Story here. I saw live footage on BBC Television awhile ago, and it looks huge.
Firs is still burning CNN story
King Kong exhibit, and courthouse square from Back to the Future destroyed, film vault appears to be OK, but a video vault was destroyed.
Wow.
I saw some smoke on the horizon when I drove down to the Marina this AM, but I just saw the news.
It’s made it to british TV news.
Didn’t the pinewood studios James Bond stage burn down a few years ago?
Article. 40,000 to 50,000 films lost in a vault.
Well, that’s good to hear. What’s a little scary is that I was thinking of going over to universal today.
You could have filmed the whole thing and turned into a major motion picture.
it looked a huge fire this morning. quite the early morning alarm for the universal folks. imagine the 4 something in the morning phone call. “your backlots on fire, might want to cancel any tours out that way.”
Glad the theme park is mostly unharmed, since I’m going in a few weeks.
I’m glad the films weren’t irreplacable- a lot of original prints of MGM films were destroyed in a fire in 1967. But the loss of the BTTF clock tower set and the King Kong prop is saddening. Kong can probably be replaced, of course, but the clock tower is such an iconic movie setting.
CNN says the fire destroyed areas such as New York Street and Courthouse Square, which have been used as street sets in hundreds of films and TV shows over the years.
The good news is that these buildings are built for show, and don’t consist of very much more than decorated plywood facades. Rebuilding them should be a snap.
I don’t know why. It’s a typical brush fire. There will be more. I’m over the hill. It makes biking and jogging hard on the lungs. They can put up those sets anywhere else they want.
Not many films are still shot there. Those sets make more money for the theme park than for the movie business.
I’ve combined the threads in Cafe Society and MPSIMS.
Your fourth and fifth sentences constitute one of the most unusual non sequiturs I’ve encountered since reading Milkbottle H.
New York Street was rebuilt once before, after it was burned down in 1990.
I think he meant he lives just over the hill from the fire, and the smoke is affecting his lungs when he jogs.
Correction: although many fake buildings in Courthouse Square burned down, the iconic courthouse/clock tower itself suffered only minor damage. Thank goodness. I was afraid Marty would be stuck in the past forever.
It’s now being reported that Universal Music rented space in the video vault. Thousands of ABC, MCA, and Decca master recordings have been lost forever.
It is now being reported the music masters were NOT destroyed- most of the masters had been moved out of the vault, and whatever ones remained had digital and hard-copy backups elsewhere. Thank God!
???
I’m trying to say that it’s not all that important that some sets got burned down. More important to me is that the smoke just makes the usual smog all the worse.
Maybe you thought “I’m over the hill” to mean “I’m getting on in years.” It meant, in this case, “I live over the hill from Universal Studios.” Literally.
Universal Studios is not in Hollywood. It’s in Studio City. I live in East Hollywood. There is a hill between us. Specifically, the hill that has that sign on it (“HOLLYWOOD”).