Although we’ve been on the
Sony lot many times for parties, a political rally, and even to see scenes filmed
from the former TV show Joan of Arcadia, we’ve never—in all the 15 years we’ve lived here—taken a formal tour of the
studios. Luckily, Sony is offering a twilight tour every Thursday this summer, so we went last week. It was very fun, even though
we didn’t learn anything new about the Hollywood side of Culver
City.
The tour started with a
short video history of how Sony started as MGM and then Lorimar studios before
its current incarnation. We also saw clips of MGM's most famous movies,
including It Happened One Night, On the Waterfront, Lawrence of Arabia, and
The Wizard of Oz. We then spent the next two hours walking around the lot,
eyeballing buildings named for classic movie stars, like Clark Gable, Joan
Crawford, Kate and Audrey Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy, and the recording stage,
named after Barbra Streisand. We also saw cars from recent Sony movies and TV
shows, ending the tour at the Jeopardy
museum, which celebrates the most beloved game show of all time.
Recent addition: an enormous rainbow
sculpture commemorating The
Wizard of Oz
Columbia Pictures, now a subsidiary of Sony,
is here, too
Sony offices that can double as movie sets, as needed
Vehicles from Green Hornet and TV show
Breaking Bad
The highlight, though, was
when our tour guide, Will, randomly selected three of us—two young people and
me—to rehearse and enact an improvised movie scene. The premise: the kids start
bickering when their mom (me) forgets the keys to their storage unit. Tim, of
course, was our cinematographer. Here’s our first rehearsal:
No Oscars, but not bad for someone who hasn't performed since 10th-grade Drama. Am I ready yet for my close-up?
1 comment:
Hey, you handled that so well -- you should think about being a young adult librarian!
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