Here’s one of the great things about Portland: We just can’t help but mix the things we love. There’s blues music mixed with beer (the Waterfront Blues Festival). There’s golf mixed with, well, beer (the nine-hole course at McMenamins Edgefield). There’s caber tossing mixed with … beer (the Portland Highland Games). And there’s even movies mixed with, you got it, beer. We’re truly a civilized city.

So if you’re looking for a Portland restaurant not too far from Hotel deLuxe or other Portland hotels, try a quick ride to one of the city’s great theater pubs:

Academy Theater

Bagdad Theater

Mission Theater

St. Johns Theater & Pub

Kennedy School

Laurelhurst Theater

And as Portland restaurants go, they’re inexpensive and good, offering, depending on the theater, everything from pizza to pesto chicken calzones.

Cheers!

Lance

My car is still out of service. I asked the guy if it needed a new Flux Capacitor, but he had clearly never seen Back to the Future I, II or III. I’m guessing he preferred Teen Wolf.

Anyway, so there I am on the #15 on my way to Hotel deLuxe just drinking my coffee and it hits me: the establishing shot for my movie should be an aerial shot. I see it like this:

We’re above the city, overlooking the Rose Gardens and its profusion of color. It’s the crown of the city and source of its nickname (and a must of Portland sightseeing). There’s the metaphor of the delicate petals protected by sharp thorns.

Then, we drop slowly over the green canopy of Forest Park, which I just learned is the third largest urban park in the country. This represents how our darker nature, that of instinct and desire, is always near at hand.

Finally, the camera spots the lights of Portland shopping central NW 23^rd and PGE Park (only a few blocks from the Hotel deLuxe) in the Nob Hill Neighborhood. We hear the crowd cheer as we pass over people walking from nearby Portland restaurants and bars.

We drop down into the sunken stadium. And then we’re in the middle of the field, host of the Portland Beavers (AAA baseball), Portland State University Vikings football, the USL First Division Portland Timbers and concerts.

But just now they’re watching Emiliano, our conflicted matador, as he prepares to throw out the first pitch while his eyes search the crowd for her.

That’s a wrap.

Lance

Here’s something you might not know: The woman’s hat worn by Tony Curtis in Billy Wilder’s classic Some Like It Hot (1959) lives just a short distance from the Hotel deLuxe and other Portland hotels. So does the dress Julie Andrews wore when singing “Do Re Mi” with the Von Trapp brood in The Sound of Music (1965) and the one donned by a Tommy-gun-toting Faye Dunaway in Bonnie & Clyde (1967).

Movie Madness Video is not your average video store, unless your neighborhood place also has the severed ear from Blue Velvet (1986) on display. You’d never even know walking up to the squat, non-descript building that it holds more than 50,000 titles and a museum’s worth of movie memorabilia. As Portland sightseeing goes, it’s up there for cinephiles. If it was a Portland hotel, I might man their door.

It was where I finally found and rented Mr. Van Sant’s little-seen 1985 film, Mala Noche. I can’t tell you how many other ignorant video clerks pointed me to their foreign-language section.

Just tell your taxi driver you want to go to 4320 SE Belmont. It’s not too far over the bridge from the Hotel deLuxe (and near some good Portland shopping on Hawthorne Blvd.). My favorite is probably the actual alien head from James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). But then they also have the knife Anthony Perkins wielded in Psycho in 1960, a film Mr. Van Sant would beautifully remake shot for shot 38 years later.

That reminds me, Happy Feet is overdue.

That’s a wrap.

Lance

Search my first name on the Internet Movie Database and you get a stunt man, an actor in something called The Severed Arm, a video game composer and “miscellaneous crew” on Bryan Adams: Live at the Budokon. Not exactly a guest list for Elton John’s post-Oscar bash.

But I actually think that’s a good sign. The way I look at it, Hollywood is ready for a director named “Lance”. The law of averages alone demands it. So, I’m always fine-tuning my screenplay. It’s called “The Bull Must Live”. I won’t ruin it for you, but let me just say it’s the best movie about a matador in Portland that you’ve ever not seen.

It occurred to me today that if all Portland hotels were movies, Hotel deLuxe would be an independent film by someone like Steven Soderbergh or the Coen Brothers. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think the Hotel deLuxe could end up figuring in my movie.

If you haven’t been to the hotel since the old Mallory Hotel became the new Hotel deLuxe, you really need to. It kept the charm of that landmark of Portland hotels, but put a polish on the threadbare bits, and gave the whole place a glamour that wouldn’t have been out of place in ’50s Hollywood.

And one of these days Mr. Van Sant is going to come in, to meet friends or have a Monte Carlo in the Driftwood Room at Hotel deLuxe, and when he does I’m going to be there to open the door for him.

That’s a wrap.

Lance