[9] A student of influential film lecturer Jim Hosney at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California,[10] Wyatt initially formed an Italian cinema club with friend Richard Petit, of which Cinespia is a natural evolution.
The name Cinespia is a portmanteau word from the Italian cine, or "movie theater," and the third person singular conjugation of the verb spiare, meaning "to observe," or more commonly, "to spy."
"[2] After attending a Valentino birthday celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2002, Wyatt approached the owners through a friend who worked there[3] and arranged a screening of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train on July 20, 2002[11] using two 35mm projectors with a changeover mechanism on the back of a pickup truck.
Among the film legends laid to rest within the confines of its 65 acres, as outlined by Matthew Duersten in the LA Weekly on the occasion of the introductory screening, are the following:[11] "Marion Davies, who perhaps knew the real secret to how Thomas Ince died on Hearst's boat; Bugsy Siegel and Harry Cohn, gangsters of different stripes but of twin hearts; Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, who was shot to death in a fight over a $50 dog reward; Col. Griffith J. Griffith, who blew a hole in his wife's head after accusing her of conspiring with the pope against the U.S. government; Virginia Rappe, violated by a Coke bottle that punctured her bladder during a party in Fatty Arbuckle's suite at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel; and director William Desmond Taylor, next to the Black Dahlia, perhaps Hollywood's greatest unsolved killing."
[12] Other famous denizens permanently resting within earshot include Tyrone Power (Witness for the Prosecution), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone (Rock and Roll High School), Peter Finch (Network), Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz), Janet Gaynor (A Star Is Born), Curtis Harrington (Night Tide), Zoltan Korda (The Thief of Bagdad), Darren McGavin (The Man with the Golden Arm), Adolphe Menjou (Paths of Glory), Paul Muni (Scarface), Dudley Nichols (Stagecoach), Maila Nurmi (Plan 9 from Outer Space), Nelson Riddle (Lolita), Vito Scotti (The Godfather), Ann Sheridan (They Drive by Night), Constance and Norma Talmadge (Intolerance, Camille), Eddie Little (Another Day in Paradise), Eddie Bunker (Straight Time), Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane), Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour), Peter Lorre (Casablanca), Clifton Webb (Laura), William Hurlbut (Bride of Frankenstein) and Fay Wray (King Kong), any number of whose films have screened at the cemetery.
"[3] Numerous celebrities and filmmakers have shown up to introduce screenings: Tatum O'Neal for Paper Moon;[13] Paul Reubens for Pee-wee's Big Adventure[14]; Amy Heckerling and Drew Barrymore for Fast Times at Ridgemont High[15]; Karen Black for Easy Rider[16]; Alicia Silverstone and Breckin Meyer for Clueless;[17] Richard Rush for The Stunt Man[18]; Charlie Ahearn, Fab Five Freddy and Patti Astor for Wild Style;[19] Kenneth Anger for a program of his short films;[20] and the real Henry Hill for Goodfellas.
(filmed several hundred feet away on the Paramount lot,[26] with Hollywood Forever denizen Cecil B. DeMille[12] playing himself and references to Fairbanks and Valentino);[27] The Holy Mountain, kept out of circulation for 35 years by the Beatles' manager Allen Klein (a benefit for the retiring Jim Hosney); The Wizard of Oz, on what would have been the 95th birthday of star and cemetery denizen Judy Garland; Singin' in the Rain; Chinatown;[2] and logical thematic tie-in Night of the Living Dead.
[30] A screening of the Werner Herzog 3-D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams was held at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County on April 23, 2011,[31] co-sponsored by Cinefamily and the Silent Movie Theater, as part of the MOCA retrospective "Art in the Streets."