The hook
On summer nights, a few thousand people spread blankets on the lawn of a Hollywood cemetery and watch a movie projected on a mausoleum wall, surrounded by the graves of the people who built the movies.
01Why it's worth it
Hollywood Forever has been burying the film industry since 1899, and it shares a wall with Paramount, so its residents read like a silent-era call sheet: Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille, Fay Wray, and the gangster Bugsy Siegel among them. What makes it a living place rather than a solemn one is what happens on warm nights. Since 2002 the group Cinespia has projected classic films onto the side of a mausoleum while the audience picnics on the grass among the headstones, an experience that's equal parts movie night, party, and memento mori. In late October the cemetery hosts the largest Día de los Muertos celebration in the country. It's a genuinely LA idea, that the dead and the movies and a good time all belong together.
02How to experience it
It's on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, about six hours from the Bay. The grounds are open by day to walk quietly among the graves. The summer movie screenings need tickets bought well ahead and a blanket; the Day of the Dead festival is a ticketed event in late October. It's still a working cemetery, so come respectfully whichever way you visit.