Showbiz Is Neat!

It may not look like much, but this is a notice that they're going to be filming a real showbiz film right here at the Rivoli. Actually, it's down in the noisy and depraved See Sound Lounge, but it's still in the building. The Rivoli's run-ins with movie glamour are few but notable. The Alan Rudolph feature Trouble in Mind was filmed here owing to the nicely customized apartments and presumably low fees they had to pay. I mean, it was 1985 and half the building's units were uninhabitable. But you couldn't tell it from watching the movie. I don't remember much about it other than it's set in some kind of mythical American fascist society and that Divine gets killed in it. Oh, and Lori Singer takes lots of baths.

This feature is called Safety Not Guaranteed. One of my waggish neighbors is correct; it's not the greatest title in the world. But it does star the lovely Kristen Bell, the very funny Aubrey Plaza (from Parks and Recreation) and Mary Lynn Rajskub, who was about the only character on 24 besides Kiefer Sutherland who didn't get killed or go insane. It's unknown whether any of these folks will be in this scene. The mighty imdb tells me nothing else about this effort, except that it's partly produced by the Duplass brothers who brought you the enjoyable Cyrus and the past SIFF feature, Baghead, which I actually saw. It wasn't bad at all.

Let's wish all of these showbiz people luck. They're better than us.

The Fabulous Baker Boys - An Epic Journey

OK, I've wanted to do this for such a long time: take Jeff Bridges' opening sojourn scene by scene from its origins in Belltown to its conclusion at the Mayflower Park Hotel. It's pretty hilarious. Oh, and for the record, I really hate Dave Grusin's soundtrack for the entire film. But this intro does give JB some inoffensive walkin' around music.

1. He starts off at 1st & Vine at the New Pacific Apartments. The Captain's Landing Restaurant closed down soon after this was shot. It became Two Dagos from Texas (a very nice faux-biker bar & restaurant) until it morphed into the hip austerity of the present Black Bottle. So JB crosses Vine and dashes across 1st, heading either downtown or to the waterfront.
2. Jeez! Suddenly, we're all the way across downtown and into the fringes of Pioneer Square at 2nd Ave S & S Main. Incidentally, the Union Gospel Mission is still in that same spot. And here, JB is walking away from downtown.
3. Jump back to 1st & Pike, downtown. We're right across the street from the Pike Place Market. That same strip club is still there. Gosh, that's way more than two decades of stripping! OK, so JB has retreated more than a half mile back towards Belltown, yet he's headed in the same direction.
4. He's suddenly a block down at 1st & Union, but headed in the opposite direction. By the way, Freedman's Loans is long gone, but it retains a place in my heart, because I bought my very first saxophone there. It was a piece of junk, but what did I know? Seattle Music is also gone, but they never sold me anything memorable, so who cares?
5. We're back again at 1st & Pike, but now he's in the Market, walking past Il Bistro on the ramp going down to Post Alley. He takes the stairs up to where the Market guys throw fish.
6. Now he's somewhere in the Market's stalls. Once again, he's changed direction, heading back toward those stairs he just climbed.
7. This is the craziest jump of them all. Suddenly, he's on the waterfront, emerging from Ivar's Fish Bar on Alaskan Way. The soon-to-be-demolished (well, fairly soon) viaduct looms in the background. Somebody told me that Ivar was gay. I wonder how true that can possibly be. OK, so now JB is heading north toward Ballard, Canada and Alaska.
8. And whaddaya know, he arrives at his gig at the Mayflower Park Hotel situated at 4th & Olive, just over the Belltown border. And he's made it with just two minutes to spare!

So I've thought about this in terms of how long it would take to get from 1st & Vine to 4th & Olive and I come up with about 12 minutes. It's 10 blocks. If you took JB's route wanna know how long it would take? At least two hours. He switches directions so often and ends up in such weird places that it might even take more time. And I'd imagine that he'd show up to his gig quite sweaty, too. I know I would! Anyhow, that's how the intro plays out for the FBBs. Aside from the sucky Dave Grusin soundtrack, it's a pretty good film.