Hollywood director’s generous gift to hometown is too hot to handle

An award-winning Hollywood director‘s gift to a Los Angeles-area park apparently has one fatal flaw that park officials overlooked: under sunny California weather, it can literally burn you.

Last year, Ron Howard and his wife donated a Victorian-style love seat statue to Johnny Carson Park in Burbank. The “kissing chair” consists of two seats facing the opposite direction melded together and is worth $88,440, according to the city.

However, a local resident shared on social media Friday that he couldn’t actually sit in those chairs —unless he wanted to suffer burn scars.

That’s because the seats, made of bronze, have no shade anywhere in sight.

“Someone made the really, really poor decision to situate the chair in nonstop direct sunlight, and the bronze doesn’t just get hot. It becomes literally scalding,” wrote Nick Carr, a Los Angeles-based movie location scout.

He said even under 80-degree weather, he couldn’t put a hand on the statue for more than a second.

Behind the seats is a warning sign that cautions, in bold black letters, “Surface may be hot.”

“It’s now a pretty common occurrence to see visitors ignore the sign and plunk into the chair, only to scream and leap off in pain,” Carr claimed.

Carr in his post pleaded for the city of Burbank to address the scalding, noting the purpose of the chairs were for couples to use.

Howard donated the chairs as an expression of his love for his wife Cheryl. The director, now in his seventies, met her in high school, and the young couple “hung out and dated and necked” at the park, he said.

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“I got the idea of an old-fashioned sort of love seat where couples could sit and talk and smooch a little bit,” he told People Magazine on celebrating 50 years of marriage.

Howard has four children with his wife. Since they met, the director has had an illustrious career, directing flims like “A Beautiful Mind” and “Apollo 13.” His brother is the actor Clint Howard and his daugther Bryce Dallas Howard has also appeared in films.

When the seats are not hot, it appears couples are using Howard’s gift.

“My brother drove by not long ago, snapped a picture with his iPhone. It was a couple kissing in the kissing chair. He said, ‘Hey, it’s working,’” the director said, according to Fox News.