Fanspot
Bethesda Fountain
This is the OASIS. It’s a place where the limits of reality are your all imagination.
Wade Owen Watts (Tye Sheridan)
The sequence at the end of which the Bethesda Fountain intervenes is a true piece of bravery. It was also a challenge for Steven Spielberg and his team. The latter had to distort the streets of New York by playing with famous monuments, before bringing in King Kong. First perched on the Empire State Building, the gorilla chases the hero played by Tye Sheridan, driving the mythical DeLorean from Back to the Future. The sequence finds its denouement around the Bethesda Fountain, in the middle of the autumnal coloured trees of Central Park…
Ready Player One is shot between the United States and Birmingham, England for a budget of $175 million. The film is full of sharp and jubilant pop culture references, even using archive footage from Shining to bring his heroes to the Overlook, the haunted hotel imagined by Stephen King, the film requires such a long post-production that Spielberg takes the opportunity to shoot Pentagon Papers before its theatrical release.
Even if it’s actually impossible to do a car skid around the Bethesda Fountain, like Tye Sheridan in Ready Player One, it’s easy to get into the atmosphere of this frenetic chase, under the gaze of the angel and his cherubs. Witnesses to countless stories, some of which have certainly contributed to the attractiveness of the place.
Ready Player One features 101 references to cult pop culture works. This is how the hero drives the DeLorean from Back to the Future and how Chucky, King Kong or the robot from the movie The Iron Giant intervene in the story.
Bethesda Terrace
New York has many fountains, but none is as attractive as the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.
Bethesda Terrace is one of the few monuments built during the Civil War. It was completed in 1873.
The fountain at the center of the fountain was designed by Emma Stebbins, the first woman to be entrusted with an art project for the city of New York.
A remarkable work depicting four cherubs embodying the virtues of temperance, purity, prosperity and peace and an angel dominating them.
This sculpture is a tribute to chapter 5 of the Gospel according to St. John in which an angel blessed the Bethesda basin in Jerusalem. A basin that is linked to the miraculous healing of a paralytic by Jesus Christ.
Once a rallying point for East Coast hippies and a hub for prostitution and drug trafficking, Bethesda Terrace had many lives. It was during this period, when the place was carefully avoided by locals and tourists, that the basin dried up.
Nevertheless, the early 1980s saw the fountain regain its luster. Entirely renovated, it initiated a major phase of rehabilitation of Central Park, gradually regaining the favor of visitors.
Regularly mentioned in popular culture, the Bethesda Terrace and its majestic fountain, because of their central position, embody the heart of the park. A heart whose heartbeat is in tune with the comings and goings of New Yorkers and tourists.
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Fanspots Stories New York
Discover the secrets of the cult places of the greatest masterpieces of pop culture in New York!
The world capital of pop culture, New York embodies unbridled creative freedom. The city that never sleeps has been the muse of a large number of directors, actors, screenwriters, singers, musicians, cartoonists and writers…
Many have passed on their fascination for the city to the general public and made some of its places famous worldwide, making them into the legend of pop culture. These are the secrets of a hundred of them revealed in this first volume of the Fanspots Stories collection.
Did you know that?
Did you know that the filming of Rage Against The Machine’s Music Now in the Fire caused Wall Street to shut down for the first time since 1929?
Fanspots Stories New York is also
Spider-Man, Ghostbusters, Superman, Leonard Cohen, Led Zeppelin…
Directed by a team of pop culture specialists and embellished with many anecdotes, Fanspots Stories New York tells more than just a story: these are some of the most fascinating stories in pop culture.
Fanspot Stories New York
100 pop cults
a unique and new concept
224 pages of fun
a beautiful large-format book 24 x 30, round back slicefil
Content quality
Interest for fans
Value for money
Discover all the places Ready Player One on our map
By Gilles Rolland
Passionné de cinéma, de rock and roll, de séries TV et de littérature. Rédacteur de presse et auteur des livres Le Heavy Metal au cinéma, Paroles de fans Guns N' Roses, Paroles de fans Rammstein et Welcome to my Jungle : 100 albums rock et autres anecdotes dépareillées. Adore également voyager à la recherche des lieux les plus emblématiques de la pop culture.