ELECTRIC DUSK & SECRET MOVIE CLUB present PARKING LOT CINEMA!
Part of our JOHN HUGHES TO THE RESCUE DOUBLE FEATURE series. Friday, August 7, 2020. 8:15pm FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986. written & directed by John Hughes, Paramount, 103mns, Digital) & 10:30pm THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985, written & directed by John Hughes, Universal, 97mns, Digital)
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 & 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 THE MAIN TICKET ($37) which is includes a $25 car fee and the first ticket at $12 per person.
2)GO TO ADD ONS: Purchase additional $12 per person tickets for however many other people after the first person will be in the car. We will be doing a count at the gate.
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.
We kick off our partnership with Electric Dusk (a wonderful home grown Los Angeles pop-up street cinema organization: https://www.electricduskdrivein.com/) with a weekend we’re calling JOHN HUGHES TO THE RESCUE. Friday night we’re screening a double feature of FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF & THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Saturday night we’re screening a double feature of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION & WEIRD SCIENCE.
Writer/Director John Hughes owned 1980’s teen movies the way Steven Spielberg owned fantasy/sci-fi/action-adventure blockbusters. They both made tremendously popular, influential films that somehow managed to maintain a sincere heart and strong authorial voice.
Most of Hughes’ movies starting with his debut as a writer National Lampoon’s Vacation through 1987’s Some Kind of Wonderful focused on, or had as central characters, American teenagers going through the trials and tribulations of adolescence.
And a John Hughes movie always had a certain amazing vibe: laugh out loud comedy, great scenes, memorable characters, a killer soundtrack, and often an affecting, surprisingly emotional ending.
One of the greatest Hughes movies of all is 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Hilariously, this movie was mostly written in ONE NIGHT when the producer of The Breakfast Club got frustrated that Hughes had not yet finished that screenplay and so locked Hughes in his own house to finish it.
He heard Hughes typing upstairs and felt good. Hours later, Hughes came down with 60 pages. . .not for The Breakfast Club but for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The Producer would have been furious but the pages were so good!
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off follows high school junior mastermind Ferris Bueller as he figures out a way to persuade his anxious best friend Cameron to join him in springing Ferris’s girlfriend Simone out of high school so they can all ditch and have a great day in Chicago. Along the way, Ferris infuriates his older sister, Jeanie, and his Principal Ed Rooney who is determined to catch Ferris red-handed and force Ferris to re-take junior year.
Somehow from this simple ditch day idea, John Hughes crafts his masterpiece about teenage friendships, sibling relationships, and that magic moment when you have to really come to understand and respect your friends’ individuality and right to make their own choices.
Next on the double feature bill is Hughes’ beloved The Breakfast Club. Many John Hughes fans often cite either Ferris or Breakfast Club as their favorite Hughes (though not ALL!). In The Breakfast Club, John Hughes took another seemingly simple teenage right of passage-Saturday all-day detention-and turned it into a metaphor for how truly complex and in-flux most of us are in our teen years.
We meet what we think are teen stereotypes-the Princess, the Rebel, the Nerd, the Jock, the Misfit-all forced to do Saturday detention with the worst principal ever. At first, of course, they have nothing in common and can’t wait for the day to be over. But as they get to know each other, and go beneath the surface of their stereotypes, they come to realize that they may be more complex and stronger together than fighting each other.
In a way, Hughes made the teen movie Shakespearean. He recognized something that should have been obvious: if many of the greatest movies are about complex adult characters, those complex adult characters HAD to first be complex teenagers.
In this age of COVID, John Hughes comes to the rescue to start off our Parking Lot Cinema series. 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.
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.
For now, you pay a single car fee ($25) and then a single ticket fee ($12 per person) which gets you admission into BOTH movies. So for instance, if you had a car with two people, the total charge would be $49.00 for the entire double feature/evening.
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 may eventually be moving to a model where you can purchase a ticket for just ONE movie. But for now, to keep everything simple/streamlined, and make sure the experience is great, please know you are purchasing a ticket for the entire night and both movies.
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.