Who ya gonna call?

By Dan Sarto

Our day began at Sony Pictures in Culver City.  We watched a short film detailing the history of the studio dating back to brothers Harry and Jack Cohn’s 1918 partnership with Joe Brandt to form CBC Film Sales, or as it was then known as Corn Beef and Cabbage.  CBC became Columbia Pictures Corporation in 1924, with original offices located on Gower Street in Hollywood. The studio’s fortunes changed dramatically with the hiring of Frank Capra in 1927, who over the next decades helped chart a course of excellence starting with their first Best Picture Oscar in 1934 for It Happened One Night.  The list of legendary films produced at the studio is immense, including From Here to Eternity, Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia, Taxi Driver, Gandhi, Ghostbusters and The Last Emperor to name but a few.  Sony purchased the studio from Coca Cola in 1989, changed its name to Sony Picture Entertainment and relocated to the former MGM lot in Culver City.  I’ve skipped numerous pieces of the studio’s story, including the growth of its vast TV operations, and of course, the creations of Sony Pictures Imageworks and Sony Pictures Animation, our ultimate destination for the morning tour and screening.

Patrick Doyon (Dimanche/Sunday) and his co-producer Michael Fukushima beside two very famous movie rides. The Ghostbusters Ectomobile is a working model, while the Green Hornet's Black Beauty has no engine.

By Zoe Chevat

 Bright and early on Wednesday morning, the directors and producers from three of this year's Oscar-nominated animated shorts joined AWN and tour organizer Ron Diamond on the Sony Pictures studio lot. The nominees, some still recovering from jet lag, were nonetheless eager to see what another full day in Hollywood had in store for them. After a quick promotional video on the studio lot's history and its decades of hand-changing, the group was off, blue windbreaker-clad guide speeding us through screen legend past and present.

First up was the restored Deco facade of the Columbia Pictures building, once home to the plush, all-white office of famed producer Louis B. Mayer. Its lobby serves an equally illustrious purpose now; showcasing the studio's 12 Oscars, from 1934’s It Happened One Night up to 1987's win for The Last Emperor. Such splendor does not sit idle, either. As we were informed, this particular building, like many other administrative offices on the lot, has been used in the studio's productions. Take away the sign over the doorway, and you might recognize Peter Parker's high school from the first trilogy of Spider-Man movies. As one might expect, the lot is full of such pieces of film history both classic, and esoteric. We paused at the original MGM studio gates, kept in pristine condition, and protected by the city of Los Angeles as a historic landmark. Just past the familiar wrought-iron and gold were a couple things even more familiar to some; shooting cars from the Ghostbusters franchise, and the studio's recent Green Hornet.