Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from “Bridesmaids”

As I mentioned in my post about the apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in Bridesmaids, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I finally managed to track down all of the L.A.-area locations from the 2011 flick last week.  Or so I thought.  While scanning through the movie on Monday afternoon, making screen captures for my post about Officer Rhodes’ (Chris O’Dowd’s) house, I came across the scene that took place at Bill Cozbi’s (Richard Riehle’s) Auto Body Shop and realized that Mike and I had both somehow completely forgotten about the locale and failed to do any sort of search for it.  I immediately shot him an email asking for some help in tracking the place down and five minutes later I received a text that said, “Oh no!  You were just there!”  As it turns out, the auto body shop that stood in for Bill Cozbi’s in the flick is located in Santa Clarita, right around the corner from Officer Rhodes’ and Judy’s (Jill Clayburgh’s) houses.  UGH!  So – after smacking myself in the forehead for being such a ditz – I drove all the way back out to the SC yesterday to stalk the place.

Fortunately, finding this location was a snap.  When Mike first received my email, he had to the foresight to do a Google search for Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop.  Because that name was obviously a fake, it did not even occur to me to search for it – I had instead been Googling Bridesmaids and auto body shop.  Thankfully though, Mike’s query led him to a page on the Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery website which identified the shop as a Bridesmaids filming location and also featured the photograph below.  Whoo hoo – I so LOVE it when location owners embrace their property’s filming history!

Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop is first mentioned by Officer Rhodes towards the beginning of Bridesmaids, in the scene in which he pulls Annie (Kristen Wiig) over for having broken taillights.  Rhodes tells Annie that she should go see his friend who has a body shop, “Bill Cozbi, with a z – different guy.  And don’t mention the whole Bill Cosby thing to him.  It drives him nuts.  I mean it!”  LOL  Annie ends up going to the shop at the very end of the movie, after finally deciding to start getting her life back on track.  Thankfully, as you can see below, Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen – aside from the name (and, therefore signage) change, of course.

I so love that a variation of one of the shop’s real life signs was used in the movie, though.

While I was stalking the shop, I happened to meet the super-nice owner, who is aptly named Ricardo.  He was in absolute SHOCK that I had driven all the way from Pasadena just to see the location.  Ricardo spent quite a few minutes filling me in on the filming of Bridesmaids, showing me photographs from the shoot, and he was even nice enough to take the picture of me that appears at the top of this post.  He also informed me that producers had taken down a chain link fence that had originally surrounded his property during the shoot and that, after filming wrapped, he decided to replace the old fence with a nicer, more permanent metal one, as you can see below.  Personally, I like the look of the place sans fence, but that’s probably because that is how it appeared in Bridesmaids.

Mike has most of the remaining Bridesmaids filming locations posted on his site.  You can check out Annie’s Cake Baby shop here, the Brazilian restaurant here, the house where Annie went on a blind date here, and Joni’s Restaurant here.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.  And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery, aka Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from Bridesmaids, is located at 24347 Main Street in Santa Clarita.  You can visit the shop’s official website here.  Judy’s home from the movie is located right around the corner at 23418 8th Street.  And Officer Rhodes’ residence is located directly across the street from Judy’s at 23425 8th Street.  Note – the Bridesmaids houses cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive.  To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

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