Amanda Peet – IAMNOTASTALKER

June 26, 2020June 25, 2020

Bistro Garden from “Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story”

The ‘80s were, without a doubt, garish, splashy, and over-the-top. But the second season of the true crime anthology series Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story, which covers the 1989 murders of Dan Broderick (Christian Slater) and his mistress-turned-wife, Linda Kolkena (Rachel Keller), at the hands of his first wife, Betty (Amanda Peet), sure makes the era look good! I am obsessed with Betty’s clothes – her oxford shirts, navy flats, ever-present gold chain, and, of course, that headscarf from episode 3’s beach scene! The locations are pretty chic, as well, none more so than the swanky restaurant Dan and Betty dine at in “Marriage Encounter,” which I recognized on sight as Bistro Garden. One of Studio City’s most oft-filmed spots, I stalked and blogged about the eatery way back in 2010 (hence the dated photo above), but figured it was time for a re-do.

[ad]

Bistro Garden was founded by Carolyn Pappas, daughter of famed restauranteur Kurt Niklas, and her husband, Gregory, in 1990. The establishment was an offshoot of Niklas’ two popular Beverly Hills eateries – The Bistro in Beverly Hills, which opened in 1963 at 246 North Canon Drive, and The Bistro Garden, which opened in 1979 just up the road at 176 North Canon. To distinguish the Studio City site from its similarly-named BH counterparts, it was originally given the name “The Bistro Garden at Coldwater.”

The stunning space, inspired by European winter gardens (aka large glass conservatories built to house tropical plants year-round), features two airy dining rooms, a handsome wood-paneled bar, thirty-foot ceilings, skylights, latticework, French doors, and trees strung with twinkle lights. It is easily one of Los Angeles’ most gorgeous restaurants.

Considering that little of the interior has been changed since its opening thirty years ago, the eatery’s use in Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story must have been a no-brainer!

In “Marriage Encounter,” Bistro Garden poses as the fancy La Jolla restaurant Dan and Betty begin frequenting after Dan finally lands a high-paying job at a law firm. It actually pops up three times in the episode, first in the scene in which Betty embarrasses Dan by mentioning to a friend they run into that they used to be on food stamps.

The couple dines there again later in the episode and Dan complains about having already grown bored with the place.

And finally, it is at Bistro Garden that Betty, after showing off her new Oscar de la Renta dress to friends at the bar, overhears Dan describing Linda to a co-worker as “just so beautiful.”

Dirty John is hardly Bistro Garden’s first onscreen foray.

Jerry (Cary Elwes) proposes to Audrey (Maura Tierney) there in the 1997 comedy Liar Liar.

That same year, Cooper Hargrove (Christopher Orr) presented Valerie Malone (Tiffani Thiessen) with a diamond necklace at Bistro Garden in the Season 8 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Toil and Trouble.”

The restaurant masks as New York’s Plaza Hotel, where Lexi Sterling (Jamie Luner) meets with three ex-fiancés of Ryan McBride (John Newton) in the Season 7 episode of Melrose Place titled “How Amanda Got Her Groove Back,” which aired in 1999.

Andy (Steve Carell) and his pals attend a speed-dating event there in the 2005 comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Bistro Garden portrays the country club where Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) catches a news report that leads her to believe her husband, Carlos (Ricardo Chavira), has been killed in the Season 2 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Remember: Part 1,” which aired in 2006.

Gabrielle returns to the restaurant the following year in Season 3’s “Not While I’m Around” in order to meet her secret admirer, who turns out to be Zach Young (Cody Kasch).

In the Season 6 episode of The Office titled “Double Date,” which aired in 2009, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) takes his new girlfriend Helene Beesly (Linda Purl) to Bistro Garden to celebrate her birthday and then promptly dumps her upon learning her age.

Julia Fitzpatrick (Jennifer Garner) poses as a waitress there to get back at her boyfriend, Dr. Harrison Copeland (Patrick Dempsey), whom she has just discovered is married, in the 2010 romantic comedy Valentine’s Day.

And in the Season 1 episode of Why Women Kill titled “Positively Lethal in Every Way,” which aired in 2019, Simone Grove (Lucy Liu) celebrates her daughter’s engagement at Bistro Garden.

While IMDB claims that the second episode of the 1985 miniseries Hollywood Wives was lensed at the Studio City Bistro Garden, being that the restaurant did not open until 1990, we know that is not true. Filming actually took place at the Beverly Hills Bistro Garden. In fact, the BH outpost inspired Jackie Collins to write the novel on which the drama was based! Of the restaurant, which shuttered in 1996, Jackie is quoted as saying, “There’s a story at every table. It’s almost like Le Cirque in New York: a place to see and be seen, to get dressed up before you go, to wave across the room at your friends when you arrive.”

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Bistro Garden, from the “Marriage Encounter” episode of Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story, is located at 12950 Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

June 5, 2020June 26, 2020

Dan and Betty’s House from “Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story”

No true crime case has fascinated me quite as deeply as the murder of prominent La Jolla attorney Dan Broderick and his wife/former mistress, Linda Kolkena. The intrigue is odd considering we know who the killer is (Dan’s first wife, Betty, confessed immediately following the slayings), we know the why (she could not get over the affair, the divorce settlement or the fact that Dan had moved on), and we know the how (on numerous occasions Betty has detailed sneaking into Dan and Linda’s Hillcrest home on November 5th, 1989 and shooting the couple dead). There’s really no mystery here. Yet, I.am.engrossed. So is much of the world. There have been myriad books and articles written on the subject, television interviews broadcast (including several with Betty conducted from prison), and a two-part made-for-TV movie starring Meredith Baxter that aired in 1992. But the public can’t seem to get enough. So it is no surprise that the USA Network decided to dedicate the second season of its Dirty John series to the case, with Amanda Peet and Christian Slater at the helm. Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story hit the small screen this past Tuesday. My interest was piqued long before that, though. In fact, I started tracking down the show’s locations as soon as the first trailer was released! The spot that most interested me, of course, was the home where Dan and Betty lived before their relationship went bad, which turned out to be a snap to find.

[ad]

In the first Sneak Peek of the series, which was released in early May, a young Dan and Betty are shown removing a “For Sale” sign from the yard of their new house. An address number of “19854” was clearly visible on the front of the property in the scene and, thanks to its early-80s tract look, I figured it could most likely be found in the San Fernando Valley. So, armed with that information, I headed over to Google and fairly quickly IDed the place as 19854 Dina Place in Chatsworth.

I ran out to stalk it – from an appropriate social distance, of course – shortly thereafter. I call the picture below “Stalking in the time of the Coronavirus.” Winking smile

Betty Broderick’s story is a tale as old as time. Wife works to put husband through school (in Dan’s case, medical and law school) while managing the household and caring for the children. Husband finally starts making money, opens up own practice, buys a house, and a new sports car. Not long after, husband begins affair with young secretary (in Dan’s case, his 21-year-old legal assistant, whom he hired even though she couldn’t type). Husband leaves wife for secretary, files for divorce, and things get ugly. Extremely ugly. At the center of Dan and Betty’s divorce proceedings was their longtime family home, which they both referred to as the “Coral Reef house.”

The actual Coral Reef house (pictured in the top Google Street View image below) is located at 5555 Coral Reef Avenue in La Jolla. Dan and Betty purchased the 5-bedroom, 3-bath, 3,000-square-foot pad, which you can see interior photos of here, in 1976 after their rental in nearby Clairemont was damaged in a fire. Per a 1989 San Diego Reader article, Dan was just on the cusp of hitting it big financially. Author Jeannette DeWyze states, “Betty said they moved there with virtually no furniture, and even after her third child, a son, was born in 1976, she continued to work nights as a cashier and hostess at the Black Angus restaurant in Kearny Mesa. According to her, the family only became ‘solvent’ around 1979. ‘I can remember because we built a swimming pool in the back yard. And that’s a luxury, right? We financed it onto the house, so it wasn’t like we paid cash for it or anything, but we were able to increase the house payment a little. So, in my mind, that’s when he had some money.'” When a cracked slab was discovered at the property in the fall of 1984, the family moved out and into a rental nearby so that repairs could be performed. Dan left Betty the following spring, moving back in Coral Reef alone for a time and then into a handsome dwelling in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood. On February 4th, 1986, he sold their longtime home out from under Betty via a legal loophole (granted she had been trying to stall and hamper the process for months), and when she found out, she was so furious she proceeded to drive a car into his Hillcrest residence! Like I said, things got extremely ugly. As you can see below, Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story location managers really strove to find a house for the series that closely resembled the real thing, which I couldn’t appreciate more.

The peaked red-tile roof, three-car garage, double front doors, stepped front walkway, and Spanish style of Dan and Betty’s actual former home are all a direct match to those of its TV counterpart, as you can see in the MLS photo of Coral Reef as compared to the image of the house used on the series below!

Not only that, but the TV pad still has a very ‘80s feel, despite being 2020, so producers must have been elated to find it!

In real life, the 1976 home boasts 4 bedrooms, 5 baths, 3,989 square feet, a 0.41-acre lot, a pool, a jacuzzi, and a tennis court.

I had to laugh at the Ferrari parked out front being that Dan bought the same kind of sports car shortly before leaving Betty – both on the series and in real life. His was red, but still. Life imitating art imitating life, I guess.

The property’s backyard is also being featured on the series.

The inside of Dan and Betty’s residence was, I believe, just a set – one closely based upon that of 19854 Dina Place. And though I could not find interior photos of the home with which to verify that hunch . . .

. . . an Instagram follower named mz._royale informed me that the very same property appeared in another true crime anthology series based in San Diego! In 2018, it popped up as the supposed Rancho Bernardo home where Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) grew up in the “Creator/Destroyer” episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

I was thrilled to discover while watching that the home’s actual interior also appeared in the episode!

Though it is similar in layout and design to the inside of Dan and Betty’s house, as you can see above and below, the two are not one and the same, making me all the more certain that filming of Dirty John took place on a set.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Dan and Betty Broderick’s house from Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story is located at 19854 Dina Place in Chatsworth. The couple’s real-life former residence can be found at 5555 Coral Reef Avenue in La Jolla.

September 26, 2018December 6, 2018

Counterpoint Records and Books from “A Lot Like Love”

I obviously need to start paying closer attention to things because for years I was under the impression that all of the locations from fave movie A Lot Like Love had been tracked down. But while scanning through the 2005 romcom to make screen captures for my recent post on the home where Oliver’s (Ashton Kutcher) parents lived in the flick, I just about fell out of my chair when I realized that one spot remained unearthed – the record/book store where Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) met – or I guess I should say “re-met” – her future fiancé, Ben Miller (Jeremy Sisto). Being that unknown locales plague me like no other and that there’s pretty much nothing I love more than a good book shop, I immediately set about IDing the place. As fate would have it, the hunt turned out to be one of the easiest of my entire stalking career.

[ad]

In A Lot Like Love, Emily reconnects with Ben, after initially meeting him at a mutual friend’s wedding, at a spacious record/book store where the two banter over the last copy of an import CD they both want. Feeling lucky, I headed to Google, inputted “large record bookstore Los Angeles” and the very first result kicked back was for Counterpoint Records and Books at 5911 Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. One look at images of the place told me it was the right spot. If only all of my searches were so simple! So to the top of my To-Stalk List the site went and I headed right on over there a few weeks later.

Counterpoint Records and Books was originally established by John Polifronio and his then girlfriend/now wife Susan way back in 1979 as a classical music boutique that operated out of the back of The Book Treasury, formerly located at 6707 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Because of the Boulevard’s rather sketchy nature at the time, the couple decided to relocate the following year and sublet a 600-square-foot portion of a frame store in the more shopper-friendly Franklin Village.

Popular from the get-go, it was not long before John and Susan needed to expand, first taking over the entire frame shop and then spreading over into the storefront next door.

The couple also soon decided to branch out. Longtime collectors of rare and used books, John and Susan eventually found their home overflowing with volumes and elected to incorporate the excess tomes into their inventory.

In 1997, the duo purchased the building that houses Counterpoint, which Susan said in a 2012 interview was the saving grace in the store’s longevity.

The shop, which teems with colorful leaflets, thick novels, stacks of vinyl, copies of used VHS and cassette tapes, and racks upon racks of CDs, remains extremely popular today with locals and visitors alike.

Even actor Ron Livingston is a fan and included Counterpoint in his itinerary for a My Favorite Weekend column for the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

It is not hard to see why the store became such a neighborhood staple. Counterpoint Records and Books is warm, friendly and inviting. The employees that I spoke with not only invited me to take as many photos of the place as I wanted, but spent quite a bit of time chatting with me about the various filmings that have taken place on the premises over the years. Though, shockingly, not a one of them knew about A Lot Like Love!

In the movie, Emily and Ben reconnect while perusing the long CD rack in the middle of the store. Though that area of the shop is largely unchanged from the time that filming took place, the sections around it have been moved. During the shoot, the Religion, Philosophy and Occult sections were situated behind the CDs, but today those shelves house Fiction, as you can see below.

Philosophy and Religion can now be found on the opposite side of the room.

I was thrilled to see that, despite the move, the signage still looks exactly as it did onscreen.

There seems to be a bit of confusion concerning some of Counterpoint’s other cinematic appearances floating around online, so I’ll do my best to clear up the misinformation here.

The shop did pop up at the beginning of Prince’s 2004 “Musicology” music video, which you can watch here.

While many websites state that Counterpoint made an appearance in the 2010 movie Beginners, it was only featured in the trailer (which is where the still below comes from), not the actual film. It seems that the scene shot on the premises wound up on the cutting room floor. To confuse matters further, a different L.A. book boutique – the now defunct Cosmopolitan Book Shop at 7017 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood – does cameo a few times. It is there, not at Counterpoint, that Oliver (Ewan McGregor) and Anna (Melanie Laurent) peruse The Joy of Sex.

Counterpoint Records and Books pops up in Olly Murs’ 2012 “Troublemaker” music video, which you can check out here. (I would be remiss if I did not mention that Olly is such a cutie! I had never heard of him until writing this post and was pleasantly surprised to find while watching his video that he reminds me quite a bit of Michael Bublé in looks and mannerisms.)

Though Curbed Los Angeles reports that Joan Crawford’s (Jessica Lange) book signing in the Season 1 episode of Feud: Bette and Joan titled “You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?” was shot at Counterpoint, that information is incorrect. Perplexingly, the website even goes so far as to say “According to [production designer Judy] Becker, the production team built a book-signing station for the scene, which Counterpoint opted to keep after filming concluded.” But, as you can see below, the two-story venue that appeared in the episode looks nothing like Counterpoint. Filming actually took place at the Philosophical Research Library at the University of Philosophical Research located at 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Feliz. You can check out some photos of the space here and here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Counterpoint Records and Books, from A Lot Like Love, is located at 5911 Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. You can visit the store’s official website here.

August 13, 2018September 24, 2018

Oliver’s House from “A Lot Like Love”

A Lot Like Love is a movie I can’t not watch. Even though I’ve seen it at least a dozen times and own the DVD, if I happen to catch it on TV, need to scan through it for a post, or it pops up in my Netflix recommendations, I’m pretty much viewing it in its entirety. And thank goodness, too, because doing so led me to find a new location from the film recently, one that I thought I had already pinpointed – the house belonging to Oliver Martin’s (Ashton Kutcher) parents in the 2005 romcom. First, let me back up a bit.

[ad]

Ten years ago (egads!), my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, tracked down what I thought was the Martin residence via a 2006 Los Angeles Times article chronicling homes featured onscreen. In the blurb, author Danny Miller states, “Encino resident Ramona Hennesy creates brochures showing her house’s best features and sends them off to location scouts all over town. Her efforts have paid off. Several commercials have been filmed in her ranch home. Last year, the house had a featured role in the film A Lot Like Love. Both the interior and the backyard were used, and her carport was even transformed into Ashton Kutcher’s bedroom.” A quick scan through public records provided us with the property’s address (17050 Magnolia Boulevard) and I ran right out to stalk the place shortly thereafter. Upon arriving, I was surprised to see the pad fronted by large hedges that obscured it almost entirely from view, as you can see below. What little was visible did not look familiar from the movie, as I mentioned in the post I wrote about the locale a few days later.

Google Maps imagery from 2007 (two years after the movie was released) show the hedges in a much less mature state, so figuring they were a post-A Lot Like Love addition, I did not think much further on the subject.

Flash forward to this past April. While making screen captures of the flick in preparation for this post, I fell into the familiar trap of viewing it through to the end and was shocked to see an address number of “17204” posted by the front door of the house across the street from Oliver’s parents’ place in the closing scene in which Oliver and his longtime on-again/off-again paramour Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) finally get together. That number, though close, did not exactly coincide with the 17050 address of the property I’d blogged about all those years ago. What the whaaat? So I headed over to Google to search for homes numbered 17204 in the Los Angeles area and quickly came across one at 17204 Otsego Street in Encino that matched the residence Emily and Oliver kissed in front of, albeit with quite a bit more foliage.

From there, I flipped Google Street View’s little yellow man around to see the property across the street and, sure enough, Oliver’s parents’ house was staring me right in the face (again, with quite a bit more foliage). Had the article gotten things wrong?

Confused, I pulled up the old Los Angeles Times article and quickly realized that I had read too much between the lines all those years ago (that was back when I was an amateur stalker, after all Winking smile ). I’d simply assumed the Magnolia Boulevard residence had been used for exteriors and interiors, as well as backyard shots, but the article never actually mentions the front exterior at all. D’oh! As I soon came to find out, Oliver’s parents’ house was a mash-up of both properties, which are located right around the corner from each other. The Otsego Street house was utilized in all scenes featuring the front of the Martin home . . .

. . . including the final scene, which was my favorite of the movie. While there, I couldn’t help but re-enact the hissy fit Oliver’s sister, Ellen (Taryn Manning), has over the fact that Oliver is holding up her wedding. (Lucifer fans – that’s Aimee Garcia, aka forensics expert Ella Lopez, in the pink dress below! She plays Ellen’s best friend in the movie.)

All interior filming took place just around the corner at the Magnolia Boulevard house.

As you can see in the screen capture as compared to my photograph below, the roofline and window framing of 17050 Magnolia match that of the Martin home.

The shape of the Martin’s pool and its location in regard to the house, as well as the residence’s rear roofline . . .

. . . all also match what is visible of the Magnolia Boulevard dwelling in aerial views.

As mentioned in the Los Angeles Times article, the property’s carport was transformed into Oliver’s bedroom for the movie.

Luckily, the Magnolia Boulevard home’s front gates were open when I stalked the place back in 2008, so I got to snap a couple of photos of said carport.

Why producers chose to use two properties in the film is unclear to me, but I am guessing it has something to do with the hedges surrounding the Magnolia Boulevard residence, which I now believe were there at the time of the A Lot Like Love shoot. The movie’s final scene, in which Emily runs from Oliver’s house to her car parked across the street, required a location that was open to the road. I think the production team likely fell in love with the Magnolia pad’s interior, but found the exterior too closed-off for the end sequence, so they searched for a secondary property to utilize. I was hoping the DVD commentary with director Nigel Cole and producers Armyan Bernstein and Kevin Messick would provide some clarification on the subject, but, other than the fact that filming of the wedding segment took place in the Valley, nothing was said about the Martin residence.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The house used for exterior shots of Oliver’s parents’ residence in A Lot Like Love can be found at 17201 Otsego Street in Encino. The pad Emily parks in front of at the end of the movie is directly across the street at 17204 Otsego. The home utilized for interior and backyard sequences is located around the corner at 17050 Magnolia Boulevard.

March 13, 2012March 14, 2012

Casbah Café from “A Lot Like Love”

Today’s blog is going to be a short one as I am heading out to the eye doctor in a bit to have my eyes dilated, which, second to being on an airplane, is my least favorite activity in the entire world. Speaking of flying, US Magazine recently published an article about celebrity riders which featured actor Billy Crystal’s “Flight Preboard Information”. The “Other notes” section of Billy’s rider states, “Normally holds hands w/ family during takeoff and landing. Keep informed of turbulence.” Um, LOVE IT! Like Billy, I, too, hold my parents’ hands during takeoff, and I am absolutely PETRIFIED of turbulence! Oh, how I wish I were a celebrity so that I could submit my very own flight rider in which I demanded that the crew keep me informed of any upcoming turbulence. Winking smile But I digress.

Anyway, just down the street from Bar Keeper – the store that stood in for Upon Gallery in fave movie A Lot Like Love, which I blogged about yesterday – is Casbah Café, a French Moroccan-style coffee shop that was also featured in the 2005 flick. And, even though I have already blogged about this location once before very briefly, I just had to drag the Grim Cheaper right on back over there to snap some pics – and grab some coffee, of course! – while we were in the area doing our Christmas shopping last December.

The Casbah Café, which first opened in 1997 and currently serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, is a very unique and quirky independent coffee house/gift boutique that sells clothing, jewelry and home furnishings collected from various locales around the world, including India, Mexico, Morocco, and Argentina. The shop’s eccentric interior features blue- and orange-painted walls covered in large framed tapestries, a French-inspired chalkboard mirror menu and exposed ductwork. In the March 2004 issue of Toro Magazine, journalist Stephen Hunt hit the nail on the head when he described the Casbah as follows: “On first glance, the café evokes one of those places where Indiana Jones hung out in Cairo. An almost too perfectly shady establishment in which to exchange letters of transit, or a Maltese falcon . . .” The place also has a definite hipster vibe to it. The GC always jokes that he is not cool enough to hang out there because he does not own a pair of skinny jeans. Winking smile And he is right – the Casbah Café is a place where skinny jeans abound.

Thanks to its fabulous coffee and free Wi-Fi, the Casbah Café has become insanely popular over the years – so popular, in fact, that curbside service has recently been added to provide for the many customers who cannot find a vacant table. Celebrities have even been known to pop into the eatery from time to time. Just a few of the stars who have gotten their caffeine fix there include Madonna, Mia Kirshner, Gwen Stefani, Sofia Coppola, Courtney Love, Patricia Arquette and clothing designer Diane von Furstenberg.

[ad]

In A Lot Like Love, Oliver Martin (Ashton Kutcher) and Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) stop by the Casbah Café to grab coffee after their “silent” New Year’s Eve dinner. It is while there that Emily tries to pay for Oliver’s coffee, to which he says, “No. I appreciate the reach – the acting classes are really paying off – but I got it.” LOL

In a very brief scene in the Season 4 episode of Southland titled “Wednesday”, Officer Ben Sherman (cutie Ben McKenzie – sigh!) eats breakfast at the Casbah Café – and checks out some girls on their way to a yoga class while doing so.

The exterior of the Casbah Café shows up very briefly in The Freebie. According to a September 2010 Los Angeles Times article, Katie Aselton wrote the six-page outline for the 2010 indie flick while at the eatery and it even inspired one of the movie’s main storylines in which married man Darren (Dax Shepard) develops a crush on a barista at his local coffee shop. The Casbah will also be featured in the upcoming movie L!fe Happens, which stars Kate Bosworth, Rachel Bilson, and Krysten Ritter.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Casbah Café from A Lot Like Love is located at 3900 West Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. You can visit the café’s official website here.

March 12, 2012March 11, 2012

Bar Keeper – aka Upon Gallery from “A Lot Like Love”

Back in December, shortly before Christmas, the Grim Cheaper and I headed out to Silver Lake to do some gift shopping for his father at one of the most unique, quirky and whimsical stores in all of Los Angeles – Sunset Junction’s Bar Keeper, the very same spot that stood in for Upon Gallery in fave movie A Lot Like Love. And even though I have actually already blogged about this location once before – way back in January of 2008, during the early days of my site – because it was not only a very brief write-up, but also lumped together with a few other A Lot Like Love locations, I figured the place was most-definitely worthy of a re-post. So here goes.

On its website, Bar Keeper is described as being a “head shop for those who want to prepare and serve their cocktails with style”. Specializing in everything from vintage glassware to bar collectibles to hard-to-find liquor, the place is truly one-of-a-kind. The store, which first opened its doors on April 4th, 2006, is the brainchild of former reality TV producer Joe Keeper, hence the “Keeper” in the name. Joe designed the entire shop himself, doing everything from laying down the flooring to constructing the L-shaped wooden bar from which he rings up customers’ purchases.

The walls of the unique shop are decorated with a larger-than-life periodic table of the elements, photographs of bartenders from local watering holes, over 70 vintage bar signs, and floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves which hold small-production bottles of liquor. Keeper scours the U.S. to find his unique stock of vintage barware and rare-label libations, traveling everywhere from the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena to such far-flung locales as Antique Alley, a 33-mile section of Old National Road in Indiana that boasts over 900 different antique dealers. In a December 2008 Los Angeles Times article, Keeper states, “In my heart of hearts, I realize I’m a gift shop, but really, what I feel like I sell is ritual, the art of drinking.” Well, whatever Joe is selling, people are definitely buying as the store has been extremely popular ever since it first opened. Some of Bar Keeper’s customers even include set designers from Mad Men who stop by regularly to pick up vintage pieces to feature on the show. Um, love it!

[ad]

In A Lot Like Love, Bar Keeper stood in for Upon Gallery, the art gallery where Oliver Martin (Ashton Kutcher) stumbled upon the nude photograph that he and longtime on-again/off-again girlfriend Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) had taken a few years prior. At the time of the filming, the storefront, which formerly housed a vintage record shop, was vacant. The space pops up twice in the movie – first in the scene in which Olive spots his photograph and later when he returns there in the hopes of running into Emily. Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the store were featured in the flick.

The laundromat located across the street from Upon Gallery, where Oliver waited for Emily in A Lot Like Love, was actually a real life laundromat named Sunset LaunderLand.

Sadly though, according to the Eastsider LA website, the place closed its doors a couple of years ago and it looks to still be vacant and awaiting a new tenant.

The exterior of Bar Keeper also showed up very briefly in last week’s episode of fave show 90210, which was titled “Babes In Toyland”, in an establishing shot for the scene in which Dixon Wilson (Tristan Wilds) and Adrianna Tate-Duncan (Jessica Lowndes) waited at a café for the VP of A&R for Def Jam Records. The actual café where filming took place, though, was the Coffee Pot located at 2201 West Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, a location that I will surely be stalking very soon. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Bar Keeper, aka Upon Gallery from A Lot Like Love, is located at 3910 West Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. You can visit the store’s official website here. Sunset LaunderLand, where Oliver waited for Emily in the movie, was formerly located across the street from Bar Keeper at 3903 West Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. That site is currently vacant.

February 8, 2011February 8, 2011

The “A Lot Like Love” Apartment Building

A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210locations website, tweeted me to let me know that he had just tracked down the apartment building where Oliver Martin (aka Ashton Kutcher) lived in fave movie A Lot Like Love. As I have mentioned quite a few times before on this blog, A Lot Like Love is one of my all-time favorite romantic comedies and I have stalked pretty much every location featured in it – every location, that is, except for Oliver’s apartment building. So I was BEYOND excited to receive Geoff’s tweet and while out and about doing some stalking in the Hollywood area this past weekend, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place.

The building, which is called the Glen Oaks in real life, was actually featured only once in A Lot Like Love in the scene in which Oliver and Emily (aka Amanda Peet) return home after a New Year’s Eve party. It is when they walk into Oliver’s empty apartment that Emily discovers that he is moving to San Francisco the very next morning, just when, as she says, “I’m starting to like you”. The following morning, Emily awakens to discover that Oliver is already gone, but that he has left behind his beloved camera, which prompts her to begin a career in photography.

And it is obvious from the way the movie was shot that the real life interior of the apartment was also used in the filming.

I am very happy to report that the Glen Oaks building still looks much the same today as it did when A Lot Like Love was filmed back in 2005. The exterior paint color has since been changed, but the property is still very recognizable from the movie

The building also boasts an AMAZING view of the Hollywood sign.

In A Lot Like Love, Oliver lived in the building’s southwestern-most corner, bottom floor unit which is pictured above.

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

Stalk It: Oliver’s apartment building from A Lot Like Love is located at 2649 North Beachwood Drive, at the corner of North Beachwood Drive and Glen Oak Street, in Hollywood. Oliver lived in the building’s southwestern-most unit on the bottom floor, which is denoted with the pink arrow in the above aerial view.

October 27, 2010September 29, 2017

Mountain View Cemetery from “The Office”

Since my favorite holiday, Halloween, is fast approaching, I thought it would only be appropriate to devote the next few blog posts to some filming locations of a spookier nature. So, this past Sunday morning, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, the Grim Cheaper, and I went on a joint stalking venture up to Altadena to stalk Mountain View Cemetery which appeared in the Season 4 episode of The Office titled “The Chair Model”, among countless other productions. I first found out about this locale from my parents’ neighbor, Julie, who owns The Coffee Gallery in Altadena – a location which was also used in “The Chair Model” episode and which I blogged about this past July. According to Julie, while scouting locations for the “Chair Model” episode, location managers sought out a coffee shop that was in close proximity to Mountain View Cemetery where they were also shooting scenes, which is how they came to use her cafe. Like the old saying goes, it’s all about location, location, location. 😉 Anyway, once Julie told me about the place, I started doing some research on it and discovered that Mountain View Cemetery has been featured in hundreds upon hundreds of productions over the years. Apparently, the 60-acre cemetery is used for filming an average of 150 days out of EACH AND EVERY year, which is absolutely incredible to me! Upon finding out that fact, I promptly informed both Mike and the GC that Mountain View Cemetery was the ONLY place I wanted to be buried. Spending my hereafter at a site that is in use as a filming location almost half of each year sounds like absolute heaven to me (pun intended). Mike jokingly said that if I did end up being buried there, my tombstone should read, “Lindsay Blake, from IAMNOTASTALKER –Still Stalking Filming Sites From Beyond the Grave”. 🙂

Mountain View Cemetery, which is one of the oldest cemeteries in the San Gabriel Valley, was first established in 1882 when a man named Levi W. Giddings designated a plot of his family’s land to be used as a site for burials for the citizens of Pasadena. His descendants still own and operate the cemetery to this day, over 128 years later. Mountain View, which as the name implies does boast picturesque views of the San Gabriel Mountains, is an absolutely enormous and quite beautiful property, with sprawling lawns, stately trees from all over the world, an art collection, two chapels, and two mausoleums. Besides being a filming location, Mountain View is also the final resting place of several notables, including actor George Reeves, who played TV’s original Superman in the 1950s television series of the same name. George is entombed in the cemetery’s Pasadena Mausoleum. Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, one of the original founders of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and builder of the Mount Lowe Railway, is also buried at Mountain View, in the cemetery’s Royal Oak’s section.

[ad]

The yet-to-be released show Franklin & Bash was setting up to do some filming while we were stalking the cemetery on Sunday, and as you can see in the above photographs, had fake tombstones, floodlights, a generator, and a mock funeral assembled, which was very cool to see.

There was also a fake crypt set up on the property, which none of us actually realized was a fake . . .

. . . until we got around to the back of it and saw the prop door. So, of course, I just had to get inside of it to snap a quick picture. 🙂 I am not sure if the fake crypt was a prop for Franklin & Bash or for Wicked Literature: A Halloween Theatre Festival – a Halloween-themed live theatre event which is running at the cemetery now through the end of October. But being that Franklin & Bash is a series about a law firm, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the crypt was set up for the Wicked Literature show.

In “The Chair Model” episode of The Office, Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) falls in love with a chair model whom he sees in an office supply catalog. He sends Dwight Schrute (aka Rainn Wilson) on a recognizance mission to track down the model and is crushed when he learns that she was recently killed in a car accident. Dwight and Michael later visit the cemetery where she is buried in order to pay their respects. While there, they break into a rousing rendition of the song “American Pie”.

While stalking Mountain View on Sunday, I was absolutely dying to find the exact spot where The Office had been filmed. Unfortunately though, I was unable to figure it out at the time. It wasn’t until after I got home and re-watched “The Chair Model” episode that I was able to discern the correct location. So, bright and early yesterday morning, I dragged my dad out to re-stalk the place so that I could get some photos of the spot where Michael and Dwight had mourned, ahem, sang. That spot can be found in the northeastern section of the cemetery.

In the Season 1 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “There Won’t Be Trumpets”, Mountain View was the site of Mama Solis’ (aka Lupe Ontiveros’) funeral. In the scene filmed at the cemetery, Gaby Solis (aka Eva Longoria Parker) flies into a rage after discovering that her destitute husband Carlos (aka Ricardo Antonio Chavira) has purchased a large crypt for his dead mother. It was during the filming of that scene that Eva Longoria Parker accidentally (and hilariously) got the heel of her stiletto stuck in the cemetery’s grass. Some paparazzi who were on hand managed to snap pictures of the event and those pictures later made their way onto the pages of US Magazine, but unfortunately I cannot find copies of those photographs anywhere online.

While watching the “There Won’t Be Trumpets” episode, I was convinced that Mama Solis’ crypt had been a prop put into place for the filming. As I discovered yesterday morning, though, her burial site is an actual crypt belonging to the Buckley family. So darn cool! I would like to let it be known here and now that, upon my death, filmmakers have my permission to use whatever it is I end up being buried in – whether it be a crypt, a mausoleum, or a simple grave – whenever and in as many productions as they so desire! 😉

The cemetery was also used in the Season 8 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Foundation” as the final resting place of Susan Ross (aka Heidi Swedberg), George Costanza’s (aka Jason Alexander’s) former fiancé, who died after ingesting toxic glue while licking the envelopes of their wedding invitations.

Mountain View also appeared in the Season 11 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled “Shock Waves” as the site of the funeral of Officer Franklin Clark (aka Reggie Von Watkins), during which a bomb explodes. Fave website Altadenablog was on hand during the filming of that episode and took some great photographs of the crew setting up the extensive rigging for the explosion scene.

The cemetery also popped up in the pilot episode of the HBO series Six Feet Under as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

The cemetery was also used in Ozzy Osbourne’s video for his 2010 song “Life Won’t Wait” . . .

. . . which you can watch by clicking above.

Ironically enough, after visiting the cemetery, I had a feeling that it might have been the very cemetery used in fave movie A Lot Like Love, so after I got home I re-watched the flick and noticed the large, open-air grave-marker located in the background behind Oliver Martin (aka Ashton Kutcher) in the scene pictured above.

I could also just make out the last name “Holmes” written on the marker. So, yesterday morning, while re-stalking the cemetery with my dad, I walked around to see if I could spot that open air crypt.

And, amazingly enough, I did! As it turns out, the filming of A Lot Like Love had taken place just due west of where The Office had filmed. The grave where Emily Friehl’s (aka Amanda Peet’s) mother was buried in the movie was a fake that was put into place solely for the filming. In real life, her grave is just empty space. Ironically enough, Ashton Kutcher returned to the cemetery once again this past May to film scenes for the yet-to-be released comedy No Strings, along with co-star Natalie Portman. You can check out some photographs of them filming here. The 2007 remake of the classic horror film Halloween was also filmed at Mountain View Cemetery.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mountain View Cemetery is located at 2400 North Fair Oaks Avenue in Altadena. The area which appeared in The Office is in the northeastern portion of the cemetery and is denoted with a pink circle and a pink “X” in the above aerial views. A Lot Like Love filmed just due west of where The Office was filmed in the area of the cemetery numbered 4474, which is denoted with a purple circle in the above aerial views. Desperate Housewives was filmed in front of the Buckley crypt, which is located in the section of the cemetery numbered 4386, directly across from the Vista Del Monte mausoleum, which is denoted with a blue circle and a blue arrow in the above aerial views.

February 10, 2010June 16, 2011

Cole’s Restaurant from “A Lot Like Love”

This past weekend I dragged my fiancé out to re-stalk Cole’s Restaurant, a location that I originally blogged about way back in May of 2008. I first learned about the old time watering hole while watching the DVD commentary for fave movie A Lot Like Love, during which one of the film’s directors mentions that the New York bar scene featured at the beginning of the flick wasn’t actually filmed on the East Coast at all, but at a historic little bar in Downtown Los Angeles named Cole’s. After doing a bit of online research I discovered that COUNTLESS movies had actually been filmed on location at the historic bar, so I, of course, immediately dragged my fiancé right out to stalk the place. Sadly, though, upon arriving we were greeted by a sign announcing that the restaurant was closed for a massive renovation project. 🙁 And I have longed to stalk the place ever since. So, since we were in the area this past weekend, I begged my fiancé to make a little pit stop there and, since he was hungry at the time, he happily obliged. YAY!

Cole’s actually has a few other claims to fame besides being an oft-used filming location, including the fact that it is not only where the French Dip sandwich was first originated, but it is also the oldest continuously operating bar and restaurant in all of Los Angeles.

Cole’s, which was originally known as Cole’s P.E. Buffet, was first opened on December 8, 1908 by an entrepreneur named Harry Cole in what was once the main terminal of the Pacific Electric Building. That very same year, Cole’s main chef, a resourceful young man named Jack Garlinghouse, dipped the bread of a roast beef sandwich in Au Jus sauce in order to soften it for a customer who suffered from sore gums, and, thus, the French Dip sandwich was born. Those sandwiches, and the restaurant itself, became extremely popular with the hundreds of thousands of commuters who traveled through the Pacific Electric Building terminal each day. Twenty-five years later, in 1933, Cole’s was still such a popular spot that on the day California nixed its ban on beer, the bar served up over 19,000 gallons of the stuff to its parched customers. Yes, you read that right – 19,000 GALLONS in ONE day! That same year, Harry Cole’s son, Rawland, who was a bit of an entrepreneur himself, decided to start cashing checks out of the restaurant’s back room and wound up giving out over $1,000,000 each month (and we’re talking 1930’s money!), which was a larger amount than any U.S. bank was giving out during that same time! Cole’s has also had a longtime celebrity following, attracting such notables as Mickey Cohen who was a regular there during the 70’s and even had his own booth.

In 2007, Cole’s was purchased by a Los Angeles area development company named 213 who subsequently began a year-long, $1.6 million restoration process on the historic restaurant, during which its 40-foot long mahogany bar, porcelain penny tile mosaic flooring, and antique Tiffany glass lamps were all brought back to their original glory. The 213 company, which is headed by C.E.O. Cedd Moses, even added a “secret” bar in what was formerly Cole’s storage room. That secret bar is named “The Varnish” and it is so hidden, in fact, that I had absolutely no idea it was there until I read about it online after I got home. 🙁 For their restoration efforts of the legendary restaurant, 213 was awarded the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Preservation Award.

Cole’s specialty is, of course, its signature hand-carved, made-to-order French Dip sandwich which was originated on the premises one hundred and two years ago. There’s actually another L.A. area restaurant named Phillipe’s also laying claim to that exact same feat and the dispute between the two establishments is almost as old as the sandwich itself. But being that in 1974 the City of Los Angeles designated Cole’s a Historical Landmark Site and a State Point of Historical Interest not only due to its significant location, but also to its culinary invention, I think it’s safe to say that Cole’s has won that battle. 🙂 Cole’s French Dips can be constructed out of a variety of meats, including lamb, pastrami, turkey, and the typical roast beef. They can also be adorned with extra meat, Swiss, cheddar, goat, or blue cheeses, and an “atomic pickle spear”. I opted for a turkey French dip, sans the cheese and pickle, and I have to say it was absolutely A-MA-ZING! The meat truly was hand-carved, right-off-the-turkey-type turkey and I loved every last bite of it. What I loved more, though, was the historic aura of the place. It was incredible to be sitting there, dining on my French dip, thinking about the fact that the very sandwich I was now eating had actually been created on the premises over a century ago. Yes, I’ll take my meal with a side of history, please. 😉 I think it goes without saying that I ABSOLUTELY LOVED Cole’s and I honestly can’t recommend stalking the place enough!

In A Lot Like Love, Cole’s stood in for the New York bar where Oliver (aka Ashton Kutcher) and Emily (aka Amanda Peet) make a $50 bet that he won’t be a successful married businessman in six years time.

And I, of course, just had to eat lunch while sitting in the same spot where Ashton and Amanda sat in the flick. 🙂

The side booth area that is visible to the left of Ashton in the above screen capture is no longer a part of Cole’s. It was closed off during the restaurant’s recent remodel and is now a separately owned “secret” bar known as the Association. Yes, there are two secret bars located on the Cole’s premises!

The Association’s unmarked front door is pictured above.

In Jumpin’ Jack Flash – one of my all-time favorite movies EVER – Cole’s once again stood in for a New York bar, this time as the place where Terri Dolittle (aka Whoopi Goldberg) gets kidnapped by a man in a tow truck while making a telephone call from a public phone booth.

It is during this scene that Whoopi utters the infamous line “I am little black woman in a big silver box!” LOL

Towards the end of the movie, Whoopi once again runs by the restaurant on her way back to her office after escaping from the police. Cole’s is also talked about throughout the flick as the place where Whoopi and her pals hang out after work. Ironically enough, back before my very first trip to the Big Apple, I spent HOURS using Google Street View to search New York for this location. It wasn’t until years later, when I stalked Cole’s the first time after watching A Lot Like Love, that realized my mistake. I can’t believe I wasted so much time scouring New York for this location, when the whole time it was literally right in my own backyard! 😉

In Rumor Has It, Cole’s stands in for the San Francisco bar named the Fillmore Pub, where Kevin Costner and my girl Jen Aniston share a dance. Ironically enough, before I knew about Cole’s, I actually spent quite a bit of time searching the San Francisco area for this spot! Which means – you guessed it! – that I not only wasted countless hours searching for this location – not realizing it was the same place featured in Jumpin’ Jack Flash – in New York, but in San Francisco, too. LOL Man, I’m such a blonde sometimes!

The scene where Kevin and Jen kiss outside of the ladies’ room after their dance was really filmed in the bathroom area of Cole’s, as well.

The exterior of the restaurant was also used in the filming of the scene, although they changed the signage to read “Fillmore Pub”. As you can see in the above photograph (which was taken during my first Cole’s stalk) and screen capture, though, the signage used in the movie is an exact match to Cole’s real life signage. Love it!

In Forrest Gump, Cole’s yet again stood in for a New York watering hole. It was used as the spot where Forrest and Lieutenant Dan spend New Year’s Eve of 1971. Sadly, though, not much of the bar is visible in that scene.

On a side note – Located directly across the street from Cole’s is a little place named J &J Sandwich Shop, which is the restaurant which stood in for the Night Owl Cafe in fave movie L.A. Confidential.

And located directly above Cole’s is the ninth floor window from which Bud White (aka Russell Crowe) hung D.A. Ellis Loew (aka Ron Rifkin) in the same movie.

Cole’s has also appeared in an episode of The X-Files, in numerous episodes of both Mad Men and NYPD Blue, and it flashed by very briefly in the 1991 movie Guilty By Suspicion. And, according to legend, the Terminal Bar from 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was in actuality just a set, was based on Cole’s.

[ad]

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Cole’s is located at 118 East Sixth Street in Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit their website here.

November 5, 2008January 3, 2011

Ashton Kutcher’s House from “A Lot Like Love”

My stalking hero Mike, from MovieShotsLA, has done it yet again! 🙂 The two of us have been looking for Ashton Kutcher’s parents’ house from my fave romantic comedy A Lot Like Love for a while now. I really had no hope of ever finding the home, as I had no idea what city it was located in and I couldn’t find any nearby landmarks, such as street signs or addresses, while watching the movie. But then last week, while doing some cyber-stalking, Mike found this article which featured a brief interview with Encino homeowner Ramona Hennesy, who mentioned that her home was featured in A Lot Like Love. Eureka! Once we knew the home was located in Encino, it was simply a matter of searching public records to find the address. And, voila – just a few hours later I was in my car headed to Encino to stalk the property. 🙂 YAY!

Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot of the house to see from the street and it looks a lot different in person than it appeared in A Lot Like Love. In the article mentioned above, Ramona says that producers turned her carport into Ashton Kutcher’s bedroom during filming, so the home was definitely altered for the production. And to be honest, when I first arrived there, I actually wasn’t entirely convinced it was the same house from the movie. There is currently a wall of tall hedges surrounding the property that didn’t appear in the movie. But when I got home, I looked at some old Google maps images of the house and the hedges didn’t appear in those photos either, so it seems that they are new additions. Why, oh why, do these homeowners have to go and change things????

The Encino home was featured several times in the movie, most prominently in the scene when Amanda Peet’s character shows up at Ashton’s parents house to finally confess her love for him. When he asks her how she found his address she says “I had your number and I just called information and got your address.” LOVE IT! That’s so something I would do! 🙂 LOL!

As always, a big THANK YOU goes out to Mike!!! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The A Lot Like Love house is located at 17050 Magnolia Boulevard in Encino.