Category: Movie Locations

Hatfield’s Restaurant from “Chef”

Today’s location is a bit of a bummer, I’m afraid. Ever since seeing the movie Chef (one of my favorites of 2014), I was itching to stalk Hatfield’s restaurant, which appeared quite extensively throughout the flick. So when I discovered that it had recently closed, I was devastated. But I ventured on over to see the exterior of it in person, nonetheless, while I was in L.A. a few weeks ago.

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Hatfield’s restaurant was established by Karen and Quinn Hatfield in 2006. The fine dining eatery was originally located in a small space on Beverly Boulevard, but moved to 6703 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood in 2010.

The Melrose Avenue space had housed a restaurant named Citrus until 2001 and then went through a succession of different occupants, including Alex, Meson G, and Red Pearl Kitchen. When the Hatfields leased the site, they remodeled the interior, creating an open space filled with bright white accents. While I was hoping to get a peek of that interior via the front windows, due to the way the restaurant is set up, not much was visible, unfortunately.

For reasons that were not specified, Hatfield’s closed its doors in December 2014 and the property that once housed it currently sits vacant. Karen and Quinn have since opened Odys & Penelope Churrasco and Grill in the Fairfax district and they still operate The Sycamore Kitchen in that same neighborhood, as well.

In Chef, Hatfield’s masked as the Gaellic-style Brentwood eatery named Gauloises where Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) worked.

I fell in love with the restaurant’s open kitchen while watching Chef and was dying to stalk – and photograph – it. A place like that is just screaming to be photographed! I sincerely hope that whoever takes over the space leaves its design intact.

According to a May 2014 Eater LA interview with Favreau, who wrote, produced, directed and starred in Chef, the kitchen is what made him choose the site for filming. He says, “Cinematically it was wonderful. When you build a restaurant on a stage for a Hollywood film it looks so perfect. This one had a beauty to it and was very well laid out. I loved how the front and back of the house you could see the open kitchen – you could see in – that was fun for the cameraman. Kitchens aren’t usually aesthetically pleasing places in reality; they’re generally hot and crowded. The visual aspect of it isn’t a priority. This one is.”

The culinary scenes in Chef are absolutely beautiful – and not just because of the design of Hatfield’s kitchen. Eater LA characterizes the sequences as “food porn” and that’s a pretty accurate description. Roy Choi, the chef behind the immensely popular Korean taco food truck fleet Kogi, consulted on the movie. According to Jon, before coming onboard Choi said, “’I’ll do it but you have to get the kitchen right. Movies always get it wrong. I’ll do everything you need. I’ll train you, do the menus, look over your scripts, help you in the editing room. Whatever you want. But you have to promise you’ll get the details right.’ I said that’s all I ever want to do. That’s the way I work. That’s exactly what I had in mind as well.” Favreau even attended a French culinary school and worked in some of Choi’s restaurants prior to filming, which becomes obvious while watching the flick. Favreau’s hands move like an artist when handling his dishes. Check out this grilled cheese-making scene and you’ll see what I mean. Just make sure you have some sliced sourdough and cheddar on hand ‘cause cravings are sure to follow!

Hatfield’s was also where Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) sat through a terse staged lunch in the Season 3 episode of Scandal titled “Ride, Sally, Ride.”

The space also masks as Jimmy’s, the restaurant belonging to Jimmy Martino (John Stamos), in the new Fox series Grandfathered. The interior of the eatery . . .

. . . and the kitchen area are featured on the show.

Exterior filming, though, takes place at Faith & Flower, located in The Watermarke Tower at 705 West 9th Street in downtown Los Angeles. That same building is also where Jimmy lives on the show.

During the space’s stint as Meson G (which you can check out some photographs of here), it masked as New York restaurant Nolita for the pilot episode of the 2005 television series Kitchen Confidential. I had never heard of the show, which was created by Darren Starr and starred cuties Bradley Cooper and Owain Yeoman, prior to doing research for this post, but it looks great! You can check it out for free on Hulu.

Thanks to my friend Molly, from the fabulous DIY/lifestyle website Almost Makes Perfect, I learned that David Boreanaz was punked at Meson G during Season 6 of Punk’d.

In 2008, when the site housed Red Pearl Kitchen, it appeared in the Season 4 episode of The Hills titled “We’ll Never Be Friends” as the spot where Doug Reinhardt took Lauren Conrad on a date.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hatfield’s restaurant, from Chef, was formerly located at 6703 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. The space is currently closed and awaiting a new tenant.

April 21, 2015
The Georgian Ballroom from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

Had you asked me last week, I would have told you that I was an expert on both Pasadena and its filming history. But something happened on Wednesday afternoon that rocked me to my stalking core. While writing a blog post for Los Angeles magazine, I got on a bit of a Girls Just Want to Have Fun kick and decided to attempt to track down a few of its unknown locations, one of which was the Lakeview Country Club where Natalie Sands’ (Holly Gagnier) debutante ball was held. As it turns out, the country club scene not only took place in Pasadena, but at a spot I am extremely familiar with – The Langham Huntington hotel! At the time of the filming, the property was known as The Huntington Sheraton. I was absolutely reeling upon making the discovery. Then, while doing further research, I learned something even more shocking – the historic hotel was actually demolished in 1989 and then rebuilt from the ground up!   What the wha?

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There’s a lot of ground to cover today, but I thought I’d start with how I made the Girls Just Want to Have Fun discovery. While scouring through the debutante ball scene, I spotted two different signs reading “Georgian Room.” So I did some Googling of the words “Georgian Room” and “Los Angeles” and eventually a listing for a Georgian Ballroom came up. I clicked on it and, lo and behold, it was a link to photos of the Georgian Ballroom at The Langham Huntington hotel.

Amazingly, the intricate gold ceiling pictured in the images was an exact match to the ceiling that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun!

Oddly though, the hallway featured briefly in the scene did not resemble The Langham hallways in any way, shape or form. While GJWTHF was filmed three decades ago and the hotel’s décor bound to have changed during such a lengthy time period, I just could not get over the fact that nothing about the hallway in the movie paralleled the hotel’s actual hallways. Nothing. The hallway pictured in GJWHF was dark and Spanish in style, while The Langham’s hallways are very bright and open and boast a Louis XIV design. So I started doing some research and just about fell over when I read that The Huntington Sheraton was demolished in the late ‘80s. Because The Langham is repeatedly touted as being one of Pasadena’s most historic properties, I was shocked to discover this information. Not to mention the fact that I lived in the Crown City for over a decade and have visited The Langham dozens of times! How did I not know about this??

The Langham Huntington was originally constructed as The Wentworth in 1907. Commissioned by General Marshall C. Wentworth, the hotel had problems from the get-go and was shuttered and declared bankrupt a short five months after opening. In 1911, Henry Huntington stepped in to purchase the site and hired architect Myron Hunt to remodel and expand it. The property reopened three years later under the name the Huntington Hotel. It quickly gained a reputation as Pasadena’s finest lodging.

In 1954, the hotel was sold to the Sheraton Corporation and renamed The Huntington Sheraton. Despite being later purchased by the Kiekyu USA company in 1974, the site continued to operate as a Sheraton through 1985. That year, Kiekyu had seismic testing done on the property and the results showed that it was not structurally sound enough to withstand a major earthquake. The doors of The Huntington Sheraton were shut in October, its future unclear. In December 1987, Huntington Hotel Associates purchased the site and set about plans to demolish it. Despite some major resistance from preservationists, the wrecking ball descended on the structure in March 1989. Miraculously, two portions of the original hotel were left intact, the Viennese Ballroom and, you guessed it, the Georgian Ballroom – which means that the very spot that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun is still standing today! But more on that in a minute.

The new property opened in 1991 as the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel. The exterior was constructed as an almost exact replica of the original. As you can see in the screen capture (which was taken from Disneyland Dream – a 1956 movie that I will talk about later in this post) as compared to a photograph that I took in 2008, while there are some minor differences between the new and old buildings, they are virtually imperceptible.

The hotel sold a couple of times after its reconstruction and, in 2007, was purchased by the Hong Kong-based Great Eagle Holdings and renamed The Langham Huntington.

While the hotel was being reconstructed in 1989, the Georgian Ballroom underwent a restoration. During the process, ten stained glass windows lining the ceiling of the room were discovered behind plaster.   They had been covered over at some point in the 1940s. (This explains why there were not visible in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.) Developers removed the plaster and restored the windows to their original glory and they once again line the perimeter of the grand room.

I have stayed at The Langham countless times over the years and thought I had ventured throughout every square inch of the property, but that was obviously not the case as I had never before seen or heard of the Georgian Ballroom. As soon as I made the discovery about the room’s appearance in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I was tempted to drive right on out to Pasadena to remedy the situation. In a timely stroke of luck, though, I remembered that my mom had a doctor’s appointment in the Crown City on Thursday, so she headed over to The Langham beforehand to snap some pictures for me. My mom currently has a broken foot and is on crutches, but she still managed to go out stalking on my behalf! She is a rock star!

The Georgian Ballroom appeared in one of Girls Just Want to Have Fun’s more memorable scenes in which Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker), Lynne Stone (Helen Hunt) and Maggie Malene (Shannen Doherty) sabotaged the debutante ball of mean girl Natalie by inviting 150 unwanted (and rather wild) guests to her upscale soiree.

The Georgian Ballroom looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen in 1985.

As you can see below, though, aside from the addition of the stained glass windows, the ceiling remains unchanged.

At the time of the filming, the Georgian Ballroom had windows and doors that led to the outside of the hotel.

That is no longer the case, though.

I am fairly certain that the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was used as the exterior of the Lakeview Country Club in the scene, as well. While I have scoured the internet looking for 1980’s images of the hotel’s main entrance taken from the same angle as GJWTHF to use for comparison, I came up empty-handed.

But as you can see below, in the screen capture from Disneyland Dream the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was covered in vines, as was the building pictured behind J.P. Sands (Morgan Woodward) in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

The exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was also featured briefly in the 1982 pilot episode of Remington Steele (more on that later) and as you can see in the screen capture below, the front of the hotel was painted white at the time, matching what appeared in GJWHF. You can also check out a photograph of the what the hotel’s entrance looked like in 1989 here.   Though not taken from the same angle shown in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, you can see that it does bear a resemblance to the exterior shown in the movie.

During its tenure as The Huntington Sheraton, the hotel popped up quite a few times onscreen. As I mentioned, it was featured in Disneyland Dream, a home movie made by Robbins Barstow who won a trip to The Happiest Place on Earth in 1956 via a contest sponsored by Scotch Tape. During the seven-night vacation, he and his family stayed at The Huntington Sheraton.

You can watch Disneyland Dream by clicking below. The Barstows seem like such a fun family!

As I also previously mentioned, the hotel was used extensively throughout the pilot episode of Remington Steele, which was titled “License to Steele.”

I could not get over seeing the interior of the property in the episode. With its arched openings, beamed ceilings and wrought-iron glass doors, the place bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to The Langham.

I honestly cannot believe how much it has changed!

I was able to spot a few things from Remington Steele that matched up to what appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which thrilled me to no end.   As you can see below, unique fan-shaped lights were visible in both productions.

The carpeting in both is also a direct match.

The hotel stood in for Club Meade in the Season 2 episode of Simon & Simon titled “The Club Murder Vacation” in 1983.

In the episode, a large tree located in front of the hotel is visible. That tree is a match to one that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. The placement of the lawn-covered center island in Simon & Simon is also a match to what was shown in GJWTHF, further leading me to believe that the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was used as the exterior of the Lakeview Country Club in the flick.

In the 1985 made-for-TV movie Promises to Keep, The Huntington Sheraton masked as the Westwind Hotel where Jack Palmer (Robert Mitchum) stayed while trying to make amends with the family he abandoned thirty years prior.

The property stood in for the abandoned Cumberland Grand hotel in the Season 3 episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King titled “The Triumvirate,” which aired in 1986.

The interior of the hotel was also used in the episode.

There are those fan-shaped lights again!

In 1987, the Scarecrow and Mrs. King crew returned to The Huntington Sheraton to film Season 4’s “One Flew East.” In the episode, the hotel masked as the Hospimerica Briarwood Sanitarium.

The renovated Georgian Ballroom also made an appearance in the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Langham Huntington Hotel is located at 1401 South Oak Knoll Avenue in Pasadena. You can visit the property’s official website here. Girls Just Want to Have Fun was filmed in the Georgian Ballroom.

March 30, 2015
“The Hangover” Wedding Chapel

It is no secret that erroneous (and/or imprecise) filming location information published online and in books is one of my biggest pet peeves – especially when it leads to me stalking an incorrect place, which is exactly what happened while I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. (Why there is some sort of halo on my shirt in the above pic is beyond me.)

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Several websites state that The Best Little Chapel from The Hangover was a fake set piece that was constructed for the shoot in a vacant parking lot near 1236 Las Vegas Boulevard South. The building at that address currently houses a youth hostel named Hostel Cat. When the Grim Cheaper and I arrived there, though, I found that there were two parking lots that fit that description – one to the north of Hostel Cat and one to the south – and only one of them was large enough to accommodate the construction of any sort of structure, not to mention the car accident scene that took place on the premises. I snapped some photos of the large lot and was shocked when I compared my pictures to images from the movie later that night in our hotel room. As it turns out, The Best Little Chapel set piece had not been constructed in the large parking lot.

The Best Little Chapel was actually not a set piece constructed in a vacant parking lot at all, but a fake front attached to the northern side of the Hostel Cat building.

As you can see below, the western portion of the hostel’s main building was even incorporated into the design of the chapel.

A white picket fence as well as quite a bit of foliage were added to the western portion of Hostel Cat during the shoot to make the place look less hotel-ish.

A fake bus stop – which was later destroyed – was also brought in for the filming. And Hostel Cat’s real life sign was covered over with signage reading “The Best Little Chapel” for the scene, as well.

Hostel Cat is actually made up of one main building and nine free-standing bungalows.

The back of one of the bungalows was painted over for the shoot. You can check out a great image of Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis sitting in front of that structure here.

The interior of The Best Little Chapel was a set built on a soundstage and not the actual interior of Hostel Cat.

I was thrilled to see that Hostel Cat embraces its filming history. Not only does the lodging make mention of its Hangover appearance on the homepage of its official website, but an image of Galifianakis as “Alan” is also painted on the wall of the main building.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Best Little Chapel from The Hangover is located “at the corner of get a map and f*ck off.” Just kidding. The chapel was a fake façade that was built around the north side of Hostel Cat, which is located at 1236 Las Vegas Boulevard South in Las Vegas. The areas that appeared in the scene are denoted in the aerial view below.

March 27, 2015
The Cooper House from “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”

Sometimes I become obsessed with a location because I love the movie that it was featured in. Other times I just like the look of a particular place and am desperate to see it in person. And other times still I read something about a filming site that completely transfixes me despite the fact that I have never actually seen it onscreen. Such was the case with the Anywhere, U.S.A.-style residence where the Cooper family – Ben (Steve Carell), Kelly (Jennifer Garner), Alexander (Ed Oxenbould), Anthony (Dylan Minnette), Emily (Kerris Dorsey), and Baby Trevor (Elise and Zoey Vargas) – lived in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. While doing research for a Los Angeles magazine post about Vroman’s Bookstore’s appearance in the 2014 family flick, I came across these production notes and was shocked to read that a re-creation of a real home in South Pasadena had been constructed for the shoot. Interest piqued, I immediately rented Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day on iTunes and, in a stroke of good luck, found the South Pas pad almost immediately.

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As it turns out, the Cooper home is located on Buena Vista Street, a place that I am very familiar with thanks to its many appearances onscreen. While watching Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day’s opening scene, I immediately recognized the mansion visible behind the Cooper family’s van as Lady Heather’s (Melinda Clark) house from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. So I did some Google Street View-sleuthing in the same area and found the Cooper’s residence just a half a block east of Lady Heather’s house. (Patrick Gates’ home from National Treasure is located directly across the street from the Cooper dwelling and the the Liar Liar house can be found two blocks north.)

Of the Cooper home, production designer Michael Corenblith said, “We imagined that this is a family of birds that live in this beautiful cozy little nest that has been created from all of the nicest little branches and twigs and pieces of colored ribbon and fabric. But there are just too many birds for the nest. This family is bursting at the seams, so the idea was to craft an environment for them that would really convey that idea to the audience.” He then set about looking for a “quaint” house to film in.

He found the perfect spot at 1037 Buena Vista Street. Corenblith said, “It was exactly the right house for this family. It had the right scale, it had the right vibe, window scape and was built in the right period. It had a lot of things we really liked, but ultimately, it was going to be too small to actually shoot the movie inside.” So he decided to have a replica of the residence built at Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio in Newhall. The “home” took five weeks to construct.

The production notes state, “The exterior of the home – complete with backyard and select interior sets – was built in one area of the studio lot, while the upstairs interiors resided on soundstages elsewhere on the lot.” Corenblith did an amazing job designing the interiors! I am in love with the Cooper’s kitchen. With the bright windows, light-colored cabinetry and large center island, it reminds me a lot of Cupcakes and Cashmere’s Emily Schuman’s kitchen.

I cannot believe that the backyard and pool shown in the movie were set re-creations! Had I seen Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day prior to reading the production notes, I would have bet money on the fact that the home’s actual backyard was used.

Corenblith explained that the need to build the backyard replica and interior sets stemmed from the scene involving the crocodile. He says, “We follow the crocodile through the house and out the back into a swimming pool. The path this crocodile takes from the front door, through the house, out the French doors in the back, and directly to a swimming pool was nothing we found in the real world. That was one of the big factors that mandated the design of this configuration.”

Corenblith even had the rear side of the home re-created for the shoot. You can see what the actual back of the house looks like in the aerial view pictured below. It is strikingly similar to what was built.

From the way the production notes were written, I originally thought that no filming whatsoever had taken place at the South Pasadena house. It became apparent while watching the movie, though, that the front exterior of the real home was used in a few scenes and in several establishing shots.

The residence looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen. The unique trees in the front yard are absolutely breathtaking!

In real life, the residence, which was originally built in 1949, boasts two bedrooms, two baths, 2,022 square feet, and a 0.37-acre lot.

It’s no stranger to the silver screen, either. In 1983, the very same home was used as Arnie Cunningham’s (Keith Gordon) Rockbridge, California residence in Christine, though it looked quite a bit different at the time.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Cooper house from Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is located at 1037 Buena Vista Street in South Pasadena. Patrick Gates’ home from National Treasure is located across the street at 1030 Buena Vista Street. Lady Heather’s house from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is located at 929 Buena Vista Street. The Liar Liar house can be found one block north at 1004 Highland Street.

March 25, 2015
The Pioneer Saloon

There’s only one thing I love more than stalking film locations and that’s stalking film locations that have a history. On our way out of Las Vegas last week, the Grim Cheaper and I visited a watering hole that has quite a storied one. The Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, which has been deemed Southern Nevada’s oldest bar, was first established over 100 years ago on a curving rural road located about 25 miles southwest of The Strip. Miraculously, little of the two-room saloon has changed since its inception and the place is still going strong to this day.

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The Pioneer Saloon was founded by businessman George Fayle in 1913.

He constructed the neighboring General Store at around the same time, which he operated as a café.

Both structures were built from kits likely purchased from a Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog. According to the Pioneer Saloon’s brochure, the buildings are thought to be some of the last of their kind in the U.S.

The walls and ceilings of the Pioneer Saloon and Goodsprings General Store were constructed entirely out of pressed tin that is still in place today.

The mahogany bar in place at the saloon today is the same one that was installed in 1913. It was made by the Brunswick Company in Maine in the 1860s.

The original brass foot railing is also still in place.

The Pioneer Saloon’s history is steeped in lore. The most notable tale (which I tend to believe) centers around Clark Gable and wife Carole Lombard. On January 16th, 1942, Carole, her mother and Gable’s press agent boarded a flight from Indiana to California. The three had been in the Hoosier State selling war bonds. After a brief refueling stop in Las Vegas, their plane crashed into Potosi Mountain. Gable immediately headed to Goodsprings and spent several days at the Pioneer Saloon, first awaiting news of the crash and then waiting for his wife’s body to be released.

Gable is said to have sat in the spot where I am sitting in the photo below.

The divots that can be seen in the face of the bar are rumored to have come from the many cigars he smoked while waiting.

The Pioneer Saloon’s eastern room is now known as the Carole Lombard & Clark Gable Memorial Room.

The space features numerous photographs and newspaper clippings about the couple, as well as a piece of the wreckage of the airplane on which Carole lost her life.

The room also boasts photographs of the many productions that have been lensed on the premises, but more on that in a bit.

Another infamous moment in the Pioneer Saloon’s history took place in 1915 when a dispute over a card game resulted in a man being shot and killed. The table where he was sitting during the game is pictured below. It was originally located in the main room of the bar, but has since been relocated to the Carole Lombard & Clark Gable Memorial Room.

It is said that the bullet holes below came from that shooting.

The three holes run straight from the inside of the Pioneer to the outside.

The photograph below is pretty eerie. No wonder the place is said to be haunted!

In 1966, the Pioneer Saloon and Goodsprings General Store (the interior of the General Store is pictured below) were purchased by Don Hedrick and his wife. When they passed away, Don Hedrick Jr. inherited the site and continued to run it until 2006 when he retired and sold it to Las Vegas entrepreneur Noel Sheckells. The property had fallen into a bit of disrepair by that point so Noel subsequently poured $600,000 into restoring it. The following year, the Pioneer Saloon was added to the Nevada Register of Historic Places.

The saloon is honestly one of the coolest places I have ever visited. The people there could not have been more friendly and the overall vibe smacked of good times. Besides cheeky décor, the walls are donned with signs that read, “Street girls bringing miners into hotel must pay for room in advance” and “Pioneer Saloon – Open Everyday Till the Drinking Stops.”

The Pioneer even has an “A**hole Association.” Being that one of my good friends refers to the GC as “Ahole” (in a loving way, of course), I made him join. The yearly $5 membership fee is donated to Goodsprings’ local schoolhouse.

While one would not think that a 100-plus year-old watering hole located in the middle of nowhere would serve particularly good food, the Pioneer’s fare was shockingly fabulous! The GC and I both opted for the chicken tacos and they were some of the best I’ve ever had! The restaurant also serves burgers (which smelled so good I almost regretted my choice of the tacos), steaks, ribs, nachos, pizzas, salads, and chicken wings. There is also the option of purchasing various meats onsite and grilling them yourself on the DIY BBQs located on the premises.

Thanks to its unique aesthetic, the Pioneer Saloon has appeared numerous times onscreen. It was featured in the deleted “Hardware Barn” scene in 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Please pardon the craptastic screen captures – I got them off of YouTube.

You can watch that scene by clicking below.

Travis Tritt shot photos for his 2004 album, My Honky Tonk History, at the Pioneer Saloon.

In 2005’s Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, the Pioneer Saloon stood in for the Sloane Valley, Nevada bar where Lou and Karl Steele (Abraham Benrubi and Nick Offerman, respectively) hosted an arm wrestling competition.

Though the interior of the saloon was also said to have been used in the filming, I am not sure if that is true. The layout of the bar shown onscreen does not seem to match up to the layout of the Pioneer.

The Pioneer served as the inspiration for the Prospector Saloon in the 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas.

The saloon also appeared in Melvin and Howard, the 1982 Cheech and Chong movie Things are Tough All Over, and The Winner, as well as in episodes of Sister Wives, Ghost Hunters and Pawn Stars. And while the bar is also said to have been featured in The Mexican, I scanned through the flick while doing research for this post and did not see it pop up anywhere.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Pioneer Saloon is located at 310 Spring Street in Goodsprings, Nevada. You can visit the watering hole’s official website here. The “gas n gulp” from The Hangover is located just a few miles away at 1 Goodsprings Road in Jean.

March 23, 2015
“The Hangover” Gas Station

The Grim Cheaper and I spent last week in Las Vegas on a business/pleasure trip (hence the lack of recent blog posts). While there, we were lucky enough to stay at Caesars Palace (post on that location coming soon!) and found ourselves constantly quoting lines from The Hangover. So one evening we decided to watch the 2009 flick and I have to say it was pretty epic to be viewing it while in a room at the very hotel where filming had taken place. One location that I wondered about while watching was the “gas n gulp” station that the boys – Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha) – stopped at on the way to Las Vegas. I figured it was most likely located in the Palmdale area (where many of the desert driving scenes were shot), but The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations clued me into the fact that the station was actually the Jean Fuel West Shell in Jean, Nevada, just east of the California border. So we dropped by to stalk it on our return trip home.

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Jean Fuel West Shell only appeared once in The Hangover, in the rather brief, but hilarious scene in which Alan admonished an old man for looking at his car and Stu tried to defend the actions of his girlfriend who cheated on him with a Carnival Cruise Line bell hop sailor pilot waiter bartender.

The station’s signage was changed to read “gas n gulp” for the shoot.

The fact that filming took place at a Shell, though, was still fairly obvious due to the yellow and red coloring of the station’s carport roof.

Other than the change in signage, the site looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

Some filming also took place inside the Shell’s food mart.

The super nice woman working behind the counter informed me that the interior was changed a bit for the shoot. In real life, the cashier stand is located in the center of the store.

But for the filming of The Hangover, a fake cashier stand was built near the store’s south windows, in the area pictured in the photograph below.

The camera then cheated to the right so that the real cashier stand was not visible behind the actors.

On a side-note – One Hangover location that I will not be stalking, sadly, is the home where Mike Tyson – and his tiger – lived. While I did find the address of that humongous dwelling – 22634 La Quilla Drive in Chatsworth – it is located inside of a gated community and is therefore unstalkable.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Jean Fuel West Shell, aka the gas n gulp from The Hangover, is located at 1 Goodsprings Road in Jean, Nevada.

March 16, 2015
Daniel McCormick’s House from “Forever Young”

Back in my early stalking days, I purchased a Scott’s L.A. Audio Tour of Pasadena CD. I loved every minute of it and learned about quite a few new locations while listening, one of which was the home where Claire Cooper (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her son, Nat (Elijah Wood), lived in the 1992 movie Forever Young. This was long before I had a blog, though, so I never wrote down the address and actually completely forgot about it until last week while stalking in South Pasadena. I did not have my Scott’s L.A. CD with me at the time, so used my trusty iPhone to do some Googling to see if I could find the place. I wound up coming across this Facebook post which gave the location of a different residence used in the movie – the bungalow where Capt. Daniel McCormick (Mel Gibson) lived. So I ran right on over to snap some pics. (I ended up tracking down the Cooper house, too, but not until after I had already returned home to Palm Springs, so that will be a different post for a different day.)

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For those who have yet to see Forever Young (and if you haven’t, you really should, it’s a fabulous movie!), the story (which was written by none other than Lost creator J.J. Abrams) centers on Daniel, a test pilot living in 1939, whose girlfriend gets into a terrible accident that lands her in a coma. Not bearing to see the love of his life dying, Daniel volunteers for the latest experiment that his best friend, scientist Harry Finley (George Wendt), is conducting – cryogenic freezing. Harry agrees to freeze Daniel for one full year, but things go terribly wrong and Daniel does not end up being removed from the suspended animation chamber until 1992 – 53 years after initially stepping inside.

Daniel’s small Craftsman-style bungalow is only shown once in Forever Young, in the very beginning of the movie, prior to Daniel being frozen.

Despite a change in paint color, the residence still looks much the same today as it did onscreen in 1992.

According to Zillow, the tiny dwelling, which was built in 1915, boasts two bedrooms, one bath and 864 square feet of space.

I was actually quite shocked to see that the home boasts such a scant square footage as it appears to be much larger from the street.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the property was also used in the filming, but I could not find any photographs of the interior online with which to verify that hunch.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Daniel McCormick’s house from Forever Young is located at 612 Meridian Avenue in South Pasadena.

March 9, 2015
Hotel Angeleno from “Heat”

The Grim Cheaper and I travel back and forth to L.A. so often that sometimes I feel like I live in a hotel – which is not a bad thing, I ADORE hotels. One that we checked into recently that I absolutely loved was the Hotel Angeleno. Not only is the place’s architecture unique, vibe spectacularly retro and views breathtaking, but it is also a filming location! I mean, come on now! What’s not to love?

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Hotel Angeleno was originally constructed in 1970 as the Holiday Inn Brentwood/Bel-Air. Its cylindrically-shaped configuration was a popular one for the hotel chain. The first of its kind was designed by architect Leonard Lundgren and still stands overlooking Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. Lundgren went on to design several similarly shaped structures for the Holiday Inn company, including the Brentwood/Bel-Air outpost.

During its tenure as a Holiday Inn, the property offered mid-level lodging. In April 2005, it was taken over by the Joie de Vivre hospitality company and a massive renovation process was started. The site re-opened in February 2006 as the much more upscale Hotel Angeleno.

Thankfully though, its unique exterior was left largely untouched.

The 17-story structure sits above the Interstate 405, just north of the Sunset Boulevard exit. Each room features a private balcony (as well as complimentary parking and free Wi-Fi), most of which offer amazing views. Our room boasted views of the freeway and it was fascinating to watch traffic start accumulating on the northbound side at around 2 p.m. and remain at a standstill until well past 10.

Our room also had a spectacular view of the Getty Center.

Not to mention a vertigo-inducing view of the street below. The GC is not a fan of heights and he couldn’t even bring himself to step out onto the balcony.

Occupying the top floor of the Angeleno is the circularly-shaped restaurant West.

We had the pleasure of dining at West while staying at the hotel and not only is the food spectacular, but the views are simply uh-ma-zing.

The Holiday Inn Brentwood/Bel-Air was most notably featured in the 1995 action classic Heat, as the spot where Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) moved upon leaving his wife. Very little of the hotel can actually be seen in the movie, though.

In the Season 1 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “Death Ride,” which aired in 1975, Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) stopped by the Holiday Inn to pick up a witness named Andrew Mello (Jeff Corey).

Thanks to the Dear Old Hollywood blog, I learned that the 1976 film Two-Minute Warning opened with a scene of a sniper taking a shot from a balcony at the Holiday Inn Brentwood/Bel-Air.

The hotel’s interiors were also shown in the movie, including a room;

a hallway;

the lobby;

and the front desk.

In the 2004 hit Sideways, Miles (Paul Giamatti) drove by the Holiday Inn on his way to pick up Jack (Thomas Hayden Church).

There was even some filming going on when we were staying there! Just as we were checking out, my mom spotted Justin Jedlica, aka the “Human Ken Doll,” filming a segment for a reality show. So I, of course, just had to ask for a pic.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hotel Angeleno, from Heat, is located at 170 North Church Lane in Brentwood. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

March 2, 2015
Thornton’s Mansion from “Back to School”

Even though I am a definite child of the ‘80s, for whatever reason I had never seen the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield classic Back to School until late last year. I wound up loving the flick and immediately started researching its locations. I covered a few of them in a September post for Los Angeles magazine, but one that I could just not seem to track down was the mansion belonging to “Tall and Fat” clothing store owner Thornton Melon (Dangerfield). I finally enlisted fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, to help in the quest and he ended up finding the pad rather quickly. Thank you, Owen!

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While watching Back to School, I spotted an address number of 9933 on the front of Thornton’s mansion. I was also fairly certain that the property was located in Beverly Hills or Bel Air, so I passed that information along to Owen. Sure enough, when he sent me the address just a few hours later, it was right where I figured it would be – 9933 Shangri La Drive in Beverly Hills. How I was unable to find the place on my own is beyond me!

The same address placard that was visible in the movie is still there today!

The mansion was only featured at the beginning of Back to School, in the scene in which Thornton and his second wife, Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau), hosted a party for their 5th wedding anniversary, during which they decided to get a divorce.

As you can see, the residence looks quite a bit different today than it did when the movie was filmed 29 years ago due to the massive amount of foliage that now surrounds it.

I was thrilled to see that the house located down the street, which was visible in the background of the scene in which Thornton’s limo driver dropped him off before the party, still looks exactly the same as it did onscreen.

The real life interior of the Shangri La mansion was also used in the party scene.

As was the home’s real life backyard and pool.

You can check out aerial images of the mansion’s backyard, which is pretty darn spectacular, below. The property actually consists of two lots – the lot that the residence sits on and the landscaped lot directly to its south – and therefore has two addresses, 9915 and 9933 Shangri La Drive.

In real life, the home, which was originally built in 1980, boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths and 6,929 square feet of living space.

In 2013, the property served as the SVEDKA Summer House and such celebs as Julianne Hough, Derek Hough, Jessica Szohr, Adrienne Bailon and Evan Ross attended events there.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Thornton’s mansion from Back to School is located at 9915/9933 Shangri La Drive in Beverly Hills.

February 18, 2015
The Whisky a Go Go

I’ve never really been into music. As I have mentioned before, if it’s not sung by Michael Bublé, Britney Spears or Michael Jackson, or was not a top ‘80s hit, chances are I haven’t heard it. But my good friend Kim from Kentucky is a huge music buff, so when she and our good friend Lavonna came out for a visit in November, we made sure to hit up what is arguably one of the most famous rock venues in the world, the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip.

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Whenever Kim, Lavonna and I do any stalking together, we seem to have miraculous luck. This day was no different. We showed up to the Whisky in the late afternoon only to find it closed. There was a sign on the front door, though, that stated that anyone looking to buy merchandise could call the club’s office during daytime hours. So we did just that, using Lavonna’s twang to full effect, of course. An incredibly nice booking agent named Bekah (that’s her pictured below) let us in and, after Kim and Lavonna purchased pretty much every piece of merchandise available (not joking!), offered to give us on a tour of the place!

We wound up being taken on an epic tour of the venue and, even though I am not into music, I was pinching myself the whole time.

While a sign on the Whisky’s front door specifically states that no photography of any kind is allowed inside, Bekah told us that we could take all of the pics that we wanted, so as you can imagine I was snapping away like a madwoman!

It was so neat to be able to see the Whisky while empty, because come nightfall it is typically packed to the gills with crowds.

It was also amazing to stand in the space and think about the music history that had taken place within the four walls and the many legends who had performed on its stage. Lavonna, Kim and I were walking in the footsteps of some major music legends and it was pretty surreal to contemplate.

Just standing on the Whisky a Go Go stage. NBD.

The Whisky a Go Go first opened its doors on January 15th, 1964. The club was founded by Elmer Valentine, a one-time Chicago cop who was the then owner of P.J.’s restaurant in West Hollywood. During a fateful trip to Paris in 1963, Valentine visited a discotheque named Whisky a Go Go and thought the concept would be successful in L.A. Upon returning home, he secured three investors and opened his club inside of a former Bank of America branch. He hired singer Johnny Rivers to be the headliner. The venue was instantly popular, though small – seating capacity was just 500. The space was so tiny, in fact, that there was no room for a D.J. booth. In a 2006 Vanity Fair article, author David Camp states, “Between sets, the audience would dance to records spun by a D.J.—but not just any D.J.: a girl D.J., suspended high above the audience in a glass-walled cage. This faintly ridiculous idea was Valentine’s pragmatic response to the room’s space limitations: the Whisky was not a big club, and the only way he could fit the D.J. booth was to mount it on a metal support beam that ran alongside the performing area.”

As fate would have it, that D.J. box wound up leading to the go-go dancing craze. Prior to the Whisky’s launch, Valentine decided to hold a contest for the D.J. job, but as Camp explains in the Vanity Fair article, “On the very night of the Whisky’s opening, January 15, 1964, the contest winner called Valentine in tears, explaining that her disapproving mother wouldn’t let her take the job. So Valentine pressed his reluctant cigarette girl, a young woman named Patty Brockhurst, into action. ‘She had on a slit skirt, and we put her up there,’ he says. ‘So she’s up there playing the records. She’s a young girl, so while she’s playing ’em, all of a sudden she starts dancing to ’em! It was a dream. It worked.’ Thus, out of calamity and serendipity, was born the go-go girl. Valentine acted fast to formalize the position, installing two more cages and hiring two more girl dancers, one of whom, Joanie Labine, designed the official go-go-girl costume of fringed dress and white boots.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Whisky a Go-Go was also responsible for launching the careers of countless legendary musicians and bands. Just a few who played at the club during their early days include Fleetwood Mac, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, Mötley Crüe, Metallica, Nirvana, Hole, The Bangles, Guns ‘N Roses, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Jimi Hendrix, KISS, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, and Limp Bizkit. The Doors and Chicago even served as the Whisky’s house bands for a time before hitting it big. Celebrities could often be found in the audience, as well, including Cary Grant, Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, Steve McQueen, Jayne Mansfield, Jack Paar, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Michelle Phillips, and Cass Elliot.

Perhaps most phenomenal about the Whisky a Go Go is that the place is still a veritable rock institution to this day, over 51 years after its opening.

The Whisky is also a filming location! It is outside of the club that Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross) kiss after a very bad first date in the 1967 classic The Graduate.

The venue played itself in the 1991 film The Doors. It was there that Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) and the group were famously fired after performing the Oedipus section of “The End.”

You can watch an interesting featurette about the filming of that scene by clicking below.

Suzette (Goldie Hawn) gets fired from her Whisky bartending job at the beginning of the 2002 comedy The Banger Sisters.

The Whisky also served as the inspiration for the fictional Bourbon Club in Rock of Ages, but no filming took place there. Though the 2012 musical was set on the Sunset Strip in the 1980s, director Adam Shankman needed to be able shut down traffic for six weeks during the shoot, a scenario that would have been impossible along one of L.A.’s busiest stretches of road. So production instead took place in Miami. For the filming, the intersection of North Miami Avenue & NE 14th Street was transformed into the Sunset Strip and the building located at 10 NE 14th Street was used for the exterior of The Bourbon Club.

The nightclub Revolution Live at 100 Southwest 3rd Avenue in Fort Lauderdale masked as the interior of The Bourbon in the flick.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Whisky a Go Go is located at 8901 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the venue’s official website here.

February 13, 2015