About 6 months ago, we entered a contest put on by Legendary Entertainment/Comics. The challenge was to create an in-store display promoting “The Tower Chronicles” comic book created by Legendary Comics. The prize was a trip for 2 to the Los Angeles red carpet premier of their upcoming feature film “Pacific Rim”. We ended up winning the contest!
The day before the premier, Legendary flew Tate and his pal Johnny Winslow out to Los Angeles. They had a great time visiting other comic book stores, the DC Entertainment offices and the Legendary offices. While out to dinner that night at “Cheebo”, Tate sat next to Jeff Goldblum and his girlfriend. Literally rubbing elbows with him at a bar style table. The next day more visiting and then time to pick up the tickets to the big premier! The screening was held at the Dolby Theater (where they hold the Oscars) and they had assigned seat tickets that had to be picked up will call. Dress code was business casual. Free popcorn and soda! People watching while waiting for the movie to start… IMAX, 3-D. Really enjoyed the movie, its a good, entertaining popcorn movie (go see it!). After the movie they walked over to the exclusive Pacific Rim after party with the cast of the film they just saw (totally surreal). Had to present a special pass to get into the fancy party… there were awesome props from the movie EVERYWHERE once they got in. Tons of tables of buffet-style delicious food and free full liquor bar for all guests. Lots of schmoozing, talking and laughing, probably about 400 guests. Party lasted about 3 hours, ended at midnight. They saw tons of celebrities and got photos with quite a few. Everyone was super nice and friendly. See the photo gallery below for the photos…
Tate said his favorite moment of the night was when he talked to Ron Perlman. He went to him and said “I’ve been a fan of yours since I saw you in Ice Pirates.” Ron Perlman, chuckled, shook Tate’s hand and patted his back. Then Tate asked to take a photo with him… Ron replied “If you would have said any other movie, I would have told you to F**K off!” and then smiled for the picture with him.
The night before they left, Tate and Johnny met Max Landis for dinner before their midnight red eye flight home. Max was a frequent customer of ours when he lived in South Florida and we have been proud of all the success he has had since moving to Los Angeles. He has dozens of scripts sold and in-production at every major studio, but you may know him best as the writer of the movie Chronicle, which you really should see if you haven’t already! Max has a great interview on The Nerdist, which you should check out too. It was great to have the chance to catch up with him and awesome to hear some of his new story pitch ideas, if we won the lottery, we’d fund them all! He really is a genius storyteller!
Tate would really like to sincerely thank Legendary Entertinment for such a great opportunity and experience! …and Johnny would really like to thank Tate for taking him along!
List of stores in Los Angeles visited: House of Secrets, Blast From the Past, Blast Off, Earth 2, Meltdown, Golden Apple, Secret Headquarters, Comic Cellar, Gallery Nucleus, Anime Jungle, Kinokuniya Book Store, Q-Pop Shop and Wacko.
List of restaurants ate at: Cheebo (good homestyle gourmet food), Blue Jay (breakfast, very good), Cat and Fiddle Pub (great!), The Griddle (giant pancakes), Forage (awesome), Diablo Taco (winner of taco food wars, according to Max Landis)
