Comments on: 1.21 Gigawatt Fire Destroys Movie History

By: Rollo

Rollo — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:40:12 +0000

I’m afraid I find it pretty hard to care – firstly because Hollywood churns out so much crap, but mainly because the “history” is widely available on DVD. What does it matter if the sets are destroyed? They were nowt but things of wood…

By: James

James — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:00:49 +0000

@ Neill & Peter, thanks for the links, these facades look like they are very prone to fires! @Paul, Yes I do mean "Jigawatts"!

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:55:40 +0000

There was a fire that damaged Courthouse Square back on November 7,1990. I’m pretty sure that after that fire, the courthouse remained standing because it really was brick.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE6DE1F3CF93AA35752C1A966958260

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:55:23 +0000

wasn’t there a fire there in the 90s sometime?

By: ike

ike — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:52:43 +0000

I was a little distressed when I saw this post (in a “oh no, we lost a piece of hollywood history” way) , but seeing as they’ve rebuilt it before, I’m optimistic that they’ll rebuild again.

By: dr.R.

dr.R. — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:07:06 +0000

“…the square looks just like it did in the 1985 film….” – that’s what you call Back to the Past

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:40:52 +0000

Some news reports made it seem as if the structures destroyed in the fire were actual buildings. They were nothing of the sort.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:17:01 +0000

Don’t you mean 1.21 Jigawatt?

By: Neill

Neill — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:10:15 +0000

Actually, this is not the original courthouse square. It was originally built for “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and the original was used for back to the future. However, the whole of courthouse square, except the courthouse, plus new york street and the sets from Ben Hur were completely destroyed in a fire in 1990 (set by a disgruntled security guard). The northern side of courthouse square was destroyed again in another fire in 1997. The unofficial Universal studio tour website has a nice summary of all the fires at the studios over the years.

http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/backlot/fires.shtml

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:10:18 +0000

On Virgin Airlines they used to show War of the Worlds on the back of the seat entertainment system, but they had a disclaimer saying that it contained scenes of plane crashes which may distress some viewers… Made me laugh at the time.