It's easy to pause on a corner in this town -- any corner -- and wonder if Charlie Chaplin tipped his hat to somebody right where you're standing. Or if Steve McQueen kissed Ali McGraw by this old pizza joint. Or if Punky Brewster filmed a very special episode on this street.
In short: the film and television history, it's all over. Alllll over. So one might think that screenings at the real locations made famous by famous movies and shows would be happening all the time. And yet they aren't, not enough for our insatiable location-movie-meet-up thirst. Probably yours, too.
But we must thank the Echo Park Film Center, the Echo Park Film Mobile, and Kristin's List (for the 411) for the Friday, July 31st event going down in the Echo Park/Silver Lake environs. That's when and where "The Music Box," that celebrated short in which hapless pair Laurel & Hardy attempt to move a giant piano up a giant exterior staircase, will be screened. Steps away from the steps from the movie. Our heart just fluttered with movie-mad joy.
The long flight is called the Music Box Steps now -- if you live around there, you know the official street sign, the plaque, the lookie-loos lookie-loo-ing with regularity -- and they look pretty different from the film. No surprise that the leap from 1932 to 2009 has brought houses and apartments and overgrown trees and vines and bushes to the immediate area; the whole hilside looks fairly bare in the flick.
If ever anything felt meta, this is it. We're thinking? Showing a flick made at a place at that place. Meta or not, potential goers should know that this is free. We'd say "another fine mess" right here, but this is definitely more fine than mess. Friday, July 31st, 8PM; Vendome Street, Silver Lake
