Laserium light show returns to Hollywood

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The Laserium light show, a staple at the Griffith Observatory for 28 years until the facility closed for remodeling in 2002, has finally found a new home and will open Friday at the Vine Theatre in Hollywood. Music by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd will still be prominent, but much else has changed.

In a story in today’s L.A. Times, writer Chris Willman reports that visitors will find that the chairs in the Vine auditorium ‘don’t recline like the Observatory’s chairs, but they don’t need to: Producers insist the days of chiropractor-friendly neck-craning have come to an end, because all the action is at panoramic eye level. Each show starts with animations projected on the former movie screen, then expands the action to three semi-transparent scrims closer to the audience, two additional screens on the side walls, mirrors and -- new to the Laserium experience -- real mid-air effects.’

Here at Culture Monster, we were shocked -- shocked, we tell you -- to learn from Willman that many people who attended the show in its previous incarnation may have been higher than the hill on which the Observatory stands. It had the reputation, he writes, of being ‘L.A.’s most infamous stoner rite of passage.’

Our own recollections being somewhat, uh, hazy, we decided to check the veracity of that statement with various FOCM (Friends of Culture Monster) who’d attended Laserium shows. The results will have to wait, though. So far, all we’ve heard in effect is that, um, like, dude, they can’t remember.

You can read the full story on the new Laserium here.

-- Lee Margulies