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

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