Jan’s Duplex from “Beautiful Girls”

One of the locations that I was most excited about stalking while in Minnesota three weeks ago (and I can hardly even believe that it’s already been three weeks!) was the duplex where Jan (aka Martha Plimpton) lived in fave movie Beautiful Girls.  The residence is actually located in Hopkins, a city about thirteen miles west of Minneapolis and a bit out of the way from the other Beautiful Girls locations.  I found this spot, once again, thanks to Owen and his Beautiful Girls master locations list and, as far as I can tell, it is the only locale from the movie that can be found in the Hopkins area.  It always strikes me as odd when one location from a particular film is not in close proximity to any of the other locations used and I often wonder about the decision-making process that led producers to choose an out-of-the-way locale.  The one that most boggles my mind is the main house from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is located in Long Beach, California – a good 1,700 miles away from every single other FB location, all of which can be found in Chicago, Illinois.  Were the filmmakers honestly unable to find a house in the entire state of Illinois at which to film?  While that doesn’t sound very likely to me, it must have been the case, otherwise why would they journey all the way to California just to film at that one, solitary location?  The whole thing doesn’t make sense, either way, but I digress.  Even though Jan’s duplex was a bit out of the way, because it holds a very special place in my heart, I just had to stalk it anyway.

Jan’s duplex shows up repeatedly throughout Beautiful Girls, in the scenes in which her incredibly jealous former boyfriend, Paul Kirkwood (aka Michael Rapaport), who works as a snow plow driver, is shown finishing off his shift each morning by burying her driveway with snow, making it so that she can’t open her garage door.  Let me tell you, it is absolutely hilarious to watch the joy with which Paul does this each and every day.

And then, towards the end of the movie, something shifts in Paul and he realizes that his relationship with Jan is truly over.  In one of the final scenes, he is shown early one morning, tears streaming down his face, removing all of the snow from Jan’s driveway, while she looks on from the second-story window.  Even though I have seen Beautiful Girls over thirty times, watching that scene never fails to bring tears to my eyes.  It’s an incredibly touching moment in the movie and was the reason I wanted to stalk Jan’s house so badly.  In fact, just being there in person, standing in the duplex’s driveway and looking up at that second-story window, made me teary-eyed.  God, I love that movie!

And even though there have certainly been some changes to the property since filming took place there back in 1996, Jan’s duplex is, for the most part, very recognizable.  I was completely floored over the fact that, even though the paint color is now different, the decorative wood “V’s” on the front of the house were still in place.

As were the mailbox and address plaque which appeared in the movie.  So darn cool!  I honestly can’t recommend stalking this location enough!  Being there in person brought back many fond memories of the movie for me and the residence was easily one of my favorite stalking stops in all of Minnesota.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Jan’s duplex from Beautiful Girls is located at 113-115 6th Avenue North in Hopkins, Minnesota.  Jan lived in Unit 113.

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