Category: Movie Locations

The Andrew McNally House from “Kingdom Come”

Los Angeles never ceases to surprise me. Though I feel like I know the city and its environs like the back of my hand and have spent the last decade of my life researching its locations, I am constantly learning of new spots that I had no idea even existed. Such was the case with an architecturally unique property located pretty much right in my own former backyard. A fellow filming location enthusiast name Liesel recently asked me why I had yet to blog about the Andrew McNally House in Altadena. The answer to that question was simple – despite the fact that the locale is historically significant, architecturally important AND a filming location, not to mention the fact that I lived less than three miles from it for over ten years of my life, somehow I had never heard of the place.

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The massive Queen Anne-style residence was originally built in 1887 for Andrew McNally (of Rand-McNally map company fame). It was designed by architect Frederick L. Roehrig, who also designed Stacy’s (Brittany Murphy) childhood home from Little Black Book, Pasadena’s iconic Castle Green apartments, and the Frederick Hastings Rindge House (a locale that I have stalked, but have yet to blog about as I am unsure of its filming history).

The residence was built facing south, away from the street, so the photographs below actually show the rear of the property. Unfortunately, the front side is not visible from the street. You can see a picture of what it looks like here, though.

You can also catch a slight glimpse of the front of the home from the 600 block of East Deodara Drive, as shown in the Google Street View images below.

The residence, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, boasts 10 bedrooms, 2 baths and a whopping 6,938 square feet. Though it originally sat on 15 acres of land, the property was subdivided after McNally passed away in 1904 and today measures 0.82 acres.

Though its exterior is striking, the most interesting aspect of the home can actually be found inside. In 1893, McNally acted as a commissioner for the Columbian Exposition at the World’s Fair in Chicago. While there, he became so enamored of a Turkish display that upon the Fair’s closing, he purchased said display and had it shipped home. In 1894, McNally employed Roehrig to build an addition to the southeastern corner of the Altadena residence in order to exhibit it. The architect wound up constructing a 25×25-foot, one-and-a-half story, eight-sided room that he topped with a conical roof. It became known as the “Turkish smoking room.” The space was ornate to say the least and featured a built-in banquette, elaborate screens, tall arches, diamond-shaped paned glass windows, and carved wood paneling. You can see historic pictures of the smoking room, which is still intact today, here and here and you can check out some more recent photographs of it, as well as the rest of the interior, here.

According to Liesel, the smoking room appeared in an episode of NCIS, but try as I might (and boy, did I try – I spent countless hours searching!) I could not figure out which episode. If anyone out there knows, please fill me in.

Liesel also let me know that the residence masqueraded as Depew’s Funeral Home in the 2001 dramedy Kingdom Come.

The interior of the house also appeared in the movie.

Several different rooms were used in the filming. You can see photographs of those rooms here.

Amazingly, the Andrew McNally House is still a private residence. Yep, someone actually lives there! I can’t even imagine how cool that must be!

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Liesel for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Andrew McNally House, from Kingdom Come, is located at 654 East Mariposa Street in Altadena.

February 4, 2015
The “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” Police Station

Once in a while a filming location comes along that blows my mind. Today’s post is about one of those locations. Recently, fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There site, texted to let me know that he had just tracked down the police station from fave movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I was shocked to learn not only that the place still looks exactly the same today, almost thirty years later, but that it is located in L.A.! (For those not in the know, Ferris was set in Chicago and, aside from a few SoCal locales, largely filmed in the Windy City.) So I ran right out to stalk it while visiting L.A. two weeks ago.

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In real life, the site is not a police station at all, but the former Los Angeles headquarters of Hills Bros. Coffee. The structure, which was built in 1929 and designed by architect George H. Kelham, housed both a warehouse and second floor offices for the java company. It is those second floor offices that masked as the police station in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Today, the property belongs to the Southwestern Bag Company.

Sadly, I was not able to get inside to see the interior, but while doing research for this post came across these fantastic images online that were taken by location scout Nick Morley. I contacted Nick to ask if he would allow me to use some of his photographs for this post and he wrote back right away giving me the go-ahead! Thank you, Nick! You can also check out another set of pictures that show the building’s first floor here.

In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the police station is where Jeanie Bueller (Jennifer Grey) is taken after being picked up by the police for making a phony 911 call. It is also where she meets “Boy in Police Station” (Charlie Sheen) and says one of my favorite lines in movie history – “Why don’t you put your thumb up your butt!”

The scene was shot in the lobby area of the building’s second floor, right at the top of the staircase. As you can see in Nick’s photograph as compared to the screen capture below, the space looks exactly the same today as it did in 1986 when Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was filmed.

The office where Det. Steven Lim (Robert Kim) informs Katie Bueller (Cindy Pickett) about Jeanie’s fake 911 call is located adjacent to the second floor lobby area. In Nick’s photograph below it is shown from an opposite angle than the screen capture pictured.

It, too, looks much the same today as it did when the movie was shot.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to get into that building! I would so love to pose for a pic on the stairs where Jeannie stood in the scene!

Chas actually found this location thanks to its appearance in a couple of other movies. While putting together a page about filming locations from Divergent a few months back, Chas tracked down the spot where Tris (Shailene Woodley) came into contact with her mother. As it turns out, that was the Hills Bros. Coffee building. Only the exterior of it was shown in Divergent, though.

Then while watching the 1987 action-comedy Beverly Hills Cop II a couple of weeks ago, Chas realized that the shaping, sizing and paning of the windows of the “Detroit” police station where Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) worked matched those of the windows of the building in Divergent. So he went searching for interior photographs of the Hills Bros. building and came across Nick’s page of images. Sure enough, what was shown in Nick’s pics matched the Beverly Hills Cop II police station.

Upon closer inspection, he realized that the staircase and lobby area from the Beverly Hills Cop II police station were an exact match to those from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. So he then compared screen captures from FBDO to Nick’s photographs and confirmed that the two places were one and the same!

The Hills Bros. Coffee building has actually appeared in countless productions over the years. The north side of it masked as a – yep, you guessed it! – police station in the 1988 thriller Jack’s Back.

In fave movie License to Drive, which was also released in 1988, Les Anderson (Corey Haim) falls asleep during driver’s ed class and dreams about speeding around in a Ferrari with his crush Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham). At one point, Les lights a cigarette for her, throws the match out the window and starts an explosion. That bit was shot in the alleyway that runs along the western side of Hills Bros. Coffee.

In 1990’s Child’s Play 2, Hills Bros. Coffee masked as the social services office where Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) was sent after his foster father was killed.

The interior of the building – as well as that famous staircase – was also utilized in the film.

Hills Bros. Coffee served as a police station once again in 1992’s Unlawful Entry.

Thanks to The Rockford Files Filming Locations blog, I learned that the building was used as the Bunker Hill Division of the Metropolitan Police Station in the series’ 1996 made-for-television movie “If the Frame Fits.”

Hills Bros. Coffee masked as a police station yet again in 1998’s The Negotiator.

In the Season 1 episode of Angel titled “She,” which aired in 2000, the building stood in for both an ice factory and a private security firm office.

Hills Bros. Coffee regularly masqueraded as Ojai Foods on the television series Brothers and Sisters, which ran from 2006 to 2011.

It also popped up in the 2011 movie The Muppets.

And in the Season 1 episode of How to Get Away with Murder titled “Smile, or Go to Jail,” Hills Bros. was used extensively as the police station where both Annalise Keating’s (Viola Davis) new client, Paula Murphy (Ana Ortiz), and murder suspect Rebecca Sutter (Katie Findlay) were being held.

The interior of the building also appeared in the episode. There’s that staircase again!

The building is featured as a Los Angeles police station circa 1932 on the HBO series Perry Mason.

Hills Bros. Coffee also apparently popped up in the Season 1 episode of Castle titled “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (though I could not track it down to make screen captures for this post) and in several episodes of CSI: NY (though I am unsure of which episodes specifically).

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Ferris Bueller’s Day Off police station is located at 635 South Mateo Street in downtown L.A. The address of the building is also sometimes listed as 642 Mateo Street, but that address is incorrect and would be located across the street from where the building actually stands.

February 2, 2015
Big Red Sun from “Chef”

Spoiler alert! If you have not yet seen Chef (and if not, what’s the hold up? I told y’all on Friday that it was one of my favorite movies of 2014!), you might not want to read today’s post as I will definitely be spoiling the ending. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Anyhow, at the conclusion of Chef, Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) is approached by his food critic nemesis, Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt), who informs him that he would like to financially back him in the opening of a new restaurant. Ramsey says that he has already secured a space for the venture on “Rose Avenue in Venice.” The movie then flashes six months into the future to a scene in which Carl is show re-marrying his ex-wife, Inez (Sofia Vergara), inside of his new eatery named El Jefe. Well, once I managed to track down Inez’s house from the flick, I immediately set about finding El Jefe. Thankfully, it was not that difficult of an undertaking.

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Because Ramsey had mentioned Rose Avenue when talking to Carl about the restaurant, I decided to begin my search there and, sure enough, found the El Jefe space at 560 Rose, just a few blocks west of Lincoln Boulevard. In real life, the space does not house an eatery, but a gift shop named Big Red Sun.

Actually to call the place a gift shop would be oversimplifying. In reality, Big Red Sun is a boutique, a nursery and a special events venue all rolled into one. The store was originally founded by landscape artist Selena Souders in 2008. Selena had first opened a Big Red Sun in Austin, Texas in 1994. She would often travel to Los Angeles to purchase succulent plants and other goods to sell there and soon was dreaming of opening a West Coast outpost. She acquired an adorable little cottage in 2007, painted it royal blue and repurposed it into a retail space. Big Red Sun: Venice was opened the following year. (The Texas outpost is still in operation, as well.) Because the site is so unique, Selena also decided to offer it up to host special events. You can check out some photographs of a wedding held on the premises here. (Notice the pics of David Foster at the top of the page! Loves it!)

I fell in love with Big Red Sun upon first glance. The shop sells some of the most unique items for the home that I have ever seen. I ended up purchasing the really cool coconut shell-looking planter pictured below to put in the Grim Cheaper’s advent calendar. (He is a major green thumb.) The site sells many nursery-type materials, but also stocks specialty gifts and home décor items. Had I had more time to spend there, I am sure I would have purchased countless other goodies.

I so wanted to come home with the amazing succulent garden pictured below, but I am pretty sure the GC would have killed me.

Chef made extensive use of the Big Red Sun property . . .

. . . and featured several areas of the store, including the front exterior.

In the movie, the El Jefe sign was placed where the Big Red Sun signage is in real life.

The interior was also used in Chef. For the shoot, all of the shop’s shelving and display pieces were removed to make the space look more like a restaurant. Despite that fact, though, it is still very recognizable from its onscreen appearance. I did not take any photos of the inside of the store as a large shipment of products had just been delivered and there were countless boxes scattered about the center of the room. Wish I could have stuck around to peruse what was in those boxes, because, as I said, the merchandise I did see was amazing. You can check out some photographs of the inside of Big Red Sun on Apartment Therapy here.

The store’s gorgeous backyard was also featured in the movie.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Big Red Sun, aka El Jefe restaurant from Chef, is located at 560 Rose Avenue in Venice. You can visit the shop’s official website here.

January 12, 2015
Inez’s House from “Chef”

My favorite movie of 2014 was, hands down, The Other Woman. Running a close second was Chef, which I am guessing many of you have not heard of. Sadly, it was a bit of a sleeper. Take my word for it, though, the flick is fabulous. As are its locations! But more on that in a minute. The Grim Cheaper and I first heard about Chef thanks to Carson Daly who talked about it on his morning radio show on 97.1 FM a couple of months back. Carson had just watched the movie the night prior and was mesmerized by it. He even mentioned that it made him cry. So when the GC and I came across the title when perusing the Instant Video selections on Amazon a couple of weeks back while spending the night at my parents’ house, we decided to watch it. And we all had much the same reaction as Carson. Chef is heartwarming, funny and feel-good. We absolutely loved it! One thing that had us debating during our viewing and repeatedly pausing the movie (much to the GC’s chagrin), though, was the real life location of Inez’s (Sofia Vergara) onscreen house.

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Because of its Spanish-style architecture, my mom and the GC were convinced that the residence was located in Pasadena. I had my doubts, though. If a place of that massive size and spectacular beauty was actually located in the Crown City, I figured I most likely would have come across it during my ten-plus years of living there. As it turns out, my instincts were right. After some digging, I ended up finding the pad in Brentwood.

Chef centers around Carl Casper (Jon Favreau, who produced, wrote, directed and starred in the movie), a high-end chef who loses his job after getting into a Twitter war with a food critic. Following the advice of his ex-wife, Inez, Carl winds up purchasing an old food truck in Miami and refurbishing it, before driving it back to Los Angeles, selling his fare along the way. His son, Percy (Emjay Anthony), accompanies him on the journey and their adventure is nothing short of magical. Inez’s house in the flick is quite magical, as well.

In real life, the residence, which was built in 1926, features five bedrooms, three baths and 6,430 square feet of living space.

The dwelling looks just as spectacular in person as it did onscreen.

The real life interior of the house, which you can see photographs of here, was also used 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: Inez’s house from Chef is located at 250 South Bristol Avenue in Brentwood.

January 9, 2015
Contempo Casuals from “Clueless”

Happy 2015, folks! Now that the holidays have come to a close, I will (hopefully) be back to my regularly scheduled blogging. So here goes. Stalking is obviously my favorite pastime, but shopping comes in at a close second. So when I get an opportunity to combine the two, I jump at it. A couple of weeks ago, the Grim Cheaper and I traveled to L.A. for a holiday party and decided to do some Christmas shopping the following morning before driving back to the desert. Because I wanted to further investigate the Contempo Casuals that appeared in fave movie Clueless, I insisted we head over to Westfield Fashion Square. For those who missed my August post about the Sherman Oaks mall and its appearance in the 1995 romcom, I’ll recap.

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For years now, misinformation has been rolling around the internet about which shopping center Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and friends shopped at in Clueless. As I came to find out during a recognizance shopping mission in August, though, more than one mall actually appeared in the flick. The establishing shot of the shopping center shown in the movie was of the Westside Pavilion in Rancho Park. But the interior scene in which some “Barneys” tried to throw Tai (Brittany Murphy) off a balcony was lensed about ten miles north of the Pavilion at Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks.

While everyone and their mother has stated online that the Contempo Casuals that appeared in Clueless was the one formerly located at the Beverly Center in Beverly Grove, during the writing of my August post I started to believe that the Fashion Square Contempo Casuals was the outpost that had most likely been featured in the flick. As I explained in the post, “Once I realized that Tai’s near-death experience had been filmed at Fashion Square, I got to thinking that the Contempo Casuals scenes were most likely shot there, as well. It did not make sense to me that producers would go to the trouble of shooting the C.C. scenes elsewhere, especially considering that they were both extremely brief. So I did some research and learned that there was indeed a Contempo Casuals located at Fashion Square in the mid-nineties, as you can see here and here. I scanned through the C.C. scenes again and just about fell off my chair when I spotted the number 22 posted on the store’s window. And while I could find no such numbers in any pictures of the Beverly Center via a Google image search, I did spot a number in the same style and color on the front of Victoria’s Secret in one of the photographs I had taken at Fashion Square a few years prior (pictured below). Then I came across this listing and just about died of excitement upon discovering that the company currently located in storefront 22 of the Westfield Fashion Square is none other than Wet Seal, the very same brand that took over Contempo Casuals in 1995! Based on all of that, I am 99.9% certain that the only mall interior that appeared in Clueless was Westfield Fashion Square. ” Since that post, I have discovered that the suite numbers of stores at the Beverly Center are three-digit (as you can see here), not two, which is further proof that the C.C. from Clueless was not located there.

So, while Christmas shopping with the GC, I set out to snap some pics of the Fashion Square Wet Seal and prove once and for all that my theory was correct.

I was a bit dismayed to discover upon my arrival that not only had the font and styling of the store’s numbers been changed since both the filming of Clueless in 1994 (the movie premiered in 1995, but was shot in 1994) and since my photograph of Victoria’s Secret was taken in 2012, but that Wet Seal’s actual suite number had been altered as well. It is now addressed #21, instead of #22. At first, I thought that Wet Seal might have moved storefronts at some point, but then I spoke with the incredibly nice people working at BCBG Max Azria (the company that currently occupies #22) and they explained that Fashion Square’s suite numbers do change on occasion. Apparently, sometimes when a store closes, its space will be subdivided into smaller spaces and the neighboring suite numbers need to be shifted accordingly. BCBG’s manager also informed me that Wet Seal had not moved storefronts since she started working at Fashion Square fifteen years ago. She was also fairly certain that prior to Wet Seal opening, the space had housed a Contempo Casuals. Eureka!

Contempo Casuals popped up twice in Clueless. It first appeared in the scene in which Cher attempted to gather her thoughts and regain her strength via a shopping trip. That scene gave us a good glimpse of C.C.’s interior. Though it has been remodeled since Wet Seal took over, as you can see below the basic set up of the store is the same today as it was in Clueless. Both Wet Seal and the store from Clueless are large (Wet Seal is one of Fashion Square’s larger storefronts, as I came to discover during my stalking mission), extremely long and narrow, and boast very high ceilings (unusually high compared to the other shops located in the mall).

In a later scene, Dionne (Stacey Dash) is shown standing outside of Contempo Casuals while talking to Cher on her cell phone. As you can see below, the split-glass-paneled frontage shown in the movie matches that of Wet Seal, though the panels seem to be spaced further apart today than they were in 1994.

The central positioning of the entrance doors that appeared onscreen match the current positioning of Wet Seal’s doors, as well. Thanks to all of these correlations, I can now say with absolute certainty that the Contempo Casuals scenes from Clueless were shot at Westfield Fashion Square, not at the Beverly Center.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Wet Seal, aka the former Contempo Casuals from Clueless, can be found in Suite 21 of Westfield Fashion Square, which is located at 14006 Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks. You can visit the mall’s official website here.

January 5, 2015
Blockbuster Video from “The Holiday”

I cannot believe that Christmas is only two days away! This whole month (year, in fact) has flown by! Sadly, this will be my last post of the season (excluding one that will run on L.A. magazine’s website on Thursday). I will be taking the rest of the week off to do some last-minute shopping and to celebrate Christmas with my family. For my final holiday-themed post, I thought it would only be fitting to write about another The Holiday location – the Blockbuster Video featured in the 2006 romantic comedy.

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I had read online a while back that the Blockbuster used in The Holiday was located somewhere in Brentwood, so I did a simple Google search for “Blockbuster” and “Brentwood” and was led to a former location of the once-popular video store chain at 11770 San Vicente Boulevard. Today, the space houses a branch of the First Republic Bank, but thanks to the fact that several of its features have remained the same despite the change of hands, I was able to determine that it was the right spot.

First, I was able to match a tree located on San Vicente Boulevard across from First Republic Bank to the tree visible outside of the Blockbuster in the scene (though my photograph below was taken from a slightly different angle than that of the film).

For those who have never visited the area, San Vicente Boulevard is lined with a large central median that is dotted with numerous unusually-shaped trees, as you can see below.

Thanks to their highly unique formations, it was not hard for me to pinpoint the one featured in The Holiday.

The store’s large three-paned windows (denoted with Christmas tree arrows below) also match what appeared onscreen.

The windowed corner doorway from the Blockbuster in the movie also correlates to that of First National Bank, although it has been altered slightly in order to make room for the addition of an ATM vestibule.

In The Holiday, Blockbuster is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) and Miles (Jack Black) shop for the next videos on their friend Arthur Abbot’s (Eli Wallach) list of movies featuring strong, gumption-filled female characters. It’s funny to think about the fact that if the movie was being filmed today, only eight years after it was actually shot, this scene would be an impossibility considering the fact that video stores simply do not exist anymore – at least not in the L.A. area. (Outside of Vidiots, that is.) If The Holiday was shot today, Miles and Iris would instead have to peruse titles at a Redbox kiosk inside of a grocery store or online via the Netflix catalog, neither of which would have made for a very compelling scene.

In the scene, Miles, a film scorer, walks around Blockbuster picking up various DVD titles and humming their theme songs loudly to Iris. He happens to pick up The Graduate at one point and sings Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” at which time the camera pans over to reveal Dustin Hoffman perusing titles in a different part of the store. Hoffman shakes his head and says, “Can’t go anywhere!” Amazingly, that bit was not planned. According to director Nancy Meyer’s DVD commentary, Dustin happened to be eating next door to the Brentwood Blockbuster at the time the scene was being filmed. Upon leaving the restaurant, he noticed the film trucks and popped in to see what was being shot. He knew Nancy and decided to hang out for a bit to watch. When The Graduate portion of the scene was being filmed (the scene had been included in the original script and was not simply added because Hoffman was randomly on set), Dustin asked if he could make a cameo and Nancy, of course, said yes. He then adlibbed the “Can’t go anywhere!” line. Such a great story behind what turned out to be one of the movie’s funniest moments.

You can watch Dustin’s cameo by clicking below.

While doing research for today’s post, I learned that the same retail complex that formerly housed the Blockbuster from The Holiday also once housed the infamous Mezzaluna restaurant, where Nicole Brown Simpson ate dinner the night of her murder and where Ronald Goldman worked as a waiter. Today, that portion of the property is home to a Peet’s Coffee & Tea outpost. You can check out a photo of what it looked like when Mezzaluna was still in operation here.

On a side-note – The Grim Cheaper and I have recently become obsessed with the new podcast Serial. We are currently in the midst of listening to Episode 6: The Case Against Adnan Syed, so, please, no spoilers from those who have finished the series! Sarah Koenig, the podcast’s host, reminds me quite a bit of myself when it comes to doing research. Her investigation into the existence of a payphone at the Security Boulevard Best Buy in Baltimore, Maryland was exactly on par with many of the location hunts I have been a part of over the years. Speaking of the payphone mystery, I am absolutely fascinated by it! It is the one detail of the story that remains constantly stuck in my head and I am convinced that my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, and I could get to the bottom of the whole thing and prove once and for all whether or not the Best Buy in question ever had a payphone on the premises. Are you listening, Owen? Let’s get on this!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Blockbuster Video from The Holiday was formerly located at 11770 San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood. Today, the site houses a branch of First Republic Bank. Pete’s Coffee & Tea, the former site of Mezzaluna restaurant, is located at the opposite end of the same shopping complex at 11750 San Vicente.

December 23, 2014
The Grill on the Alley from “The Holiday”

This past weekend, while wandering through my local Target with the Grim Cheaper, I happened to spot a DVD of fave movie The Holiday on sale for $3.99! When I saw that the special features included a commentary with director Nancy Meyers and a making-of featurette, I just about flipped my lid and immediately snapped the DVD up. (Though I have seen The Holiday more times than I can count, because I own it on iTunes, I had never seen any of the special features.) It was perfect timing, too, since I am now (finally) in the midst of writing my Christmas-themed posts. I had also just stalked The Grill on the Alley, which was featured in the flick, this past November while my friends Lavonna, Kim, Melissa and Maria were in town (that’s Melissa and Maria above), so I was most excited to listen to the commentary from that portion of the film.

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The Grill on the Alley was originally founded in January 1984 by a man named Bob Spivak. The food industry ran in Bob’s veins – his grandfather owned a Los Angeles ice cream/chocolate shop in the early 1900s and his father was the founder of the Redwood House, now known as the Redwood Bar & Grill, which was featured in Bridesmaids and which I blogged about here. In 1982, at the age of 39 and after a long tenure working in a grocery store and a short tenure owning a soup/salad restaurant, Bob found himself at a transition point in life. Recently divorced, without a job and living on his father’s couch, he decided he wanted to open an upscale steakhouse in Beverly Hills, one that offered fabulous customer service and no-nonsense food. He found financial backers fairly quickly and then secured a space to lease. The only problem with the 4,600-square-foot spot was that its main frontage was on an extremely traffic-y block of Wilshire Boulevard, on a stretch of street that did not allow parking until after 7 p.m. each day. (The Wilshire side of the building is pictured below.)

The location did have a rear entrance, though, reached via a side alley off of Dayton Way, which gave Bob an idea. In a February 2014 The Hollywood Reporter article, he explains, “I went to the building department and asked to place the entrance on the alley. They wouldn’t let me due to an ordinance against businesses opening onto an alley that they had in place. So I pulled maps and realized I had less than an inch of Dayton frontage and went to a hardware store, bought a mailbox and painted 9560 Dayton on it. Just made that address up. Then I went to the post office, mailed myself a letter, got it delivered and showed the canceled stamp to the building department. They approved it!”

That “less than an inch of Dayton frontage” is denoted with red arrows below. What a great story!

Thanks to its proximity to the headquarters of the William Morris Talent Agency, The Grill soon became the place “to lunch” in Beverly Hills. Just a few of the power players and their clients who have been spotted dining there over the years include Michael Ovitz, Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, Ron Meyer (father of Jennifer Meyer), Tom Brokaw, Vin Scully, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen, Fred Astaire, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Muhammad Ali, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Carson, Katie Holmes, Sean Penn, Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Joel McHale, and Michael Douglas.

The Grill remains insanely popular to this day, over thirty years after its founding. In fact, the eatery has spawned six additional Grill on the Alley locations, as well as the casual dining chain The Daily Grill, of which there are currently 21 outposts.

While we were stalking the place, we had the pleasure of meeting The Grill’s longtime maître d’, Pamela Gonyea . . .

. . . as well as the restaurant’s wine education coordinator, Carmen Rupe, both of whom could NOT have been nicer. Bob maintains that The Grill’s customer service philosophy is, “The answer is yes – now what was the question.” And we were certainly given that treatment despite the fact that we were not even dining on the premises! Carmen and Pamela spent quite a bit of time answering all of our questions about the various filmings that have taken place there over the years and they also let us take all of the photographs of the place that we wanted. Carmen even led us over to the center of the dining room to show us exactly where The Holiday had been filmed!

In The Holiday, The Grill on the Alley is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) takes Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) for dinner shortly after meeting him. Before inviting him to dine with her, Iris asks Arthur if he is busy that evening, to which he gives his famous line, “Busy? Honey, I haven’t been busy since 1978.”

According to Nancy Meyers’ DVD commentary, The Grill on the Alley was chosen for the scene because it is a place that Arthur, a former Hollywood screenwriter, and his colleagues would have frequented in their day. Nancy had the two seated at a regular table in the center of the Grill’s dining room to show they are just regular people, not the “Hollywood elite.” Apparently the booths that line the perimeter of the restaurant are considered prime real estate in real life and where the show biz power players are usually seated.

I, of course, just had to pose for a picture in the same spot where the movie was filmed.

Carmen and Pamela also informed us that The Grill had been featured in the Season 5 episode of Entourage titled “Fantasy Island.”

In the episode, The Grill on the Alley was the spot where Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) discussed the upcoming movie Danger Beach with producer Carl Ertz (Kim Coates). Notice that Vincent and Carl were seated in a perimeter booth in the scene.

Pamela was even visible in the episode!

Pamela and Carmen also let us know that the Season 5 episode of The Hills titled “Keep Your Enemies Closer” had been shot at the restaurant. In the episode, The Grill was where Stephanie Pratt went on a date with a DJ named Robert.

On a side-note – I would like to wish a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY today to my dad, who, despite being chronically ill, always finds a way to regularly do special, extraordinary things for my mom, the GC and me. I love you so much! (That’s me and my dad pictured below during one of my very first trips to Disneyland.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Grill on the Alley, from The Holiday, is located at 9560 Dayton Way in Beverly Hills. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

December 16, 2014
Chaya Venice from “The Holiday”

It’s finally that time of year again, folks! Time for some Christmas-themed posts! And I could NOT be more excited. First up is a locale that I had been searching for for years – the sushi restaurant where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) and Miles (Jack Black) dined towards the end of The Holiday. During my lengthy search for the eatery, I spent countless hours inputting terms like “sushi restaurant,” “The Holiday” and “filming” into Google, but always came up empty-handed. Then, this year, I decided to ask for some help and called in my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, to see if he could work his magic in finding it. Sure enough, he did! After numerous Google inquiries using, as he stated, “Soooooooo many combinations and permutations” of terms, he sent an email to The Holiday’s production manager who got back to him right away and informed him that the restaurant was in Venice. Adding “Venice” to his search terms led him to a Yelp review of Chaya Venice, in which a patron named Hayley M. mentioned that the place had appeared in The Holiday. Yahoo! So I ran right on over there for lunch while I was in L.A. a couple of weeks ago.

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Chaya Venice was originally founded by the Tsunoda family in 1990. The Tsunodas’ tenure in the culinary field is an extensive one that has lasted almost forty decades. Yes, you read that right – forty decades! About 390 years ago, the family set up shop, so to speak, under a large tree in Hayama, Japan, where they served tea and snacks to travelers on horseback who happened to pass by. At some point thereafter, they opened an inn on the site, which was eventually transformed into a Japanese restaurant that they named “Hikage Chaya.” (Chaya means “teahouse” in Japanese.) It is still open today. A second restaurant, La Maree de Chaya, which served French food, soon followed.

In the 1980s, the Tsunodas migrated to the United States and, in 1984, opened Chaya Brasserie in Beverly Hills. It, too, is still in operation today. Sister restaurants, including Chaya Venice, soon began to pop up and there are currently four Chaya outposts located throughout California. The eateries, which serve French/Japanese cuisine, are headed by executive chef Shigefumi Tachibe, who just so happens to be the inventor of tuna tartare. He created the dish at Chaya Brasserie the same year that the eatery opened, after a patron requested an alternative to the steak tartare that was then being offered on the prix-fixe menu. The rest, as they say, is history.

I absolutely loved my experience at Chaya Venice! While I am not a fan of sushi (I do not like most fish), I opted for some veggie rolls and they were delish! The staff also could not have been nicer to me and answered all of my silly little questions about the filming of The Holiday. The atmosphere of the place is quite beautiful, too. It is not very hard to see why Chaya Venice wound up being featured on the silver screen.

I was particularly obsessed with the restaurant’s painted ceiling. Gorgeous!

In The Holiday, Chaya Venice was where Miles and Iris were eating lunch when Miles’ ex-girlfriend, Maggie (Shannyn Sossamon), called to tell him she wanted him back.

As you can see, the place looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

“Accidental boob graze!”

The Holiday is not the only production to have been lensed at Chaya Venice. In the Season 5 episode of The Hills titled “Mess with Me, I Mess With You,” which was filmed in 2009, Stephanie Pratt and Audrina Patridge grabbed lunch at the eatery and discussed Kristin Cavallari and Justin Bobby’s burgeoning relationship.

And in the Season 5 episode of Californication titled “The Ride-Along,” which aired in 2012, Chaya Venice was where Richard Bates (Jason Beghe) got naked while standing on a sushi bar.

The entrance to Chaya Venice also appeared in the episode.

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chaya Venice, from The Holiday, is located at 110 Navy Street in Venice. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

December 15, 2014
Sloane’s House from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

Once the pizza parlor from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off had been found, my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, starting hunting for the home belonging to Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) – one of the last unknown locations from the 1986 comedy. We had known for a while, thanks to a helpful crew member, that the residence was not in Chicago, where much of the movie was lensed, but Los Angeles. In looking for it, though, we always came up empty-handed. Then last week, fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, contacted a different crew member who informed him that the dwelling was located somewhere in Brentwood. Owen immediately started searching aerial views of the area and, voila, found the house fairly quickly. So I ran right out to stalk it while I was in L.A. last week. (I actually had to stalk it twice – the first time, it started pouring rain immediately after I showed up. That is why some of my pictures depict rainy weather, while in others the sun is shining.)

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As it turns out, Sloane’s house is famous in architectural circles due to the fact that it was designed by Paul Revere Williams, the prolific architect who also gave us Johnny Weissmuller’s former home, the McGinley Residence, Perino’s Restaurant, and the Just Married mansion. It was actually the first home that Williams ever designed in the Brentwood area. The property is known as the Preminger House in real life, in honor of one of its early inhabitants, film producer Ingwald “Ingo” Preminger. In later years, the American Colonial Revival-style pad was owned by another famous Hollywood producer, Harold Hecht.

In 1977, the Preminger House was purchased by Peter and Merle Mullin. The couple still own it to this day. Of possessing the residence for such a long period of time, Peter said in a 2012 article, “Every now and then, I think about leaving. Then I look around . . . and I can’t. I just love this place.” At some point in time, Peter and Merle hired Gary Drake of Drake Construction to do a renovation of the U-shaped dwelling, during which the central patio was enclosed with a large glass atrium. Drake also constructed a subterranean automobile museum to house Peter’s large collection of cars. The original garage was subsequently transformed into a guest home. You can see photographs of the Preminger House post-remodel here, here and here.

The Preminger House, which was originally built in 1925, currently boasts five bedrooms, six baths, 5,726 square feet of living space and 0.55 acres of land. Sadly, not much of the property is visible from the street, as you can see below.

The pad shows up twice in Ferris Bueller’s Day off. It first appears in the scene in which Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) and Sloane attempt to snap Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck) out of his stupor by taking him swimming. You can check out a photograph of what the Preminger House pool looks like today here. Thankfully, little of it has been changed since the movie was filmed almost thirty years ago.

In John Hughes’ DVD commentary of the movie, he says of the pool scene, “We never identified where this was or whose house this was. I always presumed it was just someone else’s house. It wasn’t really Sloane’s house, it certainly wasn’t Matthew’s house, and it wasn’t Cameron’s house. They just sort of stopped and used somebody’s Jacuzzi.” I was surprised to learn this bit of info as I had always been under the assumption that the pool scene was supposed to have taken place at Sloane’s residence. In hindsight, John’s explanation makes more sense, though, being that Sloane was wearing a negligee in the scene and later references having changed out of her clothes outside by the Jacuzzi. Had she been at her own house, she would have worn a bathing suit and changed within the confines of her bedroom.

In the screen captures below, you can also see that the trio’s clothes are scattered about near the pool, further alluding to the fact that they broke into a random house to swim. Had they been at Sloane’s place, they all would have been able to change inside.

Oddly, while Hughes did not intend for the pool scene to have taken place at Sloane’s pad, he did choose to use the Preminger House to stand in for Sloane’s residence at the end of the movie. The back side of the dwelling showed up in the scene in which Ferris dropped Sloane off at home and kissed her goodbye. You can see a photograph of what the rear side of the residence currently looks like here. Though the addition of the atrium altered the property, it still looks much the same today as it did onscreen in 1986.

In this photograph, you can see that the large tree and curved brickwork surrounding it that were visible behind Sloane and Ferris in the scene are still there today.

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Preminger House, aka Sloane’s house from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is located at 340 South Westgate Avenue in Brentwood.

December 10, 2014
Regular Jon’s Pizza from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, recently texted me to let me know he had tracked down a location that I had been curious about for what seemed like forever – the pizza parlor from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Thanks to John Hughes’ DVD commentary of the flick, I knew that the restaurant was once in Brentwood and was no longer in operation, but I still desperately wanted to find its former location. So I was thrilled to receive Chas’ text and ran right out to stalk the site last week while I was in L.A.

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As it turns out, the pizzeria that made an appearance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was Regular Jon’s, formerly located at 11645 San Vicente Boulevard. The eatery was originally founded by Jon Persoff in 1971 and was a Brentwood landmark for the twenty years that it was in operation. Sadly, when Persoff’s lease expired in 1991, the landlord raised his rent considerably causing Jon to close up shop, much to the chagrin of the restaurant’s many regulars. After Jon’s was shuttered, the space was completely gutted and turned into a Louise’s Trattoria. When Louise’s closed, Yuzu Sushi Roll House & Sake Bar moved in. Today, the site houses an organic eatery known as the Coral Tree Café. Unfortunately, it looks completely different in its current state than it did when Regular Jon’s was still in operation.

The good news is that Regular Jon’s has a sister location, which Chas also informed me of. When Persoff passed away on September 25th, 2010, a former regular and one-time employee named Steven Goldberg decided to make a pizza in the former Regular Jon’s-style in his honor. He spent weeks trying to replicate the thin crust recipe that generations of Brentwoodians had fallen in love with over four decades prior. He finally nailed it and posted a comment about his endeavor on his Facebook page. Soon friends were clamoring for him to make them a Regular Jon’s pizza and an idea took hold – Steve would establish his own replica pizzeria. He opened the new eatery, which he dubbed “Steve’s Un-Original Pizza,” in November 2013 inside of the MB2 Raceway at 1475 Lawrence Drive in Thousand Oaks. I ventured out to stalk the place last week and had the pleasure of meeting Steve. He could NOT have been nicer. In fact, when I showed up to the parlor, it was not yet open for the day. Figuring my chances were slim to none, but being that I had just driven an hour and a half, I decided to call the number on the website to ask if there was anyway I could come inside to snap some pics. And what do you know, he invited me right in!

Steve designed his pizzeria to be reminiscent of Regular Jon’s, with dark wood paneling and an old school brown and yellow menu board.

He also has numerous photographs of his yearly childhood birthday parties, which all took place at Regular Jon’s, as well as a panoramic screen capture from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on display. I absolutely loved seeing it all! You can check out some more of Steve’s old photographs on his Facebook page here.

Steve answered all of my silly little questions about the filming of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and filled me in on Regular Jon’s history. While I was under the assumption that the Jon’s building had been torn down after the site closed in 1991, Steve informed me that was not the case. He said that the Jon’s property originally consisted of a thin, one-story, rectangular building with a large L-shaped parking lot. That original rendering is denoted with a pink arrow in the Historic Aerials image below.

In the early ‘80s, Jon expanded the eatery by adding a second, larger attached rectangular building that was constructed in the side portion of the parking lot. The two-part structure remains standing today, but due to the many changes in ownership and subsequent remodels, it, unfortunately, looks nothing like it did when Jon’s was in operation.

In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Regular Jon’s is where principal Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) goes in the hopes of catching Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) cutting school. While an exterior of the pizzeria is not shown in the movie, the spot where Rooney parks his car before heading inside Jon’s is actually located just outside of Chicago, where FBDO is set. Rooney parks where Chestnut Street intersects with Chestnut Court in Winnetka.

Quite a bit of Regular Jon’s is shown in the movie, including the order counter . . .

. . . and the eating area and small arcade –

– where Rooney has an unfortunate encounter with a straw full of soda. “Le jeux son faits!”

Regular Jon’s also appeared in a couple of other productions. In 1978, it was the spot where Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval) searched for clues while looking for Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) in the Season 2 episode of Dallas titled “Kidnapped.”

That same year, the pizzeria was featured in the pilot episode of the television series The Paper Chase as the restaurant where Harvard Law School student James T. Hart (James Stephens) worked. For subsequent episodes of the series, a different location was used as James’ workplace.

You can watch all of The Paper Chase scenes shot at Regular Jon’s by clicking below.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Regular Jon’s, from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, was formerly located at 11645 San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood. The space now houses the Coral Tree Café. Steve’s Un-Original Pizza can be found at 1475 Lawrence Drive, inside of the MB2 Raceway, in Thousand Oaks. You can visit Steve’s official website here.

December 9, 2014