Monday, April 30, 2012
9:30AM to 12:00 Noon
Century Plaza Towers
2029 Century Park East
Los Angeles, CA 90067
The seminar is FREE. The material covered is substantive and not some sales pitch for some other get-rich-quick program. Aside from my one book, I have no products or services to sell anyone.
If you want to attend this event, please send me an email to FreeAbalosSeminar@gmail.com with the words "Los Angeles" in the subject line.
What makes this seminar super exciting for me is a chance to finally visit Century City, the location of this seminar. I've been to Los Angeles many times but on this trip I want to explore one of the most famous planned "city within a city" developments in history.
Century City is the legendary 176-acre brainchild of genius developer William Zeckendorf. The entire complex, including the building where I will be giving my Investing in Land Live Seminar, was literally the backlot of the movie studio, Twentieth Century Fox. Or more specifically, the western backlot which was used for decades in a large number of Hollywood westerns.
In 1961, Fox made the film CLEOPATRA starring Elizabeth Taylor. This major movie spectacle is known today as the most expensive flops in history---despite the fact Fox did earn all its money back on the production. In 1961 dollars, they spent $44 million to earn $26 million in ticket sales.
Fox did have real estate development plans for the western backlot as early as 1957 but the financial losses from CLEOPATRA forced the company to sell 180-acres of land to Zeckendorf and his unlikely partner in the deal, ALCOA, the aluminum giant.
Zeckendorf then built Century City, his "city within a city" near the boundary of Beverly Hills.
Most people of my generation remember Century City because of the ABC Entertainment Center that was located there for many years, including the now demolished Shubert Theater.
If you have been watching TV and the movies over the last fifty years, you have seen Century City many, many times. If you want to get a good glimpse of what the original Century City looked liked, watch the 1972 science fiction film CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES starring Roddy McDowall and Ricardo Montalban. In the film, the entire "Ape Management" complex is literally Century City. All those street battles between apes and humans are fought on the plazas between Century City office buildings and retail shops.
For a more contemporary view of Century City, watch the 1988 action film DIE HARD starring Bruce Willis. His fictional battlefield, the Nakatomi Plaza building, is really Fox Plaza located in Century City. This 1987 addition to the original Zeckendorf blueprint and the surrounding streets in Century City can also be seen in the opening scenes of the 1994 action film SPEED starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock and also being blown up at the end of the 1999 drama FIGHT CLUB starring Brad Pitt.
After my lecture, I'm going to be exploring Century City IN DEPTH and anyone who wants to come along with me is welcome. I'm told fragments of the original Fox movie lot still exist and I'm determined to find them. I also want to visit certain movie sets from films as diverse as the 1967 comedy A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN starring the incredibly beautiful Inger Stevens and Walter Matthau as her bored husband determined to cheat on her(!!!) and even the bizarre spy thriller of the same year CAPRICE starring of all people Doris Day as a corporate executive battling industrial spies!
Again, the seminar and the tour are all FREE and I hope you can learn something about real estate and have some movie fun too.
Again, the seminar and the tour are all FREE and I hope you can learn something about real estate and have some movie fun too.
