Category: Movie Locations

Killer Café from “Enough”

One location that I had been dying to stalk for close to a decade was Edie’s Diner, the 50s-style restaurant in Marina Del Rey that stood in for Phil’s Famous Red Car Diner where Slim Hiller (Jennifer Lopez) worked – and met her reprobate husband, Mitch Hiller (Billy Campbell) – in the 2002 thriller Enough. So imagine my dismay when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, informed me, way back when, that the place had closed its doors in 2007 and was subsequently remodeled, re-opened under a different name, and then closed once again. Such a shame! And while I had long ago crossed the address off my To-Stalk List, when Mike and I were out and about in the South Bay area a couple of months ago, we happened to drive by the property and discovered that it had since been re-opened yet again, this time under the name Killer Café (which I found fitting being that Dexter had also once filmed on the premises ). So we, of course, stopped in to take a quick peek and I am very happy to report that the restaurant does not look as different from its Enough days as I would have guessed.

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Surprisingly, despite the fact that Edie’s Diner – along with its neighboring event space, Harbor House – was a long-time staple in the Marina Del Rey area, I could not find any information whatsoever online about its history or the year that it opened. I know that the place was around for at least a decade, though, during which time it became quite popular with South Bay locals and tourists alike. Then, sometime in early 2005, real-estate developer Edward Czuker purchased Edie’s and Harbor House, as well as the surrounding land, and set about securing permits to demolish both in order to make way for a large mixed-used commercial development project named The Waterfront. And while Czuker allowed the two spaces, which were owned by the same company, to remain in operation – sans paying rent! – while details of The Waterfront were being ironed out, for whatever reason both closed without notice on September 5th, 2007. A public auction was held a few weeks later and all of Edie’s interior décor, kitchen appliances and 1950s memorabilia were sold to the highest bidder. Boo!

In 2008, with The Waterfront development stalled, a new eatery and concert venue named The Organic Panificio Café (try saying that five times fast!) opened at the Edie’s Diner/Harbor House site. That establishment was closed in October 2010, though, due to continued complaints from neighboring residents over the loud music that was played nightly. After sitting vacant for over a year, Killer Café took over the property and opened its doors in May 2012. And while Mike and I did not eat there, one of the servers (who had no idea whatsoever than any filming had taken place on the premises!) was nice enough to let us take all of the pictures of the place that we wanted.

Edie’s Diner appeared at the very beginning of Enough and was used quite extensively in a few scenes. Thankfully, the exterior is still very recognizable from its onscreen appearance. You can check out a cool photograph of the exterior taken during the filming here.

Amazingly enough, while slightly different, the interior of the Killer Cafe is still set up in the same basic way that it was back during the Edie’s days! The line of booths running down the center of the restaurant is now gone, but the counter area and perimeter booths are still in the exact same spots that they were in the movie. Yay!

And while the actual booths where Robbie (Noah Wyle) and Mitch sat when they both first met Slim (which are the second and third booths from the front door) were sold during the Edie’s auction, at least there are still booths in that same area today.

Edie’s Diner also appeared in the Season 2 episode of Dexter titled “An Inconvenient Lie”, as the spot where Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) grabbed coffee with Lila Tournay (Jaime Murray) after an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And I would like to mention here that my favorite line from the series EVER was uttered about the character of Lila, whom I absolutely HATED. In the Season 2 finale, which was titled “The British Invasion”, after Lila burns down her apartment and subsequently goes missing, Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) turns to some police officers on duty and says, “Put out an A.P.B. on Lila West, a.k.a: Lila Tourney. Suspected arsonist. 5’7″, black hair, pale like a f*cking corpse.” LOL LOL LOL Gotta love Debra!

Edie’s neighboring – and more upscale – special events venue, the now-defunct Harbor House, was used in the 2003 thriller Matchstick Men, as the spot where Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage) and Frank Mercer (Sam Rockwell) met up with their mark, Chuck Frechette (Rizzoli & Isles’ Bruce McGill).

You can see the since-remodeled Jamaica Bay Inn, which is located across the street from the Harbor House space, in the background of the screen capture pictured below.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Killer Café, aka the former Edie’s Diner from Enough and Dexter, is located at 4211 Admiralty Way in Marina Del Rey. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The Former Harbor House events venue, from Matchstick Men, is located on the other side of Edie’s, as denoted by the blue arrow above, but shares the address of 4211 Admiralty Way. The parking lot where Dylan McKay’s father was killed in the “Dead End” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 is located just around the corner from the Killer Café – it is Public Parking Lot # 9 located at 14110 Palawan Way. And the Ritz-Carlton, Marina Del Rey from the “No Good Deed” episode of the new 90210 is located just a few blocks east of the Killer Café at 4375 Admiralty Way.

August 23, 2012
Mike’s House from “Say Anything . . . “

As I mentioned in last Thursday’s post about North Hollywood Park – aka the location of the iconic Boombox scene from Say Anything . . . – Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I recently went on a mission to track down some missing locales from the classic 1989 flick. And I am very happy to report that our hunt was successful! One location that Mike found was the house where Mike Cameron (Jason Gould) lived in the movie. So he took me right on over there to stalk the place way back in early June, shortly after we had stalked both North Hollywood Park and the 7-Eleven from the flick (which I blogged about on Friday).

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In Say Anything . . . , Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) becomes the unwitting “key-master” – aka the designated driver who holds onto all of the partygoers’ car keys and then judges who is able to drive home and who is not – for a high school graduation party that he has brought his dream girl, Diane Court (Ione Skye), to on their first date. After the party, he winds up having to take a drunk classmate named Mike home. The only trouble is that Mike cannot remember where he lives and the drive to his house winds up taking over three hours. When they do finally drop him off, Mike stands on the curb and says, “You guys are the best! Give me a call or uh – “, but before he can finish the sentence, Lloyd cuts him off by speeding away. LOL

Mike found this location thanks to an address number of 4936 that was visible on the curb in the scene. He figured that the residence was most likely located in the same general vicinity as North Hollywood Park and the 7-Eleven from the flick and started looking in the NoHo area before working his way outward until he found the right spot.

It is absolutely mind-boggling to me (in a good way) that the house looks exactly – and when I say exactly, I mean EXACTLY – the same today as it did back in 1989 when Say Anything . . . was filmed. Even the tree in the front yard appears just as it did onscreen – albeit slightly taller, but not by much. In real life, the residence, which was originally built in 1947, measures 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, and 1,473 square feet, and sits on a 0.17-acre plot of land.

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Mike Cameron’s house from Say Anything . . . is located at 4936 Sunnyslope Avenue in Sherman Oaks.

August 20, 2012
The 7-Eleven from “Say Anything . . . “

Located directly across the street from North Hollywood Park – aka the spot where the iconic Boombox scene from Say Anything . . . was filmed, which I blogged about yesterday – is the 7-Eleven that appeared in the 1989 flick. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I found out about this locale once again thanks to Mike’s fiancé, Ame, who grew up in the North Hollywood area and had heard about the filming when it took place 24 years ago (yikes, has it really been that long?!?!). So, after stopping by the park – where we, of course, re-enacted the Boombox scene – Mike and I headed right across the street to stalk the 7-Eleven.

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At the beginning of Say Anything . . . , Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) takes Diane Court (Ione Skye) to a supposed Seattle, Washington-area 7-Eleven convenience store to grab a Big Gulp and some coffee on their way home from a high school graduation party in the wee hours of the morning.

Amazingly enough, despite a fairly minor roof alteration, the store looks very much the same today as it did when Say Anything . . . was filmed almost two-and-a-half decades ago.

While we were there, Mike pointed out that even the brick border separating the parking lot from the sidewalk that Lloyd and Diane walked over in the flick is still there to this day – albeit a little worse for the wear. Love it, love it, love it!

In the movie, while leaving the 7-Eleven, Lloyd spots some broken glass on the ground and, almost instinctively, brushes it out of Diane’s way so that she does not walk through it. Now that’s chivalry at its finest!

So I, of course, just had to pretend to step on broken glass while we were there.

North Hollywood Park – pretty much the exact spot where Lloyd stood during the Boombox scene, in fact – is visible in the background behind Lloyd and Diane as they walk off-screen after leaving the 7-Eleven.

Say Anything . . . is not the 7-Eleven’s only claim to fame. According to the Rob Dyrdek Foundation website, on May 18th, 2010 the convenience store was converted into an urban skate shop for the day in conjunction with the grand opening of the charity’s third Safe Spot Skate Spot – a state-of-the-art skating plaza located inside of North Hollywood Park.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER and you can take a look at my my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and his fiancé, Ame, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Say Anything . . . 7-Eleven is located at 11340 Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. North Hollywood Park, where the iconic Say Anything . . . Boombox scene was filmed, is located directly across the street at 11455 Magnolia Boulevard.

August 17, 2012
North Hollywood Park from “Say Anything . . . “

A few months back, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, informed me that his fiancé, Ame (who grew up in North Hollywood), had just told him that the iconic Boombox scene from the 1989 classic Say Anything . . . was filmed at, of all places, a park – North Hollywood Park in North Hollywood to be exact. I was absolutely shocked to hear this information because, not only had I always assumed that the flick was filmed in its entirety in Seattle, Washington, but the scene was made to look as if it took place in a residential area, directly outside of the house where Diane Court (Ione Skye) lived, and not at a public park. As we both came to find out, though, thanks to the Washington State Film Locations website, while the vast majority of the movie’s establishing shots were lensed in the Pacific Northwest, all actual filming took place right here in Southern California! Well, believe you me, once Mike and I learned that bit of information, we set about tracking down some other locales from the flick and had quite a bit of success. And we also ran right out to stalk North Hollywood Park.

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In the brief, but iconic Say Anything . . . scene, shortly after Diane breaks up with him, a heartsick Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) stands outside of Diane’s bedroom window (or so producers would have us believe) at night, holding a large Boombox that is playing Peter Gabriel’s hit 1986 song “In Your Eyes”. The memorable scene has been duplicated and parodied countless times since, on everything from Saturday Night Live and South Park to The Colbert Report and fave movie Easy A.

In an interesting twist, Peter Gabriel came thisclose to turning down director Cameron Crowe’s request for “In Your Eyes” to be featured in the movie. In a November 2009 Entertainment Weekly article, Crowe explains that he was on the phone with Gabriel a few days after sending him a Say Anything . . . screener, but Gabriel refused to sign off on the song’s use. Of the call, he says, “I just remember being in the kitchen and just going, ‘Oh man.’ I said I understood and I appreciated it and was he sure and he said yes, he was sure, and I was saying goodbye to him and I remember the phone was like on its way to the cradle, I think we’d already even said goodbye. And I just, like, was seized with this thing and I pulled the phone back up and I go, ‘Why? I got to ask you why. Why can’t we have the song? Why was it wrong?’ And he said, ‘Well when he takes the overdose it just didn’t feel like the right kind of use of the song.’ And I’m like, ‘When he takes the overdose?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you’re making the John Belushi story [Wired], right?’ I said, ‘No, no, no. It’s a movie about the guy in high school with the trench coat.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, the high school movie. We haven’t watched that yet.’ Hallelujah! ‘Please watch the high school movie and let me know if it works in the high school movie.’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah yeah yeah, okay, great.’ And then we got the word back that he said yes.” And the rest is (very often re-enacted) history.

Before heading out to the park, Mike had told me to wear a trench coat and that he would be bringing along a Boombox from work so that I could recreate the iconic scene. As fate would have it, though, the Boombox went missing a few days before our stalk, but Mike was thankfully able to work his magic by digitally adding the stereo into the below picture. Love it!

I would venture a guess that North Hollywood Park was also the park featured in the Say Anything . . . montage scene, but I, unfortunately, have not been able to verify that hunch.

And thanks to the Hollywood Lost and Found blog, I learned that Pee-wee Herman (Paul Ruebens) rode his beloved red bike through North Hollywood Park – in almost the exact same spot that appeared in Say Anything . . . – at the very beginning of 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

Sadly, I can’t say that I would really recommend stalking North Hollywood Park. While the tree-lined, 99-acre space, which was originally founded in 1927, is quite beautiful and boasts countless amenities, including a library, three baseball diamonds, a public pool, tennis courts, a playground, a skate park, and a recreation center, the place seemed to be a haven for the homeless and a den of criminal activity. The police were actually called and wound up arresting someone in the brief ten minutes that we were there.

And let me tell you, when you’re standing around in shorts, wedges and a trench coat and holding a non-existent Boombox above your head, the “locals” tend to get just a wee-bit rowdy. LOL

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER and you can take a look at my latest post – about low-carb chicken noodle soup – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and his fiancé, Ame, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: North Hollywood Park, where the iconic Say Anything . . . Boombox scene was filmed, is located at 11455 Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. In the scene, Lloyd Dobler was standing on the southwest corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Tujunga Avenue, in the area denoted with a pink arrow above.

August 16, 2012
Griffith Park’s Pote Field from “Jerry Maguire”

Another location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I stalked way back in early June (shortly before we stalked the legendary Perino’s restaurant, which I blogged about yesterday) was Pote Field in Griffith Park, which was featured in the closing scene of one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time – 1996’s Jerry Maguire. Mike had discovered this locale quite a few years back and while I was beyond excited about it and had immediately added the address to my To-Stalk list, for whatever reason, I had just never gotten over there to see the place. Then, in June, while we were in Griffith Park doing some stalking of nearby Harding Municipal Golf Course, which has appeared in several movies, Mike reminded me about Pote Field and I just about had a heart attack right there on the spot. So, we quickly headed over there to stalk it. Yay!

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In the closing scene of Jerry Maguire (which was easily one of flick’s cutest scenes), the film’s title character, who was played by Tom Cruise, is shown walking hand-in-hand with his new wife, Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger), and her son, Ray (Jonathan Lipnicki), next to a little league game taking place on Pote Field, when a runaway baseball lands in front of the trio. Young Ray picks it up and tosses it high over the fence back towards the waiting players. Jerry, who is a sports agent, is thoroughly impressed by Ray’s throw and says, “Whoa! Did you see?”, causing Dorothy to exclaim, “Oh no! Let’s go!” The three then walk off into the sunset as the strains of Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From The Storm” start to be heard over Jerry’s pleas to Dorothy to let Ray play baseball.

As you can see below, Pote Field, which was named in honor of Major League Baseball scout Phil Pote, looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did back in 1996 when Jerry Maguire was filmed. And while this stalker is not AT ALL into sports, I cannot tell you how excited I was to see this location in person. So incredibly cool!

And I, of course, just had to imitate Jerry walking and swinging Ray’s hand while we were there.

Mike found the field thanks to the large hill that was visible in the background of the baseball-throwing scene. He had played ball at Pote several times as a teen and, as soon he spotted that hill while watching Jerry Maguire, he recognized the place immediately. Ironically enough, upon first moving to Southern California in 2000, I had attended a special exhibit on area filming locations at the Pasadena Central Library. One of the movies featured in the exhibit was Jerry Maguire and the display piece on it mentioned that some filming had taken place at Villa-Parke Community Center in Altadena. Well, as soon as I saw the word park in the write-up, I immediately assumed that the scene alluded to was the baseball-throwing scene and just about had a heart attack. I drove over to the park immediately upon leaving the exhibit (not kidding!), but when I got there nothing about the place looked familiar. After doing some cyber-digging later that night, I learned that Villa-Parke’s gym had been used in one of the movie’s auxiliary scenes (although I can no longer find any mention of that online, so now I am even more confused than I was before!) and not the closing scene as I had originally thought. So when Mike told me about Pote Field years later, I was absolutely floored!

I am fairly certain that Pote Field was also featured in Jerry Maguire’s opening montage as the supposed Indio, California-area baseball field where Jerry’s client Art Stallings (Jordan Ross) is shown swinging a bat. Because the shot is so incredibly tight, though, it would be extremely hard to verify that hunch, but, as you can see below, the scoreboard behind Stallings is a match to Pote’s real life scoreboard, as is the foliage visible in the background.

Pote Field also appeared in the 1991 flick Hook as the location of Jack ‘Jackie’ Banning’s (Charlie Korsmo) final little league game of the season – a game that his workaholic father, Peter Banning (Robin Williams), shows up extremely late for and winds up missing entirely.

On a Jerry Maguire side-note – a very young Emily Procter (aka CSI: Miami’s Calleigh Duquesne) was featured as one of Jerry’s ex-girlfriends in the mini-movie that was shown during the bachelor party scene. And, according to IMDB’s Jerry Maguire trivia page, the film was originally written with Tom Hanks and Winona Ryder in mind for the lead roles. All I can say to that is blech! THANK GOD that never came to be, because Jerry Maguire would have been just about the worst movie ever with those two at the helm!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER and you can take a look at my latest post – about low-carb chicken noodle soup – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Pote Field, from the closing scene of Jerry Maguire, is located on Crystal Springs Drive, just east of where it intersects with Fire Road, inside of Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Jerry Maguire was filmed in the northeast section of the field, in the area denoted with a blue arrow above.

August 15, 2012
Perino’s Restaurant

Today’s post is going to be a long one, my fellow stalkers, so brace yourselves! I hope that it makes up for the fact that I was on vacation for the past week. Last October, while doing research on Mommie Dearest locations for my annual Haunted Hollywood postings, I came across a page on Scott Michaels’ FindADeath website about the now-defunct, but still legendary Perino’s restaurant. While the historic eatery was sadly razed in 2005 to make way for an apartment building, Scott posted a fabulous write-up of his visit there prior to the demolition. Amazingly enough, I had not ever heard of the place before reading his post and became just a wee bit devastated that I never had the chance to see it in person. So imagine my surprise when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, mentioned that, while doing some cyberstalking, he discovered that the eatery’s legendary façade was still standing just around the corner from its original location! The two of us were absolutely floored to learn this information and went right on over there just a few days later. And, as luck would have it, the stalking gods were definitely smiling down upon us while we were there because it turned out to be one of our best stalks yet!

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Alex Perino originally founded his eponymous restaurant at 3927 Wilshire Boulevard in 1932. The highly exclusive eatery became an instant hotspot, drawing many of Hollywood’s elite through its gilded doors. In February 1950, Perino moved the establishment to a new, larger location two blocks west at 4101 Wilshire Boulevard, where he commissioned legendary architect Paul Revere Williams to re-design a former Thriftimart grocery store into a New Orleans-inspired restaurant. The new $200,000 masterpiece was even more successful than its predecessor and attracted such luminaries as Bugsy Siegel, Cole Porter, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, my girl Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Sid Grauman, Dean Martin, Howard Hughes, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret O’Brien, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, and Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1969, Perino retired and sold his legendary eatery to a man named Frank Esgro. And while the place continued to enjoy massive popularity for the next decade-and-a-half, in July 1983 Esgro decided to open a second Perino’s in the Wells Fargo Building in downtown L.A. and inexplicably and misguidedly stopped serving meals at the original location, which was turned into a special events venue. The downtown restaurant, which closed in December 1984, was a massive failure and Esgro wound up losing $7.5 million on it, causing him to declare bankruptcy. A court removed him from operating the original Perino’s shortly thereafter and despite a few false starts thanks to the efforts of new owners, the historic eatery never regained its original success and its doors were closed for good in 1986. The structure sat vacant for the next nineteen years, occasionally being used as a filming location and for private parties. Then, sadly, in 2002, Perino’s was sold to a real-estate developer named Tom Carey, who auctioned off most of its interior décor in 2004 before finally razing the place to the ground in 2005. Today a 4-story, 47-unit apartment building stands in its place.

Thankfully though, Carey decided to keep intact Perino’s famous porte-cochere;

its front doors;

its entryway awning;

and its main entrance, which were all then incorporated into the design of the apartment building. So incredibly cool!

While Mike and I were peeking through the front windows of Perino’s Luxury Apartments . . .

. . . into the main lobby area, the super-nice and super-knowledgeable property manager happened to see us and inquired as to what we were doing. As fate would have it, when we told him about our love of filming locations and that Mike was a location manager, he invited us inside to take a look around, at which point we both just about died!

Several items from the original Perino’s are on display in the main lobby, including one of the restaurant’s famously peach-hued booths (according to the Los Angeles Times, the “warm glow” of the eatery’s peach and pink interior “always seemed to give diners a radiant look”);

one of the gilded chandeliers;

and an etched glass sign from the Palm Court Ballroom.

Mike and I just about had a heart attack, though, when the property manager informed us that Perino’s bar area had been rebuilt in its entirety on the first floor of the building – especially when he unlocked its doors (which are original!) and invited us inside for a closer look!

The bar area, which is now named the “Remembrance Room”, is reached through Perino’s former main entrance.

Just inside the doors, the actual wall paneling from Perino’s original front foyer has been authentically reconstructed.

Just to the right of the foyer sits the Remembrance Room, which features the original bar;

bar stools;

(check out the incredible detailing!);

wood paneling;

red velvet booths;

wall sconces;

fireplace;

chairs;

beams;

and stair railing.

I cannot in a million years express how exciting it was to be able to explore, photograph and see in person such a legendary piece of Los Angeles’ history. I was literally pinching myself the whole time!

As I mentioned above, Perino’s is no stranger to the screen. The restaurant portrayed L’Etoile, where Babe (Dustin Hoffman) grabbed lunch with Elsa (Marthe Keller) and Doc (Roy Scheider) – and was chastised for not wearing a tie – in the 1971 thriller Marathon Man.

In the Season 7 episode of Columbo titled “Murder Under Glass”, which first aired in 1978, Perino’s was the eatery where the ritzy “Restaurant Writers Dinner” was held.

In 1980’s American Gigolo, Perino’s popped up as the restaurant where Julian (Richard Gere) asked Anne (Baroness van Pallandt Nina) for help.

In 1981, the eatery was featured as the spot in Mommie Dearest where (in a scene I still do not entirely understand) Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) gets mad at boyfriend Greg Savitt (Steve Forrest) for taking her to dine at the table of studio head Louis B. Mayer (Howard Da Silva) like “some picked-up floozy”, after which she screams the famous line, “Damn it, Perino’s is MY place!”

In the scene, fans are shown waiting outside of Perino’s to gather autographs from the many stars who dined there regularly, which was apparently the case in real life, too. Oh, if only the restaurant was still open! My girl Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog, and I would probably be there every night!

Perino’s shows up a second time in Mommie Dearest as the eatery where Joan takes her daughter Christina (Diana Scarwid) and gets viciously mad at her over the fact that she has not yet completed her “Christmas card list”.

In the 1982 made-for-television movie Bare Essence, the interior of Perino’s stood in for the supposed Manhattan-area restaurant where Ava Marshall (Lee Grant) threw a party for the fashion industry. The exterior party scenes were shot at the legendary Tavern on the Green in New York, though, which I blogged about here.

In 1983, Perino’s appeared as the restaurant where Tony Montana (Al Pacino) and his wife, Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer), got into a screaming match while at dinner in Scarface.

Also in 1983, Perino’s popped up as the supposed Washington, D.C.-area eatery where James Deland (Paul Shenar) took an undercover Mrs. Amanda King (Kate Jackson) in the Season 1 episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King titled “Service Above and Beyond”.

In the Season 5 episode of Hart to Hart tiled “Max’s Waltz”, which aired in 1984, Perino’s was where Jonathan Hart (Robert Wagner) and Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers) posed as an oil baron and a French dancer, respectively, in order to entrap two crooks.

The bar area was also featured in the episode.

In 1985, Perino’s was featured in the Season 1 episode of The Colbys titled “The Family Album” as the restaurant where Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) dances with Fallon Carrington Colby (Emma Samms), after which he begins to suspect that she might be his long-lost daughter.

Perino’s bar area was also featured in that episode.

In the Season 3 episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King titled “Welcome to America, Mr. Brand”, which aired in 1985, Amanda grabbed dinner once again at Perino’s (which was masquerading as Washington, D.C.’s tony Bennington Club) – this time with a klutzy English accountant named James Brand (Harvey Jason).

In the Season 1 episode of L.A. Law titled “The Douglas Fur Ball”, which aired in 1987, Perino’s was used as the eatery where Andrew Putnam (Grant Heslov) took Roxanne Melman (Susan Ruttan) for dinner and was refused a bottle of champagne due to the fact that he had forgotten his I.D. and did not appear to be of drinking age.

In that same episode, I am fairly certain that Perino’s bar area was also used twice (although not very visibly) – first as the eatery where George Cromwell (Sandy McPeak) took Ann Kelsey (Jill Eikenberry) out for dinner and asked her to be his lawyer.

And second as the restaurant where Judge Morris (Milton Selzer) begged Leland McKenzie (Richard Dysart) for a job.

In the Season 12 episode of Dallas titled “The Way We Were”, which aired in 1989, Perino’s stood in for the supposed Dallas, Texas-area “Café Espana”, where J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) and April Stevens (Sheree J. Wilson) had lunch.

Also in 1989, Perino’s stood in for the supposed San Francisco restaurant where Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) had lunch with Melissa Agretti (Ana Alicia), who was impersonating Samantha Ross, in the Season 8 episode of Falcon Crest titled “Grand Delusions”. Thank you to fellow stalker Gilles for the screen captures from the episode!

In 1991’s Dead Again, Perino’s masqueraded as Syd’s, where Roman Strauss (Kenneth Branagh) took Margaret Strauss (Emma Thompson) for their first date.

In 1992’s Chaplin, Charles Spencer Chaplin (Robert Downey Jr.) took the newly-brunette Paulette Goddard (Diane Lane) to Perino’s, also for their first date.

In the Season 3 episode of Melrose Place titled “Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Dinner at Eight”, which aired in 1995, Perino’s is the supposed Manhattan-area restaurant where Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro) tried to kiss Amanda Woodward (Heather Locklear).

In that same episode, Perino’s bar area masked as The Bistro Garden, where Allison Parker (Courtney Thorne-Smith) told a client that Amanda Woodward (Heather Locklear) was sick.

At the very beginning of 1996’s Mulholland Falls, Perino’s is where Max Hoover (Nick Nolte) beats up mobster Jack Flynn (a very young William Petersen from CSI).

In the scene, the bar area is briefly visible.

And in 1950’s Sunset Blvd., the original Perino’s location was visible in the background of the scene in which Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) takes Joe Gillis (William Holden) shopping for new clothes.

And while Perino’s supposedly appeared in Bugsy and The Two Jakes, I scanned through both of those flicks yesterday and did not see it pop up anywhere. According to IMDB, Perino’s was also used in the TV movies Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story and Sinatra: Dark Star, and the film Grilled, but I, unfortunately, could not find copies of any of those productions with which to verify that information.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER and you can take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Perino’s Restaurant was formerly located at 4101 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Its famous façade can still be seen just around the corner at 635 South Bronson Avenue. You can visit the official Perino’s Luxury Apartments website here.

August 14, 2012
Retail Rodeo from “The Good Girl”

This past Saturday morning, the Grim Cheaper and I headed out to Simi Valley to stalk a location that he was actually excited about for once – the House of the Book building at the Brandeis-Barden Campus of the American Jewish University, which stands in for the Visualize cult’s headquarters on fave show The Mentalist. And even though the American Jewish University website makes it sound as if the place is open to the public (it states that the campus is “an enchanting destination for residents and visitors to the region”), when we showed up we discovered that it most definitely is not. Fail! After a 45-minute drive out there, I was not about to turn right around and head back to Pasadena, though, so I texted Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who lives in the area, and asked him what other locations, if any, were nearby. When he mentioned that Retail Rodeo from the 2002 movie The Good Girl was just a hop, skip and a jump away, I just about flipped my lid as it is a place that I had always wanted to stalk. Yay! So I dragged the GC right on over there.

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I really should admit here that I absolutely hated The Good Girl. In this stalker’s never-to-be humble opinion, the flick was easily one of the most depressing and boring ever produced. I watched it when it was first released, of course, because of Miss Jen Aniston, but by about thirty minutes in I was ready to leave the theatre. Yes, it’s that bad. I even found it painful to scan through the thing today while making screen captures for this post. Ugh! But because Retail Rodeo was such a prominent location in the flick, it stuck with me and I had always wanted to see it in person.

In The Good Girl, Retail Rodeo is the Texas-area drug store where Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston), Jack Field (John Carroll Lynch), Cheryl (Zooey Deschanel – who was fab in her role and pretty much the only good thing about the movie) and Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal) work.

In real life, the place is currently a Flooring 101 carpet and tile center and, as you can see below, the exterior, thankfully, still looks much the same today as it did back in 2002 when The Good Girl was filmed.

I was especially excited to see the front sidewalk area where Justine and Holden ate lunch together everyday.

And the tree that Holden hid behind after stealing $15,000 from the Retail Rodeo safe.

Had to do it!

The real life interior of the store was also used extensively in The Good Girl. At the time of the filming, the property was vacant and, because it had previously housed a Thrifty drugstore, producers did not have to do much to turn the space into the fictional Retail Rodeo.

Sadly though, when Flooring 101 took over the space shortly after filming of The Good Girl had wrapped, the interior was completely gutted (like down to the studs!) and it no longer resembles its onscreen counterpart in any way, shape or form. And while we did venture inside for a peek, the place was so vastly different that I did not even bother to snap any photographs, nor did I think the non-friendly owner would have allowed it.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And you can take a look at my latest post about road trip eats on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Flooring 101, aka Retail Rodeo from The Good Girl, is located at 2790 East Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley. The tree that Holden hid behind in the movie is the second tree in from the entrance to Flooring 101’s parking lot and is denoted with a pink arrow above.

August 1, 2012
Frank the Tank’s House from “Old School”

Three weeks ago, fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, emailed me to let me know that he had recently tracked down the house where Frank Ricard (Will Ferrell), aka “Frank the Tank”, and his new wife, Marissa Jones (Perrey Reeves), aka “Mrs. Ari” from Entourage, lived – well, until she kicked him out for streaking, anyway – in the 2003 comedy Old School. I was beyond thrilled to hear this news as Frank and Marissa’s abode is one location that I have long wondered about and always wanted to stalk. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there to do just that this past weekend.

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While watching Old School on television a few weeks back, Geoff’s wife happened to ask if he knew where Frank and Marissa’s house was located. He didn’t, but figured that the information had to be mentioned somewhere online. After checking all of the usual stalking websites, though, he came up empty-handed and decided to begin his own search. Thankfully, an address number of “2234” was visible in the background of one of the scenes, so that search was a short one. As it turns out, Frank the Tank’s house is located in Altadena – pretty much right in my own backyard.

In real life, the property was originally built in 1917 and boasts four bedrooms, three baths, 2,400 square feet of living space, and a 0.34-acre plot of land. As you can see below, it could not be more charming or idyllic. This place has got curb appeal down to a T! And while this website claims that the abode was recently listed for sale at $43,250 (as if!!!!), according to Zillow, it actually last sold in August 2001 for $560,000.

Frank the Tank’s house actually only shows up twice in Old School, and very briefly at that. But it made quite an impression on me nonetheless.

So much so that, even though I had not seen the flick in ages, I recognized the place immediately when we pulled up and could almost see Frank the Tank working on his Trans-Am, “The Red Dragon”, in the driveway, with the strains of Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” blaring out of his speakers. SUCH A GREAT MOVIE!

As you can see in these photographs, the real life interior of the home, which is absolutely ADORABLE (so shabby chic!), was also used in the filming. I was literally drooling over the shots of the sweeping front porch, the backyard and the kitchen.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And you can take a look my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Frank the Tank’s house from Old School is located at 2284 Mar Vista Avenue in Altadena.

July 31, 2012
Angela Bennett’s House from “The Net”

Two weekends ago, while Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were driving around looking for a parking place in Venice Beach (NEVER an easy task!), we passed by the dwelling pictured above and he announced, “That’s the house where Sandra Bullock lived in The Net.” Well, as you can imagine, I was absolutely bowled over to learn this bit of information and asked him to pull the car over immediately so that we could properly stalk the place. And while I had not seen The Net in years, stalking the home had me absolutely itching to watch it again, so I popped in my DVD of it just as soon as I got home later that night. I was a bit worried that the flick might be outdated, being that technology has advanced so far from where it was back in 1995 when The Net was filmed, but I am very happy to report that it was still pertinent to today’s world and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!

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In The Net, reclusive software engineer Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) lives in a tiny beach bungalow located at the fictional address of “407 Finley Avenue” in Venice, until her identity is stolen by ruthless computer hackers who want her dead.

Sadly, as you can see below, Angela’s house looks quite a bit different today than it did when The Net was filmed 17 years ago. There is now a large fence surrounding the property and completely blocking it from view, which is ironic being that Angela had her lattice fence removed at the end of the flick in an effort to become less reclusive.

The fence also has a sign printed on it which reads, “Please don’t step in or on planters”. I am not sure if that is a message directed toward those stalkers who attempt to sneak a better peek at the property or to random passersby in general, but I am guessing the former. Either way, I got a kick out of it.

In real life, the house, which was originally built in 1941, measures 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, and 1,076 square feet. According to fave website Zillow, the tiny property is currently worth an estimated $833,200! Welcome to California, folks!

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the home was also used in the filming.

In the flick, after Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) realizes that her identity – and house! – has been stolen, she escapes out of her former home’s bathroom window and runs through a side fence and out onto the street toward the Venice Canals.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And you can take a look at my latest post about one of my favorite to-go meals on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Angela Bennett’s house from The Net is located at 407 28th Avenue in Venice. After Angela realizes that her home has been stolen from her, she runs out of the property’s side gate on Dell Avenue and heads north towards the Venice Canals.

July 24, 2012
The Venice Beach Cotel – aka SanDeE*’s Apartment from “L.A. Story”

One location that I have been dying to track down ever since first moving to Southern California in 2000 was the apartment building where SanDeE* (my girl Sarah Jessica Parker) lived in the 1991 classic comedy L.A. Story. (And yes, that is the correct spelling of her name – as she says in the movie, “Big s, small a, small n, big d, small e, big e, and there’s a little star at the end”. LOL) I knew that the building was located somewhere in Venice, but because I do not know the area very well and rarely venture out there, I had a hard time tracking it down. So imagine my excitement when, a couple of years ago, I came across a blurb about the place in fave stalking book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors. As it turns out, SanDeE*’s apartment building is none other than the Venice Beach Cotel on Windward Avenue. And while I immediately added the address to my To-Stalk list, I was not able to get out there until this past Saturday afternoon when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were doing some stalking in the area.

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Venice Beach actually has a very interesting history – one which involves the Cotel. The city was dreamed up by a wealthy tobacco heir/real estate developer named Abbot Kinney, who wanted to establish “The Venice of America” right here in Los Angeles. In the early 1900’s, he purchased some coastal acreage, most of it marshland, south of Santa Monica and proceeded to create a replica of the Italian city. The marshes were drained and transformed into eight miles of canals (a popular filming location, which I will be blogging about soon), complete with imported gondolas and singing gondoliers. A 1600-foot fishing pier was also constructed, along with carnival rides, a large beachside pool, and an indoor saltwater pool known as “The Venice Hot Saltwater Plunge”. The focal point of Kinney’s city, which was opened to the public in 1905 and was nicknamed “The Playland of the Pacific”, was Windward Avenue, a main street lined with beautiful neo-Italianate, columned buildings and sweeping archways as far as the eye could see. The buildings housed everything from luxury restaurants and shops to hotels, one of which was the ritzy St. Charles. Today, that site is known as the Venice Beach Cotel and it is the city’s oldest hotel.

Sadly, while St. Charles was once luxurious and upscale, it fell into decline, along with the rest of the city, shortly after Abbot Kinney’s death in 1920. And while Venice Beach has experienced a resurgence of sorts in recent years, the property is still a bit seedy. And what does the word “Cotel” mean, you ask? According to the hostel’s website, “The name Cotel comes from the prefix ‘co’, meaning getting together (people), which is what we are all about!”

The infamous mural that dominates the west side of the Cotel is named “Venice Reconstituted” and it was originally painted in 1989 by muralist Rip Cronk. It looks quite a bit different today than it did in L.A. Story, though, because in 2010, Cronk restored the huge painting, renamed it “Venice Kinesis”, added and deleted a few figures, and moved it up an entire story in a futile attempt to keep it out of reach of taggers.

There is also a 102-foot by 50-foot mural that covers the east side of the Venice Beach Cotel, but it, too, has been re-visioned. The piece was originally painted in the early 1900s by Terry Schoonhoven and was a view of what Windward Avenue looked like at the time. You can see a historic photograph of it here. Sadly, the work deteriorated and faded considerably over the years, so, in early 2012, artist Jonas Never covered over it with a new mural named “Touch of Venice” that was inspired by Touch of Evil, Orson Welles’ 1958 film which was shot in its entirety in the beachside city.

In L.A. Story, the Venice Beach Cotel is where SanDeE*, the dimwitted, colonic-loving girlfriend of wacky weatherman Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin), lived. The building and Rip Cronk’s mural popped up a few times in the flick.

I cannot tell you how absolutely devastated I was when I saw that SanDeE*’s front doorway had since been removed, as I had so wanted to reenact the image below.

As I later discovered, though, SanDeE*’s (and I cannot express what a pain in the a** it is to type that name out repeatedly! ) doorway was never actually there, but was a façade that was added solely for the movie. You can check out some pictures of the building from the same time period that L.A. Story was filmed here, here, and here, which show that the doorway never actually existed. BOO!

L.A. Story was hardly the first film to shoot at the Cotel. In 1958’s Touch of Evil, which as I mentioned above, was shot in its entirety in Venice, the building stood in for the Ritz Hotel in the fictional border town of Los Robles, where Susan Vargas (Janet Leigh) was threatened by drug kingpin “Uncle” Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) while on her honeymoon.

As an homage to Touch of Evil, the Cotel doubled as The Ritz Hotel once again in the opening scene of the 2001 flick Double Take.

As you can see below, an exact replica of the “Ritz Hotel” sign from Touch of Evil was created for Double Take. So cool!

In 1968’s I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, Harold (Peter Sellers) shops at what he calls a “hippy supermarket” set up in front of the Venice Beach Cotel.

In the opening scene of 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump, Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) parks in front of the hotel and then throws his basketball up against Rip Cronk’s mural as he walks by.

In 1993’s Point of No Return, Maggie Hayward (Bridget Fonda) walks by the building upon first arriving in Venice.

Rip’s mural showed up very briefly in an establishing shot in 1992’s Venice/Venice . . .

. . . which starred a very young David Duchovny.

According to Hollywood Escapes, the Venice Beach Cotel is also visible in the 1983 remake of Breathless, but, unfortunately, I could not find any copies of it with which to make screen captures for this post.

And on a Sarah Jessica Parker side-note – My good friend Steffi, who lives in Switzerland and is even more Sex-and-the-City-obsessed than I am (if that’s possible), texted me the below picture yesterday. Um, LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Venice Beach Cotel, aka SanDeE*’s apartment building from L.A. Story, is located at 25 Windward Avenue in Venice. You can visit the hostel’s official website here.

July 20, 2012