Hollywood & Santa Monica

The last two days of my trip will be a bit themed around Back To The Future. Today I visited a gym that is part of the United Methodist Church in Hollywood.

This particular gym was used for filming the pivotal 'Enchantment Under The Sea' dance in the first two movies. They sometimes do reenactments of the dance, so the gym is often set up to look the same way as it did in the movies.

When I visited today, they also had some props and signed guitars, and stuff related to the movie. So even though in real life, it's used as a gym connected to a church, they still embrace the significance of the history of the movie, even 40 years later.

Normally the location is not open to the public, but after reaching out to them, I was lucky to be invited to visit today. It was really cool to see this iconic location in person, especially since it mostly looks the same today as it did in the movie.

Later, I went on a two-hour guided tour of film locations. There are tons of tours in Hollywood focused on going by celebrity homes and places like Beverly Hills and the Hollywood Hills. This is currently the only tour focused on movie locations which I'm really into. The tour was great and also included a lot of rock n' roll history. The guide previously worked in various jobs in the industry, for example as a journalist interviewing celebrities for E! Entertainment. So he had a lot of fun stories. We also saw some interesting locations along the way from movies like Lethal Weapon, The Italian Job, and Speed.

I had lunch at the legendary diner Mel's Drive In, and then checked into my final hotel of this trip - the historic Biltmore Hotel in Downtown.

Speaking of film locations - a big scene from Ghostbusters was filmed at this hotel (in the room which is now the lobby), and it has been used in countless other productions. Since there have been many Ghostbusters moments on this trip, it's coming full circle by ending at the hotel that is often associated with the movie.

In keeping with the Back to the Future theme as well, I spent the evening in the company of Crispin Glover who played George McFly in the first movie. He is a very ... peculiar man in real life. He is still an actor, but also makes his own films almost entirely, and he was screening his latest one in Santa Monica this evening.

Before the movie, he did a slideshow of snippets from books he has made. I can't even retell what it was about, because it made no sense to me. Super weird. Then he screened his movie, which was also really weird.

After that, he did a Q&A which ran for over an hour and was the most interesting part for me. Aside from seeing George McFly in person, it was also interesting to learn more about how he works and his whole process.

Eventually, he did autographs and photos (at which point it was past 11 PM) but the line was so long that I decided to skip it. Fortunately, I met him when he did a similar event in Copenhagen a few years ago, where he presented his previous movie.

The only way to see his movies is by attending these events at a movie theater, which has a certain charm to it, in this on-demand streaming age.Read more