Today we experienced Pandas on the biggest of screens, walked down Venice Beach, attended a double feature of Philadelphia and Brokeback Mountain and listened to the writers answer questions about their films.

It was interesting to hear what Ron Nyswaner had to say about how his own personal experience shaped the characters of Philadelphia. He spoke of listening to opera and crying in his own home and going to a place called ‘the love shack’ where he would go hot tub with his ‘straight friend’ (the director, Jonathan Demme). By talking through the story they would bring their personal experiences to the characters and in a way become the two main characters of their film.

Philadelphia was released in 1993 and was one of the first major Hollywood films to delve into the topics of homosexuality and AIDS. It was cool to watch the movie and then listen to Nyswaner talk about writing and handing over the screenplay to the studio for the first time. He was hesitant to compliment the studios, but in the case of Philadelphia he said he did not experience any push back. Instead, they actually loved everything about his script and said something along the lines of ‘this movie has to get made’ after reading it for the first time. Tom Hanks even came to them, because he heard about the film and wanted to be a part of it.

Earlier we watched pandas play, cuddle, eat bamboo on their backs and be adorable in the most state of the art IMAX theater in the world. The experience of just being in a theater that state of the art was unreal. The CEO of IMAX Entertainment, Greg Foster, showed us around the place and was the first person we met with so far who was wearing a suit. He was described as ‘the best in the business’ by his colleague.

Also Venice made for some great people watching. Everybody was riding these electric scooters that you apparently rent using an app on your phone. I know, sounds made up.

-Micah