How is this for a plot twist? Tucson’s largest burial ground is about to be transformed into an outdoor movie theater.
Starting at 4 p.m. Saturday, Evergreen Cemetery on Oracle Road will host its first annual Spring Cemetery Movie Night in partnership with The Loft Cinema.
The family-friendly affair will feature a variety of food trucks, vendor booths and a DJ spinning easy-listening tunes — all leading up to a free, sundown screening of the screwball cowboy comedy “Three Amigos” at 7:30 p.m.
The community outreach event offers people the chance to enjoy an evening with their lost loved ones while helping to “remove the stigma of a cemetery as being a place of only loss and sadness,” said Evergreen sales assistant Bianca Valdez-Carillo, who organized the movie night.
“Cemeteries have a rich history of being public gathering spaces,” she said.
The movie will be shown in the grass-covered, undeveloped area just north of Evergreen’s chapel and mortuary building. Those who attend are encouraged to bring their own chairs or blankets to sit on.
The vendors and food trucks will be parked in the lot directly in front of the mortuary building.
Moviegoers await an outdoor screening of “Space Jam” at East Lawn Palms Mortuary and Cemetery on May 28, 2015. Evergreen Cemetery on Oracle Road will host its own Spring Cemetery Movie Night starting at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Valdez-Carillo said the cemetery at 3015 N. Oracle Road actually wanted to host its first screening under the stars about five years ago, but the COVID-19 pandemic killed those plans.
Evergreen is actually a little late to the cemetery cinema trend.
Both South Lawn Cemetery and East Lawn Palms Mortuary and Cemetery hosted summer movie screenings about a decade ago.
California’s famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery has been holding outdoor screenings of classic films since 2002, along with other cultural events such as music concerts, lectures and what claims to be the largest Dia de Los Muertos event in the country.
Meanwhile, the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia offers what it calls “movie magic amongst the tombs” with a summer film series aimed squarely at adults and featuring such titles as the 2019 horror film “Midsommar.”
As the sun sets, moviegoers watch "Space Jam" at East Lawn Palms Mortuary and Cemetery on May 28, 2015. Evergreen Cemetery on Oracle Road will host its own Spring Cemetery Movie Night starting at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Valdez-Carillo said The Loft offered Evergreen several good titles to pick from. “We chose ‘Three Amigos’ amongst others because it is a Tucson classic, with much of the film shot here.”
It’s also “a great comedy that many Tucsonans love, as well as being a family friendly film,” she said.
Though critics mostly buried the 1986 movie starring Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short, it still made money at the box office. It has since been resurrected as a cult classic.
This will mark the second movie night for Evergreen, which showed the 2014 animated movie “The Book of Life” — also in cooperation with The Loft — during its inaugural Dia De Los Muertos gathering on Nov. 2 of last year. That event drew an estimated crowd of 400 to 450 people, Valdez-Carillo said.
She hopes this is the start of a new tradition.
“It is definitely something we plan to continue twice a year, once for Dia De Los Muertos and again in the spring,” she said.
