Sunset Strip

This is a bunch of celebrity interviews spanning decades about the Sunset Strip. Not a timeline continuity and skips around years and decades in minutes. Definitely need to pay attention or you will miss a story or two All about their memories and thoughts. Old videos and pictures based on some of the stories told. Yeah some history but mostly from their eyes and inferences. Literally had to pull up how old this was as the filmmaking felt older than 2012. It is okay, not a typically historic documentary but if you want to hear all the celebrities talk about their experiences, this is a good one for you.

Interesting documentary (and an overdue one) chronicling the history of the infamous Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, extending from West Hollywood's eastern border with Hollywood to its western border with Beverly Hills. Lots of celebrities pop up to tell their own personal histories of life on the Strip, but the textbook facts are more interesting. Beginning with silent star Alla Nazimova's hotel, the decadent, sex-saturated Garden of Allah, the Strip quickly became the haven for Hollywood's elite (and their imitators) who wanted to party their nights away. Smelling easy money and opportunity, gangsters and gamblers invaded in the 1940s, but the rise in popularity of night-life in Las Vegas seemed to zap the spirit of the Strip. With the Big Band sound on the way out, teenagers ruled the territory throughout the 1960s, with rock and roll evolving into protest music, which then brought in the riot police. The film is a nice mix of stills, recent interviews, vintage home-movie footage and movie clips--but nothing here really sticks in the memory (with the possible exception of Peter Fonda's recollection of being arrested and calling for help from passing actor Bob Denver of TV's "Gilligan's Island"!). The 2006 closing of Tower Records music store (a Strip-staple) could well be the death knell for a generation of partyers, yet time inevitably brings a wave of new faces and personalities to the scene...and the Strip lives on. ** from ****

I thought this was a really interesting film about the Sunset Strip. I loved all the footage from all the different eras on the strip. For example, there is footage in there from when it was just a road but nothing on either side of it but dirt, just emptiness. This original strip (not the Vegas one) has so much history. It's great hearing celebrities (like Johnny Depp, Ozzy and Sharon Osborne, Peter Fonda) telling their stories as they re-live their personal memories from famous hotels and clubs. Also in the film, there's footage and recollections of both River Phoenix and John Belushi's deaths on this famous strip. It's an awesome strip so you've got to have both happy times and sad times to go along with it. There's just a lot of good stuff in this film.

Watching this documentary in 2022, post pandemic hysteria, post hyperinflation, post RvW, post EA & J6, post George Floyd & BLM, post Elliott Page, post Weinstein, post Matrix, post JDvAH, post *everything*...is a trip.

2012, the year this documentary was filmed, feels like a hundred years ago. The heydays of the previous century feel virtually ancient.

But man, what an era! And it's captured so explicitly. This is a must watch. Oh, the scenes you will see when you take a cruise down the Sunset Strip!

Really loved this film. Not from California, but love all the history of Hollywood. It's great to have a film that tells the story of the Sunset Strip, which is a big part of the LA/Hollywood world. This film is filled with celebrities, musicians, comedians, and actors. They tell their stories from the past and stories from more recent times. There's also interviews from what I think were groupies from the 70's and 80's. I like all the sex and drug stories, maybe not politically correct for today, but entertaining none the less. Hey it's all part of history. Some of the interviews include Johnny Depp, Sharon Stone (she said she escaped to the Penthouse of The Château Marmont for a bit), Sharon Osborne (shares stories of how Led Zeppelin treated their groupies, apparently not very nicely).

I would recommend this film if you like music, celebrity stuff, Hollywood life and history buffs. Very interesting.