23 April

At 8:00 on Friday, April 23, it was up and at 'em for my mother and myself, so that we could get to the Egyptian Theater to see "2001: A Space Odyssey". While in line outside the theater, we talked to some fellow film fans about just how awesome this festival really was. We all agreed that the red carpet event had been absolutely wonderful. Finally, the doors of the Egyptian Theater opened, and mom and I got seats in the balcony.
Then the movie started. If I had to pick one word to describe this event it would be "GRANDIOSE!" The bold and majestic soundtrack was played really... really... loud, so that it was almost deafening. Save for the Star Wars Trilogy (the original one), I had never seen so many beautiful shots of outer space, and I could just feel myself getting sucked in, which would have been pretty bad. After the film ended there was a short Q&A with Doug Trumbull, the man in charge of the special effects for the film. I got up the courage to ask him a question. I asked him how long it had taken to film the movie, and he said it had taken about two to three years, from around 1965 to 1967 or 1968.
After "2001", we ran over to Grauman's for "Sweet Smell of Success", 1957 Film-Noir movie, starring Tony Curtis as a crooked press agent who helps his client, a respected columnist played by Burt Lancaster, to interfere with Lancaster's younger sister's love life. The film was introduced by the man himself--Tony Curtis. At the respectable age of 84, Mr. Curtis was in a wheel chair, and had white hair and a wheeze to his voice, but he spoke with the air of a gallant soldier who had fought in many battles and had loved every minute of it, because it was just who he was and it was what he was born to do. I liked that. He then began complementing one lady in the front row for having nice legs. That stirred the theater up laughing.
After "Sweet Smell of Success", mother and I took a break from the cinema and adjourned to our room in the Roosevelt Hotel. But we were back before too long at Grauman's for a screening of "The Producers", directed by Mel Brooks from 1968. Mel Brooks himself made an appearance to introduce the film, and had the whole theater in stitches. The man is just hilarious! He was telling us how Kenneth Mars got the role of the German playwright. He had originally wanted Dustin Hoffman to play the part, but Hoffman was offered another part in "The Graduate" alongside Mel Brooks' wife, Anne Bancroft. The movie had only been playing for fifteen minutes and the audience, (myself included,) was howling with laughter. After the movie had ended, I was still thinking, "It's springtime for Hitler, yata yata yata" inside my head. In the semi-rare occasion I would actually start singing, my mom would look at me with an, "Are you sure you're alright?" look on her face.
The last film we saw today was "Top Hat", from 1935 at Mann's, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. What a great movie! I loved watching Fred Astaire make pass after pass at Ginger Rogers, only to be blocked every time. Of course they end up falling in love at the end of the film (of course, it's Hollywood) and they close the film in classic Fred and Ginger style, with a big song and dance number. It was another late night out at the movies, and I was trying not to fall asleep in the theater. But, I kept telling myself, my hotel was just across the street, so I had no trouble just saying, "Yeah, let's see that movie at 11:00." Besides, for an event so new as this, you gotta do things that defy ordinary routine! And tomorrow night, I would stay out at the cinema even later.