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The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures just installed the last surviving full-scale shark model from Jaws. Guests to the museum will be able to see the toothy beast when the museum opens in April of 2021, but it will also be visible from outside at Fairfax Ave. and 6th St.

The 25-foot-long, 1,208-pound predator is nicknamed “Bruce the Shark” and was created by art director Joe Alves specifically for Jaws. According to the museum, Bruce was the fourth model made from the original mold. The first three were cast in latex and rubber. They later rotted and were destroyed. This one was cast in fiberglass and used in photo ops with tourists at Universal Studios Hollywood at the time of the film’s release in 1975. 

In 1990, Nathan Adlen took the model to his family junkyard in Sun Valley. When Adlen closed the junkyard in 2015, he sold or gave away its many possessions, including several pieces to the Valley Relics Museum and this shark to the Academy Museum. Greg Nicotero of KNB EFX was recruited to restore the shark to its original glory.  

Bruce is now the largest item in the museum’s collection. Because it would not fit in the elevator, staff had to remove two panels from the building’s glass wall and place Bruce via crane.

As I’m sure you are dying to know, Bruce has 116 teeth. 

The Academy Museum is scheduled to open on April 30, 2021, assuming we have indoor museums again by then.

Open now at The Beverly Center is “Heirs to the Throne,” a six-week pop-up gallery featuring work from Black contemporary artists. 

You’ll find the gallery on the sixth floor of the mall across from artist Karen Bystedt’s gallery and clothing shop The Lost Warhols. Bystedt curated the show with guest curators Diane Allen and Terrell Tilford (Band of Vices), saying via a release that she was inspired by The Broad’s “Soul of a Nation” exhibit.

“Heirs to the Throne” features artists including Bradley Theodore, Robert Peterson, Travion Payne, Caviar, Allison Saar, Genevieve Garnard, Tavares Strachan, Kehinde Wiley, Sage Gallon, and Karl Kani.

Inside, you’ll find Brad Branson’s portraits of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, a retrospective of fashion designer Karl Kani’s work, and a hanging assemblage sculpture from Sharon Louise Barnes made from discarded industrial materials, paper, and guitar strings.

Elsewhere, Benari Kamau shows a painting from his “Army of lovers” series, a 30-piece collection about the strength of women. This one depicts a woman in a shirt that reads “Army of Lovers” as she looks off into the distance. To her side, she holds a gun. Travion Payne has two stunning paintings in the exhibit, “Golden Abundance” and “Heteronormative Death of the golden child.” Per a release, Payne’s work “sheds light on controversial topics that will give insight into the issues that black men face. Issues such as mental illness in correlation with religion, colorism, homophobia, and fragile masculinity within the black community.” 

Opening night on Nov. 11 was a bit different than a typical art show with mask-wearing guests browsing the work in a once-busy mall that was mostly vacant otherwise. Just outside the gallery space stood a vending machine that sells PPE, including masks, sanitizer, and gloves. Or perhaps it’s better to say this is what a typical art opening looks like now. Either way, the gallery is open for viewing during the Beverly Center’s usual hours, and you’ll have to wear your mask here and everywhere else in the shopping center. Find more information here.

Rooftop Cinema Club is back, this time with The Drive-In at Santa Monica Airport. It kicks off on Nov. 27 with a “We Love LA” series featuring films set in and around Los Angeles, followed by a slew of holiday programming. 

Technically, the Santa Monica Airport does not offer a rooftop, but it’s still Rooftop Cinema Club helming the program. Movie-goers will drive into parking spaces 10 feet away from neighboring vehicles. The films are projected onto a 52-foot screen, while audio is piped through each car’s FM stereo. Guests may also bring a portable radio. There’s space for 150 cars each night. 

The We Love LA series includes the ‘90s comedy Clueless, Pulp Fiction, musicals La La Land and Grease, and more. In December, expect holiday classics like Elf, Home Alone, and The Nightmare Before Christmas alongside festive decor. Guests are also encouraged to “deck” their cars out in lights, tinsel, or other ornaments. Prizes will be awarded for the best car decorations on select nights. 

The experience is contact-free for COVID-19 safety. You must stay in your car to watch the movie and wear a face covering if you’re visiting the restroom or picking up concessions. Ordering and pickup of food and beverages are also contact-free, or you’re welcome to bring your own.  

Tickets start at $30 per car, depending on occupancy and screening time. But on Wednesdays at 5:15 p.m., Community Screenings are just $5 per car with two guests or $10 per car with three or more guests. All proceeds from these screenings will be donated to Los Angles Regional Food Bank and there will also be food drive boxes for donations at all screenings through Dec. 30. 

See the full lineup and get tickets here.

Mister and Mischief’s Objectivity: From Clutter to Clarity with Mary Del Campo is a different kind of Zoom theater experience. It’s a touching, funny, interactive show disguised as a self-help webinar on decluttering. The show examines the value we place in our possessions, starting with just one of your own.

In Objectivity, Mary Del Campo (Jessica Eckenrod Cherry) is a lifestyle guru who teaches her students how to find happiness by getting rid of objects they don’t need. The obvious real-life comparison here is organization expert Marie Kondo, whose most talked-about practice is to declutter by determining if objects “spark joy.”

“Many people think we are doing a parody of Marie Kondo and the various Marie Kondos of the world, but that implies that we are making fun of her, which we are not! We love her!” Andy Crocker, who co-founded Los Angeles immersive theater company Mister and Mischief with her husband, Jeff Crocker, told We Like.

Crocker sees value in examining our relationship to our things and the “emotional exploration” that might bring, but notes that all self-help practices are ultimately aspirational.

“And that can be tricky when media empires are being built on people’s hopes for a more perfect life. Especially when we, as a culture, are going through a large-scale mental health crisis,” Crocker said, before chiding herself for getting “too serious.”

In Objectivity, the fictional Del Campo asks her attendees to choose one item in their home they haven’t used since March. The obvious significance here is that March is when everything changed—when we stopped leaving our homes unless it was for jobs or activities considered “essential.”

I chose my wristwatch. Its battery stopped weeks ago, but I haven’t bothered to replace it. Time hasn’t really had much meaning since this whole at-home-all-the-time business began. Other guests brought unworn shoes, cosmetics, knick-knacks, and art supplies. Some objects were still in their original packaging, never used. 

Mary asked us questions about our objects and the value they held in our lives. At one point, she asked something to the effect of, “Are you holding onto your object in the hopes that your lifestyle will one day call for it?” Yes! I want a reason to need to know what time it is! I thought of all the times I’d worn it while traveling to keep track of how close I must be to my destination. I miss traveling. I miss trains. These days, it might as well always be 4:18, as my watch suggests. 

It’s hard to talk about what happens next because it’s endlessly more delightful if you don’t know what’s coming. So, I’ll just say that what ensues is a hilarious battle between minimalism and nostalgia, but there’s no clear winner. As Crocker says, “Decluttering allows us to think clearly, and mementos bring us comfort. Both are incredibly important as we try to get through tough times.”

In the end, it’s up to you to decide what your object means and if it’s worth keeping. Crocker said many audience members have emailed them to share their decisions.

“Some have mailed their objects to happier homes and in the process reconnected with old friends. Some have chucked their items straight into the trash. There is a woman who told us that though she is going to keep her object, and that it reminds her of a lost loved one,  it no longer makes her sad to see it. That’s the crazy twist. We set out to make a fake seminar… but I think we actually might be helping people!” Crocker said.

When Mister and Mischief began developing Objectivity, it wasn’t meant to be a Zoom show. But what they lost in having real-life show, they gained in reaching audience members around the world, especially through their partnership with The Warehouse Theater in Greenville, South Carolina. Each participant now joins with their own objects, streaming live from their homes and peering into one another’s.

“It makes everyone’s environment and experiences deeply personal. That could have never happened if we had built out a space to do the show. And because we were so early in development when we made the shift online, we were able to really tailor the piece online. We ended up creating a piece that felt just like a webinar because it was one. We weren’t interested in pretending Zoom was anything other than what it is. We ended up making site-specific theatre, but the site is Zoom,” Crocker said. 

People keep telling me they’re “Zoomed out,” but if there’s one thing I’ve learned as someone who’s participated in and reviewed several online shows since March, it’s that there are things that work and things that don’t. I like a show that clocks in at an hour or shorter, requires me to do things other than just stare at it, uses the platform’s tools at least a few times (breakout sessions, chat, etc.), and interacts without being too demanding. It also does not hurt if it’s funny, which Objectivity nails.

I ended up keeping my object, but sometimes I wear it, even though it doesn’t correctly tell time.

Objectivity’s next run is Fridays and Saturdays, Nov. 6-28 at 5 p.m. PST. Tickets are $25 and available here.

Recently, we informed you that you could win a night’s stay in the American Horror Story Murder House’s basement. But what’s it actually like in there? What’s the deal with the ghosts that supposedly haunt it? We stopped by this week to check it out. 

The ‘Murder House’ is actually the Rosenheim Mansion, built by architect Alfred Rosenheim in 1908 at 1120 Westchester Place. In 1999, it became Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Monument 660, which is an unfortunate six numbers away from a real party. (Monument 666 is the Taft Building and its neon sign, located at 6280 W. Hollywood Blvd., if you were wondering.)  

Though the Rosenheim Mansion has appeared in several TV shows and films, its starring role came in 2011 with American Horror Story: Murder House, in which it played, obviously, the murder house. The series follows a family who moves from Boston to a beautiful, but very haunted home in Los Angeles. Because the house has been the site of grisly murders in the past, the family is plagued with not just ghosts, but corporeal annoyances in the form of true crime fans who come to gawk and cultists who come to do worse.

In real life, Dr. Ernst von Schwarz and Angela Oakenfold nabbed the house off the market for $3.2 million in 2015, but soon found themselves also warding off aggressive tourists. In 2018, they filed a lawsuit against the brokers that handled the sale, saying no one told them how many people it would attract on any given day.

But tonight, they’ll stream a seance from its basement, just one of several spooky events in a 3-day, 24/7 Halloween live stream. So, what made them decide to finally embrace the macabre? 

“In the end, I think it was just lemons, lemonade,” Oakenfold told me earlier this week, wearing a black Murder House T-shirt and a face mask.

Oakenfold, who has still never seen American Horror Story, first found the house while browsing listings near Hancock Park as she and her now-husband were planning to move in together and start a family. She said she fell in love with it the moment she saw it.

Though the couple initially had no issue with American Horror Story fans who wanted to look at it or take a photo, they were completely unprepared for how intense it could get. Oakenfold said up to 200 people per day could stop by, including some who would come late at night, gather and play loud music, or, in the worst cases, try to get inside. (While I was there, I spotted two groups of tourists on my way in and three on my way out.)

“The first six to 12 months, we were just like, ‘how are going to live?’ We’d just invested so much money in this house. Could we put a really nice fence outside and a hedge? And the city said, no, you’re not allowed to have fences in this area. You can’t have it hedged, the house has to be visible so people can view it,” she said. 

So, they put up a temporary chain-link fence. But after considering how hard 2020 has been for everyone—including Oakenfold, who gave birth to twin boys during the pandemic—they thought maybe they could do a virtual event that would allow fans to see past the fence and inside of the home for the first time since AHS.

“I thought if we could do an event and show them the inside of the house, which is what they want, then maybe there’d be some sort of peace,” Oakenfold said. “So, people can come in remotely, and then we can donate a portion of the proceeds to charity.”

For the holiday, the house’s facade has been decorated with ghoulish dolls and pumpkins, while the inside is now rigged with 14 cameras that will stream the various rooms and its guests—which include Halloween experts, psychics, paranormal investigators, and other spooky characters—now through Oct. 31. For $25, fans can watch the streams 24/7 and a few lucky victims will be selected to join seances and ghost hunts. A few may even spend the night in the purportedly haunted basement, which has been outfitted with two beds and a creepy doll. A portion of proceeds will benefit Baby2Baby, a nonprofit that provides basic needs to children in poverty. 

Tonight, psychic Patti Negri is hosting a seance in the basement to attempt to make contact with the other side.

“She said as we get closer to Halloween, the veil between the living and the dead gets thinner, so she thinks Friday is going to be the optimal night to try and connect,” Oakenfold said. 

The wall between our worlds growing thinner is not new. You can even trace it all the way back to Halloween’s origin, Samhain. 

Surprisingly, Oakenfold and her husband are not big supernatural believers, though she does think there is something in the house. When she offered her friends a tour years ago, one of them told her he saw a butler carrying a tray up and down the stairs. Later, when the daughter of a previous owner came to collect some items left behind, she told Oakenfold about a butler spirit they used to see.

At one point, Oakenfold advertised for an office assistant. One applicant stood out to her, so she sent her an email. It turns out that the applicant had been in the house before. Into the ’90s, the home had been a convent and she’d volunteered for the nuns.

The woman said that back then, any bumps in the night were attributed to one of the many nuns walking around or shutting a door. But when Oakenfold got in touch with one of the sisters, she told her a ghost story. When the nuns first arrived, a mover brought in a rocking chair only to come running out and claiming an apparition had appeared in it. The nuns entered and recognized the phantom rocker as a sister who had died.

Other guests to the home over the years have claimed they didn’t like being in the basement or that something had touched them while they were down there. Even Oakenfold’s skeptical husband said some kind of mist touched him. 

“He said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts but I did see something. I believe in energies, and there was some kind of energy that was down there and it touched me on the back and then just evaporated,'” Oakenfold recalled.

Despite this, Oakenfold has never invited a paranormal investigator in before this weekend. A friend once offered to clear her home of spirits or energies, but Oakenfold declined. The spirits just don’t seem like the evil kind, so she’s happy to share the space.

Will we make contact with those positive energies this weekend? Who knows? I personally don’t believe in ghosts, but I love a good ghost story, and doesn’t it feel like anything could happen in 2020? Here’s hoping we see a rocking nun. To check in on the livestream, go here. Follow the house on Instagram here.

The Stranger Things Drive-Into Experience has officially launched at ROW DTLA, offering an hour-long journey into the Starcourt Mall and scenes from the popular Netflix horror/sci-fi series. Though we have been sworn to secrecy (by the government or Netflix, you decide), we can share a few details from the press preview with you. 

Leading up to the show, guests are sent an email welcoming them to the world of Hawkins, Indiana circa 1985. Ostensibly, you’re headed to the Starcourt Mall for a Hawkins High reunion. Obviously, things are going to go awry because that’s what happens in Hawkins, but until then, live your best 80s life.

You can log into a portal with Facebook or Google, which allows you to create a student profile, browse 80s fashion, and read about the mysterious goings-on about town. They include missing pets, a chemical leak, and, of course, the long-awaited opening of the mall. (Just ignore the part where we didn’t have Facebook in the ’80s.)

When you arrive at ROW, the parking lot has been transformed into a neon pre-show mall experience. Characters from the show roam about: the kids weave their bikes between cars while Steve and Robin in their Scoops Ahoy outfits drop off concessions, which you can order at this point. A screen upfront allows you to join Hawkins High’s science teacher as he leads a series of in-car games, like Glove Box Bingo. You keep headlights on if you have all of the common glove box items he lists. If you’ve sprung for VIP tickets, you’ll be diverted into a car wash that’s actually a photo booth before entering the experience. 

Here’s the part where spoilers are verboten, but we can tell you the experience takes place on several floors of ROW’s parking garage and, much like the show, ranges from funny to spooky in tone. The production value is top-notch, only increasing as the show progresses. Story elements unfold through music, video, and live actors while audio comes via your FM radio. And don’t worry: you’ll be stopped and parked for all major plot points for safe scares.

If you haven’t actually watched Stranger Things, a lot of the show won’t make any sense to you. If you’re a fan, you’ll likely find this a really fun complement to the story you already know and love. There’s new music from Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, plenty of Easter eggs and recognizable moments, and lots of familiar (albeit masked) faces who may creep around your car. Most story elements come from Season 3, with some flashbacks to earlier episodes, so we’d suggest catching up if you’re behind.

It also serves as a great lead-in to Season 4, although we don’t actually know when that will air. COVID-19 threw off the production schedule, but Netflix did tease us on Oct. 1 with a Tweet depicting a clapper in the Upside Down. 

Tickets are on sale for the Stranger Things Drive-Into Experience from Netflix, Fever, and Secret Cinema now, though it’s mostly sold out through February 2021. Tickets start at $59 for Standard Access, which gets you the immersive experience and access to the Hawkins portal. VIP tickets start at $120 and also include fast track entry and a mystery box of swag, snacks, and non-alcoholic drinks.