There are few more democratic places in which to reside than 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.

As long as you have the money, plenty of it, you're welcome these days, regardless of race or creed. Swaying palm trees, manicured lawns, lakes and views of the Hollywood Hills don't come cheap.

Which is odd, really, because behind the high metal gates, next to the Paramount movie studios lot, long-term inhabitants on this patch of prime real estate don't get to enjoy the vistas or the spring breeze blowing in from the Pacific. Being dead in Southern California is a real bummer, man.

This is the Hollywood Forever cemetery - inspiration for the TV series Six Feet Under.

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Here I find Eliza Otis (1833-1904) with her own 40ft obelisk and, with a picture on his tombstone, Magardich Tavitian, born 1931, but curiously as yet no date of death. Perhaps just prudent forward planning. Interesting though these are, it's the stars of Hollywood Forever that attract sightseers.

Wander around the lagoons, mausoleums and beautifully sculptured trees and you'll find the crème de la crème of Hollywood daisy-pushers. Famous directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, and Victor Fleming whose credits include Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

Stars from the black-and-white heyday are here - Nelson Eddy, Tyrone Power, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks Sr (and Jr) and King Kong's gal, Fay Wray, as well as a new memorial to Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American Oscar winner who, back in 1952 was forced to find a more egalitarian spot in which to spend eternity, despite her wishes to be laid to rest at Hollywood Forever, because of the cemetery's whites-only policy at that time (which only changed in the 1990s).

No such trouble for 1950s blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield. Nor Charlie Chaplin's son and mother or Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, whose headstone reads “That's all Folks!”

George Harrison was cremated here, although his ashes were scattered on the Ganges. Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone from punk pioneers the Ramones are here too. Johnny died of prostate cancer in 2004 and his tombstone features a life-size statue of him on his knees twanging a guitar and the inscription: “If a man can tell if he's been successful in his life by having great friends, then I have been very successful.”

Behind him there's a 130ft (40m) lagoon, with a huge Persian-style mausoleum in the middle, flanked by palm trees, and the Hollywood Hills in the background. His bandmate (who died of a heroin overdose in 2002) is not far away with just the words “OK, I gotta go now” on his more modest grave.

Apart from there being an awful lot of dead people around, this all seems quite idyllic. There's no traffic noise, and it's T-shirt weather even at 8pm.

There's a constant stream of trendy young things walking past, most carrying picnic gear and all heading purposefully in one direction, from where In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry is being carried on the wind.

Every Saturday and Sunday evening between May and October up to 2,000 people gather on a lawn in the cemetery for DJ-ed music and a movie (tonight they're showing The Party starring Peter Sellers from 1968) projected, open air, large-screen style, on to the side of Rudolph Valentino's tomb.

To some that might seem tacky, but they get away with it here in the world capital of being laid-back - and you don't get more laid-back than being dead.

John Wyatt, the 34-year-old organiser, who has been running the event for seven years, said: “I had a film club but it got so big I decided to screen my own films in a venue that could accommodate more people. A friend worked here, and I saw the lawn so I pitched it to the owners and they said let's try one. We showed Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and everyone loved it.”

Drew Barrymore and Eddie Izzard are regulars, apparently, although this evening my star radar seems defiantly turned off, for the living ones anyway.

Wyatt gives off an infectious enthusiasm for everything film-related, like so many in this part of Los Angeles whose lives are bound up in the movie business. “This is the Hollywood cemetery,” he says.

“So many stars and film-makers are buried here, decades and decades of people who are connected with the industry. We're adjacent to the Paramount backlot; you could be watching a film that was shot down the street starring, directed and produced by someone who's probably buried here.

"There's nowhere else in the world that can claim that.” It's the only place you can watch stars, below the stars and, depending where you sit, directly above some stars.

Need to know

Hollywood Forever Cemetery (www.hollywood forever.com). Cinema screenings (www.cinespia.org) run each weekend from May-September. West Hollywood Tourist Information (www.visitwesthollywood.com).

Getting there

Trailfinders (0845 0505871, www.trailfinders.com) offers five nights in LA staying in West Hollywood from £529pp including flights, accommodation and car hire.

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