IAMNOTASTALKER

Category: Movie Locations

  • Hollywood Renaissance Hotel

    Yesterday, while killing time before an acting class, I decided to stop into the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel which is attached to the famous Hollywood & Highland shopping center. When I stepped inside, I noticed a few excited teenage girls standing in the lobby with cameras and autograph books in hand. I just had to walk over to them to ask who they were waiting for. They told me that Will Smith had just walked through the lobby and was standing “RIGHT THERE!” I looked around and did not see him and they kept saying “He’s RIGHT THERE!” LOL Turns out Will was standing just a few yards away from me waiting to get into his SUV. I had just missed him walking through the lobby by mere seconds.

    The teenage girls told me that Will was SUPER nice and had stopped to take pictures with each of them. Even though his bodyguard kept telling him that he didn’t have time to stop, Will took individual pictures with all of the girls. How sweet is that! Apparently Will was at the Renaissance for a pre-party before the premiere of his new movie Hancock. Will was much thinner in person than I thought he would be. I guess I expected him to be larger than life, due to the characters he portrays onscreen. In real life he is tall, about 6′, but pretty lanky and really thin. Everything happened so fast that I did not have time to snap a picture of him. 🙁

    Besides being a favorite stomping ground of celebrities – last time I was there I saw Nikki Blonsky from Hairspray – the Renaissance is also a filming location! It was portrayed as the hotel where Rachel McAdams works in the movie Red Eye. The brightly colored lobby stood in for the lobby of the Miami Beach hotel where McAdams character was head of customer service. The Renaissance is a great place for celeb stalking as many stay there during premieres and press junkets due to its close proximity to downtown Hollywood.

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: The Hollywood Renaissance Hotel is located at 1755 North Highland Avenue, right next to the Hollywood & Highland Shopping Center. You can visit their website here.

  • Sad Day for Stalkers!

    Sad news!! Tony just posted a comment on my Top Gun Bar post letting me know that a fire destroyed Kansas City Barbeque, aka the Top Gun Bar, this past Thursday afternoon. This has NOT been a good month for fires and filming locations – first Universal and now this. 🙁 At approximately 2:15PM on Thursday, a fire broke out in an open fire pit in the kitchen area and quickly spread throughout the rest of the restaurant. Even though firefighters had the blaze put out in twenty minutes, most of the restaurant had already been gutted. The owners of Kansas City Barbeque did manage to save Goose’s piano, as well as some other Top Gun memorabilia, but most of the restaurant is sadly gone. They do plan to rebuild, but I can’t help feeling like a piece of movie history has been lost. 🙁 Such a sad day for stalkers!!

    You can read the whole story on the fire here and here. You can also watch a news video which shows footage of the restaurant here.

  • The “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” House

    Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has long been one of my favorite movies. So I was completely floored when I found out that Ferris’ house from the movie was located in Southern California! Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was filmed almost entirely on location in Chicago, Illinois, but for some reason producers chose a house on the West Coast, in Long Beach, California, to use as the Bueller family home. As soon as I found the address, I immediately dragged my boyfriend (on his birthday, no less!) to go stalk it. This was quite a few years back and we took pictures of the house using a cell phone, so they aren’t the best. 🙁 You will immediately recognize the large colonial style home, though, and its circular driveway, as they look EXACTLY the same as they did over two decades ago when the movie was filmed. It was so much fun to see the house in person, and I really wanted to ring the doorbell to see if Ferris’ taped doorbell recording would play. 🙂

    A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some cyber-stalking and found some interior pictures of the home on a movie location website. I was shocked to see that the interior of the real home matched the interior of the home from the movie, as I had always assumed that a set was used for the interior shots. But from what I can see from the pictures, the interior of the Long Beach home was obviously used for filming, as well. You can see the interior of the house here. You’ll recognize the staircase and the kitchen as almost a perfect match to Ferris’ house in the movie.

    The Ferris Buehler house was also used in the Silence of the Lambs sequel Red Dragon and in Not Another Teen Movie as the house where the massive party is thrown.

    A little bit of Ferris trivia – Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward, the actors who played Ferris’ parents, met while filming the movie and ended up getting married after filming was completed. 🙂

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: Ferris Buehler’s house can be found at 4160 Country Club Drive in Long Beach. Many other homes in the same neighborhood have been featured in other movies and TV shows. Check out Seeing Stars, which does a great write up on this neighborhood and its famous homes.

  • Tom C. Ruz

    During high school I was completely and totally head-over-heels for Tom Cruise. Let me clarify that I now think the man is an absolute loon, but back in the day I thought Tom Cruise was the bees knees. 🙂 Each week in my high school Spanish class we were assigned three 5 minute conversations, to be conducted outside of class entirely in Spanish. We were required to keep detailed logs of when, where and with whom these conversations took place. My girlfriends and I would always sign at least one conversation each week with the code name “Tom C. Ruz” in honor of our movie star crush. Looking back, I am pretty sure our teacher knew exactly what we were up to, but we thought we were hilarious. 🙂

    So when I found out, while browsing the Internet this week, that the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie – under the code name “Rubicon” – was being filming at a church in Pasadena on Thursday, my inner-high-school-girl forced me to do some stalking. I was also really hoping to spot Katie Holmes, who has really been growing on me ever since she cut her hair. 🙂 So, at around lunch time on Thursday, I headed to the Valkyrie set. Between the hours of 12 and 1PM is usually the best time to stalk a film set, as the actors usually break for lunch around that time and you have a good chance of spotting them walking from the set to their trailers.

    I am very sad to report that even though I spent a good 4 hours on the set!!!!!!, I did not get to see Tom OR Katie (who was there WITH Suri). 🙁 Apparently, Tom never comes outside during film shoots. One of the crew members told me that he wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Ruz had an underground tunnel built from the church to his trailer so that he wouldn’t have to set foot outside! LOL All was not lost, though, as I did get to see Bill Nighy, who walked right past me on his way to lunch. Bill played musician Billy Mack in the movie Love Actually, one of my favorite romantic films of all time. Bill was very friendly and even said hi and saluted as he walked by (he was in military costume at the time). 🙂

    Even though there was no TomKat sighting, it was still super exciting to be on the set. And let me tell you, it was quite a production! There was even an on-set barista, making mocha’s and frappaccino’s for the crew all day long. 🙂 Most of the crew was extremely nice and friendly and I even got to snap some pictures of the filming, which is usually a big no-no on movie sets. I was surprised at how laid-back the set actually was, being that the biggest movie star in the world was there.

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: The Westminster Presbyterian Church is located at 1757 N. Lake Avenue in Pasadena. The church has been around since 1928 and is a frequent location for weddings. The movie American Wedding filmed just across the street froom Westminster Presbyterian at Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, which is located at 1879 N. Lake Avenue, on the corner of Lake and Woodbury. The picture to the left is of Saint Elizabeth’s.

  • The Chinese Food Restaurant from “A Lot Like Love”

    After what seems like months of searching, I have FINALLY found the Chinese Food restaurant from my fave romantic comedy A Lot Like Love. For the past few weeks, I have dragged my poor father to literally every single Chinese and Japanese restaurant in the greater Pasadena area, because according to the director’s commentary on the A Lot Like Love DVD, the restaurant used was his “mother’s favorite Chinese food place in Pasadena.” But the director didn’t specify the name of the restaurant, which means that this stalker had her work cut out for her! The hostess at one of the restaurants I stalked said I was actually the third person in the past few months who had stopped into her restaurant to ask the exact same question! 🙂 LOL

    Then last week, while walking around Old Town Pasadena with my boyfriend, when I had just about given up hope, we happened to walk by Vive Lounge on the corner of Raymond Avenue and Union Street. I peeked in the windows and immediately realized I had found my location! We went inside and asked the restaurant manager, Randy, if the Lounge had in fact been used in A Lot Like Love. He wasn’t sure, so he called up the owner for me who confirmed it! Yahooooooooo! At the time of filming the restaurant was actually a Chinese-Malaysian fusion place called Nonya. Nonya closed down two years ago and Vive Lounge opened in its place. While the decor is a bit different, it is definitely recognizable as the restaurant where Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher spit water at each other while enjoying a New Year’s Eve dinner. 🙂

    Last night we were finally able to return to Vive to grab a drink and a bite to eat and I am happy to report that we had a fabulous time! The food was amazing (especially the shrimp spring rolls!!!), the atmosphere was very New York-y complete with an exposed brick wall, and the service was spectacular! Jim, the bartender (a cutie for all you single girls) and Randy, the manager, spent most of the evening chatting with us, discussing Pasadena history, wine and champagne (Randy is somewhat of a wine connoisseur), and of course, filming locations. I was amazed to discover that neither man had ever seen A Lot Like Love!!! I tried to explain to Randy that he needs to tout Vive as the restaurant featured in A Lot Like Love and that stalkers everywhere would flock there, but I am not quite sure he believed me. 🙂

    Vive is a great place to spend an evening, and I highly recommend stalking it! On weekdays, the place has a laid-back, relaxed feel (which I actually prefer), but on weekends the vibe changes and becomes more of a dance club/lounge. And every Sunday night, the restaurant turns into a salsa lounge complete with free salsa dancing lessons. Rob Schneider even showed up for some salsa dancing a few weeks ago. 🙂

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: Vive Lounge is located at 61 N. Raymond Avenue in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit their website here. A meal there will cost you about $30 per person. The bar also features a great nightly happy hour with super reasonable, really tasty hors d’oeuvres.

  • Pacific Dining Car

    My father is currently in the hospital (again) as he just had some minor surgery – and no, it was not caused by me dragging him to filming locations! 🙂 As they say, though, every cloud has a silver lining! Not only has his hospital been used as a filming location, but there is a restaurant across the street from the hospital that is a favorite of film producers. My dad is staying at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downtown Los Angeles. Even though there are countless vacant hospitals all across LA that are only utilized for filming, for some reason Good Sam still shows up in productions now and again. The exterior was shown in an earlier episode of The Closer, it was featured on Dr. 90210 and a movie was filmed there last winter, but unfortunately I am not sure what movie it was.

    Across the street from Good Sam is a restaurant that has been around since 1921 called Pacific Dining Car. Fred and Grace Cook opened the restaurant in a replica of train dining car on a rented plot of land in Downtown Los Angeles in 1921. The idea was based on a restaurant that they had visited in New York that was also situated in an authentic railway dining car. Owned and operated by the same family since its opening, Pacific Dining Car serves up some AMAZING food in a truly unique environment. You definitely feel like you are stepping back in time when you enter the restaurant.

    The restaurant has long been a favorite of novelist James Elroy, author of Training Day, LA Confidential, Black Dhalia and the screenplay for the 2008 movie Street Kings. James usually writes about the LA area and often features Pacific Dining Car in his novels. Consequently the restaurant often shows up in the movies based on his books. The movie Training Day was filmed in the Pacific Dining Car, as was Street Kings with Keanu Reeves. Both movies were filmed in the Pacific Northwest Room of the restaurant. The scene from Training Day when Denzel Washington meets with the “three wise men” was filmed at the booth I am standing in front of in the picture to the left. (IMDB actually states that Training Day was filmed at the Santa Monica location of the Pacific Dining Car, but that information is incorrect.) My dad happened to also be in the hospital during the filming of Street Kings and I got to watch part of it be filmed. 🙂 I got to see Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, and Jay Mohr. I was HIGHLY disappointed, though, that I didn’t get to see Chris Evans, who also starred in the movie. He is such a cutie!! The security guard on duty during the filming was slightly disgusted with the fact that I was standing around watching the filming of Street Kings while my father was in the hospital. What can I say – once a stalker, always a stalker! 🙂

    If you dine at Pacific Dining Car, chances are you’ll get to see a celeb. Famous patrons have flocked to the restaurant since its opening – including Louella Parsons, Mae West, Mickey Cohen, George Raft, Sid Ziff, all of Linkin Park, Nicholas Cage and Johnny Depp who just threw a party in the Astor Room of the restaurant.

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It:: The Pacific Dining Car is located at 1210 West 6th Street in Downtown LA. You can call (213)483-6000 to make reservations. They are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and you can order breakfast there all day long! Pacific Dining Car is in a bit of a sketchy neighborhood and I recommend that you utilize their valet parking and exercise caution at night. Their sister restaurant is located in Santa Monica at 2700 Wilshire Boulevard, but that restaurant is only 18 years old and not as charming. Both restaurants are pricey and will run you about $50 a person for a meal. If you want a cheaper option, head to the restaurant’s full bar for a drink.

    Stalk It

  • "Goose, You Big Stud . . . "

    No self-respecting stalker can take a trip to San Diego without visiting Kansas City Barbecue, which is more commonly known as the “Top Gun Bar”. Kansas City Barbeque was actually featured twice in the 1986 Tom Cruise flick. It first shows up in the scene where Goose and Maverick serenade Kelly McGillis and Meg Ryan with “Great Balls of Fire” and Meg Ryan utters her famous line “Goose, you big stuuuuuud! Take me to bed now or lose me forever!” It also appears in the very final scene of the movie, where Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis reunite while “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” plays on the jukebox in the background. (Yes, that jukebox is still there!) 🙂

    Even though Top Gun was filmed over 20 years ago, fans still flock to the tiny bar on a regular basis. I’ve even seen huge tour buses pull up out front on occasion. All of the bartenders there are extremely nice and will tell you all sorts of stories about the filming of the movie. The place would definitely be considered a dive bar, but it serves up some GREAT food in a super fun atmosphere. Sitting there, you might wonder how in the heck Kansas City Barbeque wound up in one of the biggest movies of the 80’s. Apparently, location scouts were out and about searching San Diego for filming locations for Top Gun and they stopped into Kansas City Barbeque for a cold beer and some lunch. They ended up loving the place so much, they brought director Tony Scott back there for lunch and he wound up featuring it in the movie. The rest, as they say, is history.

    Goose’s piano and the jukebox can still be found in the Top Gun Bar, although they have been moved from where they stood during filming. There are tons of photographs and other movie memorabilia located throughout the restaurant – it’s a Top Gun museum of sorts. You will for sure recognize it from the movie as soon as you walk in the door and you’ll probably get the urge to sit down at Goose’s piano and play “Great Balls of Fire”. 🙂 Kansas City Barbeque is a super fun place to spend an afternoon or an evening and I highly recommend stalking it! It has also been voted “Best BBQ in San Diego” for ten years in a row.

    Note – my pictures of the Top Gun Bar are extremely old! I couldn’t find my more recent ones. But trust me, the bar looks pretty much the same as it did over ten years ago when my pictures were taken. 🙂

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: Kansas City Barbeque is located at 610 West Market Street in Downtown San Diego, just across the street from Seaport Village. You can visit the bar’s website here. After hanging out at the Top Gun Bar head across the street to Seaport Village, a cute little outdoor shopping center right on the water. Edgewater Grill, located in Seaport Village, is an excellent place for dinner!

  • Stalking San Diego

    Spent this past weekend in Coronado, a small island off the coast of San Diego, with my family to celebrate Father’s Day. My best friend, who lives nearby, came over to spend the day with me by the hotel pool and when she got there she mentioned that she was a “bit afraid” to tell me that a production crew was filming on the San Diego-Coronado Bridge. LOL While I didn’t drag her over to the bridge to do some stalking, I thought I’d do a post about past productions that took place there.

    The Coronado Bridge, as it is more commonly referred to, is 11,288 feet long and 200 feet high – a height which permits Navy ships harbored at the nearby Naval Station San Diego to safely sail underneath. The Bridge was built in 1969 and connects the City of San Diego, via the 5 Freeway, to Coronado Island. It is the third most popular suicide bridge in America, following the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, Washington. My best friend also shared a very cool, little known bridge fact with me – it floats! Yes, you read that right! In the case of a disaster, natural or otherwise, if the Coronado Bridge is destroyed, pieces of it will actually float instead of sinking to the bottom. It was designed this way so that in the case of a disaster large pieces of the bridge can be towed out of the harbor so that the Naval Station and Navy ships are not blocked in.

    The Coronado Bridge is an oft used filming location, mostly for commercials, but it has showed up in a few TV shows. The bridge was featured each week in the opening credits of the TV show Simon & Simon and it also showed up several times on Veronica Mars, where most notably it was the bridge where Logan’s mother jumped to her death. While it is sometimes referenced as the bridge used in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, even though that movie was supposed to take place in “Sun” Diego, it was actually filmed almost entirely in Long Beach. The scene where Will Ferrel and Jack Black get into a fist fight was actually filmed on the Queensway Bridge in Long Beach, not on the Coronado Bridge.

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: The San Diego-Coronado Bridge is located off the 5 Freeway in San Diego County, just past the Downtown San Diego exits. If you have time, spend the afternoon walking around Coronado – it is an adorable little town.

  • The World’s Most Famous Subway Grate

    The other night in my acting class we were talking about Marilyn Monroe and the movie The Seven Year Itch. One of my classmates asked me if I had ever seen the famous scene of Marilyn standing on top of a subway grate from the movie. I told him that not only had I seen it, I’ve stood on that very subway grate! So, I thought I’d do a little post about it. 🙂 In that famous scene, Marilyn and her downstairs neighbor, played by Tom Ewell, exit the Trans Lux Theatre, which once stood at 586 Lexington Avenue, and walk onto a subway grate. Marilyn is standing atop the grate as a subway passes making her white skirt billow high above her waist as she exclaims “Oh, can you feel the breeze from the subway? Isn’t it delicious?”

    sevenyearitch1

    The scene was originally shot on location in Manhattan on September 15, 1954 at 1 O’clock in the morning, with over 5000 spectators and media men watching. The crowd went wild as Marilyn’s skirt flew higher and higher, making the footage being shot completely unusable due to the noise. Director Billy WIlder ended up having to re-shoot the entire sequence at 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles.

    The footage that ended up making it to the final cut of the movie was significantly edited down as the scene was considered far too racy for its time. But everyone remembers those black and white photographs taken of Marilyn that September night in Manhattan with her skirt billowing high above her waist, showing off her panties and her long gams. In the actual movie, you barely see Marilyn’s skirt fly up at all, most of what is shown is her face reacting to the subway breeze. You can watch the subway grate scene below:

    On a side note – One of the many people in attendance that September night in New York was Marilyn’s husband at the time, Joe DiMaggio. Supposedly, Joe became enraged that the gleeful onlookers were viewing his wife’s panties over and over again during the filming of the scene. The marriage was already on the rocks at the time and this experience put Joe over the edge. Just a few weeks later he filed for divorce from the starlet, long before the movie ever premiered.

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: The Seven Year Itch subway grate is located at the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street. The Trans Lux Theatre is no longer there and a large office building now stands in its place.

  • “The Entertainment Capital of L.A.”

    This weekend, for my birthday, my boyfriend surprised me with a day at Universal Studios Hollywood, which according to the entrance sign, is the “Entertainment Capital of L.A.” and is now just as expensive to visit as Disneyland – $70 per day! I must say that while I had a FABULOUS time on the Studio Tour (which lasts about 45 minutes), I was ready to leave the park by 1pm. LOL Besides the Studio Tour, Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride, and The Universal Experience attraction, there wasn’t a whole lot I wanted to see. I don’t know that I’d recommend spending the $70 to get into the park, unless you are a huge movie buff. For me, the Studio Tour alone was worth the entrance fee. 🙂

    Even though it was a bit cheesy at times, I loved every single minute of the backlot tour!!! It was a blast and I could hardly sit still in my tram seat! The first stop we made on the tour was the entrance to Courthouse Square, from Back to the Future fame and, more recently, the location of the Universal fire. As we came upon it, my boyfriend said “Oh, that must be the War of the Worlds set.” I was like, “No, no – that was the real fire!” LOL I am happy to report, though, that the Clocktower that sends Marty back in time in Back to the Future was not harmed in the fire, despite news reports to the contrary. The Courthouse Square set is currently being used in the TV show Ghostwhisperer and it looks a bit different than it did when Back to the Future was filmed. The Courthouse is now made of brick and the clock is no longer there- it is currently in Universal’s storage area until Ghostwhisperer goes off the air, at which point they plan to re-attach it.

    While the tram does go right by the fenced off, fire-damaged section of the backlot to give you and up close and personal view of the destruction, it unfortunately does not drive very close to the Courthouse or the New York Street sets, many of which are still standing. I was so looking forward to seeing that area of the lot, so I guess I am going to have to go back as soon as it is rebuilt and is part of the tour again! My boyfriend will be oh-so-happy about that. 🙂

    Our next stops on the tour were a demonstration of a flash flood and rain storm, a drive through Old Town Mexico where the Tijuana episode of The OC was filmed and a drive through of the Old West set where the bar from Jessica Simpson’s These Boots Were Made For Walkin’ video is located. After that came the moment I had been waiting for all morning – the tour of Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives! Mia posted a comment on my previous Universal Studios post saying I probably wouldn’t be able to see the Wisteria Lane set as the area is usually closed for filming, but since it was during the summer, when most episodics are on hiatus, the street was open for us to view. YAY!

    We got to see all the Housewives homes and they were all so much smaller than I had expected. Ironically my boyfriend said they were bigger than he imagined they would be, but I was just shocked at how tiny they were. To me they look like they were built on a 3/4 scale or something. Wisteria Lane is a little cul-de-sac which begins with Gaby Solis’ large yellow home (pictured above). The houses definitely look like sets – the flowers are all fake and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they just don’t look like real homes. Possibly because of the size thing. Bree’s house (pictured at left) is by far the nicest and apparently was also used as the main home on the TV show Providence. I guess the first few episodes of Providence were filmed at a real house somewhere in LA, and subsequent episodes were filmed on the back lot. Looks like I have some research to do so I can stalk the real home! 🙂

    Susan Meyer’s (Terri Hatcher’s) house was by far the tiniest of the street! I almost didn’t recognize it at first. It is a teeny, tiny yellow house with gable windows. In the picture to the left, though, it looks normal size. So wierd how cameras can do that! The magic of the movies! Wisteria Lane used to be known as Colonial Street where it was used in Leave It To Beaver, The ‘Burbs, Ghostwhisper, National Lampoon’s Delta House, The Munsters, Gremlins, and the Smashmouth Allstar video, as well as countless other productions. The exterior of the homes on Wisteria Lane change for each film shoot (with the exception of Bree’s house which looked exactly the same in Providence as it does in Desperate Housewives), so the houses at this time are not recognizable from other productions.

    One of the last stops on the tour is a plane crash set from Steven Spielberg’s movie War of the Worlds. This set was absolutely incredible! Steven took a real 747 airplane and destroyed it for the movie and let me tell you, it was HUGE! In the movie a plane crashes into the middle of a suburban neighborhood, destroying homes and cars in the process. I think it is so cool that this set was left intact for stalkers like myself to tour long after filming was completed and I wish more productions did that. Imagine if the set from Friends was still around and was open to the public for touring! How cool would that be??? 🙂

    Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

    Stalk It: Universal Studios Hollywood is located at 100 Universal City Plaza in Universal City. You can visit the park’s official website here. There is a VERY cool site called The Studio Tour that gives a comprehensive and detailed history of Universal Studios (as well as other LA studios) and productions that were filmed on the lot. LOVE IT!