Category: Movie Locations

The Possible Interior of O’Hara’s Pub from “Bad Santa”

As I mentioned in last Tuesday’s post, thanks to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, I am fairly certain that I have managed to find the bar that was used as the interior of O’Hara’s Pub in the 2003 comedy Bad Santa. When Owen heard about my quest to track down the location a couple of weeks ago, he contacted a few of the movie’s crew members in the hopes that they could provide some assistance. One did, informing him that the interior was a bar on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica “near the beach.” Once I heard that, my thoughts immediately went to Scarboni New York Lobster & Steak House – a now defunct restaurant formerly located at 312 Wilshire that I had visited for a brief moment a few years prior. Sadly, the place has since been completely remodeled, which is why I cannot be certain that it was the spot used in Bad Santa. I still ran right out to stalk it, though, while the GC and I were in L.A. two weekends ago.

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The structure that once housed Scarboni was designed by legendary architect Paul Revere Williams in 1928. The two-story, Spanish Colonial Revival-style edifice, which features Plateresque detailing and is known as the Edwin Building, was constructed by the H.W. Baum Company at a cost of $100,000. At the time of its inception, it housed three lower-level retail storefronts (which have since been combined into one large space) and eleven upstairs offices. In 2008, the Edwin Building was declared a Santa Monica Historic Landmark, protecting the exterior from any future alteration. The interior, though, boasts no such protection, unfortunately.

In the ’80s, the first floor of the Baldwin Building was occupied by a restaurant named the Darwin. It closed in 1988 and was subsequently taken over in 1992 by new owners, who established Italian eatery Pentola Taverna at the site. (While The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations states that the building’s lower level housed a restaurant named Vesuvio’s Ristorante in the early ’90s, I believe that information is incorrect. I am fairly certain that from 1988 through 1992 the space remained vacant.) Little of the interior was changed upon Pentola’s opening because, as Taverna owner Blaine Ivy stated of the Darwin, “They cut down half the rain forest for the wood in that place, so that will remain largely intact. We just want to lighten it up.” LOL A March 1993 Los Angeles Times article described Taverna as such: Part trendy pasta joint and part classic chop house, Pentola looks like a remake of the wood-paneled restaurants of the ’40s–a ’90s version of Musso and Frank or Chicago’s bustling Berghoff. According to that same article, the property boasted two bars – “the main one seemingly a mile long, the other tucked into a corner of the restaurant. Both are ornate, old-fashioned and crammed on a Saturday night.” It is the main, seemingly-mile-long bar that I believe was featured in Bad Santa. You can see a photograph of Pentola’s interior here. Sadly, the main bar is not shown in the image, though – nor anywhere else online, maddeningly enough. It is due to that fact that I cannot say for certain that the property was where Bad Santa was filmed.

Sometime in 2006, after Pentola Taverna closed its doors, Scarboni New York Steak & Lobster House opened in its place. The new tenants remodeled the site a bit and Chowhound commenter robertholtz had this to say, “The booths are a little tight and the decor has yet to be broken in. This style needs the grit of time to earn its charm; right now it sometimes feels like you’re on a movie set instead of a real location. Ironic, considering that was how Pentola was often used.” Love it! You can see some photographs of the old Scarboni interior here. Once again, the main bar is, unfortunately, not shown. The Grim Cheaper and I actually ventured into Scarboni back in 2006 to grab a drink, but he took one look at the prices and nixed the idea. Sadly, because of the way the restaurant was set up, I only caught a glimpse of the smaller bar – not the bar that I believe was used in Bad Santa.

Scarboni was shuttered after a scant 11 months and when new tenants took over, they gutted the interior to make room for a restaurant named Riva. Along with the complete dismantling, the space was also made smaller in order to add a second, rear dining room. Riva didn’t last long, either, though (I swear, the space is cursed), and shortly after its closing, the Riva owners opened a place named Fraiche at the site. Fraiche subsequently closed in December 2012 and the site has remained vacant ever since. The current state of the interior is pictured below. As you can see, it is a sad shadow of its former self. You can check out some photographs of Fraiche’s interior from the time that it was still in operation here.

In Bad Santa, I believe that Pentola Taverna was the bar where Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) lamented over his hatred for Christmas. And I should mention here that I was not a fan of Bad Santa – not even remotely. I was a fan of that gorgeous wood-paneled bar, though, and so badly wanted to see it in person. I cannot express how heartbroken I am that it is now gone. Why on earth would someone gut such a gorgeous interior? Who purchases something like that and thinks, yeah, let’s get rid of it and start fresh?

As luck would have it, the GC and I randomly decided to watch the 2000 flick Coyote Ugly a couple of nights before Christmas and I just about fell over when I spotted what I am fairly certain was the Bad Santa bar in the scene in which Lil (Maria Bello) tried to offer Violet (Piper Perabo) her old job back. The white tile flooring and slatted wooden chairs at the Coyote Ugly bar match up to those of the bar from Bad Santa.

As do the cabinets and drawers behind the bar;

as well as the antique cash register, wooden beams flanking it, and mirrored shelving.

At the time that we watched Coyote Ugly, I was not at all certain that Pentola Taverna was the spot used in Bad Santa, so I was floored when I spotted a backwards view of a restaurant name in the window of the Coyote Ugly bar. Using Picasa, I flipped one of the screen captures I had made and, sure enough, the loopily-written “P” visible in the window was a perfect match to the “P” in Pentola Taverna’s former logo. Woot woot! (I got the below photograph of the Taverna exterior from the Edwin Building’s City Landmark Assessment Report.)

Thanks to a commenter named Stewart on the Santa Monica Mirror website, I learned that the Pentola Taverna space (while it was vacant, I’m assuming) was where Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) told Capt. Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon) that he had managed to find Lt. Col. Matthew Andrew Markinson (J.T. Walsh) in the 1992 flick A Few Good Men (one of my all-time favorites). The main bar is visible in the scene, but too little of it is shown to be able to say with complete certainty that it is the same bar from Bad Santa.

Pentola Taverna was also featured in the opening scene of 1995’s Get Shorty, in which Ray ‘Bones’ Barboni (Dennis Farina) stole Chili Palmer’s (John Travolta) $379 black leather jacket. The western portion of the restaurant, where the smaller bar was located, was the main area used in the scene.

At one point, Chili does wander over to the eatery’s eastern side and a limited view of the main bar is shown. Unfortunately, yet again, not enough of it is visible to be able to determine with 100% certainty that it was the same spot that appeared in Bad Santa. If anyone out there ever visited the Darwin, Pentola Taverna or Scarboni and can give me a definite answer either way, please let me know.

The Art Deco-style buildings across the street from the Pentola Taverna space were also shown in the scene.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The interior of the Bad Santa bar was most likely the now defunct Pentola Taverna, which was formerly located at 312 Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. The space is currently vacant, but most recently housed a restaurant named Fraiche.

January 6, 2014
Abbot’s Habit from “The Truth About Cats & Dog”

Last Saturday, after stalking the Venice exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from Bad Santa (which I blogged about here), the Grim Cheaper and I decided to walk around Abbot Kinney Boulevard for a bit. At one point during our stroll, we passed by a corner coffee shop named Abbot’s Habit and I recognized it immediately as a location from the 1996 romantic comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs. So I dragged the GC right on over to do some stalking of it. And that right there is what I love about L.A. – you never know what adventure is waiting around the corner. It turned out to be quite a fortuitous stalk, too, because it led to me meeting my very favorite blogger and style icon, Emily Schuman from Cupcakes and Cashmere. But more on that later.

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Abbot’s Habit, which was founded in 1991, is actually Abbot Kinney Boulevard’s oldest coffee shop. Aside from that small tidbit, though, I could find no information whatsoever about the eatery’s history online.

I already had a Starbucks in hand (duh!) at the time that we stalked Abbot’s Habit, but the GC did not, so I encouraged him to try some of the place’s java. He didn’t end up to be a fan, but he did really enjoy their “bacon, egg & cheese” breakfast sandwich.

While the GC was eating his sandwich, I happened to check Instagram and almost had a heart attack when I saw that Emily Schuman had just posted a photograph of herself dining at Gjelina. I had heard of Gjelina before via Emily’s site and from my mom’s hairstylist in Palm Springs who had told me a few months prior that the place was his favorite restaurant in all of L.A. And while I knew that the establishment was located on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, I was unsure of exactly where. So imagine my elation when I saw that it was about three doors down from Abbot’s Habit! I mean what are the odds? Barely containing my excitement, I grabbed the GC and marched right on over there to ask Emily for a picture. And I am thrilled to report that she could NOT have been nicer, even though I was interrupting her during a meal. She didn’t even seem at all put off by the fact that I had totally Instagram-stalked her. Emily is an absolute doll and meeting her was one of the highlights of 2013 for me – particularly when she told me she “loved” my “ensemble.” The GC had been making fun of my outfit all day (especially the boots), so to hear my style guru compliment it was major validation.

In The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Abbot’s Habit is where Noelle (Uma Thurman) and Abby (Janeane Garofalo) grab coffee shortly after becoming friends. While there, a fellow patron very humorously tries to protect Noelle from a bee that has flown into the café.

That scene took place in front of the window in Abbot’s Habit’s main room.

The café was also the site of Becca Moody’s (Madeleine Martin) poetry reading in the Season 6 episode of Californication titled “Hell Bent for Leather.” Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of Abbot’s Habit were shown in the episode.

Becca’s poetry reading took place towards the back of the café’s rear room.

And while the Venice California History Site states that Abbot’s Habit was featured in the 1997 comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, I scanned through the flick yesterday and did not see it pop up anywhere.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Abbot’s Habit, from The Truth About Cats & Dogs, is located at 1401 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

January 3, 2014
O’Hara’s Pub from “Bad Santa”

I realize that Christmas has passed, but I have one more holiday locale to write about before bidding adieu to the Yuletide season. Two Fridays ago, after reading my post on Footsies bar from Bad Santa, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, miraculously managed to track down the exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from the 2003 comedy. Being that I had been trying to find that darn bar for what seemed like eons, I could NOT have been more excited to learn the news. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it while the two of us were in Los Angeles this past weekend. (And yes, I do realize that my outfit in the above photograph is slightly ridiculous, being that the weather was a sunny 75 degrees at the time. I had been dying for a pair of red Hunter rain boots for ages, though, and finally received them from the GC this Christmas. I don’t care that I live in the desert where it never rains, I am in love with the boots and am determined to wear them as often as possible – rain or shine. So !)

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During his search for the Bad Santa bar, Owen managed to contact a couple of the flick’s crew members, one of whom told him, “The exterior front was a built and dressed empty storefront in Venice.” With that information in hand, Owen did a Google image search for “Venice California store,” as he said, “hoping that by some minor miracle I’d recognize a building.” Thankfully, fate took hold. He went on to say, “Well, a minor miracle occurred. In the fifth row of images, I saw this picture. It was brick and had that white brick trim, so I opened the page and learned it was an antique store on Abbot Kinney. I figured perhaps the building you were after, because it shared similar elements, would be nearby. I went to Google Maps, put in ‘Abbot Kinney Blvd., Los Angeles’ and — GET THIS! — I grabbed the little yellow/orange ‘street view’ man and the very first place I dropped him on Abbot Kinney was literally right in front of the bar. And the camera was even facing the right way. Talk about luck! It must be a Christmas miracle.” Not only was it a Christmas miracle, but it was one of the best gifts I received this year! Thank you, Owen!

As the crew member had mentioned, the storefront was dressed heavily for the shoot, with an “O’Hara’s Pub” neon sign added to the exterior and a fake green façade constructed over the space’s windows and doors. Even with the changes, though, the place is still very recognizable.

I accidentally took my photos from a slightly wrong angle, so the street light in front of the bar exterior appears to be a bit farther east than it did in Bad Santa. If you take a look at Google Street View, though, you can see a correctly-angled view of the space.

Today, the O’Hara’s Pub storefront houses a clothing boutique named Heist. As the crew member told Owen, the space was vacant at the time that Bad Santa was filmed in 2003.

As I mentioned in my Footsies bar post, I am also dying to locate the interior of O’Hara’s Pub. I may have found it, too, but I need to do some more research to be sure, so stay tuned!

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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: Heist boutique, aka the exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from Bad Santa, is located at 1100 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice.

December 31, 2013
Downey Studios from “Christmas with the Kranks”

Back in early 2011, while doing some research on filming locations from Christmas with the Kranks, I just about fell off my chair when I discovered – thanks to Google Street View – that the backlot residential street at Downey Studios, which served as the main neighborhood in the 2004 comedy, was visible from the road. And while I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter, for whatever reason, when the holidays rolled around that year and the following year, I somehow forgot to blog about the place. Sadly, the entire studio was leveled in late 2012, so while this post is now somewhat obsolete, I figured the site was still blog-worthy. There’s no time like the present, right?

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Before it became home to Downey Studios, the 160-acre site located on the corner of North Lakewood Boulevard and Imperial Highway was home to an aircraft manufacturing facility that produced Apollo modules and space shuttle fleets for NASA for almost 40 years. When Boeing shut the plant down in 1999, the property was purchased by the city of Downey. An 80-acre portion of it was subsequently turned into Downey Studios, one of the largest production facilities in the United States, complete with two soundstages, the biggest indoor water tank in North America, a lake the size of a football field and over 360,000 square feet of production space.

In late 2003, Christmas and the Kranks director Joe Roth and production designer Garreth Stover started scouting neighborhoods for their upcoming Chicago-set holiday-themed movie. They didn’t have much luck, though, so they did what any Hollywood executives with deep pockets would do – they built their own, in an empty portion of Downey Studios. The Coming Soon website states, “Stover actually scouted 15 neighborhoods in the Chicago area and decided on Winnetka. The problem was that shooting for 10-12 weeks in the spring, they’d have to kick families out of their homes for the Easter/Passover holiday season. They would have to defoliate all the trees to make them look like winter. The sight lines wouldn’t match. In the plot, certain neighbors would have to witness certain events, and the actual layout of the Winnetka street made that impossible. But most importantly, they could never control the snow they would have to for the film’s snowstorm climax. So, Stover built a model and pitched director Joe Roth the idea of building Hemlock Street in Los Angeles.” $5 million and 12 weeks later, Downey Studios’ residential street was born. You can read a fabulous Variety article about the construction here.

The street consisted of 16 houses, four of which were practical (meaning that the interiors could also be used for filming), and 11 facades.

When Christmas with the Kranks wrapped, the street was left intact for future productions to utilize, with Joe Roth receiving a portion of the rental revenue. Sadly though, due to runaway production and numerous health complaints, Downey Studios began to lose money and was eventually closed and then razed in 2012. A 77-acre shopping center named Tierra Luna Marketplace is currently being constructed on the vacant land.

You can see an aerial view of Downey Studios’ residential street via Google Maps below. When it was still standing, Congressman Steve Horn Way and Bellflower Boulevard provided a fabulous view of the place. It is absolutely heartbreaking to me that it is no longer there.

The street was (obviously) used extensively in Christmas with the Kranks.

Especially the two-story clapboard and stone residence where the Krank family – Luther (Tim Allen), Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Blair (Julie Gonzalo) – lived.

The Krank house was one of the street’s practical sets in which interior filming took place.

The very same residence was used four years later as Angie Anderson’s (Amber Heard) home in Pineapple Express (bottom screen shot below). A porch was added to the exterior of the dwelling for the filming, but as you can see below, the bay window, stone work and windows that flank the front door match the Krank abode (top screen capture below).

The Krank’s kitchen (top) also matches Angie’s kitchen in Pineapple Express (bottom);

as does the Krank’s study (top) and Angie’s dining room (bottom);

and the Krank’s entryway (top) and Angie’s entryway (bottom).

In 2005, one of the Downey Studios residential street homes was used as the Lawrence, Kansas-area childhood home of Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) in the pilot episode of Supernatural.

The street also popped up at the very end of the Jonas Brothers music video for their 2009 song “Paranoid.”

You can watch that video by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The now defunct Downey Studios, from Christmas with the Kranks, was formerly located at 12214 Lakewood Boulevard in Downey.

December 23, 2013
Footsies Bar from “Bad Santa”

One location that has been a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember is the gorgeous wood-paneled bar featured in the opening scene of Bad Santa. Despite having contacted several crew members and spending copious amounts of time searching for it online, I just cannot seem to find the place – and, let me tell you, it is driving me absolutely crazy! A locale from the 2003 black comedy that I was able to track down last January, though, thanks to location manager Steve Beimler, was Footsies – a different watering hole that appeared in the movie. While Beimler originally informed me that Footsies was the bar from Bad Santa’s opening scene, when I went to stalk it – with Mike, from MovieShotsLA – I knew right away that it was not the right spot. Regardless, I was excited to have a Christmas locale for my stalking backlog and figured it was most definitely blog-worthy.

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Footsies popped up towards the beginning of Bad Santa as the supposed Milwaukee-area tavern where Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and Marcus (Tony Cox) celebrated their successful robbery of a local mall. It was also where Willie told Marcus that he was hanging up his Santa hat and moving to Miami Beach. Only the interior of the bar was used in the filming.

In real life, the establishment looks very much the same as it did onscreen, despite a slight remodel.

According to Mike, who grew up in L.A., Footsies has been around forever. Oddly enough, though, I could find no information whatsoever – nothing, nada, zip! – about its history online.

I did learn that the bar appeared in two episodes of Southland, though. The exterior was used in the Season 1 episode titled “Derailed” as the watering hole that Officer Dewey Dudek (C. Thomas Howell) stumbled out of before heading to work early in the morning.

And in the Season 5 episode titled “Bleed Out,” Footsies was where Officer Ben Sherman (cutie Ben McKenzie – sigh!) and Detective Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) investigated a disturbance.

For any of my fellow stalkers who might have information or are interested in helping with the hunt, the exterior of the thorn-in-my-side Bad Santa bar is pictured below. According to a crew member that I spoke with, it is located somewhere in Santa Monica and was dressed for the filming. (I am guessing that the entire green front panel may have been faked.) The locale is a one-story brick building that sits perpendicular to a traffic light.

The interior of the thorn-in-my-side bar might also be located in Santa Monica (although no crew members can say either way with any certainty). It is such a beautiful, historic-looking site, I am shocked that no one I have spoken with has any recollection of its whereabouts.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Footsies bar, from Bad Santa, is located at 2640 North Figueroa Street in Los Angeles’ Cypress Park neighborhood.

December 20, 2013
The “Four Christmases” Bar

Last December, while doing research on the Venice residence that was used as the interior of the house belonging to Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Brad (Vince Vaughn) in Four Christmases (which I blogged about here), I came across this Venice Paper article that stated that the 2008 comedy had also done some filming at a neighboring property located at 1319 Abbot Kinney Boulevard. When I Googled the address, I learned that it was the location of a spiritual gift shop/bookstore named Mystic Journey (which has since moved). Being that Four Christmases did not have a scene that took place at any sort of a store, I could not for the life of me figure out what the space had been used for in the flick. It was not until I came across these interior photographs of the building’s second floor that I figured out a fake bar had been built there for the shoot. I later confirmed my theory with the movie’s incredibly nice production designer, Shepherd Frankel, and then ran right out to stalk the place in early February.

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The 6,057-square-foot, three-story ultra-modern building was originally constructed in 2007 and was set up to accommodate two different retail/office spaces. The ground floor consists of a 2,000-square-foot storefront that has been vacant ever since Mystic Journey moved out this past April. (According to the Yo Venice website, It will soon be home to an IRO clothing store outpost.) You can see photographs of that bottom level here.

The top two floors are comprised of a 4,057-square-foot open live-work space with a full kitchen, hardwood flooring, two patios, and plenty of windows.

As you can see in the interior photographs below (which I got from the building’s former real estate listing), the place is absolutely incredible! Throw in a huge walk-in closet and it’s pretty much my ideal living space.

At the time of the filming of Four Christmases in December 2007, the building’s first floor and roof were being temporarily utilized for a Smart Car promotional event called the “Smart House.” Shepherd and his team took over the property’s second and third levels, which were vacant, and transformed them into a supposed San Francisco-area bar/art gallery.

The bar was only featured once in Four Christmases – in the opening scene, in which Kate and Brad pretended to be strangers named “Kent” and “Daphne.”

As you can see below, the place was dressed heavily for the filming and is virtually unrecognizable from the real estate listing photographs.

The third floor railing, thankfully, remains the same, though, and is what eventually tipped me off as to what the building had been used for in the movie.

The bathroom where Brad and Kate, ahem, rendezvoused in the scene was a set that Shepherd constructed inside of the building.

Although the exterior of the bar/gallery is never visible in Four Christmases, Kate and Brad are shown leaving the establishment and hopping onto a cable car. That portion of the scene was actually filmed in San Francisco (one of the few scenes that was), just outside of Café Grecco, which is located at 423 Columbus Avenue.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The fake Four Christmases bar/art gallery was created on the second and third floors of the building located at 1319 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. The spot where Kate and Brad caught a cable car outside of the bar can be found about 400 miles away at 423 Columbus Avenue in the North Beach area of San Francisco.

December 19, 2013
The “Four Christmases” Church

Due to the fact that Christmas movies filmed in the L.A. area are few and far between, I typically only compile about five holiday-themed locales to blog about each year. (If I could swing an entire month of Christmas posts, believe me, I would.) This year was no different and because there are only five blogging days left until Christmas, you know what that means – my Yuletide posts start today! Yay! So here goes. Last January, while on the hunt for locations from Four Christmases, I managed to track down New Life Community Church, the Hawthorne parish that masqueraded as the United Church of Faith and Worship, Piedmont Branch, in the 2008 comedy. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over to stalk it a couple of weeks ago, after first stopping by Marilyn Monroe’s childhood home (which I blogged about here).

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While most of the interior spaces that appeared in Four Christmases were studio-built sets, I knew from the movie’s production notes that an actual religious institution in Hawthorne was used for the filming of the church scene. Because only the inside of it was shown, though, I had a tough time tracking it down. That is, until I came across production designer Shepherd Frankel’s FABULOUS website last year, on which were posted exterior photographs of the ultra-modern-looking parish where filming took place. From there I just did a Google search for modern places of worship in Hawthorne and was fairly quickly led to images of New Life Community Church.

New Life Community Church pops up towards the middle of Four Christmases (in the second Christmas vignette), in the scene in which Marilyn (Mary Steenburgen) takes her daughter Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Kate’s boyfriend, Brad (Vince Vaughn), to a bit of an unconventional mass to meet her new boyfriend, Pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam). While there – and despite Kate’s massive stage fright – Kate and Brad get roped into portraying Mary and Joseph in a reenactment of the Nativity of Jesus. According to the production notes, the church’s hi-tech style was not the original design concept. Director Seth Gordon states, “Pastor Phil was originally meant to play guitar and deliver a brief sermon, but Dwight brought such stature and swagger to it, with his arms raised and a booming voice that played to the furthest pews.” From there, the design scheme of the church was changed to include a large stage, huge video screen backdrops, colored lights, smoke, and blasting music. Frankel says, “The church was an environment that morphed considerably from its earliest conception. Pastor Phil’s sermon was originally written as something with a dilapidated smoke machine on a bare stage, but once Dwight got involved, it turned into a real rock n’ roll event with projection screens and lighting cues and neon illuminating the nativity. We did keep the smoke, though, and made it a key visual element to the set.”

Sadly, New Life Community Church was not open when we showed up to stalk it, so I was not able to get any interior photographs of the place. But you can see some on the church’s official Facebook page here.

Despite the fact that the church’s architecture is unusual to say the least, I could not find any information whatsoever about its construction or history online. The only thing I was able to discern – thanks to the Historic Aerials website – was that the structure was built sometime after 2005.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: New Life Community Church, from Four Christmases, is located at 5009 West 119th Street in Hawthorne. You can visit the church’s official website here.

December 18, 2013
The Guesthouse Hotel from “National Lampoon’s Vacation”

Once fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, tracked down the Town House Motel from National Lampoon’s Vacation (which I blogged about here) a couple of weeks back, he set about trying to find the hexagon-shaped pool where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) went skinny dipping with The Girl in the Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) in the 1983 flick. After, as he said, “putting in more Google search permutations and combinations than I can count,” he came across the locale right in the heart of Norwalk, of all places. As you can imagine, I was absolutely chomping at the bit to stalk it as soon as he gave me the address (I was thisclose to driving from Palm Springs to Norwalk for the day), but did not manage to make it out there until last week when the Grim Cheaper and I were in L.A. for a brief visit.

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While sleuthing – and only after looking at a lot of results pages – Owen was led to this Panoramio photograph of a phone booth in Norwalk, on which a commenter named Joe Gattuso happened to mention that he was fairly certain a nearby hotel named the Guesthouse International was used in the filming of National Lampoon’s Vacation. So Owen did a Google search for images of the Guesthouse pool and, sure enough, it was the spot where Clark had skinny dipped. Woot woot!

The Griswold clan – Clark and his wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter Audrey (Dana Barron) – check into the Guesthouse International, which is said to be located about ten hours outside of Los Angeles, towards the end of National Lampoon’s Vacation. While there, Clark and Ellen get into a fight and Clark winds up heading to the hotel bar alone, where he encounters The Girl in the Ferrari. Sadly, the Guesthouse’s lounge area has been completely remodeled in recent years, according to the super nice hotel employee that I spoke with, and no longer looks anything at all like it did in Vacation. Boo! (It was closed at the time that I was stalking the hotel, so I was not able to get any photographs of it in its current state.)

After a few drinks, Clark and The Girl in the Ferrari decide to go skinny dipping in the hotel’s pool (“This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!”) and end up waking up all of the guests, including Clark’s family, while doing so.

I am fairly certain that the area where the scene took place is right about where the Jacuzzi (which was not there when the movie was filmed) is today.

At the time of the filming, the hotel was known as the Saddleback Inn. You can see a photograph of it from that era here. Amazingly enough, despite a name change (that resulted from what I am guessing was a change of ownership), the place still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did in 1982 when Vacation was filmed. Seriously, how cool is that? Over three decades later and the place is still completely recognizable! LOVE IT!

I am fairly certain that one of the hotel’s actual rooms was also used in the filming, but because the hotel interiors have since been updated, it is impossible to tell. You can see some photographs of what the rooms currently look like here.

Today, the Guesthouse International Hotel boasts 230 rooms, 8 acres, 6 buildings, 2 pools, 1 Jacuzzi – and a partridge in a pear tree. According to the Desert USA website, President Ronald Reagan even stayed there at one point in time.

I was absolutely floored to see the pride that the Guesthouse takes in its cinematic history. Signs stating that Vacation was filmed on the premises are posted throughout the lobby and by the pool. I so wish more hotels would do this sort of thing!

The super nice employee that I spoke with also informed me that the lobby area was used in the filming of the Lifetime movie Drew Peterson: Untouchable. Unfortunately though, I could not find a copy of the production with which to make screen captures for this post.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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 Guesthouse International Hotel, where Clark skinny dipped in National Lampoon’s Vacation, is located at 12500 Firestone Boulevard in Norwalk. You can visit the hotel’s official website here. There are two pools located on the premises – the one that appeared in Vacation is the larger of the two, located on the eastern side of the property, closest to the lobby.

December 17, 2013
Citizens Bank Building from “The Sting”

Upon landing my new gig writing for Los Angeles magazine’s CityThink blog, I comprised a list of iconic SoCal locales to spotlight in my weekly column, one of which was the Santa Monica Pier Carousel from 1973’s The Sting. The only problem was that I had never actually seen The Sting. Neither had the Grim Cheaper. So I set out to remedy the situation and immediately ordered the DVD from Amazon. We watched it shortly after it arrived and I was shocked at how good it was – forty years later! Not to mention the fact that the locations absolutely blew my mind. While The Sting takes place in 1936 Chicago, the vast majority of it was lensed in 1973 Los Angeles, with a significant portion of the filming taking place in my former hometown of Pasadena. Shockingly, I did not recognize any of the Rose City locales that were featured and when I started doing research on the flick, I just about fell out of my chair. One spot used prominently towards the end of the movie was the J. Crew store in Old Town, a place I used to shop at on a weekly basis! So while I was in L.A. last week, I spent one particularly cold morning (the GC said my outfit above resembled Nanook of the North) stalking the flick’s Pasadena locations, one of which was the historic Citizens Bank Building.

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The Citizens Bank Building was constructed in quite an unusual manner. The bottom floor of the structure was built in 1906 to house Citizens Bank. The site was designed by architects John Parkinson [who also gave us the Bullocks Wilshire department store from Christmas Vacation (which I blogged about here) and Union Station (which I blogged about here)] and George Edwin Bergstrom.

In 1914, when Citizens Bank was ready to expand, Parkinson and Bergstrom added the top six levels to the structure, creating the seven-story building that stands today.

The square cast metal clock featured on the corner of the edifice was added in 1926 and is still currently in working condition.

Citizens Bank occupied the site until September 2004, at which point it was sold to a developer, who immediately began a large renovation. The first-level former bank area was gutted entirely and now serves as offices for the Dilbeck real estate company.

I found this spot thanks to The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations and just about fell over when I did, due to the fact that the GC had an office in the Citizens Bank Building for years. His office was reached via a side door, though, and neither of us had ever seen the interior of the bottom floor bank space during his tenure there.

The bank popped up in the beginning of The Sting, in the montage scene in which grifter Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) is shown getting together a team of people to help exact revenge on Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw).

The space is only featured for a brief moment in the scene and only a very small portion of the interior is shown.

The interior of the former bank area, post-remodel, is pictured below. While researching this location, a few things gave me pause as to whether it was the bank that was used in The Sting. For instance, the shape and spacing of the windows that appeared onscreen don’t seem to match up to the building’s actual windows. And in a very frustrating twist, I could not find any interior photographs of the space prior to its renovation to verify that it was the location used. I even contacted the current property manager and sent her screen captures from the movie, but she was uncertain as well. Boo! If anyone out there has any photographs of the site pre-remodel, please let me know as I’d love to verify this locale.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Citizens Bank Building from The Sting is located at 255 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

December 16, 2013
Melrose Avenue from “L.A. Story”

Another L.A. Story location that has been waiting patiently in my stalking backlog is the block of Melrose Avenue where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) and Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant) walked and talked after attending a fundraiser for a private art museum in the 1991 flick. Unfortunately though, because the movie was lensed over twenty years ago and that area of Melrose has changed quite a bit during the interim, I am unsure of the exact spot where filming took place. But I sure did my best to try to pinpoint it.

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While watching Harris and Sara’s walk-and-talk scene in L.A. Story, I noticed a neon sign in the background that spelled out “Wacko.” Harris had mentioned in the scene that they were wandering down Melrose, so I decided to begin my hunt there and did a Google search for “Wacko” and “Melrose Avenue.” Sure enough, I was led to an April 1997 Los Angeles Times article that stated, “Wacko, a toy and trinket shop with a bizarre inventory ranging from eyeball magnets to ‘mystic smoke for fingertips,’ is famous for its colorful neon name sign that has become an icon of hipness known worldwide.” (I must not be all that hip being that I had been completely unaware of the sign prior to reading the article. ) From there, finding the address of the former Wacko storefront – at 7404 Melrose Avenue – was fairly easy.

It was not until later that I realized a street sign for “Martel Avenue” was visible in the background of the scene. My search would have been a whole lot easier had I noticed that earlier! D’oh!

Wacko was originally established in 1984 by entrepreneur/art collector Billy Shire. Shire’s parents had founded the Soap Plant, a boutique specializing in handmade soap, ceramics and leather clothing, in Los Feliz in 1971. In 1980, Billy took over the family business and moved it to a strikingly unique corner building at 7400 Melrose Avenue. The new space was larger, enabling Billy to expand his wares to include jewelry and books. Four years later, when two vacant storefronts located next door to the Soap Plant became available, he opened a “pop culture toy shop” named Wacko, aka “The Second Happiest Place on Earth.” Besides selling Japanese robots, wind-up trinkets and games, Wacko also offered the largest selection of postcards in all of Los Angeles. In 1986, Shire founded an art showplace named La Luz de Jesus Gallery in the space located upstairs from the Soap Plant and Wacko. All three were so successful that nine years later he opened up sister locations in a 6,500-square-foot space at 4633 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz. Sadly, as the Melrose Avenue clientele shifted from punk to hipster in the late ‘90s, his business began to decline and he wound up closing his outposts there in 1997. His Hollywood Boulevard shops are still alive and well, though. Today, Wacko’s former Melrose Avenue home is the site of a boot shop and cell phone store. You can check out what the building looked like during the Wacko days here.

While the former Wacko building was an easy find, I still have not been able to pinpoint the exact storefronts that Harris and Sara walked in front of in L.A. Story. It is clear from the position of Wacko’s neon sign in the scene that the two were on the north side of Melrose Avenue, heading east from the Martel Avenue intersection towards North Fuller Avenue. None of the storefronts on that particular block match up to what appeared onscreen, though.

Granted a lot can change in 22 years time, but I was absolutely certain that I would find something that had remained the same, something that would allow me to identify the exact storefronts. Sadly though, the Grim Cheaper and I walked up and down that particular block of Melrose several times, screen captures in hand, without turning up a single thing.

The storefront that I most wanted to locate was the spot with the neon-decorated three-panel window, where Harris and Sara paused and where Harris uttered his famous line, “So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman – about anything at all – but all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, and yet again, wonderful.”

While I originally thought that the window that appeared behind them in the scene was arched, as you can see in the screen capture pictured below (which I lightened a bit), that is not actually the case. Some sort of arched backdrop was used to create that illusion, but in reality the window is rectangular in shape.

My best guess is that the storefront used is the one located at 7365 Melrose Avenue, which now houses Freak Chic Tattoo. That is just a guess, though. While the shop does boast a similarly-shaped three-panel window, because there are no other identifying marks, it is virtually impossible to say for sure.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Harris and Sara’s walk-and-talk from L.A. Story took place on the 7300 block of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles’ Fairfax district. The couple was on the north side of the street in the scene, near the storefronts located at 7377 and 7383, heading east. I believe that Harris and Sara stopped in front of the storefront located at 7365 Melrose Avenue. The former site of Soap Plant and Wacko can be found at 7400/7404 Melrose Avenue. You can visit the Soap Plant/Wacko official website here.

December 10, 2013