ELECTRIC DUSK DRIVE IN & SECRET MOVIE CLUB present PARKING LOT CINEMA!

Part of our HIGH SCHOOL DOUBLE ALBUM DOUBLE FEATURE series. Saturday, August 15, 2020. 8:15pm  DAZED & CONFUSED (1993. written & directed by Richard Linklater, Universal, 103mns, Digital) & 10:30pm FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982, directed by Amy Heckerling, Universal Studios, 93mns, Digital)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Gates will open for our First Movie at 6:45pm.  If you are just attending the second movie, please arrive no earlier than 10pm so we can allow all FIRST FEATURE only attendees to leave and get you in quickly!

PARKING LOT: Sears Parking Lot across the street from 211 West California Avenue, Glendale, California 91203.  The actual entrance to the parking lot is on West California Avenue between North Central Avenue and North Orange Street.  

HOW TO: While we all work to be socially responsible during the age of coronavirus, Electric Dusk Drive In & Secret Movie Club are partnering to put on a Parking Lot Cinema series.  Each week, we will be screening movies on a great inflatable screen in a great parking lot location in Los Angeles.

Make sure when you purchase your ticket(s), you do the following:

1)PURCHASE EITHER THE DOUBLE FEATURE MAIN TICKET ($37) which includes a $25 car fee and the first ticket at $12 per person. This gets you into BOTH Features.

OR PURCHASE A SINGLE FEATURE EARLY BIRD TICKET ($23) which includes a $15 car fee and the first ticket at $8 per person. This gets you into the single FEATURE you select by title.

2) GO TO ADD ONS: Purchase either an additional $12 per person ticket (for BOTH Features) or an additional $8 per person ticket (for a SINGLE FEATURE) for however many other people after the first person will be in the car. We will be doing a count at the gate. 

PLEASE NOTE TICKETS THE DAY OF AND AT THE GATE WILL BE $20 per car + $8 per ticket for a single screening. 

3)PRE-ORDER ANY CONCESSIONS & POSTERS you would like from the additional Add-Ons. We will have everything waiting for you at the gate. 

To attend, you need  a car with an FM radio. We will space out cars to make sure folks can always maintain 6 feet of distance. We ask that folks stay in their cars unless they need to use the portable restroom. Whenever you are out of your car, you are required to wear a mask. 

We will have hand sanitizer, masks, and gloves for sale for folks who need them. WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU BRING ALL THESE THINGS ON YOUR OWN.

For the foreseeable future, we will be screening our movies at the great spacious Sears Parking Lot in Glendale, California.  Please read through the Frequently Asked Questions for more thorough instructions after our description.

Our partnership with Electric Dusk Drive In (a wonderful home grown Los Angeles pop-up street cinema organization: https://www.electricduskdrivein.com/) continues this weekend when we time travel across HIGH SCHOOL DECADES with DAZED AND CONFUSED (1970’s) and FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1980’s). 

Each decade has produced a classic HIGH SCHOOL movie which is distinct from a TEEN MOVIE. The High School movie aims to capture a big picture look at teenage society in a specific moment while also looking at the universal rites of passage of all adolescents. In the 1970’s that movie was George Lucas’s American Graffiti. In the 1980’s, it was Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In the 1990’s, it was Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused.

First up at 8:15pm, we travel back to 1976 and Texas with Richard Linklater’s follow up feature to his break out festival hit Slacker.  We follow an ensemble of different teenagers of all stripes, personalities, confidence levels across the first night of summer as they try to negotiate their future plans, their current romantic relationships, and have the greatest night of their life.

Linklater has always had an amazing ability to marry a laid back approach with an incredibly sharp and perceptive eye for human nature.  We recognize many teen archetypes in this movie from Ben Affleck’s hyper-aggressive bully jock to Matthew McConaughey’s career making role as that dude that still hangs out with high school kids to a trio of nerdy friends who have to overcome their own hang-ups to have a good time to a high school freshman suddenly thrust into the world of pre-adulthood. 

Along the way we get great music, amazing cars, hilarious scenes, and a single night we will remember the rest of our lives. 

Next, at 10:30pm, we screen the Amy Heckerling directed, Cameron Crowe written Fast Times at Ridgemont High which looks at high school in the early 1980’s.  Fascinatingly, some things definitely stay the same-the Stoner Philosopher, the intense desire and want to experience romantic love-while we get glimpses here of a more intense, more realistic world.  Cameron Crowe, who would go on to write and direct Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, among others, clearly loves and feels for his characters.

At the same time, more so than in any other movie he would do, Crowe also shows us the repercussions, consequences, and not-so-fun parts of being a teen: the horrible minimum wage jobs, the romantic partners who turn out to be unreliable or jerks.

Heckerling directed the movie with such energy, she created a number of all-time hilarious scenes from Sean Penn’s breakout moments as stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli to Judge Reinhold’s senior year from hell moments switching jobs and bombing out with the women he secretly fantasizes about. 

We also get, as in Dazed and Confused, a who’s who of many actors who would go on to be huge-Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold-would all appear in countless 80’s movies. 

So let’s put on the High School Double Album and enjoy all the stone-cold classic tracks. 

Each successive week, we aim to surprise you with a diverse slate of all-time great movies and give all of us the 2020 movie summer you deserve!

 Best always,

Craig Hammill

35mm Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer

“HOW TO” AND FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR OUR PARKING LOT CINEMA SERIES

HOW TO: 

For now, our Parking Lot Cinema events will be held at the Sears Parking Lot across the street from 211 West California Avenue, Glendale, California 91203.  The actual entrance to the parking lot is on West California Avenue between North Central Avenue and North Orange Street.  

You will need a car with FM radio to attend.   Gate will open at 6:45pm so folks have plenty of time to find the lot, get a good space. We will begin our pre-show/introduction at 8pm and the first movie will start promptly at 8:15pm.

IMPORTANT: If you are only attending the second feature, please arrive no earlier than 10pm so we can get everyone attending the first feature out of the lot, so we can get you in and start the movie!

We will be pre-selling concessions and posters here on Eventbrite to start so everything is as easy as possible. We will hand you your poster and all your concessions AT THE GATE when you enter. 

PURCHASE EITHER THE DOUBLE FEATURE MAIN TICKET ($37) which includes a $25 car fee and the first ticket at $12 per person. This gets you into BOTH Features.

OR PURCHASE A SINGLE FEATURE EARLY BIRD TICKET ($23) which includes a $15 car fee and the first ticket at $8 per person. This gets you into the single FEATURE you select by title.

GO TO ADD ONS: Purchase either an additional $12 per person ticket (for BOTH Features) or an additional $8 per person ticket (for a SINGLE FEATURE) for however many other people after the first person will be in the car. We will be doing a count at the gate. 

PLEASE NOTE TICKETS THE DAY OF AND AT THE GATE WILL BE $20 per car + $8 per ticket for a single screening. 

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GONE TO THE "ADD ONS" section in EVENTBRITE to purchase your ADDITIONAL PERSON(S) IN CAR tickets.  We will be doing a count when we check you in at the gate.

We do offer a VIP package for $100.00 which gets your car a first row space for the entire double feature. You can have up to 4 people total in the car at no additional charge. And you get a CONCESSIONS package of 4 sodas/waters/iced teas,  2 popcorns packets, & 2 regular sized candies.  If you PURCHASE the VIP TICKET there is no need to purchase any additional per person add-ons. 

We can offer refunds for requests made MORE than 24 hours before showtime through Eventbrite. After that, no refunds. Sorry. 

As we fine tune these screenings, we will be bringing food trucks, speakers, more variety. But for this first weekend, we JUST want to focus on quality and having a great time. 

We highly recommend that you bring a sweater, jacket, or a few layers of clothes just in case it gets a little chilly and you don’t want to run your car. 

We will also have portable restrooms which are cleaned daily AND in between movies.  

TICKETS & REFUNDS: Because of the special nature of these screenings, we can not offer discounted series passes. We can offer refunds for requests made through Evenbrite more than 24 HOURS before screening time.

After that, no refunds. Sorry. But we can offer you complimentary tickets to a future Secret Movie Club screening as long as it hasn’t sold out and isn’t a special screening with a different pricing structure.

WHAT IF I HAD TICKET(S) TO A SECRET MOVIE CLUB SCREENING THAT GOT POSTPONED DUE TO COVID AND WANT TO USE IT HERE? We will be reserving 10 spaces per screening for folks who want to transfer their tickets to one of our Parking Lot Cinema events. We will still need to charge you for the car ($25) but we won’t charge for the tickets. 

Please email us at: community@secretmovieclub.com as soon as you can if you want to attend so we can reserve you one of these spaces. Once these 10 spaces fill up, you will have to either pay full price or request a different event. 

WHAT IF I HAVE A SECRET MOVIE CLUB LIFETIME, SPRING OR SUMMER 2020 SEASON, OR SERIES PASS? Lifetime Pass holders do get automatic admission to all our events so that includes our Parking Lot Cinema events.  Please just email us at community@secretmovieclub.com to let us know you will be attending.

For Spring and Summer 2020 Season and Series Pass holders who had their events delayed due to our COVID postponements, we can’t transfer those passes to the Parking Lot Cinema series because of the special nature and different pricing structure of this series.

HOWEVER, if you write us at community@secretmovieclub.com, we will do our best to get you entrance into at least a few of these screenings as a thank you for your patience.  We will have to charge the $25 car fee but we will waive the per person ticket fee. And your Season or Series pass will STILL BE GOOD once we return to theatrical screenings.

WHAT PRECAUTIONS AND MEASURES ARE YOU TAKING SO THESE EVENTS ARE SAFE DURING THE COVID PANDEMIC?

All our staff will have gloves, masks, and work to maintain 6 feet of distance.

We are working to make these events as touch-less as possible. Therefore we ask that you purchase your tickets and all concessions, movie posters, etc THROUGH Eventbrite prior to the event.  That way we can just check you off our list, hand you your concessions/posters, and guide you to your parking space.

We will work to have masks, gloves, hand sanitizer for sale at our events. 

BUT WE DO HIGHLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO BRING ALL THESE THINGS YOURSELVES.

We will have portable restrooms which are routinely cleaned BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER EACH AND EVERY SCREENING.

HOW WILL THESE MOVIES BE SCREENED: For the time being all movies will be screened digitally. While our first love is 35mm, to make these events happen in parking lots, we do need to screen movies digitally. However, we have taken every step to make sure the image and sound are of the highest quality so you have a great cinematic experience. We will also be doing LIVE IN PERSON INTRODUCTIONS as we did for our theatrical screenings.

WILL THERE BE SINGLE FEATURES AND/OR FAMILY FEATURES? Yes! We will occasionally be screening single features of longer length and single family features.  Pleasencheck our website (secretmovieclub.com), our Social Media (@secretmovieclub35mm @secretmovieclub), and our Eventbrite page: http://secretmovieclub.eventbrite.com each Monday at 1pm for newly announced events.

HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:

You can always email us at community@secretmovieclub.com with any other questions, thoughts, recommendations.