Bridesmaids filming locations

January 3, 2013January 4, 2013

Redwood Bar & Grill from “Bridesmaids”

Once the rain finally stopped falling this past Saturday morning, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to downtown Los Angeles to stalk a Bridesmaids location that has been at the very top of my To-Stalk list for months now – Redwood Bar & Grill, where Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) and Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) went on a spontaneous date towards the end of the movie. I found this locale thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, who has a page dedicated to a few of the spots featured in the 2011 flick.

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Before arriving at Redwood Bar & Grill, I knew virtually nothing about the place, other than the fact that it had been used in Bridesmaids. And because so little of it was shown in the movie, I had no idea what to expect of the interior. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

While fairly non-descript on the outside, the interior of Redwood Bar & Grill is all dim lighting, dark wood paneling and themed nautical décor. Dining there feels like dining in the middle of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, only better. Unfortunately, because the lighting was so low, though, the vast majority of my pictures did not come out. Ugh! Mike, from MovieShotsLA, has promised that he will teach me how to use the aperture settings on my camera in the near future, but in the meantime, you can check out some cool photos of the bar here. (Now why couldn’t my pics have come out that clear?)

Redwood Bar & Grill actually saw its origins as a 1930s-era hamburger stand where Philadelphia native Samuel “Eddie” Spivak sold 10-cent burgers out of a small storefront located at 234 West 1st Street, just downstairs from the Los Angeles Times newsroom. In 1942, Eddie expanded his eatery, as well as its menu, added a bar, and renamed the place the “Redwood House”. Due to its proximity to the newspaper offices, the restaurant became extremely popular with the journalist set, who dubbed the site the “Red Dog”. According to the obituary of Alice Broude, who worked at the Redwood House for more than 50 years, a certain unnamed reporter would place his daily order by stomping his feet three times loudly on the floor. Ha! You can see a photograph of the original Redwood House here and a picture of its former menu here. When the Times Mirror Co., owner of the L.A. Times, decided to expand into the Redwood space in January 1970, Spivak moved his restaurant one block south, where it remains to this day. Despite the move, the watering hole remained popular with Times journalists. So much so that for years the bar was equipped with a special red phone that was connected directly to the paper’s main news desk, just in case any last minute tips came in. It was not only journalists who were drawn to the site, though. Over the years, the Redwood House was frequented by the likes of actors Burt Reynolds and Jack Warden, former presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and such notorious gangsters as Frankie Carbo (who, according to Broude, refused to eat meat on Fridays) and Mickey Cohen (who, also according to Broude, was a fabulous tipper).

At some point in time, the establishment’s name was changed to the Redwood 2nd Street Saloon and it was taken over by new owners In and Ho Park. Sadly, in June 2005, due to dwindling business and failed lease negotiations, Ho and In closed the eatery, which most regulars had described as a real life Cheers (where everybody knows your name). Thankfully though, restaurateurs Christian Frizell and Dev Dugal stepped in, signed a new lease, renovated the interior, and, in September 2005, re-opened the site as a pirate-themed watering hole named the Redwood Bar & Grill. The décor is now decidedly unique and swashbuckler-esque. I absolutely fell in love with the skeleton candelabra pictured below. I so need to find one for myself to add to my Halloween decorations!

Besides spicing up the décor, Frizell and Dugal also revamped the Redwood menu, and, let me tell you, the food is to-die-for! I opted for the Redwood’s Veggie Burger, made on the premises out of mushrooms, vegetables, and quinoa, and not only was it divine, but absolutely HUGE! The GC ordered a cup of the restaurant’s New England Clam Chowder, which was also fabulous, especially considering the chill in the air that day. I honestly cannot more highly recommend stalking Redwood Bar & Grill! It is a shame that we only just discovered the place as I have a feeling that, were we not moving to Palm Springs in three weeks, it would have quickly become a favorite.

In Bridesmaids, Redwood Bar & Grill is where Rhodes and Annie grabbed a drink after her ill-fated flight to Las Vegas. It is there that Rhodes uttered the super-cute line, “There’s something about you – something about you that sticks.” As you can see below, the place looked quite a bit different onscreen.

Because Bridesmaids was set in Milwaukee, the exterior of an actual Milwaukee-area watering hole – Norman One Step (which is now closed), located at 3218 West Cameron Street – was used for the establishing shot of the bar in the movie.

Redwood Bar & Grill also popped up in the 2009 flick (500) Days of Summer, as The Mill – aka the spot where Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and their greeting-card-writing co-workers karaoked on Day (28).

The stage where Summer and the rest of the gang performed is actually there in real life, too, although the Redwood does not actually host karaoke nights.

And the skeleton candelabra that I fell in love with was even pictured briefly in the flick. Love it!

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Redwood Bar & Grill from Bridesmaids is located at 316 West 2nd Street in downtown Los Angeles. The eatery is open daily from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. You can visit the Redwood’s official website here.

December 6, 2012December 5, 2012

Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from “Bridesmaids”

As I mentioned in my post about the apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in Bridesmaids, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I finally managed to track down all of the L.A.-area locations from the 2011 flick last week. Or so I thought. While scanning through the movie on Monday afternoon, making screen captures for my post about Officer Rhodes’ (Chris O’Dowd’s) house, I came across the scene that took place at Bill Cozbi’s (Richard Riehle’s) Auto Body Shop and realized that Mike and I had both somehow completely forgotten about the locale and failed to do any sort of search for it. I immediately shot him an email asking for some help in tracking the place down and five minutes later I received a text that said, “Oh no! You were just there!” As it turns out, the auto body shop that stood in for Bill Cozbi’s in the flick is located in Santa Clarita, right around the corner from Officer Rhodes’ and Judy’s (Jill Clayburgh’s) houses. UGH! So – after smacking myself in the forehead for being such a ditz – I drove all the way back out to the SC yesterday to stalk the place.

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Fortunately, finding this location was a snap. When Mike first received my email, he had to the foresight to do a Google search for Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop. Because that name was obviously a fake, it did not even occur to me to search for it – I had instead been Googling Bridesmaids and auto body shop. Thankfully though, Mike’s query led him to a page on the Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery website which identified the shop as a Bridesmaids filming location and also featured the photograph below. Whoo hoo – I so LOVE it when location owners embrace their property’s filming history!

Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop is first mentioned by Officer Rhodes towards the beginning of Bridesmaids, in the scene in which he pulls Annie (Kristen Wiig) over for having broken taillights. Rhodes tells Annie that she should go see his friend who has a body shop, “Bill Cozbi, with a z – different guy. And don’t mention the whole Bill Cosby thing to him. It drives him nuts. I mean it!” LOL Annie ends up going to the shop at the very end of the movie, after finally deciding to start getting her life back on track. Thankfully, as you can see below, Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen – aside from the name (and, therefore signage) change, of course.

I so love that a variation of one of the shop’s real life signs was used in the movie, though.

While I was stalking the shop, I happened to meet the super-nice owner, who is aptly named Ricardo. He was in absolute SHOCK that I had driven all the way from Pasadena just to see the location. Ricardo spent quite a few minutes filling me in on the filming of Bridesmaids, showing me photographs from the shoot, and he was even nice enough to take the picture of me that appears at the top of this post. He also informed me that producers had taken down a chain link fence that had originally surrounded his property during the shoot and that, after filming wrapped, he decided to replace the old fence with a nicer, more permanent metal one, as you can see below. Personally, I like the look of the place sans fence, but that’s probably because that is how it appeared in Bridesmaids.

Mike has most of the remaining Bridesmaids filming locations posted on his site. You can check out Annie’s Cake Baby shop here, the Brazilian restaurant here, the house where Annie went on a blind date here, and Joni’s Restaurant here.

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery, aka Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from Bridesmaids, is located at 24347 Main Street in Santa Clarita. You can visit the shop’s official website here. Judy’s home from the movie is located right around the corner at 23418 8th Street. And Officer Rhodes’ residence is located directly across the street from Judy’s at 23425 8th Street. Note – the Bridesmaids houses cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive. To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

Judy’s House from “Bridesmaids”

The one location from Bridesmaids that I was most determined to track down – the one that I would not stop bugging poor Mike, from MovieShotsLA, about – was the yellow ranch-style dwelling where Annie’s (Kristen Wigg’s) mom, Judy (Jill Clayburgh, who was ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE in the role, which was, sadly, her last), lived in the 2011 flick. Thankfully, once Mike managed to find Officer Rhodes’ (Chris O’Dowd’s) house, which I blogged about yesterday, tracking down Judy’s was a snap because, in an odd twist, the two properties are located right across the street from one another. While I had told Mike when we first began the search that I had a hunch that the residences would most likely be found in the same vicinity, perhaps even the same town, never in a million years did I think that they would be directly across the street from each other!

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Mike had an inkling that they would be, though. While scanning through Bridesmaids, he noticed that the fake address numbers that producers had given the properties for the filming – 8409 and 8410 – were sequential, which would, in fact, put the two structures across the street from one another. He figured that the residence’s actual addresses had most likely just been shortened – from 28409 to 8409 and from 28410 to 8410, perhaps – for the shoot. So, when he ended up finding the locations, we were both absolutely flabbergasted to learn that the real life numbers – 23418 and 23425 – are not actually in any sort of sequence. Why on earth producers would give two homes that are not supposed to be located anywhere near each other random, but sequential address numbers is absolutely beyond me!

Judy’s house shows up numerous times throughout Bridesmaids, especially towards the end of the movie when Annie moves in with her mother.

As you can see below, the abode looked quite a bit different onscreen than it does in real life. While I figured that the pad had most likely been remodeled in recent months, a super-nice neighbor informed us that the enclosed front porch area that appeared in Bridesmaids was actually a fake that had been built specifically for the filming. I actually think the front porch makes the house much more appealing, which is most likely why it was added.

You can see the home’s real life front door behind Judy, inside of the fake enclosed front porch, in the screen capture below.

The exterior of the home is actually quite deceiving as it looks to be fairly moderate in size. In reality, though, the property, which was originally built in 1948, boasts two bedrooms, one bath, a scant 882 square feet of living space, and a 0.21-acre plot of land. It’s teensy!

And while I originally thought that the residence’s actual interior was used in the filming, that does not seem to be the case. You can check out some photographs of the home’s real life interior here. As you can see, it looks nothing at all like Judy’s wood-paneled, 70s-style abode.

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

Big THANK YOU to the world famous Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Judy’s house from Bridesmaids is located at 23418 8th Street in Santa Clarita. Officer Rhodes’ house is located directly across the street at 23425 8th Street. Note – these properties cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive. To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

December 4, 2012December 3, 2012

Officer Rhodes’ House from “Bridesmaids”

As I mentioned in last Thursday’s post about the apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in Bridesmaids, I recently became just a wee-bit obsessed with tracking down all of the locales featured in the 2011 hit. One of the sites I was most interested in finding, of course, was the small blue ranch-style house belonging to Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). I bugged Mike, from MovieShotsLA, relentlessly to help me out with the search and he finally managed to track the place down last Wednesday morning. Needless to say, I was absolutely ecstatic and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it just a few days later – despite the fact that it was raining at the time. As I have mentioned before, this stalker absolutely HATES rain (thank goodness I am moving to the desert) and there are very few locations that I would actually venture out to stalk during a downpour. But Officer Rhodes’ house was one of ‘em!

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Finding this location took quite a bit of work, actually, so Mike definitely deserves a HUGE pat on the back! While scanning through Bridesmaids looking for clues as to the house’s location, I noticed an address number of 8410 behind Rhodes in the scene in which Annie (Kristen Wiig) leaves a cake on his doorstep. Mike and I both had an inkling that the number was a fake, though.

That inkling was solidified when I spotted a five-digit address number on the residence pictured behind Annie’s car in the same scene. And while I was unable to make out the number with any sort of certainty, I told Mike that I thought it read 23430. As luck would have it, I was right! I had read in the Bridesmaids production notes that towns surrounding Los Angeles had been used to stand in for Milwaukee and Chicago in the flick, so Mike and I decided to begin our hunt in the 23400 blocks of small towns surrounding L.A. proper. And, sure enough, although it took a while, Mike worked his magic and found the pad – in Santa Clarita of all places. Yay!

Officer Rhodes’ house shows up a few times in Bridesmaids and, as you can see below, has not been altered much from its silver screen appearance.

In real life, the tiny cottage, which was originally built in 1948, boasts 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 605 square feet of living space (that’s smaller than my apartment!), and a small 0.085-acre parcel of land.

As you can see below, the place is absolutely adorable in person – and does not seem like an L.A.-area house at all.

I was most excited to see the front porch area where the raccoons devoured Annie’s cake in the movie. LOL LOVE IT!

And while I am not certain, I have a hunch that the interior (LOVE the beamed roof and French doors, by the way!) of Rhodes’ house was just a set.

Tomorrow, I will be blogging about the residence where Annie’s mom, Judy (Jill Clayburgh), lived in Bridesmaids – which just so happens to be located directly across the street from Rhodes’ house! I was going to blog both properties together, but ran out of time today. So until tomorrow . . .

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Officer Rhodes’ house from Bridesmaids is located at 23425 8th Street in Santa Clarita. Note – the property cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive. To gain access to the site, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

November 29, 2012November 28, 2012

Lillian’s Apartment from “Bridesmaids”

This past Monday, the Grim Cheaper and I both had some business to attend to on L.A.’s West Side, so we decided to drive out that way together. Because his meetings were going to run a lot longer than mine, I figured I would do some stalking in the area while I waited. And I really have to give myself a major pat on the back here as I managed to get quite a bit of stalking done using the GC’s car, which does not have a GPS. I am seriously directionally-challenged and typically cannot find my way out of a paper bag, but the direction gods were definitely smiling down upon me on Monday because I managed to get to several locales with no problems whatsoever . . . in Venice, mind you – an area I am not particularly fond of due to the crowds, the sketchiness, and the lack of parking places and public restrooms. So needless to say I am very proud of myself! I feel like I can conquer the world now! Winking smile Anyway, one of the locations that I managed to successfully find my way to was the supposed Milwaukee-area apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in the 2011 hit Bridesmaids.

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I should mention here that I did not particularly enjoy Bridesmaids the first time I saw it – perhaps because I was home alone at the time and had no one to laugh with. But when the GC and I randomly caught the last half of it on TV while vacationing in La Quinta last August, I was practically rolling on the floor in hysterics. Then when my good friends, fellow stalkers Lavonna and Kim, came for a visit in November they quoted the movie constantly, so I re-watched it during their stay and became just a wee bit obsessed – the airplane scene (which you can watch by clicking below – caution, it is NSFW) is SO me, I cannot even tell you! Anyway, I spent the past few weeks bugging Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to help me track down all of the locations from the flick, the final two of which he did yesterday, after which he sent me a text that said, “Can we move on from this now?” LOL (I have to say that I was seriously disappointed to learn that Joni’s Restaurant, where Lillian and Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) had coffee at the beginning of the flick, was just a set built on the Paramount Studios backlot. But I digress.)

Lillian’s apartment was kind of a random find, actually. While the majority of the Bridesmaids establishing shots were taken in the Milwaukee area, all actual filming was done right here in Southern California. At one point in the movie, Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) mentioned that Lillian’s building was located on the corner of Craner and Rose. And while I was not aware of any L.A. street named Craner, I was, of course, aware of Venice Beach’s famous Rose Avenue and decided to begin my search there. Sure enough, I found Lillian’s apartment just a bit east of Rose Avenue, on the corner of San Juan and Cabrillo. Woot woot!

Amazingly enough, despite the fact that the building is quite beautiful and looks to be somewhat historic, I could find absolutely no information whatsoever about it online, outside of the fact that it was originally built in 1922 (thank you, Property Shark!). According to a Panoramio poster named “gregmaz”, the domicile was designed and constructed by Abbot Kinney, the father of Venice himself, but I could not find any other references which support that claim. And being that Kinney passed away in 1920, two full years before Property Shark states that the place was built, I am fairly certain that he had nothing to do with its creation.

The building shows up twice in Bridesmaids – first in a brief establishing shot before the scene in which Lillian tells Annie that she has just gotten engaged.

And next towards the very end of the movie, in the scene in which Annie and Helen (Rose Byrne) track Lillian to her apartment on the morning of her wedding.

The interior of Lillian’s apartment was just a set, though. You can check out the real life interior of two of the building’s actual units here and here.

The very same building was also featured very briefly (blink and you’ll miss it, in fact) in the 1990 movie A Girl to Kill For, in the scene in which Chuck (Sasha Jenson) and Sue (Karen Medak) are being chased by the police. (Please pardon the craptastic screen captures below.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Lillian’s apartment building from Bridesmaids is located at 300 San Juan Avenue in Venice.