I do not have the best taste in movies and am the first to admit it. Case in point – Just My Luck, a 2006 Lindsay Lohan romcom that I absolutely love. Have I lost you already? If so, it’s understandable. But I find the film adorable. I’ve seen it about a hundred times and never tire of it. Part of the appeal is the fact that it takes place – and was largely shot – in New York. (Some filming also took place in and around New Orleans.) Prior to heading to the Big Apple in April, I did some research on the flick and was thrilled to discover the location of the Parisian-style building where Ashley Albright (Lohan) lived. As it turns out, the gorgeous property has appeared in quite a few productions over the years
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Thankfully, Ashley’s apartment was an easy find – the real life address number of the building was visible in the movie’s opening scene.
43 Fifth Avenue, as the property is known, was originally constructed in 1905 by architect Henry Andersen.
The 11-story structure, which originally operated as an apartment building, became a cooperative in 1978.
The pre-war site boasts 42 units (each with 10 1/2 foot ceilings!), a marble lobby with bas-relief sculptures, a two-story mansard roof, bay windows, wrought iron balconies, a 24-hour doorman, and, my personal favorite, a dry moat that lines the perimeter. The property is absolutely gorgeous and it is not hard to see how it wound up onscreen multiple times.
The building next door (which was featured prominently in 13 Going On 30) is currently under construction and, unfortunately, some equipment was set up in front of 43 Fifth Avenue when we showed up to stalk it which kind of marred our view.
Numerous luminaries have called 43 Fifth home over the years including Marlon Brando, Jennifer Jason Leigh, fashion designer Roland Leal, novelist Dawn Powell, and screenwriter Noah Baumbach. One particular unit, #9E (which you can see photos of here), has had two big-name celebrity inhabitants – both Julia Roberts and Holly Hunter lived there at different points in time.
Way back in 1914, Chevalier Giacomo Fari Forni, Italian Consul General to New York, lived in the building. On October 14th of that year, a terrorist group known as the Black Hand put a bomb in the property’s boiler room with the hopes of killing Forni. The Consul General was not in New York when the explosive was detonated, though, and remained unscathed. William Waters, one of the building’s employee’s, was not so lucky. His skull was fractured in the blast. Several first floor apartments were damaged, as well. You can read more about the events of that day here and here.
43 Fifth Avenue only shows up briefly in Just My Luck as the spot where Ashley lives before she unwittingly transfers her luck to stranger Jake Hardin (Chris Pine) via a kiss at a masquerade ball, at which time she becomes unlucky, her apartment floods and she is forced to move in with friends. Like I said, my taste in movies isn’t the greatest.
Only the exterior of the building appeared in the flick. Interiors were shot on a soundstage in Louisiana.
43 Fifth Avenue was also used in the 2004 comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which not so coincidentally was directed by Donald Petrie, who also directed Just My Luck. The property showed up a few times in the flick, most famously in the scene in which Ben Barry (Matthew McConaughey) arrives at Andie Anderson’s (Kate Hudson) apartment to take her to a party and she walks out wearing an unforgettably stunning yellow dress.
In the 2000 comedy Small Time Crooks, 43 Fifth served as the apartment of David (Hugh Grant). (I apologize for the poor quality of the screen shots below – I got them off of YouTube.)
Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) lived in the building in the 2010 dramedy Please Give, though very little of the exterior was shown.
43 Fifth’s ornate lobby made an appearance in the film, as well.
The building also popped up in A Kiss Before Dying, but I could not find a copy of the flick with which to make screen captures for this post. And while it was supposedly featured in both Deconstructing Harry and Everyone Says I Love You, as well, I scanned through both movies and did not see the structure anywhere.
Locations from the movie You’ve Got Mail have been well-documented online on countless sites. I chronicled quite a few of them on mine – in a December 2007 post, as well as in follow-up posts that you can read here and here. One spot that hasn’t been mentioned anywhere and one that I was desperate to find was the café where Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) and Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear) so amicably broke up in the 1998 comedy. So I got to work in tracking it down shortly before heading out to NYC in April.
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While scanning the breakup scene for clues, I spotted a (rather blurry) neon sign reading “Monsoon” posted on the window of the storefront across the street. Figuring it was most likely an eatery of some sort, I did a Google search for “Monsoon,” “restaurant,” and “Upper West Side” (since the vast majority of the movie was shot in that area of the city), and the first result kicked back was for Monsoon Vietnamese Cooking at 435 Amsterdam Avenue. Though that spot is now shuttered and looks a bit different today, I was able to toggle back to the 2007 Street View image of it and the red patio area shown matched perfectly to what was seen in You’ve Got Mail.
A current view of that site is pictured below. As you can see, not only has it been cleaned up significantly, but the entire patio area has been removed. The space is now occupied by a Thai eatery named Spice.
I then used Street View to see what restaurant was located across the street from the former Monsoon site. At present, there is an American/Irish bar in that spot named St. James Gate.
Toggling back through the years, I could see that St. James Gate took over the space in 2008 and that, prior to that, it was the site of a different eatery, one that I could not make out the name of. So I did a deep Google search of the place’s address – 441 Amsterdam Avenue – and was able to discern that the location’s previous occupant was an American Nouveau/Mediterranean restaurant named Louie’s Westside Café, which originally opened on the premises in 1986. Eureka! As you can see below, despite the change in tenancy, little else of the structure has been altered since St. James Gate moved in.
Some further research on Louie’s pulled up the review pictured below. Looks like I should have just used Yelp from the get-go to find this locale!
Louie’s Westside Café was originally established by a woman named Louie Sloves and in its early days boasted a scant 11 tables with seating for 35. Despite the small size and lack of a liquor license, it managed to become a local favorite.
Louie’s Westside Café popped up towards the end of You’ve Got Mail in the scene in which Kathleen and Frank admit to each other that they are in love with other people – Frank with Sydney Anne (Jane Adams) and Kathleen with “the dream of someone else.”
In the scene, they sat in the southwest corner of the restaurant, in the area pictured below.
The brick beam visible behind Kathleen in the scene is still there.
Though we did not have time to eat on the premises, the employees at St. James Gate could not have been nicer and invited me in to take all of the photographs that I wanted.
Much of my free time as of late has been spent tracking down missing locations from Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Ever since writing my post on the apartment where Terry Dolittle (Whoopi Goldberg) lived in the 1986 comedy, I have been just a wee bit consumed with finding other spots featured in the flick. So much so that I even purchased director Penny Marshall’s 2012 autobiography in the hopes that it might shed some light on the subject. One locale that I did not need to put any effort into tracking down was Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, aka the building that portrayed the New York British Consulate in the movie, which fellow stalker Mick managed to pinpoint in February 2014. He had been searching for the place for a while and, on a whim, emailed screen captures to a friend in the hopes that he might recognize it. It turned out to be a fortuitous move because the friend wrote right back saying, “Hey, that’s on my street!” I was floored when Mick relayed the news and ran right out to stalk the site while in Manhattan in April.
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Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum originally served as the private residence of wealthy industrialist/philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who purchased the land on which the structure now stands in 1889. At the time, the area was rather rural, which gave Carnegie ample space to built a large estate flanked by a sprawling garden. He hired the Babb, Cook & Willard architecture firm to design the dwelling, asking them to create “the most modest, plainest, and most roomy house in New York.” If what’s pictured below is modest and plain, I can’t imagine what Carnegie considered grandiose and ornate!
The 64-room, 4-story (that does not include the three-level basement!) estate was quite innovative for its day, boasting an Otis passenger elevator, a steel frame, and a central heating and cooling system, among many other luxurious amenities.
I am in love with the mansion’s gilded glass and copper canopy, which always catches my eye during viewings of Jumpin’ Jack Flash and was no less striking in person.
Today, the property, which has been dubbed the “Carnegie Mansion” or the “Carnegie Hill Mansion,” houses a massive collection of design artifacts including textiles, furnishings, clothing, lighting fixtures, and jewelry that once belonged to sisters Amy, Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt. The collection was originally displayed at the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, which was established in 1897 at Cooper Union college located at 7 East 7th Street. The museum was shuttered in 1963 and the Hewitt sisters’ assemblage was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1967. It was then moved to the Carnegie Mansion in 1970, at which time the property underwent a renovation before being opened to the public as Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 1976.
In 2011, the site was shuttered for an extensive three-year, $91-million renovation and expansion. It re-opened in 2014 as Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, one of the most cutting-edge and technologically-advanced institutions of its kind. You can read about a few of the property’s most unique innovations here.
The Carnegie Mansion popped up as the Manhattan British Consulate numerous times in Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
Only the exterior of the Carnegie Mansion was shown in the movie. Scenes involving the interior of the British Consulate were filmed at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash is hardly the first production to make use of the Carnegie Mansion. Way back in 1955, it appeared in Daddy Long Legs as the Pendleton House art gallery.
The property was the site of the car crash at the beginning of the 1976 thriller Marathon Man.
The estate played the home of Martha Bach (Geraldine Fitzgerald), Arthur Bach’s (Dudley Moore) grandmother, in the 1981 comedy Arthur.
In the 1988 film Working Girl, the Carnegie Mansion masked as the Union Club, where Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) and Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) crashed a wedding.
The Carnegie Mansion was also shown briefly in the 1993 comedy For Love or Money.
And in the Season 1 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Much ‘I Do’ About Nothing,” the Carnegie Mansion was where Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford) and Bart Bass (Robert John Burke) got married.
The ceremony scene was shot in The Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden, the museum’s enclosed rear garden which is open to the public daily, free of charge. Bart and Lily’s reception did not place at the Carnegie Mansion, but at the Madison Room of the Lotte New York Palace hotel.
The Carnegie Mansion is also said to have made appearances in 1973’s Godspell and 1976’s The Next Man, but I was unable to find copies of those movies with which to make screen captures for this post.
On a Jumpin’ Jack Flash side-note – I was floored to discover while scanning through the movie to make screen captures for this post that the police station featured in the flick is none other than the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off police station! How it took me this to recognize it is beyond me, but better late than never.
I’ve made no secret over the years of my love for Jumpin’ Jack Flash. (You can read the posts I’ve done on the 1986 comedy’s locations here, here, here, and here.) Whoopi Goldberg is literally perfection in her role as zany New York bank employee Terry Dolittle and I pretty much go around quoting her and the other characters on a regular basis (“Get Larry, the heavy-set guard! Get Larry, the heavy-set guard!”). So when a fellow stalker named Mick emailed me in July 2013 to ask for some assistance in tracking down a few of the movie’s locations, I was eager to help. Somehow I got distracted, though, and never did any investigating. Then Mick contacted me again the following February and this time I got to work.
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One of the locales Mick was hoping to find was the apartment where Terry lived. So I popped in my DVD and was thrilled to see that there was a restaurant located on the ground floor of Terry’s building and that its name, La Tablita, was clearly visible on its awning.
An internet search for “La Tablita” and “New York” led me to an ad in a 1985 issue of New York magazine that listed the eatery’s location as 65 West 73rd Street. I headed right on over to Google Street View, popped in that address and, sure enough, it was the right spot!
The exterior of Terry’s apartment building was only shown a couple of times in Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but it was extremely memorable to me due to the unique glass block pop-out located next to the front door.
I was floored to see that virtually none of the property had been changed since filming took place there three decades ago. (I honestly cannot believe the movie will be turning 30 in October!)
Today, the La Tablita space serves as home to a hardware store. Other than a change in tenant, though, it, too, still looks very much the same as it did onscreen.
Terry’s apartment building is part of a set of neighboring row houses that were designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the same architect who gave us The Plaza Hotel, the Dakota, and the original Waldorf-Astoria, which was demolished in 1929 in order to make way for the Empire State Building. Construction on the homes began on July 20th, 1882. Terry’s building was completed on January 21st, 1885.
Of the 28 properties originally constructed by Hardenbergh, only 18 remain. They can be found from 15A through 19 West 73rd Street and 41 through 65 West 73rd Street. Sadly, the ten homes that once stood in between those two groups were demolished during the Great Depression in order to make room for a 16-story apartment building.
The row houses that do remain standing have been left largely untouched from their original design.
Terry’s building is one of the few that has been modified. The large glass block pop-out that was so memorable to me from Jumpin’ Jack Flash is obviously a later addition and not an original 1885 detail. Other than that, Hardenbergh’s design remains intact, though. You can read more about the history of the 73rd Street row homes here.
Only the exterior of the property was used in Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Terry’s apartment interior was a set built on a soundstage at 20th Century Fox Studios in Century City where portions of the movie were lensed. You can check out what a unit in the building actually looks like here. Apparently, the images are from the penthouse, which cracked me up as the place is teeny tiny. I mean, come on! That kitchen looks like it should be on a ship and the second bedroom is more like a closet. Sex and the City really led me astray when it comes to apartment sizing in New York. So did Friends and pretty much every other movie/TV show set in the Big Apple for that matter (outside of Wanderlust), including Jumpin’ Jack Flash! As you can see below, Terry’s apartment was huge compared to the building’s actual units.
For our recent Big Apple vacation, the Grim Cheaper and I took a red eye into New York, leaving Palm Springs at 11 p.m. and landing in NYC at 6:30 a.m. Working off zero sleep, we were obviously exhausted upon arrival (me especially considering the copious amounts of calming drugs I ingested to curtail my flight anxiety), but obviously were not able to check into our hotel at such an early hour. So what else were we to do, but head out for some stalking? (And major props to the GC for going all-in with me that day. Despite the lack of sleep and even after we were informed that our room was ready, we decided to stay up the rest of the day and stalked from one end of the city to the other! “We can sleep when we’re dead” pretty much became our trip motto.) For our first foray, we ventured over to Brooklyn so that I could see one of the locales I was most excited about – the house where Jules (Anne Hathaway) lived with her husband, Matt (Anders Holm), and daughter, Paige (JoJo Kushner), in The Intern. The romcom was easily my favorite movie of 2015 (I’ve literally watched it about twenty times since it came out) and Jules’ charming brownstone was easily my favorite location from it.
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I began the search for Jules’ house the moment I found out we were headed to New York. Said to be located in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood in the movie, thanks to this Architectural Digest article I learned that the pad was actually a renovated brownstone in Clinton Hill. That information led me to a post on the Brownstone website that stated that The Intern had done some filming at a home located at 385 Grand Avenue. Upon closer investigation, though, I discovered that the Brownstone website reporting was slightly off. Jules’ house can actually be found at 383 Grand Avenue.
Several of the houses along the 300 block of Grand Avenue bear strikingly similar façades, which made figuring out the exact spot where filming took place a bit difficult. I finally managed to pinpoint the locale, though, thanks to a few unique characteristics. Namely, the edge of the faux portico above Jules’ front door was shown to be a greater distance away from the crosshead of the window directly next to it. That was not the case with the neighboring homes. Jules’ house, which has a black door, was also shown to be situated next to a dwelling with a brown door and stairs with a concrete railing, and two doors away from a home with a brown door and stairs with a metal railing. From there, I simply headed to Google Street View and searched for the residence on that stretch of Grand with a large gap between its portico and window crosshead and a black door/concrete railing combo that was located next door to a house with a brown door and a concrete railing and two doors down from a house with a brown door and a metal railing. It was not long before I found the right spot.
Jules’ brownstone was featured extensively throughout The Intern.
In the movie, Jules says, “I love this house. It just looks happy to me, like if it was in a kid’s book, it would make you feel good when you turned the page and saw it,” which is the perfect way to describe the place.
In person, the residence did not disappoint.
It is not very hard to see how filmmakers came to choose it for the shoot.
The dwelling is charming, picturesque, and screams of being the quintessential New York brownstone.
I was shocked to learn while researching this post that filming took place inside of the brownstone, as well, which is not in keeping with a typical Nancy Meyers shoot. Usually, the esteemed director constructs elaborate sets for the interior of her characters’ homes, as was the case with It’s Complicated and The Holiday. But for The Intern, the actual inside of 383 Grand was utilized as the interior of Jules’ spectacular house. You can check out some photographs of the inside of the residence here.
Though many of the living areas look much the same in reality as they did onscreen, the kitchen was completely redone for the shoot. The property’s dark wood and glass cabinets were swapped out for dark blue drawers and open shelving, the center island was replaced with a larger, bluer version that was then moved to the center of the room, and the oven was relocated to the back wall. You can check out how the kitchen is set up in real life here, here, and here.
Though the actual space is gorgeous, personally, I prefer the look of Jules’ kitchen.
The moratorium was rather unfortunate for the homeowners as the 4,032-square-foot, 4-story, 5-bedroom pad, which was originally built in 1900 and includes a separate ground-floor unit, is a virtual A-Lister of locations. According to The New York Times article, the residence has been featured in countless shoots since its onscreen debut in the 2011 movie Friends with Kids, in which it was used to portray two locales. It served as both the home of Missy (Kristen Wiig) and Ben (Jon Hamm) in the beginning of the flick . . .
. . . and then later masked as the dwelling that Julie Keller (Jennifer Westfeldt) moved into.
Some of the home’s other credits include a Nordstrom commercial and print ads for West Elm and Best Buy.
Stalk It: Jules’ house from The Intern is located at 383 Grand Avenue in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. (Note – the map link I’ve included is for 381 Grand Avenue as, for some reason, the 383 Grand Avenue link does not lead to the correct house.)
My favorite movie of 2014 was The Other Woman. The romcom may have been heavily panned by critics, but I loved everything about it. The Grim Cheaper and I saw it in theatres shortly after it premiered and then I purchased a copy as soon as it came out on DVD and have proceeded to watch it copious times since. I’m addicted! The flick was lensed primarily in New York and its environs and I, of course, tracked down the vast majority of its locales immediately upon buying the DVD. (I chronicled a few of them in an August 2014 Los Angeles magazine post which you can read here.) The spot I was most anxious to stalk was the restaurant featured at the end of the movie. I finally got my chance while in NYC last month.
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At the end of The Other Woman (spoiler alert!), after exacting revenge upon their cheating husband/boyfriend Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz), Kate King (Leslie Man), and Amber (Kate Upton) headed to an absolutely gorgeous restaurant to celebrate.
The eatery’s setting was nothing short of magical and, even though it was only featured briefly in the movie, I became captivated by it while watching. Thanks to the On the Set of New York site, I learned that filming of the restaurant scene had taken place at Isola Trattoria & Crudo Bar located at 9 Crosby Street in SoHo. I added the information to my vast file of New York filming locations and did not do any further thinking on it until I started planning out itineraries for our April trip. Isola Trattoria was one of my must-see/must-eat-at locales and, upon Googling the restaurant’s name to see if reservations were suggested, I was heartbroken to learn that it had closed. I added it to my To-Stalk List regardless with the hope that I might be able to peek through a window and catch a glimpse of the place’s stunning interior.
Imagine my surprise – and elation! – when I arrived on the scene and discovered that the restaurant was not only still open, but that it looked exactly the same as it did onscreen! Thanks to the super friendly staff, I learned that the eatery had never actually closed, but had only undergone a name change, from Isola Trattoria & Crudo Bar to NoMo Kitchen.
NoMo Kitchen is located on the ground floor of the hip and elegant NoMo SoHo hotel, which was originally constructed as the Mondrian SoHo in 2011. The unique, dream-like schematic of both the hotel and restaurant was conceived by interior designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, who drew inspiration from the 1946 film La Belle et la Bete (a French adaptation of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale).
When the Mondrian first opened, the restaurant was a “sustainable seafood spot” known as Imperial No. 9. Helmed by former Top Chef contestant Sam Talbot, the 180-seat, 5,000-square-foot venue consisted of two sections – an interior dining room and a greenhouse-like space enclosed by a glass atrium. The stunning greenhouse is the area that appeared in The Other Woman.
By August 2012, the eatery had become Isola Trattoria. While the menu received an overhaul at that time, the striking dining area thankfully did not. Aside from swapping out Imperial’s odd patio-furniture-like tables and chairs for more sleek leather and wood combinations, the space was left untouched. It was also left unaltered during the transition from Isola to NoMo Kitchen (the name is a combination of the words “nostalgic” and “modern”) in 2015.
NoMo Kitchen still retains its breathtaking garden-like setting, with towering crystal chandeliers hanging from the peaked glass roof, a sprawling cream stone bar backed by handsome oak shelving, and massive amounts of foliage adorned with twinkle lights.
The site also boasts an adorable outdoor patio.
I half expected fairies to start flying around while we were exploring the place. It’s truly that magical!
NoMo Kitchen is easily one of New York’s most beautiful spaces.
So it is no surprise that it also popped up in an episode of The Real Housewives of New York City. In Season 8’s “Airing Your Dirty Laundry,” Bethenny Frankel, Carole Radziwill and Ramona Singer met up there and discussed Sonja Morgan’s “cheater brand,” Tipsy Girl.
Besides functioning as a working restaurant and filming location, NoMo Kitchen is also available as a special events venue. I can’t even image how gorgeous a wedding there would be!
On a side-note – and speaking of special events – while in New York, the GC, my friend Owen (from the When Write Is Wrong blog), and I happened to meet a woman named Man-Lai Liang who did us an enormous favor. I won’t get into specifics, but to say she hooked us up would be a vast understatement. I wanted to say a huge thank you to her for her incredible kindness and also give her a shout-out. Man-Lai is a New York-based special events coordinator, so if you are looking for help in planning your next Big Apple party, I urge you to contact her. You can visit her website here.
Between our trip to New York and dealing with some matters out of state, the Grim Cheaper and I have been away from home for the better part of five weeks. While most of our traveling has not been for pleasure, I did just recently get to check an item off of my Stalking Bucket List. While in Nevada last week, we took a bit of a detour and headed out to Henderson to see The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa, aka the former Hyatt Regency Lake Las Vegas Resort, Spa and Casino which had a prominent role in America’s Sweethearts, one of my favorite movies. I had been dying to stalk the gorgeous hotel ever since first seeing the romcom back when it originally premiered in 2001 – and it did not disappoint.
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The area known as Lake Las Vegas was the brainchild of actor J. Carlton Adair, who acquired 2,245 acres of land in Henderson in the 1960s with the intention of turning it into a lakeside community named “Lake Adair.” While water rights were secured, development of the site never came to fruition and J. Carlton wound up filing for bankruptcy in 1972, dashing his dreams of a man-made desert oasis in the process. The project suffered another failed attempt before being rescued in 1990 by Ron Boeddeker of the Transcontinental Corporation, who finally got the ball rolling on creating a 320-acre man-made lake fed from nearby Lake Mead. Construction of the surrounding village of large-scale homes, lush golf courses, fancy boutiques, world class restaurants, and premiere hotels was started shortly thereafter.
One of those hotels was the Hyatt Regency Lake Las Vegas Resort, Spa and Casino, which opened its doors in December 1999.
The grand 493-room, 21.6-acre property has changed hands and names several times over the ensuing years, first in December 2006, when it became Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort. Sadly, the entire LLV area was hit hard during the recession and in 2009, the owners of the hotel defaulted on their $117-million mortgage, causing it to be taken over by a court-appointed receiver. Five weeks prior to going into foreclosure in 2012, it became The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa. The site was finally sold in late 2015 to the investment firm Pacifica Companies, but has remained operating as a Westin. Miraculously, despite all the changes, very little of the property’s Moroccan-themed design has been altered since it originally opened almost 17 years ago.
Today, the resort boasts a spa, two pools (one with a waterslide), four restaurants including the AAA Four-Diamond award-winning Marssa, a cocktail lounge, a coffee bar/bakery, a private beach that offers water activities such as kayaking and paddleboarding, access to two golf clubs, a fitness studio, and 25 meeting rooms comprising 90,000 square feet of event space.
Oh, and it also boasts some pretty amazing views.
Travel + Leisure named The Westin Lake Las Vegas one of the “World’s Best Hotels” and it is not very hard to see why. The place is absolutely magical – and feels much more like a tropical resort than a Sin City lodging.
The Westin is relaxed, low key and tranquil – in short, though located only a scant 17 miles from The Strip, it is very far removed from any Sin City melee. A stay there would most likely entail sipping tropical drinks, working on a tan, and leisurely walks by the lake. The hotel is the perfect spot for a family vacation or a romantic getaway. I already told the GC that I want to go back for a week and do nothing but lounge by the pool and stroll down to The Village at night for dinner.
Ah, yes, The Village. Just down the road from The Westin is a quaint waterside shopping center known as The Village at Lake Las Vegas.
The site boasts several shops, boutiques and restaurants . . .
The Village truly feels like being on another continent and while there I could think of nothing better than booking a nearby room for an extended stay and strolling down to the quaint center every night to grab dinner. You can check out all Lake Las Vegas hotels here.
America’s Sweethearts made extensive use of The Westin. For those who have not seen it, the flick is a true romp – a hilarious take on celebrities and filmdom that pokes endless fun at Hollywood. I’ve watched it countless times over the years and yet it still manages to make me laugh out loud throughout. The film centers around divorcing movie stars Gwen Harrison (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Eddie Thomas (John Cusack). The former couple starred in dozens of hits together and were considered “America’s Sweethearts,” until Gwen cheated on and then subsequently left Eddie for a Castilian heartthrob named Hector Gorgonzolas (played to perfection by Hank Azaria) whom she met during the filming of Time Over Time. (The storyline was inspired in part by Elizabeth Taylor’s infamous love affair with Tim Burton during the filming of Cleopatra.) The break-up lands Eddie in a live-in healing institution, while Gwen and her career take a massive beating in the press. Audiences don’t like America’s Sweethearts apart. As Time Over Time is about to released, studio publicist Lee Phillips (Billy Crystal) decides to host the press junket far out of town in order to distract the media from Eddie and Gwen’s battling – and to divert attention away from the fact that the movie’s eccentric director Hal Weidmann (Christopher Walken) has yet to release a cut of the film for the press to screen. As Lee says, “We need to get these people out in the middle of nowhere. Once they find out there’s no movie, they can’t escape. We need to find a hotel like the one in The Shining – you know, isolated.” He settles on the newly-built Hyatt Regency Lake Las Vegas. Virtually all of the film takes place at the hotel.
In fact, The Westin is featured so prominently, it almost serves as a character. Areas of the property that appeared onscreen include the front entrance (though the scene shot there contained a lot of movement, so I was not able to make a great screen capture);
the beach;
the lobby stairs/The Arabesque Lounge;
the back terrace;
the neighboring Reflection Bay Golf Club;
and Rick’s Café (love the name!), where one of my favorite scenes took place.
When the movie was filmed, Rick’s Café was known as Café Tajine. You can see pictures of it from that time period here. Though certain elements, like the tile work, flooring, and curtains, have since been changed, the space still currently looks very much the same as it did when America’s Sweethearts was shot.
You can watch the scene shot at Rick’s below. I first saw America’s Sweethearts in the theatre with my best friend, Robin, who was visiting from his native Switzerland. When Lee uttered the line, “Word of advice, when you hit Formica – stop!” I started cracking up. Robin turned to me and whispered, “What is Formica?” When I explained, he began cracking up. To this day, I can’t watch the scene – or hear the word Formica, for that matter – without thinking of him.
One of the hotel’s private Casbah Villas also made an appearance as the spot where Gwen stayed with her sister, Kiki (Julia Roberts), during the press junket – and where Eddie was caught “giving himself a big favor.” Unfortunately, we did not venture out to the villas while there, but you can see a guest photograph of the exterior of one here.
The Westin boasts several Casbah Villas. The exact one used in America’s Sweethearts is the northeastern-most villa. It is denoted with a yellow arrow below.
The interior of Lee’s and Eddie’s rooms were also set re-creations.
One spot I was unable to pinpoint while stalking The Westin was the restaurant where Kiki and Eddie – and then Gwen and Eddie – attempted to have dinner . . .
. . . and where Lee orchestrated a fight between Eddie and Hector.
What was shown in the scene does not match the décor or layout of the hotel’s main restaurant, Marssa (pictured below).
At the time that America’s Sweethearts was shot, Marssa was known as Japengo. You can check out some images of what Japengo looked like here. As you can see, despite the name change, little of the space has been altered and what is shown in the photos does not match the restaurant featured in the movie at all.
What is odd is that some portions of it, including the wall shelving (pictured below) and tile work, do resemble that of Café Tajine/Rick’s Café, which leads me to believe that the space was a set built at Sony that echoed the décor of the hotel. That scenario seems a bit unlikely, though, being that the restaurant was large and elaborately decorated. If it was a set, it was an extensive one, which seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a relatively short scene. But who knows?
I am also unsure of where the screening of Time Over Time took place.
While the space that was shown in the movie does bear a strong resemblance to The Westin’s Casablanca Ballroom, some things do not gibe. For instance, though the look of the real life doors seems to be a dead-on match to what appeared onscreen, the number of doors does not. I am guessing that the screening scene was shot on a set built to resemble the Casablanca Ballroom. But again, that is a lot of trouble to go to for what amounted to a relatively short segment. You can check out a wider view of the ballroom here.
Today’s locale is another one of those facepalm spots. For ages, I had been trying to track down the interior of the diner where Mitch (Owen Wilson) and the boys discussed saving their fraternity in the 2003 comedy Old School. While I had long known that Montrose Bakery & Café (which, sadly, Yelp is reporting has closed) was used as the exterior of the restaurant, the café that portrayed the interior remained a mystery. Then while watching the flick recently, I spotted something that I thought I recognized.
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Visible outside of the window behind Mitch in the restaurant scene was a red brick building that looked extremely familiar to me.
Upon scrutinizing the scene further, I spotted a Kentucky Fried Chicken outpost located across the street from the restaurant and it was then that everything clicked into place. I knew immediately that filming had occurred at Shakers Family Restaurant in South Pasadena. I used to get my nails done at a salon just south of Shakers and, though I had never eaten there, I passed by it, as well as the red brick building and the KFC (which is now Mamma’s Brick Oven Pizza and Pasta), on a regular basis, which is why they looked so familiar to me.
As soon as I figured out that filming had taken place at Shakers, I started doing some research on the eatery and its filming history and came across this mention of Old School being shot on the premises on the Scott’s L.A. Audio Tours website. Now, not only have I been to that website several times over the years, but I own and have listened to (several times, I might add!) the Scott’s L.A. Pasadena Audio Tour CD! D’oh! Feeling a bit sheepish, I immediately added the diner to my To-Stalk List and ran right on over there a couple of weeks later.
In 1971, the South Pasadena Preble’s changed hands and was turned into the Salt Shaker. Just a few years later, in 1975, the owners dropped “salt” from the name (according to Wikia, the change was made due to the many studies being released at the time that showed salt was unhealthy) and the eatery became known simply as “Shakers” or “Shakers Family Restaurant.” Though the interior has been remodeled slightly in recent years, it still boasts much of the same décor that it did when the Salt Shaker was originally established 45 years ago.
I cannot believe that in all the years I lived in Pasadena, I never dined at Shakers! The Grim Cheaper and I thoroughly enjoyed our lunch there, though I am really regretting not opting to order the chicken strips, which countless Yelp reviewers have touted as being the best they’ve ever had. That’s what I get for trying to be healthy! I cannot say enough good things about the Classical Cobb Salad that I did order, though. It was fabulous!
Thanks to the place’s fabulously retro aesthetic, it has long been a favorite of location managers.
In Old School, Mitch and his Alpha Epsilon Omega brothers discussed the Charter Certification Review of their fraternity while sitting in Shakers’ southern dining room.
As I mentioned earlier, only the interior of Shakers was featured in Old School. The exterior shown in the movie can be found at 2325 Honolulu Avenue in Montrose.
I was floored to learn via various websites and Yelp reviews that an episode of The X-Files had been lensed at Shakers. I was unsure of which episode, though, and while it took quite a bit of time, I finally managed to figure it out! Shakers was the spot where Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) told Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) the legend of the Lazarus Bowl in Season 7’s “Hollywood A.D.,” which aired in 2000 and was written and directed by Duchovny.
In the Season 2 episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. titled “One of Us,” which aired in 2015, Calvin Zabo (Kyle MacLachlan) and the rest of the “Masters of Evil” dine at Shakers and discuss how to take down the Agents.
I immediately recognized the diner when it popped up in the recently-aired episode of Scandal titled “Wild Card” as the spot where Tom Larsen (Brian Letscher) convinced Wayne Turner (Braden Lynch) to hold up the Pennsylvania State Capital.
The exterior of Shakers also appeared in the episode.
I often get asked if I think that someday down the road I might run out of places that I am passionate about stalking. That is like asking if I will ever tire of shopping! The answer is a definitive no! As long as movies and TV shows continue to be made, this girl will continue a’stalking, passionately so! Heck, even if Hollywood did cease churning out new films and television series, my To-Stalk List would remain full. I am constantly discovering new-to-me productions that warrant stalking, not to mention the fact that there are countless locations from films and shows I have long been a fan of that I have yet to visit. Case in point – Studio City’s Beeman Park which was featured in the 1985 romcom Girls Just Want to Have Fun, one of my all-time favorite flicks. Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There site, tracked down the locale a few years back, but, for whatever reason, I failed to stalk it until recently. When I finally did make it out there, though, I could not have been more thrilled and was immediately brought right back to the first time I watched the movie over 30 years ago!
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Beeman Park, which is also known as Studio City Recreation Center, is a very cute little spot that I had never heard of until Chas discovered it, which is actually quite surprising being that it has appeared onscreen numerous times.
The 4.5-acre park features four baseball diamonds, a jogging path with fitness stations, two basketball courts, a picnic area, a playground, four tennis courts, barbeque pits, and an auditorium.
Studio City Recreation Center is a very peaceful space. While we were walking around, we saw couples jogging, adults reading, kids engaging in pick-up basketball games, and fathers and sons playing catch on the various baseball diamonds. Though there were plenty of people on the premises, it was still quite quiet and tranquil – the perfect spot to spend a shady afternoon.
Beeman Park is also quaintly picturesque and it is not hard to see how it has wound up onscreen so many times over the years.
In Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Studio City Recreation Center masks as the unnamed downtown Chicago park where the Dance TV auditions are held. Though it is only featured in one scene, it is a rather prominent scene and several areas of the park are shown.
Those areas are denoted in the aerial view below.
In the beginning of the scene, Jeff Malene (Lee Montgomery) and Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman) drive onto the property via an access way on the park’s eastern side located at approximately 4457 Beeman Avenue. The house visible in the background of the segment is located at 4456 Beeman. The residence’s exterior has been altered in recent years, but you can see what it looked like previously via the Google Street View image pictured below, which was taken in July 2007.
A current photograph of the house is pictured below.
Though the access way that Drew and Jeff drove through is still intact, it is no longer accessible to cars.
After entering the property, Drew and Jeff park on a patch of grass located in the southern portion of Studio City Recreation Center, just south of the baseball diamonds. The same area is pictured in the photograph below, albeit from a different angle. It is there that Drew accidentally hits on a young Maggie Malene (Shannen Doherty) and calls her a punk, which, FYI, is not as cool new wave, but is a lot better than preteen!
The building that was visible behind Drew and Jeff in the scene is still there today, although it currently looks a bit different than it did when Girls Just Want to Have Fun was shot.
The colorful (and definitely ‘80s-style) stage where the actual auditions took place was set up on top of the park’s southwestern-most baseball diamond, in the area pictured below.
And come on, fans of the movie – you can’t look at the screen capture below and not have the lyrics to “Dancin’ in the Street” come pouring into your head, am I right? “Callin’ out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer’s here and the time is right, for dancin’ in the street. They’re dancin’ in Chicago (dancin’ in the street), and down in New Orleans (dancin’ in the street), in New York City (dancin’ in the street). All we need is music – music, sweet, sweet, sweet music. There’ll be music everywhere – everywhere! They’ll be swingin’, swayin’ and records playin’ and dancin’ in the street!” I digress, but man, just one glimpse of that scene and all the lyrics come flooding right back!
I have always been obsessed with the Bob Fosse-style arm movements that Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker) employed during her audition, so I, of course, had to re-create them while I was there. (If I only had a stage!) I mean, it’s no wonder that Jeff fell in love with her in that moment.
You can watch a portion of the Girls Just Want to Have Fun audition scene by clicking below.
Studio City Recreation Center was also where Perry Cox (John C. McGinley) and Jordan Sullivan’s (Christa Miller) divorce ceremony was held in the Season 4 episode of Scrubs titled “My New Game,” which aired in 2004.
Beeman Park was the site of a couple of Laire (aka “Live Action Interactive Role-playing Explorers”) events in the 2008 comedy Role Models.
In the movie, it was made to appear as if “The Burger Hole” was located across the street from the park, but, in actuality, the restaurant, which is a Shakers in real life, can be found about 15 miles away at 601 Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena.
Studio City Recreation Center was also where the Annual Pawnee Easter Egg Hunt was held in the Season 1 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Canvassing,” which aired in 2009.
Stalk It: Beeman Park, aka Studio City Recreation Center from Girls Just Want to Have Fun, is located at 12621 Rye Street in Studio City. From what I have been able to piece together, the stage was set up diagonally in the eastern portion of the park, in the spot denoted with a pink rectangle below, the parking area was in the southern part of the park, in the spot denoted with a blue rectangle below, and the place where Jeff and Drew drove into the park (which is no longer accessible to cars) is located directly across the street from the house at 4456 Beeman Avenue, and is marked with the purple arrow below.
I am not a spontaneous person by nature. I much prefer planning things out, especially when it comes to vacations. Typically when going on a trip, I investigate any and all filming that has been done in the area we are heading to. As I mentioned in Monday’s post, though, our Big Bear Lake getaway last week was completely last minute. So much so that I was unable to do any sort of location research beforehand, which is a shame being that not only has the region seen copious amounts of filming over the years, but I even own two books which chronicle much of it, Those Magnificent Mountain Movies and More Magnificent Mountain Movies. One area locale that is well-covered online, though, is the 7-Eleven that was featured in the 1983 movie WarGames. So I made a point of stalking it while we were in town.
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The 7-Eleven only shows up once in WarGames, in the scene in which Seattle high school student David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is arrested by the FBI for hacking into a NORAD supercomputer named WOPR and starting a game of Global Thermonuclear War again Russia.
As you can see below, very little of the 7-Eleven has been changed in the three-plus decades (!) since filming took place, which is absolutely amazing to me.
The surrounding area also remains virtually untouched.
The Foulkes Building, which is located just east of the 7-Eleven, has undergone a paint job, but otherwise looks the same as it did onscreen in 1983.
As does the McDonald’s that is located to the west.
And while payphones are no longer as ubiquitous as they once were, the one that was visible in the background of WarGames is, amazingly, still there!
After the FBI collars David, they usher him into a van and rush out of the 7-Eleven parking lot, making a right onto Eureka Drive, heading north.
And if you happen to be in a bookstore or at a newsstand in the next few days, check out the latest issue of Closer Weekly magazine – a photograph I took of The Golden Girls house is featured in it.
