Bradley Cooper – IAMNOTASTALKER

June 14, 2019June 13, 2019

Mary’s House from “All About Steve”

If you listened to critics, you probably think All About Steve has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. You’d be wrong, though. While the 2009 comedy (and I use the term “comedy” loosely) is not remotely funny, boasts an odd storyline, and fails to properly showcase the talents of its fabulous cast, which includes Bradley Cooper, Sandra Bullock, Thomas Haden Church, Ken Jeong and DJ Qualls, it does feature some pretty stellar locations. The delightfully retro residence where Mary Horowitz (Bullock) lives with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz (Howard Hesseman and Beth Grant, respectively), in the flick especially had me drooling. I, of course, set out to track it down shortly after first viewing All About Steve ten years ago, but was unsuccessful. And though I subsequently revisited the hunt several times over the years following, I always came up empty. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to call in the big guns (aka my friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog), to see if he might be able to provide some assistance and in less than 24 hours he had an address for me. Thanks to a helpful crew member, we learned that the Horowitz home is located at 1704 Wellington Road in Mid-City’s Lafayette Square neighborhood. So I immediately ran out to stalk it.

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In real life, the All About Steve house is known as the J. Phyromn Taylor Residence. The two-story pad was designed in 1953 by prolific architect Paul Revere Williams (you can read a few of my posts on his many famous properties here, here, here, here, here, here and here) for his good friend, wealthy doctor Jackson Phyromn Taylor.

Built in a style known as Los Angeles Contemporary, the home also boasts prairie, international, and midcentury design elements, as well as a lot of geometric detailing. Per The Paul Revere Williams Project website, “The motif was used in a floating staircase flanked by a dramatic two-story sandblasted glass wall, metal work, etched room dividers, light fixtures and other midcentury-style custom furnishings designed for the space.”

Williams also incorporated Lafayette Square’s strict design regulations into the architecture of the residence, which included a second-floor balcony, deep setbacks, clean lines and a horizonal layout, with the long end fronting the street.

Sadly, Dr. Taylor passed away just a few short years after his home was completed, but the extraordinary residence remains in his family today. It is currently owned by Lauren Smith, his granddaughter, who told the Larchmont Ledger, “They [Jackson Phyromn Taylor and his wife, Pearl] surrounded themselves with art, music their entire lives. My uncle Phyromn was an accomplished jazz saxophonist so music was definitely a part of our lives. My mom was a music major in college as well. Very social, Paul Williams designed their house with their desire to entertain in mind. My grandparents were proud to have an African American man, their friend, design their unique house.”

The home features 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, a whopping 5,062 square feet of living space, a 2-car garage, and a 0.27-acre lot.

Unfortunately, the property looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen in All About Steve. Not only is it now significantly covered over with foliage, but it has undergone a drastic paint change. The result is a residence that is much darker and less aesthetically pleasing, at least in my opinion. In fact, if it had boasted its current color scheme in the movie, I probably wouldn’t have been nearly as enamored of it.

Due to the pad’s rectangular orientation and decidedly midcentury feel, I had been convinced that it was an apartment building, not a single-family home, in real life.

And because of the mansion-like properties situated next door . . .

. . . and across the street, I knew it had to be located in an upscale neighborhood. Accordingly, I spent copious hours searching Hancock Park and West Hollywood for a midcentury apartment complex, so it’s no surprise that I couldn’t find the place. Somehow I had completely forgotten about Lafayette Square, an area I’ve been to a few times and even written about – twice! Thank goodness for the helpful crew member who provided Owen with the address!

The J. Phyromn Taylor Residence popped up several times in All About Steve.

The movie did a fabulous job of showcasing the dwelling . . .

. . . and all of its unique architectural details.

As fabulous as those details are, it was the interior of the Horowitz home that really stole my heart, namely the floating staircase. The openness of the steps, the paned glass panel behind them, and the stone walls on either side practically had me drooling.

I am torn as to whether what was shown onscreen was the real interior of the J. Phyromn Taylor Residence or a set modeled after it, though I’m leaning toward the former. As you can see below, the glass panel pictured behind the stairs in All About Steve is a perfect match to that of the actual home.

And the geometric elements visible in several scenes, like the open metal wall in the foreground below . . .

. . . and the silver sculpture to the left of the pool table, mesh with the interior detailing described on The Paul Revere Williams Project website.

I am fairly certain, though, that Mary’s colorful bedroom . . .

. . . and bathroom were just sets.

Either way, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place!

Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location.

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 J. Phyromn Taylor Residence, aka the Horowitz home from All About Steve, is located at 1704 Wellington Road in Lafayette Square. The McGinley Residence, where Robert F. Kennedy is reported to have spent his last night, is right around the corner at 1821 South Victoria Avenue. And the incorrectly identified Leave It to Beaver house is two blocks west at 1727 Buckingham Road.

March 1, 2019September 17, 2019

Tacos Jalisco from “A Star Is Born”

Stumbling upon filmings used to be a regular occurrence when I lived in L.A. Sadly, that is not the case in Palm Springs. So I was thrilled – and shocked – to happen upon A Star Is Born being shot at desert eatery Tacos Jalisco while on a Windmill Tour with the Grim Cheaper and our friends Nat and Tony back in April 2017. Though I had no intention of ever seeing the flick due to its sad storyline, I made a mental note to do a proper stalk of the restaurant once it came out. After a few failed attempts in which I showed up only to find the place closed, I was finally able to do so this past week.

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Sitting adjacent to Jalisco Tires auto repair shop, Tacos Jalisco is located quite a ways off the beaten path on a sleepy road in North Palm Springs.

If not for the Windmill Tour, I never would have known the place existed.

And that is a shame because it serves up uh-ma-zing food. The GC and I, of course, partook while there and he quickly proclaimed the tacos some of the best he’s ever had.

The small, casual eatery consists of two rooms – a main dining area and a bar.

Surprisingly, I could not find much information about the place’s history online aside from the fact that it formerly housed a market.

In A Star Is Born (which is out on DVD now!), Tacos Jalisco masks as the roadside eatery where Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) and Ally (Lady Gaga) stop to grab a bite to eat upon arriving in Jackson’s hometown of Arizona.

While there, Ally jots down lyrics for a song she is writing titled “Look What I’ve Found” and Jack discusses the fact that he doesn’t return home very often.

The restaurant’s interior was changed a bit for the shoot, with the booths that usually sit along the side wall moved to the middle of the dining area.

Otherwise, the place looks much as it did onscreen.

The exterior of Tacos Jalisco also appears in A Star Is Born – and is the site of a rather large gaffe. Notice below that as Ally walks up to Jack outside of the restaurant, she does not have a jacket on . . .

. . . but seconds later, as she embraces him, she magically does!

It was that portion of the scene that we saw being shot during our Windmill Tour. I was even able to snap a few pics of the production as we drove by. (I believe that is Bradley Cooper standing in the forefront of the top image below as the outfit seems to match what he was wearing onscreen – but don’t quote me on that as it could just as easily be his stand-in.)

Interestingly, prop gas pumps were brought in for the shoot to make Tacos Jalisco and the adjoining Jalisco Tires appear to be a service station. Because I had never seen the locale prior to the filming, I assumed the tanks were real and was shocked when I showed up to stalk the place and discovered there were no pumps to be found anywhere on the premises!

The scene that follows that of the roadside diner, in which Jack discovers that his childhood ranch has been sold and turned into a wind farm, was shot just around the corner on Dillon Road, about half a mile west of where it intersects with North Indian Canyon Drive. (I did not realize that when I stalked the restaurant and, as such, failed to take any photographs, so the Street View image below will have to do for now.)

In the interest of being thorough, I’ve denoted exactly where Ally and Jack were standing in the segment in the aerial view below. Ally’s position, in the bare patch of dirt, is marked with a pink “X,” while Jack’s, which is slightly west in the nearby foliage, is denoted with a blue “X.”

While stalking Tacos Jalisco, I happened to chat with its super-nice owner who informed me that the restaurant also appeared in the 2005 thriller Constantine as the spot where Manuel (Jesse Ramirez) stole a car in what was supposed to be the Mexican desert.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Tacos Jalisco, from A Star Is Born, is located at 17725 North Indian Canyon Drive in North Palm Springs. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. Jack’s childhood-ranch-turned-windmill-farm from the movie can be found just around the corner on Dillon Road, about half a mile west of where it intersects with North Indian Canyon Drive.

February 11, 2019November 5, 2019

The Millennium Biltmore Hotel from “A Star Is Born”

It’s not everyday you’ll find photos of a public restroom on my site. It’s not everyday you’ll find me stalking one either. But a couple of years ago, the Grim Cheaper and I were granted an extensive private tour of the Millennium Biltmore Los Angeles that included a visit to the hotel’s Regency Room men’s lavatory. Our guide thought we would want to see the space thanks to a bit of cinema history that exists there. (More on that in a bit.) Flash forward to last week – while scanning through the 2018 A Star Is Born prior to writing my recent post on East Hollywood bar The Virgil, I was shocked to see the very same bathroom (well, the women’s version, at least) pop up in an opening scene and decided I just had to chronicle it here. When I sat down to write the post, though, I discovered that the entire Biltmore property – not just its bathroom – has ties to three of the A Star Is Born movies. So I figured a more all-encompassing article about the hotel was in order.

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The Biltmore’s Regency Room was originally part of the Sala De Oro ballroom, which was constructed during the hotel’s 1928 expansion. You can see what the stunning venue looked like in its early days here and in its current state below.

The grand space, surprisingly located on a sublevel of the hotel, ran 140 feet long and 107 feet wide and boasted three open stories, an insane vaulted ceiling, a large mezzanine, box seating for 46 groups, a stage (built on hydraulics that allowed it to be raised and lowered), a dance floor, a check room with a capacity for 100 guests, and its own kitchen. So stunning was the massive hall that it was chosen as the site of eight different Academy Awards ceremonies.

In 1934, management decided to change things up by turning the ballroom into a hopping nightclub named the “Biltmore Bowl.” Architect Wayne McAllister, who also gave us Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, was brought in to revamp the room. And revamp it he did. He moved the stage, making it the central focal point, and also, oddly, split the venue into two levels, a two-story upper floor and a single-story lower floor. You can see what the upper level looked like during its heyday here and here.

Sadly, the nightclub was gutted by a fire in the 1950s and subsequently renovated, at which time the grand ceiling and elegant stage were removed. But the split levels remained, with the top floor becoming a ballroom that retained the Biltmore Bowl name and the sub-level becoming an exhibit hall initially dubbed the “Rex Room” and later the “Regency Room.” The gilded, gated entrance to both spaces is pictured below.

The Biltmore Bowl underwent a re-do again in 2001, during which the venue’s tiered seating was removed and its decorative aesthetic shifted to match that of the rest of the hotel.

The Regency Room, which is largely unchanged from its 1950’s post-fire state, is much less opulent than its upstairs neighbor, as you can see below.

In fact, the only ornamentation the space really has is some decorative grillwork, which is leftover from its days as part of the Sala De Oro ballroom.

The ornate ceiling in the Regency Room’s foyer is also original to the Sala De Oro.

Today, the Regency Room boasts 17,000 square feet of space – and a set of famous bathrooms.

At the beginning of A Star Is Born, Ally (Lady Gaga) breaks up with her boyfriend via phone from a stall in the Regency Room women’s bathroom, which is said to be the restroom of the hotel kitchen where she works.

Though I did not see the women’s bathroom during my tour, I was shown the very similar-looking men’s room.

It was there that Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and his pals tied up and threatened Police Commissioner Jacobs (Pat McNamara) in the 1999 drama Fight Club.

Our tour guide highlighted the space not only because of its onscreen cameo, but also because of some damage that occurred during the shoot, which she figured I would be fascinated by. And I was! Apparently, while Pitt and McNamara were filming the fight scene, the base of one of the pedestal sinks was splintered. For whatever reason, the chip was never filled in and the sink currently remains in its post-Fight-Club state, a little piece of filming ephemera left behind for the ages.

You can see said chip in the images above and below, as well as what an intact sink base looks like directly next to it.

The Biltmore’s 25,000-square-foot basement kitchen, which I did not get to stalk during my tour, makes a couple of appearances as Ally’s workplace in A Star Is Born, as well.

That very same kitchen also appeared as the kitchen of a Radisson hotel in East Lansing, Michigan in the Season 4 episode of The West Wing titled “College Kids,” which aired in 2002.

It can also be seen in the Season 4 episode of Bosch titled “Rojo Profundo,” which aired in 2018. As I said in my recent post on the hotel’s South Galleria, every single area of the Biltmore has been utilized in multiple major productions!

The hotel’s loading dock, which leads directly down to the Biltmore Bowl and Regency Room, also pops up a couple of times in A Star Is Born – first in the scene in which Ally leaves work to head to her gig at Bleu Bleu and then later when she and Ramon (Anthony Ramos) get picked up by Jackson Maine’s (Bradley Cooper) driver to go to one of his shows.

The loading dock pops up in the “College Kids” episode of The West Wing, as well.

As I mentioned earlier, the Biltmore had ties to A Star Is Born long before the latest version was filmed. In the 1937 original, Vicki Lester (Janet Gaynor) and Norman Maine (Fredric March) attend an Academy Awards ceremony at what is said to be the Biltmore Bowl.

I am unsure if filming actually took place in the ballroom or on a studio-built set, though.

My hunch is that a set was utilized being that not much of what was shown onscreen matches early photographs of the Bowl. The wide shot of the room featured in the movie (pictured below) also looks to me like a matte painting of some sort.

I can say with certainty that the Biltmore Bowl was the site of the Grammy Awards in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born. You can see some behind-the-scenes photos of the segment being shot here.

Esther Hoffman (Barbra Streisand) and John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson) even head up the escalators situated adjacent to the South Galleria in the scene. It is on the escalator landing that Howard punches a paparazzi.

The Biltmore Bowl is also the site of the Leadership in Journalism Awards gala in the Season 1 episode of The Morning Show titled “A Seat at the Table,” which aired in November 2019.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Millennium Biltmore Los Angeles, from A Star Is Born, is located at 506 South Grand Avenue in downtown L.A. You can visit the property’s official website here. The Regency Room and its bathrooms are situated underneath the Biltmore Bowl on the south side of the hotel and can be reached via the South Galleria. The kitchen from the film is also located in the basement of the hotel. Unfortunately, neither area is open to the public. The loading dock can be found just south of Coffee on Grand at 530 South Grand Avenue.

February 6, 2019February 5, 2019

The Virgil from “A Star Is Born”

I got a text from my friend Liz the other day saying, “Don’t see A Star Is Born . . . OMG!” followed by a bunch of crying face emojis. As Liz and most of my fellow stalkers are well aware, I do not like sad or depressing movies – at all. Liz needn’t have worried. While I have never watched any of the A Star Is Born iterations, I am familiar enough with the storyline to know that they are just not my cup of tea. My friend Lavonna is on the other end of the spectrum, though. She saw the latest installment as soon as it came out, became absolutely obsessed, and, during a recent visit to L.A., stalked a bunch of its locations, including The Virgil, which masked as Bleu Bleu in an opening scene. As fate would have it, upon arriving at the East Hollywood bar, she stumbled upon some crew members from Glow striking set pieces from a shoot that had been done on the premises the day prior. Lavonna struck up a conversation with one them who invited her inside to take a closer look and snap pictures. Figuring it would make for a good blog post, she forwarded the photos on to me. And while I still have yet to see A Star Is Born, thanks to Vudu, where it is available for streaming, I was able to scan through the beginning to familiarize myself with it a bit in preparation for this write-up.

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The Virgil was originally established in June 2012 by nightlife impresarios Louie and Netty Ryan, of Temple Bar Concepts, who also founded Townhouse/The Del Monte in Venice and Santa Monica’s famed Temple Bar (which is now closed), among a slew of others.

The lounge, known for its specialty craft cocktails, occupies a space on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and North Virgil Avenue that formerly housed Little Temple, another of the Ryans’ watering holes which opened in mid-2004. Prior to that, the site was the longtime home of The Garage, a rock club owned by Steve Edelson.

Comprised of two spacious areas, the “Stage” room and the “B Side” (the latter of which Lavonna did not get any photos of, but you can see what it looks like here), The Virgil has a distinctly bohemian vibe . . .

. . . with some Moroccan elements thrown in.

With curtains flanking wide openings . . .

. . . and unique carvings adoring various doorways, The Virgil looks like a really cool place to hang out.

In A Star Is Born, Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) pops by “Bleu Bleu” to get a drink while on his way home from a performance. The exterior of the bar is only shown briefly in the segment.

Though, as Lavonna informed me, the billboard out front does provide some foreshadowing of the movie’s ending. (And she wonders why I’m resisting watching it! Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard ‘no’ from me!)

It is at The Virgil that Jack first lays eyes on Ally (Lady Gaga) as she spectacularly performs “La Vie en Rose.”

Due to low lighting and rather tight camera angles, not much of the bar can be seen in the movie. We do get a better glimpse of it later in the scene, when Jack is invited to perform onstage while he waits for Ally after Bleu Bleu has closed for the evening. Despite some major set dressing that was added for the shoot (which, per Vulture, took two days to complete), the place is still definitely recognizable from its appearance.

I am unsure if the Bleu Bleu dressing room segments were shot at The Virgil, as well, but I am guessing that they were.

The Virgil is also featured twice in the Season 1 episode of Strange Angel titled “The Sage,” which aired in 2018. The B Side area first pops up as the bar where Jack Parsons (Jack Reynor) laments to his friend Ernest Donovan (Rupert Friend) about not being allowed in to an important business function.

The Stage room then masks as the gentleman’s club that Jack and Ernest visit later in the episode.

As I mentioned earlier, Glow also did some filming at The Virgil, so be sure to look for it in an upcoming episode of the third season.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Lavonna for stalking this location for me!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Virgil, aka Bleu Bleu from A Star Is Born, is located at 4519 Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood. You can visit the bar’s official website here.

November 9, 2016November 9, 2016

Janine and Ben’s House(s) from “He’s Just Not That Into You”

You know those crime novels where a main character is trying to solve a case and there is some niggling clue that tugs at them throughout the story – an important piece of evidence that would solve the whole mystery, but which remains elusive until the final pages? That was how I felt while trying to track down the Baltimore row house where Janine (Jennifer Connelly) and Ben (Bradley Cooper) lived in He’s Just Not that Into You. Though the 2009 film was largely panned by critics, it is one of my favorite romcoms of all time and prior to our recent trip to Charm City, I set out to track down its locations, namely Janine and Ben’s handsome brick townhome. Try as I might, though, I could just not locate it. During the tail end of my search, I found myself sitting at my computer staring at a screen capture of the residence for what seemed like hours, aware of the fact that I was missing something, but unsure of exactly what. Then finally, something clicked!

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All of a sudden, I noticed that a fire hydrant was visible on the street corner next to Janine and Ben’s pad. I swear, I started to hear angels sing when I realized that said hydrant was painted red, white, and green. That could only mean one thing – the house had to be located in Little Italy! Not being familiar with Baltimore, I wasn’t even sure if the city had a Little Italy neighborhood, but a quick Google search told me that it does. So I started searching the area via Street View and found the place within minutes.

Throughout He’s Just Not That Into You, Janine and Ben’s dwelling is under extensive renovation.

Because of the work being done, it is not until the end of the movie that we actually get a clear view of the property’s exterior. Aside from the front door being changed, the structure looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

Something I did not notice until making screen captures for this post (despite my many viewings of the movie) is that Janine and Ben actually owned two neighboring townhomes that were being combined into one, hence the scaffolding on the two residences you see below. (And yes, I realize how blonde that makes me sound being that, as stated earlier, I spent a considerable amount of time staring at a screen capture of the house during my search for it. In my defense, though, I was looking at the grab pictured above, which is from the scene in which the remodel has already been completed.)

Because I did not realize that both properties were used in He’s Just Not That Into You, I only shot photographs of the residence that Janine walked into towards the end of the flick.

Per Zillow, that handsome pad, located at 226 South Exeter Street, boasts 1,508 square feet of living space, 2 bathrooms, a 0.02-acre lot, a fireplace, and a 325-square-foot finished basement.

The property, which was built in 1860 (yes, 1860!), last sold in December 2002 for $135,000.

While the exterior of Janine and Ben’s residence is quite stately, it is the interior that I fell in love with. I mean, #housegoals, right? All of the exposed brick, built-in shelving, and woodwork had me drooling.

Sadly, I am fairly certain that it was all a set built on a soundstage in Los Angeles, where the majority of the movie was lensed. Only two weeks of filming took place in Baltimore, which is far too short a time for the interior house sequences to have been shot at the actual residence. Add to that the fact that, from most of the articles I’ve read, it does not seem that Bradley Cooper, who was present in many of the home scenes, traveled to Baltimore for any filming. I believe Kevin Connolly, Scarlett Johansson, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Jennifer Connelly were the only cast members who were in Charm City for the on-location portion of the shoot.

I have to give major props to the production team for their seriously keen eye for detail. In the scene at the end of the movie in which Ben comes home and discovers (spoiler alert!) that Janine is divorcing him, a panoramic photo of the actual houses located across the street from 226 South Exeter was displayed as a backdrop outside of the set windows. As you can see below, the residences visible through the windows of Janine and Ben’s dwelling match perfectly to the properties located across the street in real life! A generic backdrop featuring random homes could just as easily have been used in the scene, so I am extremely impressed that the production team went to such trouble to be authentic.

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: Janine and Ben’s houses from He’s Just Not That Into You are located at 224 and 226 South Exeter Street in Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood.

November 18, 2015November 17, 2015

The Sadr City Date Factory from “American Sniper”

As I sat down to figure out what to write about for today’s post, I started getting worried that my location backlog was running low. That worry was quickly amended as soon as I began perusing my inventory of stalking photographs and saw that was not the case at all. I have so many locales stock-piled, in fact, that it is almost ridiculous! One such spot that I visited last February, but somehow failed to do a post on is the abandoned El Centro warehouse that masked as an Iraqi factory in the 2014 drama American Sniper.

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The warehouse was featured towards the end of American Sniper, during Chris Kyle’s (Bradley Cooper) fourth tour of duty in Sadr City. I became fascinated by the location due to both the fact that it is abandoned (obviously!) and because cast and crew ventured all the way out to El Centro, an Imperial Valley city situated about 110 miles east of San Diego and a good 200 miles outside of the Thirty Mile Zone, to shoot there. Most of the American Sniper war sequences were lensed on location in Morocco and on outdoor sets at the Blue Cloud Movie Ranch in Santa Clarita. But I guess, for the “Tour Four” scenes, nothing matched the war-torn landscape of Sadr City better than a sleepy stretch of El Centro. (The screen capture pictured below shows the northern side of the warehouse, an area that is, unfortunately, not accessible to the public. My photograph is of the building’s eastern and southern sides.)

I could find virtually no information online about the warehouse’s history, but according to the American Sniper production notes, the structure is a former milk processing plant that set designers transformed into an abandoned date factory for the shoot.

As you can see below, the building looks much the same in person as it did onscreen, though the surrounding area was changed significantly via CGI.

I found it fascinating to compare the aerial view of the warehouse shown in the movie to a real life aerial view.

It is on the rooftop of the warehouse that Kyle makes his “impossible” 2,100-yard shot that takes out an enemy sniper in the movie.

I believe the real life interior of the warehouse was also utilized in the filming.

With its dilapidated exterior and surrounding dirt roads, it is not hard to see how the building came to be used in American Sniper.

I found the structure to be eerily beautiful.

I literally could have spent the entire day taking photos of it.

The cracked, rusted detailing was mesmerizing.

The building located immediately northwest of the warehouse also made an appearance in American Sniper.

That property is fabulously dilapidated, as well.

And, thanks to Dr. Andreas Stavridis, the Asst. Professor of Engineering at the University of Buffalo, the site is actually even more run-down today than it was when American Sniper was shot.

The two-story brick and concrete building was originally constructed in the 1920s and, over time, served as both a grocery warehouse and a cabinet store. The property suffered severe damaged during the Mexicali earthquake in 2010 and was subsequently set to be demolished, until Stavridis stepped in. Shortly after the earthquake, the engineer, who was then in the process of getting both his Masters and PhD at UC San Diego (my alma mater), approached the building’s owner and asked if he could conduct an experiment there. The undertaking took four years to set in motion, but finally, in late 2014, several months after American Sniper had shot on the premises, Stavridis and team staged a fake earthquake on the structure’s second floor using a tool called a “shaker.” The effects were then studied to determine the best way to retrofit similar concrete and brick properties in order to make them more quake resistant. You can watch a fascinating video about the experiment here.

It was Stavridis’ testing that caused most of the building’s large gaping holes. According to the article, the experiment only damaged the second floor, which the owner is planning to remove before restoring the bottom level and re-opening it as a business.

I must say, though, that the building fits in with the neighborhood in its current state. The entire area looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland – and I mean that in the best way possible.

There is even a graffitied train car, seemingly frozen in time, situated on the tracks that run adjacent to the buildings.

The rooftop of the building located immediately south of the warehouse was also featured in American Sniper. Although very little of the structure is visible in the movie, the triangular crenellation on the corners of the roofline are very recognizable from their onscreen appearance.

You can watch some behind-the-scenes footage of the American Sniper scene being shot below.

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 American Sniper Sadr City date factory is located at the western end of the 300 block of Broadway Street in El Centro.

August 13, 2015August 17, 2015

New “L.A.” Mag Post – Calamigos Ranch from “Wet Hot American Summer”

Don’t forget to read my latest post for L.A.mag.com, about Calamigos Ranch from Wet Hot American Summer. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

May 29, 2015May 29, 2015

Caesars Palace from “The Hangover”

My recent trip to Las Vegas with the Grim Cheaper was magical, due in large part to the fact that we stayed at Caesars Palace. Neither the GC nor I had ever stayed there before and, while planning our trip, I decided to see what the rates were. I happened to find a remarkably inexpensive one and booked it immediately. It was a fortuitous decision because the four nights we spent there were spectacular.

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As luck would have it, when we checked in we were given an upgraded room in the Palace Tower. It was absolutely gorgeous – and huge.

The bathroom was massive as well and featured a huge Jacuzzi tub and stand-alone shower.

We also had a pretty stunning view of the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis area.

Construction on Caesars Palace began in 1962. The property was the brainchild of hotelier Jay Sarno, who also owned the popular Cabana Motel chain. According to this article, Sarno purposely left off the apostrophe in the resort’s name because having it “’would mean that it was the place of only one Caesar.’ He wanted to create the feeling that everybody in the hotel was a Caesar.” The site opened to the public on August 5th, 1966. You can read an extremely extensive history on the hotel here.

At the time of its inception, Caesars Palace consisted of a single 14-story tower with 680 rooms.

Today, the site is comprised of six towers, 3,960 hotel rooms, a 300,000-square-foot convention center, a 4,296-seat circular theatre modeled after the Colosseum in Rome, and a 636,000-square-foot shopping center known as The Forum Shops at Caesars. In short, the property is massive!

The front of Caesars Palace is marked by a 135-foot driveway flanked by 18 fountains.

In 1967, daredevil Evel Knievel tried to jump across the 141-foot long fountain situated directly in front of the hotel, but failed and wound up in a coma for the next 29 days.

You can watch that failed jump below.

In 1989, Evel’s son Robbie attempted the jump and was successful. You can watch a video of Robbie’s jump below.

Caesars’ humongous Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis was modeled after the Pompeii baths of ancient Rome.

Sadly, because the GC and I were in Las Vegas for a working trip and were busy most of each day, we were not able to partake of the pool facilities.

Caesars Palace has been featured onscreen countless times over the years – far more times than I could ever chronicle here, but I will name a few of its more notable appearances. The hotel’s most famous role was in The Hangover. It was there that Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) threw an epic bachelor party for Doug (Justin Bartha) in the 2009 breakout hit. The movie made extensive use of the Caesars property, including the front entrance;

lobby;

check-in desk;

(love the shot of the Wolf Pack below);

a hallway, which (according to Hannah Allen, the Director of TV and Film Production for Caesars Entertainment, who was nice enough to fill me in on the shoot) was a hallway on the 24th floor of the Augustus Tower;

the Augustus Tower’s 24th floor elevator bay (again, thank you, Hannah!);

an Augustus Tower elevator (once again, thanks to Hannah);

the roof;

and the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis.

For the scene in which Stu, Phil and Alan take note of Doug’s mattress on the hotel’s roof, a fake statue was installed in the area noted with a pink arrow in my photograph below.

The hotel’s actual roofline is pictured below.

“Some guys just can’t handle Vegas!”

Sadly, the guys’ spectacular villa was not an actual Caesars room, but a set created inside of a soundstage at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank. The set was modeled, in part, after the hotel’s lux Emperors Suite.

The casino where the Wolf Pack gambled in The Hangover was not located at Caesars Palace, but at the since closed Riviera, which, sadly, is set to be demolished in the near future.

Stu, Alan and Phil returned to Caesars Palace for 2013’s The Hangover Part III.

Thanks to Hannah, I learned that an actual Caesars suite was used in Part III – the Constantine Villa in the Octavius Tower –

which Stu and Alan climbed down to from Caesars’ roof.

The Constantine Villa also appeared in Think Like a Man Too.

The 2014 comedy gave audiences a much better view of the suite.

Think Like a Man Too was filmed almost exclusively at Caesars Palace.

Caesars also made an appearance in Rain Man. It was there that Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) counted cards for his brother Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) in the 1988 classic (as Alan said in The Hangover, “He practically bankrupt a casino and he was a re-tard.”). The casino floor looks much different today, though, and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance in Rain Man.

Hannah informed me that the escalator that Charlie and Raymond famously rode down in the movie was removed when Caesars’ convention center was remodeled in 2009. Such a shame!

Rain Man’s escalator scene was re-created in The Hangover, complete with “Iko Iko” playing in the background. Because the re-creation was shot at the Riviera, sadly, that escalator will soon be gone, too.

The suite where Charlie and Raymond stayed in Rain Man is an actual Caesars room, the Emperors Suite (which, as I mentioned earlier, served as the inspiration for the Wolf Pack’s room in The Hangover). It looks quite a bit different today, though. You can check out some current photos of it here.

The room, which is located in the Forum Tower, was numbered 7416 in Rain Man, but looks to be numbered 6316 today. It is an extremely popular room thanks to its appearance in the movie and is still referred to as “the Rain Man suite,” 27 years after the film originally premiered!

The scene in which Charlie lets Raymond drive took place in front of Caesars’ main entrance.

Isabel Fuentes Whitman (Salma Hayek) worked at Caesars Palace in the 1997 romcom Fools Rush In.

After getting married, she and her new husband, Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry), spend the night in the Rain Man suite.

Caesars Palace was also featured in the Coen Brothers’ 2003 dark romantic comedy Intolerable Cruelty.

Miles (George Clooney) and Marilyn (Catherine Zeta-Jones) also spend their wedding night in the Rain Man suite in the movie.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gambles at Caesars Palace in the beginning of Iron Man.

In Ocean’s Eleven, Elliot Gould describes “the three most successful robberies in the history of Vegas,” one of which took place at Caesars in 1987.

Joyce Brewster (Barbra Streisand) and Andrew Brewster (Seth Rogen) spend a night at the hotel in the 2012 comedy The Guilt Trip.

One of the hotel’s real life rooms – one that looked very much like ours – was used in the filming.

Caesars Palace also made appearances in Godzilla, The Electric Horseman, Rocky III, Oh, God! You Devil, History of the World: Part I, The Sopranos, 21, Showgirls, My Giant, The Only Game in Town, 2012, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Emma for putting me in touch with Hannah so that I could get all of my filming questions answered! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Caesars Palace (not the real one – Caesar never actually lived there), from The Hangover, is located at 3570 South Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

March 27, 2015March 26, 2015

“The Hangover” Wedding Chapel

It is no secret that erroneous (and/or imprecise) filming location information published online and in books is one of my biggest pet peeves – especially when it leads to me stalking an incorrect place, which is exactly what happened while I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. (Why there is some sort of halo on my shirt in the above pic is beyond me.)

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Several websites state that The Best Little Chapel from The Hangover was a fake set piece that was constructed for the shoot in a vacant parking lot near 1236 Las Vegas Boulevard South. The building at that address currently houses a youth hostel named Hostel Cat. When the Grim Cheaper and I arrived there, though, I found that there were two parking lots that fit that description – one to the north of Hostel Cat and one to the south – and only one of them was large enough to accommodate the construction of any sort of structure, not to mention the car accident scene that took place on the premises. I snapped some photos of the large lot and was shocked when I compared my pictures to images from the movie later that night in our hotel room. As it turns out, The Best Little Chapel set piece had not been constructed in the large parking lot.

The Best Little Chapel was actually not a set piece constructed in a vacant parking lot at all, but a fake front attached to the northern side of the Hostel Cat building.

As you can see below, the western portion of the hostel’s main building was even incorporated into the design of the chapel.

A white picket fence as well as quite a bit of foliage were added to the western portion of Hostel Cat during the shoot to make the place look less hotel-ish.

A fake bus stop – which was later destroyed – was also brought in for the filming. And Hostel Cat’s real life sign was covered over with signage reading “The Best Little Chapel” for the scene, as well.

Hostel Cat is actually made up of one main building and nine free-standing bungalows.

The back of one of the bungalows was painted over for the shoot. You can check out a great image of Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis sitting in front of that structure here.

The interior of The Best Little Chapel was a set built on a soundstage and not the actual interior of Hostel Cat.

I was thrilled to see that Hostel Cat embraces its filming history. Not only does the lodging make mention of its Hangover appearance on the homepage of its official website, but an image of Galifianakis as “Alan” is also painted on the wall of the main building.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Best Little Chapel from The Hangover is located “at the corner of get a map and f*ck off.” Just kidding. Winking smile The chapel was a fake façade that was built around the north side of Hostel Cat, which is located at 1236 Las Vegas Boulevard South in Las Vegas. The areas that appeared in the scene are denoted in the aerial view below.

March 16, 2015March 13, 2015

“The Hangover” Gas Station

The Grim Cheaper and I spent last week in Las Vegas on a business/pleasure trip (hence the lack of recent blog posts). While there, we were lucky enough to stay at Caesars Palace (post on that location coming soon!) and found ourselves constantly quoting lines from The Hangover. So one evening we decided to watch the 2009 flick and I have to say it was pretty epic to be viewing it while in a room at the very hotel where filming had taken place. One location that I wondered about while watching was the “gas n gulp” station that the boys – Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha) – stopped at on the way to Las Vegas. I figured it was most likely located in the Palmdale area (where many of the desert driving scenes were shot), but The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations clued me into the fact that the station was actually the Jean Fuel West Shell in Jean, Nevada, just east of the California border. So we dropped by to stalk it on our return trip home.

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Jean Fuel West Shell only appeared once in The Hangover, in the rather brief, but hilarious scene in which Alan admonished an old man for looking at his car and Stu tried to defend the actions of his girlfriend who cheated on him with a Carnival Cruise Line bell hop sailor pilot waiter bartender.

The station’s signage was changed to read “gas n gulp” for the shoot.

The fact that filming took place at a Shell, though, was still fairly obvious due to the yellow and red coloring of the station’s carport roof.

Other than the change in signage, the site looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

Some filming also took place inside the Shell’s food mart.

The super nice woman working behind the counter informed me that the interior was changed a bit for the shoot. In real life, the cashier stand is located in the center of the store.

But for the filming of The Hangover, a fake cashier stand was built near the store’s south windows, in the area pictured in the photograph below.

The camera then cheated to the right so that the real cashier stand was not visible behind the actors.

On a side-note – One Hangover location that I will not be stalking, sadly, is the home where Mike Tyson – and his tiger – lived. While I did find the address of that humongous dwelling – 22634 La Quilla Drive in Chatsworth – it is located inside of a gated community and is therefore unstalkable. Sad smile

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Jean Fuel West Shell, aka the gas n gulp from The Hangover, is located at 1 Goodsprings Road in Jean, Nevada.