TV Locations – Page 65 – IAMNOTASTALKER

April 9, 2009April 8, 2009

The W Hotel

This weekend while out doing some stalking of L.A.’s Westside, I dragged my boyfriend to the W Hotel, which was featured in both fave movie Win A Date With Tad Hamilton and the new 90210. I have wanted to stalk the W ever since I first watched Win A Date over four years ago, but somehow never got around to it until this past Sunday. I actually can’t believe that I waited so long to stalk the modern style hotel, but, as I’ve said before, in L.A. there’s just so much to stalk and so little time! 🙂

The W Hotel is actually featured quite a few times in Win A Date. The poolside restaurant, named “The Backyard”, shows up in the very beginning of the movie as the location where Tad and his agents (who are both named Richard Levy) do lunch. It is during this luncheon that Tad is told he must clean up his public image and thus the “Win A Date With Tad Hamilton” contest is born.

The W also shows up a bit later on in the movie as the hotel where contest winner Rosalee Futch (aka Kate Bosworth) stays while she is in L.A. The front entrance of the hotel is shown when she first checks in, as well as when she is picked up and dropped off for her dream date with Tad.

The lobby area of the hotel and the stairway leading up to the pool are also both featured in the movie.

On the new 90210, Naomi Clark, following in the footsteps of Dylan McKay from the original series, forgoes living with her parents to permanently check in to the ultra-trendy W. In the episode entitled “By Accident”, Naomi moves out of her cheating father’s house and into Room 723 of the hotel. The W has been featured on the series several times since then, most prominently in the Valentine’s Day episode entitled “Of Heartbreaks and Hotels”.

Many areas of the hotel were shown in that episode including the front entrance;

the lobby;

the hotel’s NineThirty Restaurant where Silver and Dixon share a Valentine’s Day dinner;

the hotel’s coffee bar where Naomi first meets cutie bartender Liam (in real life the coffee bar is set up daily between 6 and10am just outside of the NineThirty Restaurant, but sadly it had already been removed by the time we got there, so I didn’t get to snap a photo of it);

the hotel’s Whiskey Blue Bar where Silver and Naomi grab some tea;

and, just like in Win A Date, the hotel’s Backyard restaurant where Naomi gets stood up by Liam.

I HIGHLY recommend stalking the W! The hotel somehow manages to be ultra-trendy and ultra-modern, yet extremely welcoming at the same time. The staff truly could not have been nicer to me and answered all of my silly questions about the filming of 90210 and Win A Date. 🙂 Since we were stalking the place in the middle of the day, though, we weren’t able to grab a drink in the hotel’s Whiskey Blue Bar. But you can bet that is something I am going to do in the very near future. I also must book a room and drag my boyfriend there for the weekend sometime! Even though ultra modern hotels are usually not my thing, I really fell in love with this one. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The W Hotel is located at 930 Hilgard Avenue in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. You can visit their website here.

April 8, 2009April 7, 2009

Joe’s Pizza

Last week, on April Fools’ Day, CBS aired a television special entitled I Get That A Lot in which celebrities posed as normal, everyday people working in normal, everyday jobs. Hidden cameras captured customers’ reactions as stars like Jessica Simpson, Ice-T, LeAnn Rimes, and Jeff Probst waited on them and told them that they were not, in fact, famous, but that they “get that a lot.” 🙂 While the show was a bit on the silly side, I, of course, LOVED it! I so wish I could have been one of those customers! But since I wasn’t, I figured I’d at least stalk one of the locations where I Get That A Lot was filmed. 🙂

My favorite segment from I Get That A Lot involved supermodel Heidi Klum whose assignment on the show was to spend a few hours serving pizzas at a small pizza place in Santa Monica named Joe’s. Heidi was absolutely adorable in the segment and since I happened to be in Santa Monica this weekend, I just had to drag my boyfriend out to stalk the place. 🙂

Joe’s Pizza is a very cute, but super tiny shop located just off the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. In fact, it is so tiny I am surprised they were able to film inside of it at all. Joe’s was also extremely crowded – during the brief twenty minutes that we were there no less than fifteen people stopped in for a bite to eat – which is, I’m sure, why it was chosen for the hidden camera special. I am guessing that the producers wanted Heidi waiting on as many people as possible. The staff at Joe’s was extremely nice and answered all of my questions about the filming of I Get That A Lot,which took place almost a year ago. They told me that Heidi Klum was very down to earth and a lot of fun to work with. 🙂

While stalking Joe’s, my boyfriend and I just had to sample a few slices of their pizza. And let me tell you, it is some of the best pizza I’ve ever had! The Joe’s Pizza chain originated in New York in 1975 and has continuously been credited as New York’s best pizza. In fact, New York Magazine stated that “the quintessential New York slice is at Joe’s”. The Santa Monica branch, which opened in 2007, is just as good as its New York counterpart and I am sure I will be frequenting it quite often. Being that I am diabetic, a big ol’ slice of cheese pizza is probably the last thing I should be eating, but, hey, life’s short – sometimes you’ve gotta live it up. 🙂

Other famous fans of the restaurant, besides Heidi Klum, include Brooke Shields, Harrison Ford, Robin Williams, Tobey Maguire, Ben Affleck, Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, and Everybody Loves Raymond’s Doris Roberts. Pictured above are photographs of Joe’s celebrity fans which line the walls of the small restaurant. Love it! Think someday they’ll put my photo on the wall? 🙂

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The original Joe’s Pizza, which is located in Manhattan, has long been a favorite of location scouts. It has appeared in Spiderman 2 (Peter Parker worked as a Joe’s pizza delivery boy), Sex and the City, Along Came Polly, and a Nike Commercial. You can bet that Joe’s is at the top of my list of places to stalk on my next trip to NYC. 🙂

I HIGHLY recommend stalking Joe’s Pizza! It’s a really fun place to grab a bite to eat and the pizza is to die for! It’s truly like having a little piece of New York right here in L.A. 🙂 You can watch some clips from the I Get That A Lot special, including Heidi Klum’s stint as a Joe’s Pizza girl, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Joe’s Pizza is located at 111 Broadway in Santa Monica. The original New York location can be found at 7 Carmine Street in Manhattan. You can visit the Joe’s Pizza website here.

April 3, 2009April 3, 2009

The Mama’s Family House

Last week I got a challenge to find the house used in the 1980’s television series Mama’s Family. I had heard a while back that Mama’s house was in Pasadena, but had no idea of its exact location. After doing a simple Google search, though, I quickly found the address. Or so I thought. 🙂 According to IMDB, Mama’s house is located at 1019 Montrose Avenue in South Pasadena. But as I have mentioned before, IMDB has been known to post incorrect information. And this time was no different. Oh, Internet Movie Database, why do you so often lead me astray?? 🙂

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After thinking I had found the correct location, I grabbed my camera and immediately drove out to South Pasadena to snap some photos of Mama’s house. But when I arrived at 1019 Montrose Avenue, it quite obviously wasn’t the home where the Harper Family had lived on the show. Feeling defeated, I got in my car to drive home. And that’s when I noticed a house just a few doors down from number 1019 that looked a whole lot like Mama’s. So, I snapped some pics and drove home to compare them to the screen captures I had from the show. Sure enough, it was the place!

The house in South Pasadena was used each week for establishing shots of the Harper home. The interiors existed only on a soundstage located about 15 miles away on the former KTTV/Fox Television Center lot on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sadly, that studio has since been torn down. The home was also shown each week in the Mama’s Family opening credits, in which Mama would march to the end of her walkway, pick up the morning newspaper, and then proceed to dust it off . LOL You can watch the Mama’s Family intro here. This same house was also used very briefly as Lynda’s home in the original Halloween movie.

Even though I haven’t seen an episode of Mama’s Family in years, I was very excited to be stalking the home, as I have such fond memories of watching the show with my grandma when I was a little girl. I still remember not being able to wrap my six year old brain around the fact that, in real life, Mama wasn’t truly an old lady. 🙂 It is unbelievable to me that Mama’s house still looks almost EXACTLY the same as it appeared onscreen 26 years ago! Besides the white picket enclosure, which has since been removed from the porch area, and a blue trim which has been added, the house is pretty much identical to how it appeared on television back in 1983. And I highly recommend stalking it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Mama’s Family house is located at 1027 Montrose Avenue in South Pasadena.

April 2, 2009April 1, 2009

Vibiana

A couple of weeks ago, while spending the weekend at the Hilton Checkers Hotel, I stumbled upon a filming location I had been meaning to stalk for quite some time – a former cathedral named Vibiana located in Downtown Los Angeles. While walking back to the hotel after grabbing a Starbucks :), I saw what looked like a wedding being set up outside of a church. And I just about fell over when a woman stopped me and said “Are you here for Vibiana?” It was at that point that I realized I wasn’t standing outside of a church at all, but a filming location that had appeared on my fave show The Hills. I had actually found Vibiana’s location a few weeks back, but had yet to stalk it for some odd reason. So, I was pretty much jumping up and down with excitement when I realized what I had stumbled upon. The woman who had stopped me was extremely amused at my thrill over seeing Vibiana in person and was nice enough to let me step inside to take a peek at the former church and snap some photos.

The Cathedral of Saint Vibiana was built in 1876 by Ezra F. Kyson, the very same architect who designed the Pico House. The Baroque style church could seat 1200 parishioners, which at the time was one tenth of the city’s population. For many years St. Vibiana’s enjoyed the prestige of being the mother church cathedral parish of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Sadly, the building was badly damaged during 1994’s Northridge Earthquake, and since the archdiocese had since outgrown the structure, they set their sights on demolishing it to build something bigger. Thankfully, preservationists stepped in and literally stopped the wrecking ball mid-swing. After a time consuming and much heated debate between the city, the archdiocese, and preservationists, the city decided to give the archdiocese a larger piece of land in exchange for the damaged church. In 1999, the city sold the property to real estate developer Tom Gilmore, who spent the next seven years and over $8 million restoring the building to its former grandeur. Today, the former cathedral is used as an events venue, hosting everything from weddings to corporate parties. In February of 2008, former American Idol Katharine McPhee held her wedding reception at Vibiana.

And, of course, there’s also the filming! 🙂 Vibiana’s showed up in two Season 3 episodes of The Hills. In the first episode, entitled “Stress and the City”, Teen Vogue intern Whitney Port is delegated the task of choosing a venue for the upcoming Young Hollywood Party. Whitney chooses the former cathedral and suggests running a long carpet down the aisle to be used as the fashion show runway and setting up photo booths in the confessionals. The following episode, entitled “Young Hollywood”, centers around Lauren and Whitney setting up for and running the Young Hollywood Party. Since the name of the church was written right across the screen in both episodes, finding this location was a snap. 🙂

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The former church also showed up very briefly in a controversial scene in the pilot episode of the David Duchovny series Californication. Only the interiors of Vibiana were used for that scene, though. The exteriors were filmed about ten miles away at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

I highly recommend stalking Vibiana as it is absolutely gorgeous inside! I would so love to have a wedding there! Although the property is not currently open to the public, you can stalk the exterior and maybe someone will be nice enough to let you take a peek inside. You can also cyberstalk the building here. If you are interested in hosting an event at the former church, you can contact the events coordinator here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Vibiana is located at 210 South Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

March 27, 2009March 29, 2009

Hilton Checkers Hotel

A few months ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, scored the two of us invites to a party and silent auction being held by the Location Managers Guild of America. We had a fab time at the party and got to meet many location scouts, none of whom had any idea that there were people like us out there obsessed with movie and television locations. LOL Anyway, the highlight of that evening was when I placed the winning bid on a one night stay in the Penthouse Suite of the Hilton Checkers Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles for the bargain price of $160! I’m not kidding! So this past weekend my boyfriend and I cashed in on our big win and spent a night in luxury at the historic boutique hotel.

On its website the Hilton Checkers Hotel touts itself as being Downtown Los Angeles’ only four diamond boutique hotel – and, let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint! Checkers was originally built in the 1920s and was called “The Mayflower”. The boutique hotel, which stands at twelve stories high, was built at a time when the City of Los Angeles did not allow any buildings in the Downtown area to have more than twelve floors. In 1984, the hotel was completely renovated and remodeled and given it’s current moniker. For a time it was owned privately and then was sold to Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. When it was purchased by the Hilton Hotel chain in 2002, it took on the name Hilton Checkers.

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Checkers Hotel has two Penthouse Suites – one each on its 11th and 12th floors – and I can’t tell you how excited I was to be staying in one of them! Besides soon-to-be-famous actress Lindsay Blake :), numerous other celebs have stayed in the hotel’s Penthouse Suites over the years, including Jim Carrey (who lived in one while he was filming the movie Man on the Moon), Carol Burnett (who also resided in one for a few months during her stint at the Ahmanson Theatre performing in Putting It Together), Ray Charles, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith (who were recent guests), and Cher (who books a Penthouse each year when she’s in town for the Grammys).

Both of the Checkers’ Penthouse Suites are identical in size and decor. Each boasts two bathrooms, a separate bedroom with a desk and reading chair,

a separate dining room with a marble table that seats eight,

and a large living room complete with a fireplace and big screen plasma TV.

Besides celebs, dignitaries have also been known to visit the hotel. According to the book Hollywood & the Best of Los Angeles Alive!, in 1992 President Richard Nixon and Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev had a meeting in the Checkers’ Library (pictured above).

And, of course, Checkers is also a popular filming location! The hotel was featured twice in a Season One episode of fave television show Shark. In the episode, entitled “Fashion Police”, Sebastian Stark dines at the hotel’s award winning restaurant, named Checkers Downtown, with the mayor.

Later on in the episode, Stark arrests fashion designer Z Pruitt (played by Diedrich Bader) at a lingerie party being held at Checker’s rooftop pool.

Other productions filmed at the hotel include Heroes, which used Checker’s front entrance, and the now-canceled What About Brian, which filmed in the lobby area. In 2003’s A View From The Top, Checkers stood in for the Paris hotel where Gwyneth Paltrow stays on a layover. Paula Abdul and a few of this season’s Idols just recently filmed a segment by the hotel’s pool. And Dancing With The Stars has also shot numerous segments at the hotel. Just last week Carson Daily filmed a television interview about the birth of his son in the Checkers Lounge (pictured above). And Stefanie Powers, of Hart to Hart fame, has filmed numerous PBS specials onsite.

I HIGHLY recommend stalking Checkers! It’s a really beautiful hotel and I wouldn’t hesitate to stay there again. And if you can swing it, I’d definitely recommend booking a Penthouse room! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Hilton Checkers Hotel is located at 535 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit their website here.

March 24, 2009March 24, 2009

On Location With The Mentalist!

Yesterday morning while doing some Downtown Los Angeles stalking, I happened to stumble upon a large film crew outside of Union Station. I, of course, asked one of the background actors what was being filmed and almost fell over when she told me it was my new favorite show, The Mentalist!!!! I asked if Simon Baker was on set and she laughed and said “Everyone’s been asking for him all morning! It’s cause he’s such a cutie.” LOL Sadly, SB had already been wrapped for the day, as had actress Robin Tunney. 🙁 Such a bummer!!

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But I did get to see actor Tim Kang, who plays Detective Kimball Cho on the show (pictured above). I love Kang’s character, so I was pretty floored to see him in person. He was filming a scene that basically consisted of him sitting on a bench reading a newspaper at the entrance to Union Station’s former ticket concourse. Needless to say, it wasn’t that exciting. LOL

I didn’t stick around very long to watch the filming as not a whole lot was going on and, sadly, the crew wasn’t all that friendly. The area where the scene was being filmed wasn’t shut off to the public as filming areas normally are, so I am guessing that the crew was just slightly annoyed at the many random people who were walking directly into their shot while the cameras were rolling. I guess the people didn’t notice the many signs that were posted around the area announcing that filming was taking place (pictured above). LOL I can’t tell you the number of people I saw who walked right in front of the camera and into the former ticket concourse, then stopped and looked around with confusion on their faces, only to walk right back out in front of the camera once again. I’m not kidding! I can imagine how that might have gotten old for the crew real quick!

Countless productions have filmed at the historic train station since its opening in 1939, including Nick of Time (Johnny Depp’s daughter is kidnapped there), Charlie’s Angel’s: Full Throttle (Demi Moore lived in the former ticket concourse area which is pictured above), Can’t Hardly Wait (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ethan Embry finally get together in the station’s waiting area), 24, Alias, Blast From The Past, Bugsy, Catch Me If You Can, Blade Runner, Guilty by Suspicion, Garfield, The Italian Job, Pearl Harbor, and a 1950’s movie actually entitled Union Station.

Union Station is an absolutely beautiful place to visit and I highly recommend stalking it, even if you aren’t a film locations buff. The interiors, which have been beautifully maintained, immediately transplant you back to the 1930s. It’s not hard to see why the station has been a favorite of location scouts over the years. Union Station, which was built by architects John Parkinson, Donald D. Parkinson, and Jay van der Lin, is on the National Register of Historic Places and according to Wikipedia, is considered the “Last of the Great Railway Stations” built in the U.S. You can see some great photographs of the station here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Union Station is located at 800 North Alameda Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Ironically, it is located just around the corner from The Mentalist’s CBI Headquarters. 🙂

March 20, 2009March 23, 2009

The Mentalist’s CBI Headquarters

My location obsession as of late has been the CBI Headquarters building where Patrick Jane and the gang report to work each week on my new fave show The Mentalist. I do love me some Simon Baker! He’s such a cutie! 🙂 Being that it is quite unique in appearance, I had an inkling that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, might recognize the building used on the show, but since he had never watched The Mentalist I was out of luck there – until this past Tuesday night when the episode entitled “Bloodshot” aired. For the first time ever, the cast and crew actually filmed on location at the Headquarters building (in the past it had only been used for set-up shots) and I was able to make quite a few screen captures to send to Mike. And, sure enough, he recognized the building immediately! He’s so my hero!

In actuality, CBI Headquarters is the rear entrance of the Pico House, a former luxury hotel and a National Historic Landmark located in Downtown Los Angeles. I am ashamed to admit that I have actually visited the Pico House several times, but never recognized it as the CBI Building, most likely because the front of the former hotel looks strikingly different from the back. The front of the Pico House is pictured above. The Pico House was built from 1869 to 1870 by Pio Pico, a former governor of Alta California. The building was designed by architect Ezra F. Kysor and at the time of its opening was considered the most upscale hotel in the L.A. area. It was also the first three story building located in Los Angeles. The luxurious hotel boasted 82 rooms, 21 ballrooms, a French restaurant, and bathrooms for “both sexes” on every floor. LOL Pio Pico lost the hotel due to financial difficulties just ten years after its grand opening. For the next thirty years, beginning in 1892, the hotel was known as The National and was a cheap boarding house. In 1953, the hotel was taken over by the City of Los Angeles who has managed it ever since. The Pico House was restored in the 60s and again in the 80s and 90s. Today it is no longer a hotel, but remains vacant and is used as an event location and for filming. You can see great interior photographs of the Pico House here.

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Once Mike told me that CBI Headquarters was really the Pico House, I dragged my dad right out to stalk it. He actually didn’t mind being dragged to this location, as The Mentalist is one of the few shows on television that he actually likes. My dad was especially excited to see the CBI building in person since he had just watched the “Bloodshot” episode, in which the Pico House is featured prominently, the night before. He kept saying “This is so cool – I just saw this place on TV last night!”

I am happy to report that the CBI building looks exactly the same in person as it does onscreen. The “Bloodshot” episode featured several parts of the Pico House, including the exterior stairwell area where the team exited the building after being evacuated due to a bomb threat;

the alleyway where Van Pelt met her boyfriend for an early morning cup of coffee and also where Jane’s team got evacuated;

the parking lot area where the car bomb exploded and later where a temporarily blind Jane drove Van Pelt’s car;

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and Hype Nightclub, which in actuality is not a nightclub at all, but the entrance to the Pico House’s central courtyard.

I highly recommend stalking the CBI Headquarters building to all Mentalist fans. Who knows, you might even catch them filming an episode while you’re there! Even though no filming was going on while I was stalking the Pico House, I can’t tell you how excited I was to finally be seeing CBI Headquarters in person! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Mentalist’s CBI Headquarters, aka the Pico House, is located at 430 North Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles. The back side of the Pico House, which is the area shown on The Mentalist, can be viewed on West Arcadia Street in between North Main and North Spring Streets. The area surrounding the Pico House is open to the public, so I would suggest parking your car and taking a walk around the historic building. The parking lot where the “Bloodshot” episode was filmed is really the El Pueblo De Los Angeles parking lot located on the corner of West Arcadia and North Spring Street. And the fake Hype Nightclub’s entrance is located on the Pico House’s South facing wall.

March 12, 2009March 12, 2009

Flash Forward!

This past weekend, while out doing some stalking, my boyfriend and I happened upon a rather large film shoot that shut down an entire block in Downtown Los Angeles. So, of course, we just had to pull the car over to find out what was being filmed. 🙂 Turns out it was the pilot episode of a new Lost-esque television series entitled Flash Forward that is set to premiere on ABC this Spring. The series is based on a science fiction novel of the same name written by Robert J. Sawyer. While the crew members were pretty tight-lipped about plot details and the show’s cast, they did let me snap some pics of the production. 🙂

And what a production it was!! I’ve don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie set that was quite so large or quite so involved. And what amazed me the most was how realistic everything seemed. It truly felt as if we were viewing a real life disaster area. The scene being filmed centered around a major accident involving several overturned cars and two totalled buses. If you look closely at the above pics, you’ll notice that both buses used in the filming feature advertising for ABC shows (Lost and Desperate Housewives) on their sides. LOL Gee, I wonder what network this show will be airing on. 😉

When I got home from stalking the Flash Forward set, I did some cyber-research on the show and this is the info I was able to gather. The script for the pilot episode, which is entitled “No More Good Days”, was written by David S. Goyer (author of The Dark Knight and Batman Begins movies among many others) and Brannon Braga (co-executive producer of the series 24). The show’s premise is this: at the exact same time all across the globe all of humanity loses consciousness for approximately two minutes. During that brief period of time people everywhere “flash forward” to a moment exactly five months into their future to witness an unexpected event in their lives. Sort of like what happened when the Ghost of Christmas Future visited Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. 🙂 Adding to the drama is that fact that during the worldwide black-out, chaos takes over the earth – there are plane crashes, car accidents, deadly falls, etc. – and 40 million people lose their lives. Even though I am not a fan of the science fiction genre (I’ve never watched even one episode of Lost), I have to admit that Flash Forward’s already got me hooked and I am for sure going to tune in! The show stars Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, and Courtney B. Vance. You can read a great article about the new series here.

And although I didn’t see any stars while stalking the Flash Forward filming, I did spot an actor walking around in his tighty-whities (pictured above). LOL

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Flash Forward was filmed on South Broadway in between 8th and 9th Streets in Downtown Los Angeles. Look for Flash Forward to premiere on ABC sometime this Spring in the time slot before Lost.

March 11, 2009March 11, 2009

Samantha Jones and Smith Jerrod’s Beach House

This weekend after stalking Carrie’s honeymoon villa from Sex and the City: The Movie, I dragged my boyfriend about 15 miles south to stalk yet another location from the film – Samantha and Smith’s beach house. Thanks to fave book Sex and the City: The Movie, which stated that the home was located on Malibu Road, this location was a snap to find! Smith and Samantha’s house, with its curved glass and steel architecture, is quite unique and it’s not hard to see why producers chose it as the residence of SATC’s trendy P.R. exec and her young movie star boyfriend.

In person, the house is absolutely breathtaking. Located right on the sand in Malibu, the home has five separate cantilevered balconies that seem to just hang right over the Pacific Ocean. I can only imagine what the views must be like at sunset! I’m not usually a big fan of modern houses, but this one is pretty special. At the time of filming the home was on the market for a cool $17 million (the price has now dropped to $14,500,000). I believe it was also vacant, which would have made filming there much easier than in a home that was occupied.

Filming of the Samantha/Smith scenes took two weeks to complete and both the interior and the exterior of the real life beach house were used extensively. Featured in the movie were the kitchen area (where Samantha cooks Smith homemade sushi),

the living room where Samantha and Smith celebrate New Year’s Eve in front of a fire,

and the master bedroom, where Smith asks Samantha to stop running off to New York every chance she gets. You can compare the above screen captures to the interior photos of the home shown on its real estate website and on this website. From the looks of it, it seems producers even chose to use the home’s real bedroom furniture for the filming.

The front of Samantha and Smith’s home wasn’t shown in Sex and the City: The Movie, but you can catch a glimpse of it in the above pic. Ironically, the front of the house looks like a normal everyday modern style home and doesn’t give any clue as to the amazing architecture located just on the other side of it. And while the front of the house will not be familiar to Sex and the City fans, the back definitely will be. Public beach access is located fairly close to the house, so if you would like to see the back view – and I really suggest you do – it’s less than a five minute walk down the beach.

The house directly next door to Samantha’s should also be recognizable to SATC fans. It was used as the home of Samantha’s hunky neighbor Dante (played Gilles Marini who is currently competing on Dancing With The Stars) on whom she develops quite a crush. As for Dante’s outdoor shower, I couldn’t find it anywhere. It is my guess that either another home was used for that scene, or a special shower was created especially for filming purposes that was later removed.

Also missing in real life – the balcony hot tub that Samantha relaxes in towards the beginning of the movie.

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Samantha’s house is absolutely beautiful in person and I highly recommend stalking it – or purchasing it if you have the means! If you don’t have $14,500,000 on hand to buy the home, it is also available as a rental property at the rate of $75,000 per month. Being that I’ve never made that amount in an entire year, let alone a month, I think I’m pretty much out of the running on this one. LOL

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Samantha and Smith’s beach house is located at 24826 Malibu Road in Malibu. Dante’s house is located directly next door at 24822 Malibu Road.

March 10, 2009February 4, 2010

The Sex and the City Honeymoon House

Ever since Sex and the City: The Movie premiered last May, I have been absolutely dying to stalk the hotel where the girls stayed during Carrie’s non-honeymoon. In the movie, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte spend a week at what is supposedly a private villa located on the grounds of a Mexican resort. In actuality, though, not only were the Mexican hotel scenes not filmed in Mexico, but they weren’t even filmed at an actual hotel. LOL In reality, two different locales situated over forty miles apart from each other stood in for Carrie’s honeymoon hotel. The villa the girls stayed in is actually a private home located right off the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. And the hotel restaurant where Carrie and the girls drank margaritas is actually a ballroom located at an equestrian compound in Simi Valley named Hummingbird Nest Ranch. And while I have yet to stalk the Ranch – something which I am planning to do in the near future – I did drag my boyfriend out to stalk Carrie’s villa this past weekend.

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My first clue in locating the villa came from fave book Sex and the City: The Movie, in which Sarah Jessica Parker mentioned that the honeymoon scenes were filmed in Malibu. Knowing that there is no hotel anywhere near Malibu that looks at all like the one Carrie and the girls stayed at, I started searching the internet for a private home near the coast that had an infinity pool flanked by two huge built-in planters holding palm trees. And I located the home almost immediately. Then when I came across these close up photos of the house, I knew for certain that it was the place where Carrie spent her honeymoon.

At first I couldn’t figure out why producers didn’t use a real Mexican resort to shoot the honeymoon scenes. But then I remembered that Kim Cattrall and Jason Lewis were already shooting on location in Malibu, so it would have made sense to shoot the honeymoon sequence there, as well. Apparently, the producers were even given the opportunity to film for free at a Caribbean resort (in exchange for a pretty prominent plug of the hotel, I’m sure), but they loved Carrie’s “Mexicoma” joke so much that they decided to keep the honeymoon in Mexico. I actually thought that joke was pretty lame and I can’t even believe they gave up a free five-star filming location to keep it in the script! LOL

Carrie’s honeymoon house is absolutely stunning in person and I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was quite a lot of it visible from the street.

Even the pool area, which was the part of the house featured most prominently in SATC, can be seen from the road! Love it! Quite a bit of the property can be seen from the Pacific Coast Highway, as well.

There is even what appears to be a chapel located on the property, so I am guessing that the owners must rent out their house quite often for weddings. Even though the place didn’t prove to be good luck for Carrie, it still looks like a pretty amazing place to get married. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Sex and the City: The Movie honeymoon house, aka Villa Lizton, is located at 4440 Encinal Canyon Road in Malibu. To see the house’s pool area, you have to drive a bit south of the property.