Dear Readers
I’m writing to ask you to support a documentary film that I’m producing about L.A.’s late great Olympic Auditorium. If you’ve been to the Kim Sing Theatre, you’ve seen the amazing boxing and wrestling images of Theo Ehret, house photographer for the Olympic from the 1960s through the 1980s. Over the last few years my partner Steve DeBro has spent hundreds of hours researching and developing this as a documentary and cultural history project, interviewing people like Gene LeBell, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Ed Ruscha and developing this into something special.
For those of you who remember the Olympic, the documentary will bring back to life the great characters of boxing, wrestling, roller derby and the downtown punk scene. Freddie Blassie, Andre the Giant, Jimmy Lennon, Black Flag, the L.A. T-Birds—the Olympic had a reputation for great fights and wild spectacle in the ring, on stage, and in the crowd.
For those of you who don’t remember the Olympic, you missed out. Downtown L.A. used to be weird, wild, and a lot more fun. Check out the Kickstarter page HERE and give what you can.
Thanks,
Willard Ford