Burbank – Page 5 – IAMNOTASTALKER

As the old Albert Hammond song says “It never rains in Southern California, but girl, don’t they warn ya, it pours man, it pours!” And pour it did almost all last week all over the normally sun drenched landscape of Los Angeles. While on my way to stalk Burbank’s Handy Grocery Store in the pouring rain this past weekend, I happened to pass right by Walt Disney Studios on Buena Vista Street and was reminded about a story I once heard that seemed quite fitting of the day’s weather.

According to The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book, journalist Peter J. Boyer stated in a Vanity Fair article that Disney is “a place so reviled that even its architecture inspires nasty rumors, such as the apocryphal story that architect Michael Graves arranged the drainage system in the Disney headquarters building [aka the Team Disney building] in such a way that the huge sculpted Seven Dwarfs atop the edifice would seem to be peeing on Disney executives whenever it rained.” LOL So, since it just happened to be raining at the time, I pulled over to see if Boyer’s story had any merit. 🙂 After seeing the Dwarfs in person in the pouring rain, I have to admit that I think the anecdote is somewhat of an urban legend, but it still makes for a great story and hopefully a great blog post. 🙂

Walt Disney built his Burbank studio in 1940 after the enormous financial success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – the world’s first full length animated feature film. At the time it was built the 41 acre lot was comprised of four full size soundstages (there are now six), a backlot that included a Western town, a town square, a residential street, and a small pueblo (the entire backlot has since been demolished), and recreation areas for employees which included ping pong tables and a volleyball court. Over the years many productions have been filmed on the historic Disney lot, including That Darn Cat, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Absent Minded Professor, The Swamp Fox, The Princess Diaries, Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Boy Meets World, Home Improvement, Lizzie Maguire, Less Than Perfect, and Mary Poppins. Ironically enough, Mary Poppins was filmed solely indoors, using up all four of the Disney Studio soundstages. Even the Cherry Tree Lane set where the Banks Family lived was built inside of a soundstage. Being a huge Mary Poppins fan myself, I was highly disappointed when I found this out as I had always hoped to one day see Cherry Tree Lane in person. 🙁 On an interesting side note, even though he passed away in 1966, Walt Disney still holds the record for most Academy Awards won by a single person. In his lifetime, he won a incredible TWENTY-SIX Oscars!

Unfortunately, Disney does not currently offer tours of its studio. : ( But the good news is that the Team Disney building can be viewed from the street outside the studio gates. If you are a big Disney fan, I highly recommend stalking the exterior of the building as it is very cool to see in person. The Seven Dwarf statues are absolutely HUGE. I was shocked at their size when I saw them in person as pictures simply do not do them justice!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Disney Studios is located at 500 S. Buena Vista Street in Burbank. The Team Disney building, with its Seven Dwarfs facade, can be viewed through the main gate located just around the corner on Alameda Avenue. Unfortunately the studio does not offer tours of its property. 🙁 But for $2,169 (per person!!!!!) you can purchase a 6 day/5 night “Hollywood and the Disneyland Resort” vacation from the Adventures by Disney Vacations company. One of the days consists of a behind the scenes tour of Walt Disney Studios.

On Friday night, literally the second my boyfriend got off work, I dragged him right out to see new movie He’s Just Not That Into You. He said afterwards that if he had known it was a two-hour-and-nine-minute-long-movie, he never would have agreed to see it. LOL Needless to say, he just wasn’t that into the movie. But I, on the other hand, was! I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! LOVE LOVE LOVED IT! I was practically skipping out of the theatre afterwards, with a huge grin on my face, thinking to myself that movies like HJNTIY are the reason I moved to Hollywood. Movies like that make me want to act. 🙂 I’m not aiming to be the next Meryl Streep and I have no desire to be the darling of the independent film circuit – I just want to make people laugh and walk out of that movie theatre with a big ol’ smile on their face. 🙂 That’s the kind of acting I want to do – and HJNTIY is EXACTLY the kind of movie I hope to someday be a part of. So, in case you didn’t get it the first few times – I LOVED THIS MOVIE! 🙂

So, yesterday, after I found one of the movie’s filming locations, I, of course, ran right out to stalk it. 🙂 Although the movie is set in the East Coast city of Baltimore, most of the filming took place – of course – in Los Angeles. Only two weeks of filming actually occured in Baltimore and only four of the HJNTIY actors (Bradley Cooper, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly, and Kevin Connolly) made the trip out to the East Coast. The film’s writers, Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn, decided to set their story in Baltimore because they had never seen it done before. Most romantic comedies are set in either New York or Los Angeles and Marc and Abby were hoping to shake things up a bit. Since Marc had lived in Baltimore for ten years before moving to L.A. to pursue a screenwriting career, he knew the coastal city well and thought it was the perfect choice to set their story.

But since I couldn’t very well run right out to Baltimore to stalk HJNTIY, I decided to try to find some of the movie’s West Coast locations. I really wanted to stalk the coffee shop where Drew Barrymore met Kevin Connolly towards the end of the movie, but I struck out on that one. Instead, after a bit of Googling, I happened to find these paparazzi photos of Scarlett Johansson and Bradley Cooper filming a scene at a grocery store in Burbank. From there it was just a matter of finding the right grocery store. And sure enough, I did! 🙂

In real life the grocery store is called Handy Market and it is a very cute and very tiny little shop. According to one of the Handy Market checkers, back in October of 2007 the store was shut down for a full day and a half for the filming of the two short scenes that took place there. Scenes were filmed both inside the store – at the first check-out stand and in a few of the aisles – and outside on the market’s exterior West facing wall.

It’s not hard to see why producers chose to use Handy Market. According to this article about the filming of HJNTIY , director Ken Kwapis said “One of the things that I love about Baltimore is that the texture of the city can be summed-up in one word: brick. The brick textures of the interiors and the exteriors are, to me, so expressive, so distinctive. Being a resident of Baltimore, you may not realize it, but boy, it’s not easy to find a lot of brick in L.A.” LOL Handy’s all-brick exterior must have made it a shoe-in for being used in the movie.

So, for all of you out there who weren’t like me and didn’t catch HJNTIY on opening night, drop what you’re doing and go see it now! I guarantee you so will be that into it! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Burbank’s Handy Market is located at 2514 W. Magnolia Boulevard in – you guessed it! – Burbank. The Home Depot store located at 16800 Roscoe Boulevard in Van Nuys was also used in He’s Just Not That Into You, although I most likely won’t stalk that location. 🙂 My boyfriend would probably be really excited if I did, though. LOL

Tag: Burbank

“It Never Rains In Southern California . . . “

I Am Just So That Into It!