Screening of CASABLANCA at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Every year Cinespia in conjunction with the Hollywood Forever Cemetery screens vintage movies for all their fans.

On June 5th they will be showing the 1943 classic movie, Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

I am making this a small Meetup so we can all sit around each other at what I am sure is going to be a huge turnout of people.

You can bring alcohol (wine, beer, cocoberries) as well as your favorite snacks to share with the rest of our group. The gate open at 7:30pm and the movie starts at 9pm.

DJ, Dr. Who, will be spinning tunes before and after the screening

There is a $10 donation at the gate to get in. So come join me for what is sure to be a really fun event.

UPDATE 06/04/10

To locate where the group will be - look for a coffee table with a small Coleman lantern on it and a florescent orange flag and Meetup sign behind it.

I will try to get there early enough to get as close to center of the lawn and directly in line with the screen as possible.

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It is 1941. Much of the world is embroiled in WWII. We are introduced to the northern African city of Casablanca, Morocco. Although the city is administered by the Vichy French government, the local police are eager to please the visiting Third Reich officers, since France is currently occupied by Germany, who have installed their own government in the country.

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The city serves as the last stop for European refugees. They travel from Marseilles, France to purchase illegal travel visas in the city, and from Casablanca fly onto to Lisbon, Portugal, where they make the last leg of their trip to America and freedom. The flashiest and most popular establishment in Casablanca is Rick’s Café Americain, frequented by clients of all political affiliations. It is a place to get good food, good music, and, if you fall in favor with the owner, a piece of some illegal gambling in the back room. The owner is Rick Blaine, an exiled, cynical American portrayed by Humphrey Bogart. Rick is a loner, a man who “sticks his neck out for nobody”. A no-nonsense person, he does what is always in his own best interests.

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The Cinespia film screenings at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, otherwise known , as "I see movies with dead people," started in 2002 with a handful of hardcore film bUffs and' has evolved into a several-thousand_people weekly summer pilgrimage, On Saturday and Sunday evenings through May and June, people traipse across the cemetery lawn toting picnic baskets, pillows and low folding chairs.

Classic midcentury films and cult favorites,are projected onto the white-marble wall of Rudolph Valentino's tomb, His Girl Friday, Rebei Without a Cause, Ace in the Hole, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Touch of Evil" , nothing is more Spookily romantic than watching
these films outside on a-warm summer night, sitting on a blanket, sipping from a plastic cup of wine, a cute girl Snuggled next to you, with dead people underfoot

Not just any old dead people mind you but the creme de la creme of Hollywood dead. The fact that the actors, Writers, directors and crew members who made these films are interred at this cemetery is cool and creepy at the same time, Was Alfred Hitchcock's spirit looking in from the beyond at those gathered for this season's recent, packed screening of his masterpiece Rear Window! Or is old Hitch just a rotting pile of dust buried in a nearby plot, literally silent as the grave?