Larry Richman's take on Eclipse premiere

I am a big fan of Larry's he is a true, honest journalist.  You can always count on him to set the record straight and give you good information.  Here is what he tweeted today about his thoughts on the Eclipse premiere.  Very insightful and good to know.
On Sunday 4th April 2010, @larry411 said:
CORRECTED: Here is everything I can tell you about the #Eclipse premiere. First you may want to see this excellent piece at @TwilightLexicon about the saving of the Westwood theaters where Twilight Saga films premiered:http://bit.ly/dh7zOq

The LA Film Festival takes place from June 17-27. It is in Westwood. In fact, the streets that were closed off and the theaters used for the Twilight and New Moon premieres just happen to be the same streets and theaters used by the LA Film Festival. Summit has confirmed that the LA premiere of Eclipse will be June 24 with location to be announced. That is the Thursday night before the end of the LA Film Festival. If the premiere is at the same theaters as New Moon it would be at the same time and location as the LAFF. They would have 2 choices: be part of the festival or disrupt the festival by taking over the venues and blocks that are being used for the festival. That is highly unlikely.

Well, the LAFF is for little indies, you may say. No! Every year they have an Opening Night Film (Thu 6/17), Centerpiece Film, and Closing Night Film which are usually big movies about to open in theaters. They also have other Gala or special premieres within the time frame of the festival that are run in a joint venture between the festival and studio with tickets sold by the festival. For example, last year Transformers premiered there right before it opened. That was a much much bigger film than New Moon and was the #2movie of 2009, behind Avatar. Journey to the Center of the Earth was there the year before.

There are obvious advantages of having Eclipse premiere there as part of or in connection with the festival. Obviously they would be able to close off the same streets as for New Moon and utilize more than one theater if they wanted to. They would not be able to do that at Grauman's, for example, which is another theater that hosts movie premieres, and which has been mentioned as a possible location. Grauman's is at Hollywood and Highland in the middle of a busy urban area that is generally only closed off for the Oscars. It is doubtful that any tickets would be made available to the public since it's one theater and that kind of premiere is usually VIP only by invitation. Premieres are generally accessible to the public only when they are part of festivals which can then sell tickets. That's why being part of LAFF would allow people to attend. Tickets would be sold by the LAFF.

Camping out in the middle of Hollywood would be dangerous if it's even allowed. It's like Times Square in New York. Camping out near UCLA where New Moon premiered is an experience we've already seen and we know it works. I'm not saying they will allow it but we know it can be done, whereas it's highly unlikely it can be done at Grauman's.

And of course, Eclipse would benefit from all the promotion it would get by the LA Film Festival. So it is clearly a win/win/win for the fans, the film, and the festival if it happens there.

LAFF usually announces its films beginning in early May, about a month from now. They roll out the announcements gradually over the course of the month.

Here is their site:
http://lafilmfest.com/2009/index.php

I always have press credentials so I get the press releases first, and will be posting everything on my blog as I get them:
http://www.pronetworks.org/independent_films/

If you go to their site you can navigate through but they won't be selling tickets to the big premieres until after they are announced. That will probably be in May. They sell passes and packages as you can see at the link "TICKETS" on that page but most of those do not include big gala premieres. For those you have to buy them separately when they go on sale.

You just have to keep checking the site as May approaches and they start to announce the films and ticket sales details. That's about all the answers to all the questions I've been getting that I can think of!
Source
xoxo
Carrie