I don’t believe in ghosts. But, on the off chance I’m wrong about this, I try my best not to piss off any ghosts I may encounter. That means I don’t step on graves, I try my very best not to build houses over ancient Native American burial grounds, and I keep my laughter to a respectful chuckle at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.
So when my editor told me to cover a late night outdoor movie screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, I wanted to turn down the assignment. Because LA-types drinking much box wine and smoking more pot while watching Johnny Depp in a cemetery seemed exactly like the sort of thing that would piss off a ghost… and most other entities that weren’t ghosts. But I also couldn’t explain why I wanted to turn down the assignment, because that would mean admitting to my boss that I sorta believed in ghosts and definitely believed in the fury of ghosts. And so I took the assignment. Because I fear ghosts, but I fear professional embarrassment even more.
After circling some of LA’s least parking friendly/most sex work friendly streets–
Fun fact: a gentleman frantically searching for a parking spot apparently looks almost identical to a gentleman frantically searching for a prostitute.
Additional fun fact: the sex workers around Santa Monica and Vine are surprisingly polite about any misunderstandings.
— I passed through the gates into the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
I walked down a dark road through the cemetery, flanked by tidy rows of graves, and distant mausoleums, with the never-quite-black LA night sky above me, the never-quite-cold LA night air around me, and Modern English’s “I Melt with You” echoing through distant speakers. It was ominous, and I no longer doubted the existence of ghosts.
With every step, I felt like I was walking into the first act of a horror movie. A horror movie that would begin (like all good horror movies do) with attractive people performing debauchery and unwitting blasphemy and one chubby guy with few lines, stupefied by it all, and it would soon turn (as all good horror movies turn) into boiling chaos and bloody judgment with generous pauses for inexplicable, strictly-top-half nudity sex scenes.
I knew I was the chubby guy with few lines in this scenario. And I knew, I knew more than anything, that chubby guys with few lines never make it far into the second act of horror movies.
But then I finally reached the end of that dark road, and I saw this.
And there were hipsters and box wine and dancing and balloons and a DJ and giant inflatable flamingos and giant-er beach balls, and many suggestive selfies taken on and around giant inflatable flamingos and even giant-er beach balls, and other acts of mild debauchery performed by attractive people. I expected all this, perhaps not the inflatable flamingos exactly, but something along those lines. What I didn’t expect was how appropriate it all felt.
Because the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is not like other cemeteries; the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is the final resting place for some of the biggest names in the history of entertainment — Douglas Fairbanks, Jayne Mansfield, Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone, even the dog from The Wizard of Oz — and entertainment types like a party, they love a party, for many of them, it’s the very reason why they’re in that cemetery. So being at this party did not feel sacrilegious or disrespectful or even the slightest bit in bad taste. I didn’t feel like I was pissing off any ghosts, but participating in the best, and most appropriate, tribute to the people in those graves, to the people who loved a party when they were alive, to the people who loved attention even more.
I no longer felt like the chubby guy with few lines in a horror movie. I felt like the chubby guy with few lines in an enormous, fun, immaculately set-designed house party that only seems to exist in the final act of teen comedies. And being the chubby guy with few lines in a teen comedy is still not a great role to have, but it’s decidedly better than the first option.
Eventually, the music quieted, the dancing stopped, and the movie began. I was dreading this part; outdoor movie nights are almost as scary as vengeful ghosts. Because outdoor movie nights, wherever they are, always feel the same: tight quarters, grass allergies, some asshole with a tall camping chair right in front of you, regretting being the asshole who forgot his own tall camping chair, too many wedges of Trader Joe’s brie, too many forgotten cheese knives, too many desperate people fashioning primitive brie knives with Triscuit shards, trying to hear the movie, succeeding in hearing the chatter of every other miserable bastard around you, pretending you’re having a good time, pretending this is an acceptable way to watch a movie.
But it wasn’t like this at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. There were many of the same elements — the close quarters, the chatter, the brie — but I never felt any of the simmering annoyance and eventual fury that comes from these things. Maybe that was just because the speakers were louder than the chatter, but I think it was something else. Because the people at this outdoor movie night were not like the other people at other outdoor movie nights I have attended. They weren’t at the cemetery because they were too cheap for a regular movie, creatively stymied for date ideas, or to find new and creative ways of breaking the social contract…they went to the cemetery to have a good time and enjoy the movie.
So I leaned back, and I watched Edward Scissorhands projected on the side of the mausoleum, and I thought about when Tim Burton was good and why that stopped, and I thought about how much weed the people next to me were smoking and at what point that amount would turn fatal, and I thought about the few stars in the sky and the many police helicopters, but mostly, I just enjoyed the movie.
And ghosts aren’t real, I’m almost certain they aren’t real, but if they were real, I’m sure they would have enjoyed that movie, too.
Movie screenings at Hollywood Forever Cemetery run through September 17. For more information and to buy tickets, visit cinespia.org.
Ben Esch is a former security guard, and current writer living in Los Angeles. Here is his Twitter, and here is where you can buy his book. Please buy his book.
