plastitrucadero, which was in John Wick, which is in Anna, like it's the movie location in itself. Yeah, so you didn't run up the Eiffel Tower and do like Roger Moore in a view to a kill or anything like that. I didn't touch the damn metal that it's made out of. So right in front of it, there is a bridge and it leads straight to the Plastitrucadero.
You're going to get the best views there. And most times when I went there were, unfortunately, a few other people, because one, the secret is starting to get out. And two, it was around the time of everything was getting set up for the Olympics. So there was a lot of shits just covered in bleachers.
The Palais Royale was getting re-done. So that was all blocked off. Across the Pawnale-Exandor-Twaw Bridge, there was massive bleachers. It was just everywhere.
But for the purposes of the podcast, I kind of want to keep this movie related a little bit. And I mean, you're setting a scene, which is nice. But the thing is, by the time I was done, I called you, and it was about 1.30 in the afternoon, I was walking along the left bank of the sun, and you were just getting up at 7 AM. Yeah, sorry.
That's what I was getting to. But you're in the City of Lights, City of Culture, City of History. And you still went to the movies, though? Twice, actually.
Yes. Which was the first movie you went to? Hold on. Okay.
After, before I get to the first movie that I went to, which was on my first night in Paris, a landed at noon. It was at my hotel before two o'clock. Got changed, got cleaned up, put away all of my, you know, belongings hung out my clothes. And then I hit the streets.
I walked an hour and a half to my first ever dinner in Paris, which was a movie location. It was the restaurant called La Gala and Colbert. And it is from the end of Nancy Myers, something's got to give. The name is Chicken Scene with Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves happened there.
And I was so antsy. I was starting to feel like, what have I done? Was this a bad idea? The trip itself?
Yes. No, I was having major anxiety about being there alone and having a language barrier. And the thing is, my French is not bad. It's actually really freaking good.
I took three years in school. You were brushing up for months before you. Yes, I was. I even hired a little bit of a tutor.
Oh, okay. I didn't even know that. My friend, like, who had spent. I know you'd been practicing with him.
Yeah. And so he was, he was tutoring me. And so we would sit for hours and just go over it. Or he would find things and send them to me.
He still does to keep me engaged now that I've been. But I was sitting there going, I think this is a huge mistake. I made an emotional judgment. I'm in a country thousands of miles away.
What the fuck have I done? And then the host came up to me. His name was Jacques. And he said, your French is better than you think.
More confidence. And by the time I was at my meal, I said to myself, I'm going to the movies. Because that is a place where I always feel comfortable, no matter where I am. So I didn't go very far from my hotel.
Maybe about a 20 minute walk. And I went south here. Opening weekend in Paris, motherfuckers. OK.
OK. So how does the French movie going experience differ from going to see Furiosa at our local cinema, or one's local AMC or whatever. So to give you guys a heads up, there are cinemas all over Paris. But here's the thing.
Most of them don't show the newest releases. It's a lot of rep. No more. So here's the thing around us, you're going to find a lot of the big blockbusters.
Even in the little houses, because I know that's what's going to bring in the money. Over there, they have a completely different mindset about it. New movies don't bring in the money that old movies do. There are art house theaters all over the city.
Most of them show on film, not on digital, on fucking film. I'm filling out my passport application already. And they show older films. I ended up at the Pathé Theatre in the 14th Air Indies, and a ticket to see Furiosa was 30 euro.
Okay. That is fucking expensive. I was going to say, can you remember off the top of your head what the conversion rate is on that? No, that was like 24 euro, which equaled out to about 30 dollars.
Oh, 30 dollars, okay. To see for one ticket. I'm glad that I was already full from dinner, because I wouldn't even want to try. I was going to say, did you take a look at the concession stand to see what kind of different snacks they might have?
I did not, but the way that their theater was set up was really interesting. It was multi-leveled, as in you had to walk up levels of stairs. And on each level, there was like two theaters, two or three theaters on each level. So it was like one on either side and one in the middle.
But it was a winding staircase to go all the way up. Okay. Structurally, that sounds very similar to like the AMC 25 Empire on 42nd Street, New York City, that I've been in a couple of times over the decades. Possibly.
And where you go up escalators, and each floor has like one, two, and three, and then house number four, five, six, seven, eight. That would be exactly how it was, yeah. Was it a more modern building and construction, or was it like an older building? It was modern, super modern, really sleek, lots of grays and metal.
Okay. Yeah, I really felt like it was top-notch. Probably it'd only been open a couple of years. By the time I got done with a film, it was 1 a.m.
And then I had to walk back to my hotel. I walked a half an hour. And it was amazing. I just put in like an earbud, and here's, I'm going to see you guys a little trick, if you're ever alone in a city that you don't know, just put it in a earbud, set it up to your maps on Google, or Apple, or Waze, or whatever it is that you want to use, turn on some music.
When you need to make a change on the street, it's going to break into your music and say, turn right, it's going to be the same as if you're driving. And no one will know that you don't know the city. And you have, I mean, I have short guy hair. You have longer hair.
So you can always even just hide the earbud underneath some hair. And it was useful. I did it all the time. By the time I got back to my hotel, it was about 2 a.m.
And I felt at home in Paris. It kind of really kind of warmed me up to it. Good. I'm glad that I, would you say that?
Well, let me, yeah, let me retract here for a second. Would you say that going through the cinema helps with that adjustment period? Having a French person tell me that I just needed to have a little more confidence, because that's the secret to being okay. That helped.
And then also to go somewhere that no matter what city I am in, makes me feel like I'm at home. Yeah, it helped. And there were a couple of other times throughout my time in Paris where I needed that comfort. So I sought it out.
Well, let me ask you this then. Furiosa itself. Not a lot of dialogue. But was it a dubbed film in French or was there subtitles in French?
Neither. Really? It was pure English. Wow.
So when I was trying to decide where I wanted to go, it was between that and Rome. And more people speak English in France than they do, or in Paris than they do in Rome. So that was a big factor because I was like, my first time going overseas, I wanted to make certain that if I did finally hit a wall. Yeah, if I didn't hit a wall, I would still be okay to say, can I switch?
But no, that cinema was definitely, we show American movies, we show English movies. They are not dubbed and they are not subtitled. Okay, could you get a vibe? Was it like a lot of tourists who are going?
Was it more Parisians, a nice mix or? So the theater was not super packed. I mean, it was packed, but it wasn't like crazy. It wasn't, and it seemed like it was a mix, but definitely more French because that is technically a residential neighborhood.
Most people who are tourists usually stay around the Senn area, where all the big monuments and the museums are, where I was was very much a residential neighborhood near the outskirts of Paris. And when you say outskirts of Paris, I mean, it's an hour walk, and all of a sudden you're at the Louvre, it's not that crazy, but yeah. So what was it like being a contributor to the Foreign Box Office of a film? It sucked.
The presentation wasn't great or? No, it was great. It just, I felt like I had wasted a good 30 euro on something that, as a film consumer, I probably should have been spending a little more attention to. Like, as I was walking up those staircases, they had different posters, and one of them was for the new Kanamani Christo coming out of Paris.
And by the way, this was a Paris cinema. And my brain went, when is that dropping? Is that in right now? Should I go back downstairs?
I'll spend another 30-year-old and go to a different movie. And then I thought it was coming out for like a week. I missed it by a week. I was so pissed.
I had a similar experience. Because I saw the the Pathé French Three Musketeers movies that recently came out, and they were amazing. And I was like, I love Kanamani Christo. I love that story.
I love the books. He makes a mean sandwich. I love the Jim Cavizo film. I just love that story.
And so I really wanted to see what France was going to be doing with it, considering the last time that Al-Zantara Dumas' work had been translated over there hasn't been for more than three decades. But unfortunately, I got stuck seeing American films the entire time I was there. Okay. Well, let's get to that second film that you saw.
Because that was a movie-heavy day. Yes. Okay. Well, let's start at the beginning then, because we're just trying to keep to the movie stuff.
How did that day start off movie-wise then? I got to really state why I ended up changing my plans and I ended up that day. So I tried, this was Sunday, and I had tried to get to Bessoka the second car in Montmart in the 18th. And I only got made it to the 10th in my Uber, because Streets were blocked off for Olympics perhaps.
People were very upset. My Uber driver, after 25 minutes, turned around to me and said, stay in Pussybet. And I was like, okay, I understand. And Bonnese, just let me out here.
This is good. And I walked my ass down to the Opera House and grabbed another Uber. And I was like, I need to pick me up. Take me to the Cinama Tech Forces, one of the first ever museums of cinema in the world.
Now, this was on your checklist of places to visit. It was, it was. And they were actually doing a retrospective of James Cameron while I was there. Like they were showing James Cameron films.
But I didn't go there for that. I went there for one reason and one reason only. Inside list cinema tech phone says, is another museum. Small, but it's very integral.
It is the Mille's Museum. Rich, would you like to hop in and now explain George Mille? Pioneer in cinema created an entire language of visual effects that was used pretty much up until digital stuff in the last 20 years. Still being used.
Still being used in some cases. Just adapted for digital and just an amazing, amazing storyteller. And storyteller. You've all seen at least a little bit of a trip to the moon with the moon with the actual human face in there and the rocket gets stuck stuck in the eye.
But he's done so many things, so many marvelous things. And thankfully a lot of that's been preserved. And I know you have been a fan of his work forever. Ever since I saw Hugo by Martin Scorsese, most people completely forget that that film exists in Scorsese's long list of legacy.
And it hurts me inside. Funny enough where I stayed in the 14th, it's called Monpanas. And there is a George Mille link there. After his studio went under and a lot of his films got melted down and everything, he spent the end of his years in the train station, which we see in Hugo.
Yeah, I did not make it to that train station, unfortunately. And I wish I had because that would have been a great link. But my time at the Mille's museum was eye opening. I took photos of every plaque that I could find that explained so much.
I saw cameras that are over 100 years old. And everything is very interactive too, so you could play with optics. You got to see exactly how some of the illusions in the backgrounds were created and how they have been updated. There is work by Guillermo de Toro and Christopher Nolan and so many others that have been influenced heavily by his work.
At the end of my trip there was a room. And I took a lot of photos, a lot of video. This room held nothing but a bench and a screen. And on that screen for over 30 minutes was just a montage of all the work that had been influenced by George Mille.
From Nolan to Terry Gilliam, Andre Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Lucas, Cameron. I started to cry. I just couldn't stop myself for probably a good 10 minutes. Like I laughed and my eyes were just bloodshot.
It was very much a true religious experience. I was so pleased that I didn't end up at Basilica the Sacchar. But I still went to church on Sunday. I went to the place that mattered the most to me.
And I've always stated that the cinema is where I went to worship. To worship ideas and imagination and what the human brain is capable of. And the worlds that we can create. All the worlds that we visit, the worlds that we can actually be gods over, that we can create, that we can give everyone else an escape to from their lives.
I'll never be able to see something like that again. Maybe I'm wrong. And I hold to God, I'm wrong. But to stand there in a place that's over 100 years old, to see how far one's legacy, even when they don't know what themselves can stretch.
I had similar experiences on my trip too. But I kind of don't want to jump in yet with my stuff. Because yeah, we're still working on Paris here. And after I left there, I walked quite a while away.
So I was in Bursey in the 18th, which is on the right bank. And I walked all the way into the fifth and sixth guarantees, one, which is the left bank, otherwise known as the Latin quarter and into where like the Sorbonne University and all that is. And I ended up walking up a street and I found this little tiny indie cinema house. As in, they had two screens, massive marquee out front, only one little box office holder in the middle and you know, you split off.
And it was like those movie theaters you see in cinemas all the time, the little tiny ones and the little box office right up front. Yeah, but you never see those. You see them in the movies, but you never see them in real life. And just out of curiosity, I looked at the list of what they had been playing and what they were going to be playing.
And I had a great experience when I saw this list. They were playing the Deer Hunter, the original Suspiria, Possession, Strange Days with Ray Fiennes, the usual suspects, Returnal Sunshine of the Spotless Mine, Darjeeling Unlimited, True Romance, Virgin Suicide, the Big Lebowski, and the Wicker Man, the original Wicker Man. Blah, that's a hell of a light up over it all. Those were, and Cassino.
Oh, yeah. Those were the American movies that they were showing, which usually was more at night. During the day, they would show, I saw, and I missed it, Cleofy the Seven. They were showing a lot of more French new wave and international sectors from, say, Italy and Greece and all that.
What I had missed with Cleofy the Seven, I gained because the next movie that they were showing was The Big Heat from 1953 with Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham. Yes, an amazing film, a classic film. One of my favorites. You used that as a bit of research for one of our short films, where you told an actor to go, watch it.
Yes, I did, yes I did. So, yeah. And so I walked down the street, had a drink, came back in an hour, bought my ticket, which was less than 10 Euro. Nice.
And as I was standing on the front, too, because I had nowhere to say, because there's no lobby, I actually saw the projection of this booth open, and I saw him actually hooking up the film. So it was a 35 millimeter film. Yes. Okay, that was going to be my next question is, were all of these being projected from Prince or were they digital packages?
I don't know all of them, but that one definitely was. That one was Prince, and it was amazing. Really good quality print? Incredible quality print.
I know you guys can't see this, but Rich. Oh, nice. Yeah, I did take a photo of just the title card from where I was sitting, and it was very small. There may have been 10 rows in that theater.
Okay, how many people were there to get there? There were so many people there. Oh, good. There were more people there than there were for Furiosa, by comparison of the size of the theater.
So Furiosa was a theater that was seating over probably 200, and there maybe it was about 40 people, maybe 50 people there. This is a theater that seated maybe 60 or 70, and there was about 40 people in that theater. So it was a strong number. Wow, that sounds great though.
And that's how I noticed how people really appreciate art. They don't appreciate so much where we are as so much, where we came from. And I love that so much because you can't create, you can't innovate without knowing your past. Yes.
And what about you? Okay, here we go. Well, I had a week in Los Angeles, and I mean, I went out with that folder I mentioned before, full of things I wanted to do and places to go and things. And ultimately though, I didn't push myself to do all of those things on that list.
A, because hey, I need an excuse to go back. But also I had been feeling so stressed for the last several months about various things that I was like, why am I going to go on a vacation and put a consonant between me and all that stress, only to get myself a different kind of stress for eight days? So I got out there and nice flight on a ventful. Same.
I read the entirety of the book about the making of airplane. One of my all my favorite movies. And did you watch any movies at all on your flight? I did not.
I did on the way back. We'll get to that. Okay, but I figured if I'm going to be flying in an airplane, I should read the book about the movie airplane. So I actually watched the airplane the night before I laughed.
I hope they didn't offer you fish for your in-flight meal. They did on the flight back because it was from Iceland Air. Oh, okay, yeah. And I actually did eat the fish and it was pretty fucking tasty.
I'm not going to lie. The way that it was done is Icelandic. Pretty good. But so anyways, it's a breezy read, by the way, the book, if you're interested in picking it up.
And so I get to LA, land, literally, I was disappointed that the hallway from arrivals to luggage pickup was not one of the ones that are done over in all the colored tiles that you see in, well, an airplane or the president's analyst or Jackie Brown. That was 40 years. Well, 30 years ago. Come on.
Some of those hallways are still like that. Yeah. There's like, I think they did like, I remember researching this like when I would get there. They did like seven hallways that way.
And I think five are still available, something like that. And I was like, I was a little disappointed. I was like, damn it. But, you know, I literally walk out of the terminal to find the thing to get me to a hotel, sorry, to get me to the hotel.
And literally, I see that 60s double arched control tower that they no longer use. But it's just, that's LAX to me, you know? It's like one of those, oh shit, I'm here. I am here, cool, awesome.
And so I get to the hotel and I gave myself a day to kind of like acclimate, drive around a little bit. You know, so I drove up to Griffith Observatory, but there was a concert at the Greek theater, which is like right there. So like traffic and everything was a mess. So I kind of like, yeah, come back another day and drove a little bit down Sunset Strip, stopped at a pizza place for dinner.
And you know, just kind of like checking out the vibe. You know, I was like, oh, this is really nice. This is cool. So I guess the first thing I'm going to talk about is, I say that the Millennium Built More Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.
This is not a plug. No, it is very much a movie location. Yes, very much. If you've seen Chinatown, Bachelor Party.
A little film called Beverly Hills Cop. Well, I wasn't going to go to that one, but yeah. Ghostbusters. That's the one.
Oh, go to Banzai. So right there, it's like five movies I love. Dr. Detroit, this was a place I was built in the 20s.
And right as like, people were coming to Hollywood and starting to, you know, explode as an industry town. And it was the largest hotel west of Chicago. It had a thousand rooms at one point. They've since done some renovations and stuff.
And this is the hotel where they held the first kind of, like, congratulatory dinner after the Motion Picture Academy was founded. And they've held Oscar ceremonies in the ballrooms. They've, you know, lots of films have shot there, lots of TV shows have shot there. It's so drenched in its own history.
There's a little hallway off the grand arcade where you can go and they have pictures of all sorts of things from their history. You know, even, you know, like a little exhibits, like an old cocktail lounge menu and then, you know, pictures of Hollywood royalty there. If you go down all the way down at the end of the, the side corridor off that, off that main history corridor, there's one little picture and you're looking at it. It's like, oh, who is this?
Who's this young woman? Oh, let's read that. Oh, turns out in the lobby was one of the last places the Black Dahlia was seen before she was murdered. So, so yeah, there's a little bit of dark history too.
The hotel thrived up until about the 70s, started to decline a little bit, was sold in the late 70s and got renovated. And I think that's around, you know, after the renovation was like 82, 83, 84. And that's when a lot of movies from that time, like Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, Dave. Which I just watched for the first time, Beverly Hills Cop probably about two weeks ago.
Okay. That's the Beverly Palms Hotel in the movie. Yeah, I know. So I recognize the lobby.
From other pictures that I see. So, I think at that point, the owners were like, we need to recoup as much money as we can. So now that it's looking really nice here, let's see if we can get some location fees out of some production companies. So, you know, a lot of stuff shot there.
They rearranged part of it. So now the new lobby is the ballroom from Ghostbusters. Literally, you walk in the side and if you know where you're walking in or you recognize, oh, I recognize that chandelier. I recognize that first, you know, if perhaps if you've watched.
And the plowers are still standing. If you've watched Ghostbusters close to triple digits. Yeah, I just kind of walked in and I went. Anybody see a ghost?
You know, I just muttered that to myself. I didn't yell it out through the room, but I just knew where I was. And I was like, okay, this vacation is here. We're going to have some fun.
I know that feeling because I went to a restaurant from Midnight in Paris, which is one of my favorite films. Yes, I know it's a Woody Allen movie, but that movie gets a pass because it's just one, it's iconic and it is universal. And it's not exercising some of his creepier tenants. Yeah, yeah, it talks kind of more about creation and the love of the past and not appreciating the present.
And I greatly appreciate that. But the so the restaurant I went to was called Polidor. And if you guys have seen Midnight in Paris, that is where Tom Hilsen, Zescophage, Gerald, takes Owen Wilson to meet Ernest Hemingway for the first time. So I'm sitting there having dinner and the way it's set up is kind of like cafeteria-wise.
So you're sitting at these long tables with people that you don't know. I loved it. I loved it because I mean, I could talk to a lot of different people I didn't know. But in the back of my head, I could see Corey Stoll sitting in the corner saying writers are competitive.
If I hate if I don't like it, I'm, you know, I'm not going to like it because bad writing. If I do like it, I'm going to be envious even more. You don't want the opinion of another writer. And I was like, ooh.
When we visit locations like that, especially for movies that we really love, we do see like the ghosts of the movie. You know, no pun intended with ghosts, but yeah. So yeah, I literally... You did the same with the Bill Maher, I'm sure.
Oh my God. You couldn't turn anywhere in that grand arcade there without like going, oh, okay, I know what happens here. What was their cockroach up on 12? No.
I know what you're going to say. There's only 11 floors at the Bill Maher, too, which was a little bit disappointing. It was disappointing for me to hear that. But I was up on the ninth floor, which is the highest of the hotel rooms.
And then 10 and 11 are like ballrooms and meeting rooms and the gym and stuff like that. So I got up as high as one could get in the, if you're just staying there, which was nice. And unfortunately, I didn't have a great view. But I wasn't there for the view, really.
So like the, like my first morning there before I went and drove around, I got up and I walked a couple of blocks to a place that had a lot of different little food stalls, got some breakfast, and I'm sitting there on this little cafe table on the sidewalk and I'm looking across the street and it's the Bradbury building that we've seen in all sorts of films from Blade Runner to Wolf to a number of other films. And I was just like, this is amazing. You know, you can't turn anywhere without looking and seeing something like, oh, that building over there, I think that's the building from Independence Day, where the people in LA are like up top when they get blasted, you know, welcoming the aliens. Over there's, oh, that's the, you know, I saw that and that's from LA Confidential over there.
It's all, yeah, it's crazy driving around. And when you suddenly realize you see something, like jumping forward a couple of days, I was driving back from doing the Warner Brothers Studio Tour. And I'm coming up to, you know, Olive Street heads down onto a tee and, you know, kind of do left to get on the highway to get back to downtown. And I look ahead and, you know, the roads on the tee, I'm, you know, looking straight ahead at this building and it's like Valhalla Entertainment.
And my brain just goes, oh, Gail Ann heard the producer of Walking Dead and hundreds of other things. That's her office right there. Cool. Like, turns green, I turn left and I go on to the highway.
And, but it's hard to do, you know, look, you're gonna yell at me for this one, actually. Go for it. As I was wet, because I drove by the Warner studios on my way to the tour the one time. And then I went back just to take a couple pictures of the, one of the gates just as a, you know, where you could look through and you see the classic Warner Brothers water tower and believe me, Animaniacs.
If the scale is correct, the Animaniacs are giants. Yes! They're monsters, they're Kaiju. It's crazy.
Wait, that's how big the tower is? Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's not, it's not tiny. But I drove by a restaurant twice and I looked at a smokehouse.
That name rings a bell. I can't place it. It looks kind of groovy. It's has like this late 40s, early 50s, neon sign outside.
And it looks kind of cool and everything. And it's like right across from one of the gates at Warner's. And I was like, hmm. Well, maybe, you know, next time maybe, you know, I'll look into, you know, grabbing a bite there or something.
Last week, long after I got home, I was reading something and I was like, I saw, you know, and blah, blah, blah, from smokehouse production. So I was like, wait a minute, what? And then I go, and so I go, you know, George Clooney from smokehouse. And then I did like a little bit of research.
George Clooney owns that restaurant. Not that he's there every night, you know, checking receipts. But that's the restaurant George Clooney owns. And it was used in a sequence in La La Land.
Which one? The jazz club sequence. Really? Yes.
Okay, I can be that. Okay. Because I was like, as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh god, I got to tell Natasha this at some point. You never told me that.
About me not going. No, well, I also have a La La Land reference. Oh, okay. You know, I have a La La Land reference.
Go. I went dancing at the jazz club, La Cabo de la Houshette that shows up in the La La Land montage near the end of the movie. Yes, you did. That was a great night.
Oh, yeah. I left my bag at home. I sucked my money and my phone in my boots. And I just went dancing and it was amazing.
I met these two wonderful gentlemen, one was English. Can't remember his name, but his friend's name was Tom. He was Scottish. We're friends now on Facebook.
So you never know what can happen when you're in another country. That's true. That's true. We just drank and danced.
And then we left and we went our own separate ways. And it was amazing. It's so funny. Because even the one night I went out to Burbank to meet our friend Ben.
Ben's doing great. Probably would like to be writing more and getting paid for it. But I think that's just common across our whole industry right now. Agreed.
For journalists. But when I parked my car, like a block away from the restaurant, we were going to meet at, I parked on a side to meet. I walk up to the main road and I look and there's the LA connection, which is an old, very long-lived comedy club that I can remember. They had a TV show in the late 70s, early 80s, that my younger brother and I would sometimes sneak back downstairs to watch after my parents went to bed.
Called mad movies with the LA connection, where they would kind of sit there and edit like a public domain film down to like 30 minutes and then redub it. Wow. Yeah. It was similar to what Mr.
Science Theater 3000 would eventually do. But instead of making fun of the actual movie, they kind of took the movie and reworked it. So like, Night of the Living Dead became just Barbara running away from a zombie who had a telegram and he was like, telegram. Oh, no, no, no, no.
It's always bad news. You know, and that was like one of the gags that they had in that, you know. So it was like, oh crap, LA connection. Awesome.
You know, you just stumble over that stuff in Los Angeles because it's all so much trenching in history. I'm like driving over bridges and stuff going, I know I've probably seen this in like nine movies. I was going to say, was there a moment where you were just doing a drive by really quick? And it wasn't a big monument like for me, like seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Octoplyomph.
But was there a moment where you saw something and you automatically recognized it just from a movie as you were driving past? Unintentionally? Yeah. Having by it?
Um, well, I mean, it's not quite from a movie, but you know, the Galen Hertz production office kind of filled out at me. Location. Oh, just as a location though. Because I had one.
That's why I was like, you did. Yes, and no. I mean, I didn't realize how many things had shot at the Biltmore until I like literally was in the old, the old lobby, which they use in Beverly Hills Cop and bachelor party. And then I was like, wait a minute.
This is the bachelor part. I pulled out the book and gave me and I'm like flip flip flip flip flip. Oh my God. So some places like that, I know I walked by like a couple of other places like when I was walking around within the vicinity of my hotel.
And I was like, oh, I know I've seen that in something. And I know I had walked down Broadway just a little bit because I wanted to see the Eastern building because it has that big clock. It's that beautiful green building with the golden letters and everything. And it features very prominently in the final act of the pilot for moonlighting.
So that was like kind of one of those. I need to see this. And it was undergoing some renovation. And it had these black scrims up all around the whole top section.
I was like, motherfucker. Yeah. So you do run into that. I mean, that wasn't the worst disappointment I had.
And I'll tell that story in a minute. My worst disappointment ended up with a great night. Oh, okay. So because I couldn't get to the Soka the second career on Sunday, I went on Monday after I just got off the phone with you.
After my whole walk on the shot on Salise and you were like, oh, it's 130. I'm like, yeah, and I've done everything I wanted to do. And you're going, so the rest of the day is gravy. So I grabbed the cab and I took me all the way up there when I was done there.
I inadvertently found the steps from, well, it's a very fame as that of steps. But the first movie location that came into mind using it recently was John Wick 4. Okay. There's 200 stairs.
Mm-hmm. It's like. Did you have dirt off getting up them than he did? I didn't get up them.
I came down them. Oh, okay. Well, he did too. But I'm sure he's easier way.
No, he was trying to get up to the basilica. I was leaving the basilica because I took a cab and then walked down. So as I was going through mamata after that, I ended up at the cafe from Amalie. Oh, I know that's a favorite of yours.
It is. And it doesn't look a damn thing like it does in the movie. No, it's okay. Because to be honest, their beef borignon was worth it.
Okay, then. The inside of the building was crap. The chairs were the paint was peeling off of it. It was kind of neon-y and they were playing 80s American 80s music, but at least the food was good and that made it all good.
And how it used to look in that movie is so preserved in that movie. Exactly. So that's always nice. The history.
I'm not a brain person because I'm crap when I come to three-membering dates. But the person who appreciates history, at least. Oh, that's I think something that's grown out of my love of movies is an appreciation of history. Oh, and really quick before I forget.
No. My random encounter with a movie location that I was not expecting was on my first night. In between the Grand Colbert and the cab that was taking me down to the pathway cinema, we passed by a place called Dooluk Detective. That is the detective agency that was in Midnight in Paris.
And one of the guys traveled back in time and got lost trying to keep an eye on Owen Wilson's character. But no, I drove right past it. And it looks the same as it did in the film. Well, I mean, okay, so I've done my first day of like just fussing around, getting a vibe for the city and everything.