Tag: Celebrities

The “Crossroads” Motel

One location that I have been trying to track down for what seems like ages now is the supposed Tucson, Arizona-area motel where Ben (aka Anson Mount) played the song “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” for Lucy (aka Britney Spears) in the 2002 movie Crossroads. In the flick, Ben takes Lucy into a large, very unique-looking, surfboard-shaped glass room and proceeds to play the song for her on a piano that is stationed there. Well, let me tell you, I became absolutely intrigued with that room ever since first seeing the movie almost a decade ago and immediately added the motel to my “To-Find” list, but for whatever reason could just not seem to locate it. So imagine my surprise when fellow stalker Owen emailed me a little over two weeks ago to ask if I happened to know where that motel was. He was trying to track it down because, as he said, “the big room with the large glass windows is pretty cool”. What can I say – great minds think alike. When I told Owen that I had no idea where it was located, he got right to work in finding it. He had learned from watching the Crossroads’ DVD commentary with producer Ann Carli, director Tamra Davis, and writer Shonda Rimes that the motel was located somewhere in “the Valley” and that a production designer named Waldemar had discovered it while driving around scouting locations for the film. So what did Owen do? Yep, he went straight to the source and contacted Waldemar directly! Well, the very next day there was an email from Waldemar waiting in Owen’s inbox – with an address. Yay! As it turns out filming had taken place at the Hometown Inn in North Hills. So I dragged my dad right on out to stalk the place a few days later. (Now I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here that I, too, listened to that very same DVD commentary while trying to locate the motel and never in a million years did it occur to me to go after Waldemar himself! Owen is most definitely the master and my hat is completely off to him on this one!)

Oddly enough, the room where Ben played “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” is now a restaurant of some sort and it looks quite a bit different today than it did when filming took place back in 2002. The whole motel has an odd feel to it, truth be told, and the place seemed to be rather deserted while I was there taking pictures.

I cannot express how cool it was to finally be standing in that room, though, and thinking about the fact that Miss Britney Spears had once been standing – and singing – in that same exact spot.

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Quite a bit of the Hometown Inn was featured in Crossroads, including the front entrance;

and the pool area . . .

. . . which appeared in the scene in which Lucy speaks with her friends, Kit (aka Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (aka Taryn Manning), about the fact that her mother does not want a relationship with her.

As you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, the blue lip which surrounds the perimeter of the pool still looks exactly the same today as it did when the movie was filmed!

The Hometown Inn was not used for the filming of the interior of Lucy, Kit, Ben, and Mimi’s motel room, though. As was the case with the majority of the motel room scenes in Crossroads, interior filming took place at the now-defunct Ambassador Hotel near Downtown Los Angeles. You can see what an actual Hometown Inn room looks like here.

While we were stalking the Hometown Inn, I desperately wanted to find the payphone where Lucy called her father, Pete (aka Dan Aykroyd), in the movie, but for the life of me I just could NOT seem to figure out where it was. I knew the phone had to be situated somewhere near the motel’s main entrance because Ben’s car was visible in the background behind Lucy in the scene, but I just could not locate it anywhere.

It wasn’t until after I returned home and watched the above-pictured deleted scene that I realized the payphone was located inside of the motel’s lobby.

That payphone is, sadly, no longer there. And while I did go inside the lobby while I was stalking the motel, because I did not realize it had been featured in the movie, I, unfortunately, did not get any photographs of it.

Crossroads Behind-the-Scenes Featurette–Hometown Inn

You can watch a behind-the-scenes video of the Hometown Inn scene being filmed by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hometown Inn, aka the Tucson, Arizona motel from Crossroads, is located at 9401 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills. You can visit the motel’s official website here.

March 29, 2011
Paty’s Restaurant from “Desperate Housewives”

To continue on with this week’s restaurant theme, today I thought I would write a post about an eatery that the Grim Cheaper and I stalked back in January – the historic Paty’s Restaurant in Toluca Lake, which first opened for business just a little over a half century ago in 1960. I had become a wee bit obsessed with tracking down the restaurant a few weeks beforehand while watching the Season 7 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Assassins”. At the very beginning of that episode, Mike Delfino (aka James Denton) is shown eating at a supposed Alaska-area diner whereupon he receives a phone call from Felicia Tilman (aka Harriet Sansom Harris) who accuses him of having shot his neighbor, Paul Young (aka Mark Moses). While watching the scene, I had noticed a wall displaying what looked like autographed celebrity headshots in the background behind Mike and my stalking radar immediately went on high alert because, let’s face it, any restaurant that has a wall full of celebrity headshots is undoubtedly my kind of place!

Because Desperate Housewives is filmed at Universal Studios, I had a hunch that the restaurant was most likely located in Universal City or in one of its neighboring communities. So I immediately started using Google to search for diners in different areas of the San Fernando Valley, beginning in Universal City and working my way outwards. It wasn’t very long before I came to the Toluca Lake district and, amazingly enough, when I inputted the words “diner” and “Toluca Lake” into the Google search bar, Paty’s Restaurant was the first item to pop up. And, sure enough, it was the right place – celebrity headshots and all! So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk it that very weekend. And I have to say that we were NOT disappointed. Paty’s menu is quite extensive and the food they serve up is nothing short of EXCEPTIONAL! I opted for the Southwest Chicken Salad entrée which featured an array of chicken strips – my favorite food – atop a large serving of lettuce and avocado. And, let me tell you, it was A-MA-ZING! The ranch dressing was simply out of this world, as were the chicken strips! For a stalker like myself, finding Paty’s was like a dream come true! A restaurant that not only serves comfort food, but is a celebrity hangout AND a filming location – what more could a girl ask for? Love it, love it, love it!

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As the headshots on the wall can attest to, Paty’s Restaurant has been a major celebrity hangout pretty much from the time of its inception just over five decades ago. A few of the stars who dined there in the early years include Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, all of the Brady Bunch kids, James Garner, Jane Russell(!), Ed Asner, Roy Rogers, Debbie Reynolds, and Jonathan Winters.

Most amazing of all, though – to me at least – was the fact that, according to the waitress that I spoke with, a young Michael Jackson, along with other members of his family, had once dined at the eatery during the heyday of the Jackson 5! So incredibly cool!

In more recent years, such stars as Nick Jonas, Joe Jonas, Hilary Duff, Haylie Duff, Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus, Jennie Garth, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Tisdale, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Shia LaBeouf, George Clooney, Ron Howard, Kevin Costner, Lorenzo Lamas, Leah Remini, Tim Allen, John Travolta, and George Lopez have all stopped by Paty’s to grab a bite to eat.

Our waitress also informed us that one of Paty’s regulars is George Barris, an automobile customizer who has designed numerous cars for television shows, most notably the Batmobile from the original Batman television series.

And while George did not design the DeLorean from the Back to the Future movies, he did apparently build a replica of one and often drives it to the restaurant, which is how the above photograph came to be taken.

While we were dining I noticed an autographed photograph of the cast of The Office displayed on one of Paty’s walls. When I inquired about it, one of the waitresses told me that a few episodes of the series had been filmed on location at the restaurant, but she was unsure of exactly which episodes.

Because the restaurant did not look familiar to me from the show, I called upon fellow stalker David in Spain who just recently started watching the series from the beginning. Since the show was fresh in his mind, I was hoping he might remember which episode had been filmed at Paty’s and, sure enough, he did! David emailed me back almost immediately to let me know that Paty’s was the spot where Dwight Schrute (aka Rainn Wilson) sat down with Jan Levinson (aka Melora Hardin) and told her he wanted to take over management of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch in the Season 3 episode titled “The Coup”.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker David for figuring out which episode of The Office was filmed at Paty’s!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Paty’s Restaurant is located at 10001 Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

March 25, 2011
Watching “The Mentalist” Being Filmed – A Second Time!

This past Tuesday morning I was interviewed about my website for an article on filming locations that will be published sometime in early April in a few local, San Gabriel Valley-area newspapers. While we were talking, the reporter happened to mention that she had just spoken with the City of Monrovia’s Film Liaison who had told her that fave show The Mentalist would be filming that very day on Myrtle Avenue in Downtown Monrovia. So, I immediately headed right on over there to do a bit of Simon Baker stalking. As I have mentioned a few times before on this blog, I do not particularly enjoy stalking alone, so I begged my mom, who lives just up the street from where filming was taking place, to come to the set with me and, thankfully, she agreed. When we arrived, we discovered that producers had built a fake, but very detailed jewelry store set inside of what is, in actuality, a large kitchen appliance store named Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc.

I cannot tell you how fascinating it was to see the fake store, which was named Nesbitt & Company Jewelers, in person. A false rear wall had been built in front of the large appliances that are normally on display in the front windows of the Kitchen & Bath Expo and fake jewelry cases along with fake jewels had been placed in the main area of the store and the effect was incredibly realistic. So realistic, in fact, that one of the people we spoke with who had stopped to watch the filming with us mentioned that she had walked by the storefront the previous morning and thought to herself, ‘Just what the area needs – another jewelry store!’ It was not until she saw the filming trucks the following day that she realized the entire thing was just a set.

Pictured above is what Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc. looks like in real life.

As you can see, set decorators simply covered over the kitchen displays with fake walls. My mom asked one of the crew members why producers had not simply found a real jewelry store to film at, since there are more than a few of them in the area, but he told us that they needed a jewelry store situated next to an alley. When they couldn’t find one that met their needs, they simply decided to create their own. Ah, the magic of Hollywood!

The scene we watched being filmed involved Patrick Jane (aka Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (aka Robin Tunney) pulling up next to the jewelry store in Lisbon’s car and then walking through the alleyway together. The camera was set up directly across the street from the store.

Traffic on Myrtle was shut down only intermittently during the filming and, with the crime scene tape strung across the alley, the flashing lights on the many police cars parked at the scene, and the camera not being readily visible, it must have looked to those driving by as if an actual crime had just taken place.

Simon Baker and Robin Tunney walked out just a few short minutes after we arrived on the set and Simon immediately smiled and waved at the fans standing across the street (there were only about five of us) and then the two of them walked over to the car they were set to be driving in the scene. I was really hoping that Simon would walk over to take pictures with the fans, since there were so few of us, but he never did.

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The driving scene was completed in only one take and then Robin and Simon headed into the alleyway to do some more filming. Unfortunately, we could not get very close to the alley so we left shortly after that.

On the way back to my parents’ apartment, I noticed that every single store and restaurant on Myrtle Avenue had a sign offering discounts to the film crew taped to their front windows, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever! Talk about being a film-friendly city! Love it!

Some filming also took place at Monrovia’s Vertia Salon, which is located right around the corner from the Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc., but unfortunately I arrived after that scene had already been completed.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc., aka the fake jewelry store set from The Mentalist, is located at 415 South Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia. The alleyway where filming took place is located just south of the Expo. Verita Salon is located at 111 East Lime Avenue in Monrovia.

March 24, 2011
The Original Pantry Cafe

Well, it is shaping up to be restaurant week at iamnotastalker.com because for the third day in a row now here I am with yet another eatery to blog about – this time Downtown Los Angeles’ historic Original Pantry Café which first opened almost nine decades ago in 1924. While I had actually known about the landmark restaurant for many years due to the fact that it has long been one of the Grim Cheaper’s boss’ favorite breakfast joints, it wasn’t until fellow stalker Lavonna recently informed me that my girl, Miss Marilyn Monroe, had once dined there that I realized the place was also a stalking location. Just a few of the other luminaries who have patronized the legendary restaurant over the years include Humphrey Bogart, Sammy Davis, Jr., former President Bill Clinton, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Martin Luther King, Jr. So a couple of weeks ago, while out doing some stalking in Downtown Los Angeles, the GC and I decided to hit the place up for lunch.

The Original Pantry Café first opened for business in 1924 in a storefront located one block west of where it stands today. The tiny eatery consisted of one counter with seating for fifteen, a hot plate, a grill, and a sink. The place became extremely popular from the get-go thanks to its hearty servings and reasonable prices and hungry patrons formed lines that wound around the block out in front of the eatery on an almost daily basis. The Pantry flourished even during the Depression years and, in 1934, expanded its sitting area by adding a dining room. In 1950, the State of California took over the space where the Pantry was located in order to build a freeway onramp and the restaurant was forced to move to its current location at the corner of 9th and Figueroa Streets, where it has remained to this day.

On the day of the move, breakfast was served at the Pantry’s original location in the morning and then dinner was subsequently served at the new locale at night, so the restaurant, which is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, actually has the distinction of being able to say that it has never closed and has never been without a customer since its first day of business back in 1924. And to prove it, as you can see in the above photograph, the restaurant’s front doors are sans locks. In 1980, the Original Pantry Café was faced with demolition once again, but Richard Riordan, the future mayor of the City of Los Angeles, stepped in and purchased the property and some neighboring storefronts for $3.5 million. Thankfully, he left the exterior of the property, as well as the restaurant’s menu, exactly as they had been since the new location first opened in 1950. The interior has, sadly, been remodeled quite a bit in recent years, though. On October 5, 1982, the restaurant was declared Los Angeles’ Historic-Cultural Monument Number 255. Today the pantry, which can seat 84 patrons, still has customers lining up around the block on a daily basis, with some guests waiting up to two hours before being served.

When we showed up to stalk the place, though, there was no line and we were seated immediately – which should have been a clue. I am sad to say that our meal was not very good, which was highly disappointing as the place serves up mostly comfort food – my favorite . But from what I have since learned from the GC’s boss, the Original Pantry Café is definitely a breakfast place, so it looks like we just picked the wrong time to stalk it. Apparently the Pantry’s breakfasts are out of this world, which is why the place usually has large lines during the morning hours. And while our lunch left quite a bit to be desired, I have to say that the Pantry was definitely a cool place to hang out.

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The Original Pantry Café is also a filming location. In the 2000 movie The Million Dollar Hotel, the Pantry was where Detective Skinner (aka Mel Gibson) got into a fist fight with Tom Tom (aka Jeremy Davies). The movie was filmed before the recent remodel, though, so the restaurant is largely unrecognizable from it.

In 2007’s Knocked Up, the Pantry was where Ben Stone (aka Seth Rogan) told his father, who was played by actor Harold Ramis, that he had gotten a girl pregnant.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Lavonna for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Original Pantry Café is located at 877 South Figueroa Street in Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The Pantry is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

March 23, 2011
The HMS Bounty Bar and Restaurant from “Mad Men”

Another stalking stop on the Grim Cheaper’s Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt around Los Angeles that we embarked upon this past February was the historic Koreatown eatery known as the HMS Bounty Bar and Restaurant. And while I had known about the watering hole’s vast history and longtime celebrity clientele before we dined there, up until this past Friday afternoon I had no idea whatsoever that the place was also a filming location. I first read about the bar, which was founded over six decades ago in 1948, in the book Peaceful Places: Los Angeles, 110 Tranquil Sites in the City of Angels and Neighboring Communities and, because the GC loves all things historic, I knew it would be right up his alley. And it was! But imagine my surprise when, while doing some research on the Quality Café last Friday afternoon, I came across a blurb on fave website LA Time Machines which stated that the nautically-themed restaurant had been used in the Season 1 episode of Mad Men titled “Indian Summer”. So incredibly cool!

The HMS Bounty was originally founded in 1948 on the bottom floor of the Gaylord Hotel and was known at the time as the “Gay Room”. Both the hotel and the restaurant were named in honor of legendary land developer and longtime socialist Henry Gaylord Wilshire, for whom Los Angeles’ famed Wilshire Boulevard was also named. The Gay Room became extremely popular with the Hollywood elite and the political luminaries of the day and just a few of the legends who were regulars there included British statesman Winston Churchill, actor Jack Webb, radio commentator Walter Winchell, and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

The watering hole even features plaques above many of its booths which cite the names of the legends who once sat there. The GC and I happened to dine at the favorite booth of Wilbur Clark, the restaurateur who founded the famed Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn in Las Vegas (pictured above). Since its inception in 1948, the Gay Room has changed hands several times and has been known as the Gaylord Dining Room, the Secret Harbor, and the Golden Anchor. In 1962, it opened as the HMS Bounty Bar and Restaurant and it has remained so to this day. Amazingly enough, even with the numerous changes of ownership, the eatery’s interior remains largely the same as it was when it was first founded over six decades ago.

And, as you can see in the above photographs, the place is still going strong! It was absolutely jam-packed while we were there and the bar area was strictly standing-room-only. Thanks to the dimly lit interior, the restaurant still attracts stars to this day. In recent months, both Chloe Sevigny and The O.C.’s Adam Brody have been spotted there. And the “wake” for the famed Ambassador Hotel, which used to stand directly across the street from the Gaylord, was held at the Bounty on February 2, 2006 and was hosted by none other than actress Diane Keaton.

The bathrooms for the HMS Bounty are located in the lobby area of the historic Gaylord Hotel, which means that if you are dining at the restaurant, you can catch a glimpse of the former hotel’s beautiful interior. The 14-story building, which is now made up of apartment units, was designed by J.B. Lilly and P.B. Fletcher in 1924 and, at the time, was Los Angeles’ tallest structure.

There are several memorabilia items from the hotel’s heyday on display in the lobby area, including antique room keys, an old coffee shop menu, and the guest register (pictured above).

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In the “Indian Summer” episode of Mad Men, the HMS Bounty stood in for the supposed Manhattan-area La Trombetta seafood restaurant where Peggy Olson (aka Elisabeth Moss) suffered through a horrible blind date with truck driver Carl Winter (aka Aaron Hill).

That scene was filmed in the HMS Bounty’s back room, which I unfortunately only took one photograph of.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The HMS Bounty Restaurant from the “Indian Summer” episode of Mad Men is located at 3357 Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown, just west of Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

March 22, 2011
The Quality Café

While stalking in Downtown Los Angeles a couple of weekends ago, the Grim Cheaper and I found ourselves hungry so I suggested grabbing some lunch at the Quality Café on West 7th Street – a diner that has appeared in countless productions over the years. When we showed up to stalk the place, though, we were shocked to discover that it was completely boarded up. I was even further shocked to discover, once I returned home, that, aside from some brief blurbs about its filming history, I could not seem to find any information about the place online. I was extremely curious if the cafe had ever been an actual working restaurant or if it had only ever existed as a film set. So I contacted fellow stalker Harry Medved, author of one of my very favorite stalking tomes – Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors – who was nice enough to give me the scoop on the former greasy spoon. As it turns out, the Quality Café was indeed a real life restaurant at one point time. It closed its doors a few years back and is now used solely for filming, although word on the street is that the place might re-open as an eatery once again in the near future.

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Being that it is completely boarded up and there is not a whole lot to see while there, the Quality Café does not make for a great stalking venue, but because it has such an incredibly vast filming history, I figured it was worthy of a blog post.

In Catch Me If You Can, it is while dining at the Quality Café that a waiter clues Carl Hanratty (aka Tom Hanks) into the fact that Barry Allen, the alias Frank Abagnale Jr. (aka Leonardo DiCaprio) has been using, is the actual name of the comic book character “The Flash”.

In 1995’s Se7en, Tracy Mills (aka Gwyneth Paltrow) confesses to Detective Lt. William Somerset (aka Morgan Freeman) that she is pregnant with Detective David Mills’ (aka Brad Pitt’s) baby over a cup of coffee at the Quality Café.

Morgan Freeman returned to the Quality Café in 2004 to film the scene from Million Dollar Baby in which his character, Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris, takes Maggie Fitzgerald (aka Hilary Swank) out to celebrate her birthday.

In Gone in Sixty Seconds, the Quality Café is the diner where Helen Raines (aka Grace Zabriskie), the mother of Memphis (aka Nicolas Cage) and Kip Raines (aka Giovanni Ribisi), works.

In Training Day, Detective Alonzo Harris (aka Denzel Washington) and Jake Hoyt (aka Ethan Hawke) meet up at the café on their first day of working together.





In Old School, Mitch Martin (aka Luke Wilson) takes Nicole (aka Ellen Pompeo) to the Quality Café and tries to convince her that he is actually a nice guy.

In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, John Smith (aka Brad Pitt) and Eddie (aka Vince Vaughn) meet up at the Quality Café to discuss the failed assassination attempt of Benjamin Danz (aka Adam Brody).

In 2001’s Ghost World, Enid (aka Thora Birch) and Rebecca (aka a very young Scarlett Johansson) spy on some supposed Satanists while dining at the Quality Café.

In 2009’s The Stepfather, the Quality Café is where David Harris (aka Dylan Walsh) asks Michael Harding (aka Penn Badgley) to be his best man.





In Sex and Death 101, the Quality Café is where Death Nell (aka Winona Ryder) tells Roderick Blank (aka Simon Baker) her life story.

In 2008’s The Midnight Meat Train, the Quality Café is where Leon’s (aka Bradley Cooper’s) wife, Maya (aka Leslie Bibb), works.



In 1993’s What’s Love Got To Do With It, the Quality Café is where Ike Turner (aka Laurence Fishburne) takes Anna Mae Bullock (aka Angela Bassett) out to dinner for the first time.

The Quality Café was the site of a triple murder in the Season One episode of CSI: New York titled “Outside Man”.

In the Season One episode of Mad Men titled “5G”, the Quality Café stood in for the Delight Café where Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm) met up with his half-brother, Adam Whitman (aka Jay Paulson), whom he had been estranged from for years.



Harry Medved also let me know that, according to Marty Cummins, the key assistant location manager for 500 Days of Summer, the Quality Café is where Summer (aka Zooey Deschanel) broke up with Tom (aka Joseph Gordon-Levitt) at the beginning of the flick.

And while the exterior of the restaurant appeared as a local hangout in 2004’s You Got Served . . .



. . . as you can see in the above screen captures, a different restaurant was used for the interior filming.

EMBED-The Quality Cafe in Movies Mash-Up – Watch more free videos

You can watch a fabulous compilation from the Screen Junkies website of several different movies that have been filmed at the café by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Harry Medved for filling me in on the restaurant’s history.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Quality Café is located at 1238 West 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles. The restaurant is currently closed to the public and is only available for film shoots, so I can’t say that I’d really recommend stalking it as there is just not a whole lot to see.

March 21, 2011
Alicia Silverstone’s “The Kind Diet” Book Signing

This past Wednesday night I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to my favorite local bookstore, Vroman’s (which coincidentally just appeared in the most recent episode of Modern Family, but more on that later), to attend the book signing and discussion for Alicia Silverstone’s new lifestyle tome The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet. Even though I am not in any way, shape, or form a vegan, I was absolutely DYING to attend the book signing because, as I have mentioned a few times before on this blog, not only is Clueless one of my all-time favorite movies, but Alicia and I happened to grow up in the same hometown – San Mateo, California – so I have always had a very special place in my heart for the actress. Because I am a diabetic and on a very strict, virtually no-carbohydrate diet, though, and because most vegan diets that I have read about tend to favor carbs, I was not actually interested in purchasing a copy of Alicia’s book for myself. But my good friend Nat, who actually attended San Mateo High School – Alicia’s alma mater – is a vegan and she absolutely LOVES Alicia’s book – and her lifestyle blog, The Kind Life – so I decided I would purchase a copy for her as a little “just because” present. Which is how the GC and I found ourselves heading over to Vroman’s at about 5 p.m. this past Wednesday night. And, as always, before the event got started, I sent him outside to snap some photographs of Alicia when she arrived.

The signing began right on time, at 7 p.m., but for some reason it was VERY strictly monitored. No photographs WHATSOEVER were allowed during the event – not when Alicia walked into the room, not during the discussion session, and not while standing in line waiting to have our books signed. We were told shortly before her arrival that each guest would be allowed one – and only one – posed photograph with Alicia (which I could NOT have been more excited about as most celebs will not actually pose for pictures during a signing), but otherwise photographs of any kind would not be allowed. To enforce this, two quite burly Pasadena policemen were on site and they threatened to remove anyone who was even spotted with a camera in their hands during the event! So I was extremely thankful that the GC had managed to snap some photographs of Alicia outside of the store.

Alicia, who is currently pregnant, was ABSOLUTELY adorable in person and much taller than I had expected her to be, although she was wearing some fairly tall heels. She walked directly to the podium upon arrival, introduced herself, and started speaking about why she decided to write The Kind Diet, which was an extremely surreal moment for me as it was like watching the Haitian immigrant debate scene from Clueless (pictured above) come alive before my very eyes. I kept having to pinch myself to make sure that it was all really happening and that I wasn’t actually at home sitting in front of my television set. I have to say that in person, Alicia reminded me A LOT of Cher, her Clueless alter-ego. In real life, Alicia has the same mannerisms, facial expressions, and vocal tendencies that I had grown so familiar with from watching the movie over and over again. And I can honestly say that I love Alicia even more now than I did before. The actress came off as extremely charming, warm, genuine, and sweet. She was also poised, well-read, and wildly knowledgeable about veganism, holistic medicine, and healthy nutrition. I was riveted listening to her and, while not a vegan, found myself agreeing whole-heartedly with the vast majority of what she had to say. She also handled herself incredibly well when one of the audience members asked her an asinine question about veganism and pregnancy, in which he tried to make Alicia look bad. (Honestly, if you don’t agree with her lifestyle and are not a fan of hers, then why come to the event????) Alicia responded to him, though, with honesty, wit, and a bit of snarkiness and ended up making him look like a complete and total moron. As we left the event, I found myself wondering how she managed to do that! I cannot tell you how much I would love to be able to tell a rude person off without breaking my cool and all the while seeming poised and charming. But I digress. I was most surprised to hear Alicia speak about diabetes and veganism. As it turns out, her diet does not favor carbohydrates at all and is actually very similar to the diet I am currently on, so it looks like I am now going to have to buy a copy of the book for myself!

After Alicia’s speech, which lasted about thirty minutes, we all lined up to meet the actress. Alicia really took her time with all of her fans and seemed to have an incredibly warm and open personality. And, as promised, every guest got to pose for a photograph with her, which I was absolutely floored about!

Nat’s signed book is pictured above.

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Alicia’s inscription reads, “Dear Natalie, Thank you for loving the book! <3, Alicia Silverstone”.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, fave show Modern Family recently did some filming on location at Vroman’s Bookstore. The final scene of the Season 2 episode titled “Two Monkeys and a Panda”, in which Mitchell Pritchett (aka Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron Tucker (aka Eric Stonestreet) peruse various books on parenting, took place near the store’s Current Event’s section.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Vroman’s Bookstore is located at 695 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can check out the store’s upcoming signings here. You can purchase Alicia Silverstone’s book The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet here. You can visit Alicia’s lifestyle blog, The Kind Life, here. And you can check out future L.A.-area book signings and other celebrity events on my Upcoming Celebrity Events page here.

March 18, 2011
The Barclay Hotel from “As Good As It Gets”

This past weekend, the Grim Cheaper and I re-watched the movie As Good As It Gets, which I had not seen since it first came out in theatres almost 15 years ago. I am ashamed to admit that I had somehow forgotten what a great flick it is! While watching, I, of course, became a bit obsessed with tracking down some of the Southern California locations featured in it and just about had a heart attack when I read on IMDB’s As Good As It Gets filming locations page that the interior of the Barclay Hotel in downtown Los Angeles stood in for the movie’s fictional Café 24 Heures, where Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) worked and where Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) dined each morning. So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place this past Sunday afternoon. As it turns out, this location proved to be one VERY LUCKY find as it has been used in countless productions over the years.

First built in 1897 and commissioned by L.A. businessman Isaac Newton Van Nuys, the Barclay Hotel was originally known as the Van Nuys Hotel The Beaux-Arts-style building was designed by the architecture firm Morgan + Walls and, with its sprawling lobby, detailed stained glass windows, and phone service in each room, was considered one of the finest hotels of its day. In 1929, the property’s name was changed to the Barclay Hotel and there is supposedly a sign still visible on one of the building’s exterior walls which reads “Van Nuys Hotel, Rooms $1 and Up.” It would have been so incredibly cool to see, but, sadly, I could not find it anywhere. The Barclay has the distinction of being known as downtown L.A.’s oldest continuously operating hotel and is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. It currently serves as a residential hotel which offers affordable housing to its residents, many of whom have lived there for years.

The GC and I were lucky enough to speak with the Barclay’s manager as well as one of the hotel’s longtime residents while we were stalking the place, both of whom could NOT have been nicer! They filled us in on all of the filming that has taken place on the premises over the years and allowed me to take all of the photographs of the interior that I wanted. Yay! The resident that we spoke with was literally like a walking encyclopedia of the hotel’s vast filming history and in some instances was able to tell me not only when filming of certain productions had taken place, but how long the crew was onsite, AND he also knew the names of particular episodes of shows that had filmed on the premises and the exact dates on which those episodes had aired! Speaking with him was like . . . well, it was like speaking with myself, actually.

The Barclay Hotel’s actual, working lobby was transformed into the supposed Manhattan-area Café 24 Heures for the filming of As Good As It Gets.

According to the hotel manager, producers not only brought in several booths for the filming;

but they also built a fake waitress station;

and swapped out the lobby’s front windows with French doors, which were then swapped back after filming had wrapped.

The hotel’s real life check-in desk, which is now caged, was used as the Café’s bar in the movie.

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The entire opening scene of the 1998 disaster movie Armageddon takes place in front of the Barclay Hotel and the neighboring Farmers & Merchants National Bank, which were both made to look like they were located in New York City.

In 2002’s Catch Me If You Can, the Barclay was the apartment building/residential hotel from which a young Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) was evicted after having written a series of bad checks to the landlord.

Leo returned to the Barclay for the filming of last year’s Inception, in which the hotel was featured twice. It first showed up towards the very beginning of the movie in the scene in which Cobb (DiCaprio) is dunked into a bathtub. According to the manager, that scene was filmed in one of the Barclay’s second floor hotel rooms.

The Barclay’s lobby was later used as the African casino where Cobb meets up with Eames (Tom Hardy). The hotel’s check-in desk is where Eames cashed in his casino chips in the scene.

The Barclay also stood in for the Columbian hotel where John Smith (Brad Pitt) and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie) met at the very beginning of 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

A fake bar was set up in the Barclay’s lobby for the filming of that scene.

In 2009’s (500) Days of Summer, the Barclay’s lobby was transformed into the coffee shop where Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) regularly hung out with his friends McKenzie (Geoffrey Arend) and Paul (Matthew Gray Gubler).

The Barclay’s former coffee shop, which is located on the southeast corner of West 4th and South Main Streets, is not currently a working restaurant, but was kept intact in order to be used for filming, which I think is so incredibly cool! Unfortunately, that area is closed to the public so I could only take photographs of it through its front windows.

The cafe was featured in the Season 5 episode of The Closer titled “Tapped Out”, in the scene in which Lieutenants Flynn (Anthony John Denison) and Provenza (G.W. Bailey) are shown eating breakfast and discussing Provenza’s new girlfriend all the while ignoring a crime taking place directly outside.

There is another vacant room located on the eastern side of the hotel that is also often used for filming.

That room was recently dressed to look like a New York bakery in the Season 7 episode of CSI: New York titled “To What End”.

The exterior of the Barclay also appeared a few times throughout the episode.

Most amazing of all, though – to me, at least – is the fact that the Barclay appeared in the pilot episode of the television series Starsky & Hutch way back in 1975, looking almost exactly the same as it does today! As I mentioned above, the check-in desk has since been caged in, but other than that minor detail, the Barclay has remained unchanged in the more than 36 years since filming took place. Love it, love it, love it!

Ironically enough, the Starsky and Hutch movie, which premiered in 2004, was also filmed at the Barclay. The flick’s opening scene took place on the hotel’s roof.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Barclay Hotel, aka Café 24 Heures from As Good As It Gets, is located at 103 West 4th Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

March 17, 2011
Maggie Peyton’s House from “Herbie Fully Loaded”

After fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, so expertly tracked down the Georgia Rule house for me last week, I asked for his assistance in locating the residence where the Peyton family – Ray Peyton Sr. (aka Michael Keaton) and his children Ray Peyton Jr. (aka Breckin Meyer) and Maggie Peyton (aka Lindsay Lohan) – lived in the 2005 movie Herbie Fully Loaded. Now before I get y’all thinking that I am a massive Lindsay Lohan fan or something, I would like to assure you that I most definitely am not. Nor was I a huge fan of Herbie Fully Loaded, truth be told. What I was a fan of, though, was the Peyton family’s adorable and – what I thought was – little Craftsman-style bungalow which appeared countless times throughout the movie. And while I had a hunch that the property was located somewhere in the Pasadena area, I just could not seem to find it. So last week I called upon Chas and, working together this past Monday afternoon, the two of us were finally able to track it down. Yay!

I decided to take a page out of fellow stalker Owen’s book for this particular hunt and began my search by looking through various Herbie Fully Loaded message boards to see if any fans had mentioned the home or its location.   And, sure enough, several had! I first came across this filming locations thread on the LoveBugFans website on which a real life photograph of the house was posted and, amazingly enough, an address number of 1120 was visible on the curb out in front of it. After seeing that photograph, I became convinced that the home was located somewhere in Altadena. So I immediately passed that information along to Chas and he subsequently started using Google Street View to search all of the 1100 blocks in the Altadena area, even though his gut was actually telling him that the house was located in South Pasadena.

Imagine my surprise when I came across yet another thread, this time on the LoveBugCentral website, on which someone had stated that the Peyton home was located just a few doors down from Patrick Gates’ house from the National Treasure movies. And where is Patrick Gates’ house located, you ask? I am ashamed to admit that it can be found on Buena Vista Street in . . . yep, you guessed it, South Pasadena.  So, after apogizing profusely to Chas for steering him in the wrong direction, I immediately opened up Google Street View and started perusing Buena Vista Street and, sure enough, found the house in just a few short minutes.

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The Herbie Fully Loaded house actually looks much different in person than it did onscreen as, for whatever reason, only a side view of the property was ever shown in the movie.



The view of the house from the street is pictured above and, as you can see, it is absolutely MASSIVE in real life – much, MUCH larger than it appeared onscreen.

In actuality the Peyton home, which was built in 1870, boasts 6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a whopping 3,974 square feet of living space. It is incredible to me how deceiving the home’s appearance was onscreen, as while watching the movie I had been fully convinced that Maggie’s house was a teeny, tiny, little California bungalow, ala Dylan McKay’s home from Beverly Hills, 90210.

As you can see in the above aerial view, in real life the home also sits on a GINORMOUS parcel of land.



The home’s real life backyard also appeared quite a few times in the movie.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for helping me find this location! Be sure to check out his detailed Herbie Fully Loaded filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Maggie Peyton’s house from Herbie Fully Loaded is located at 1120 Buena Vista Street in South Pasadena. Patrick Gates house from National Treasure and National Treasure: Book of Secrets is located just a few houses west of Maggie’s at 1030 Buena Vista Street. Lady Heather’s house from the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is located at 929 Buena Vista Street. And the Liar Liar house is located just around the corner at 1004 Highland Street.

March 16, 2011
Rocking My Wedding Reception – Michael Jackson Style

Ever since I first watched fave movie 13 Going On 30 for the first time back in 2004 and saw Jenna Rink (aka Jennifer Garner) so charmingly reenact the Zombie Dance sequence from “Michael Jackson’s Thriller” while at a party, I became absolutely obsessed with doing the very same thing at my wedding reception. At the time the Grim Cheaper had yet to propose, nor had the two of us ever even really talked about marriage, but I knew that we would most likely be tying the knot at some point and that when we did, my friends and I were going to do that “Thriller” dance!! Unfortunately, when I actually tried to learn the dance not long after the GC finally did propose, I realized it was far too complicated for this stalker, especially considering that not only do I have two left feet, but I am by far the least coordinated person I know. So, after scouring countless MJ videos and concert clips on YouTube, I decided that the infamous “Jackson 5 Medley” – which is a compilation performance of the songs “I Want You Back” and “The Love You Save” that MJ used to perform during his many concerts and which you can watch by clicking above – would be a far easier dance to learn. The only trouble was that I did not much like the ending of the Medley featured in the clip posted above, as it seemed to be a bit anti-climactic.

I much preferred the ending of the Medley that the Jackson 5 performed during the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever television special (which can be viewed at the 1:59 mark in the above video) in 1983. So I ended up putting together a bit of a mash-up of the two dances for my friends to perform at my reception.

The GC had informed me very early on – and in no uncertain terms – that he would definitely NOT be participating in my Michael Jackson dance extravaganza, so I instead enlisted the services of my best friend Robin and my good friend Stew. Because Stew is a complete and total ham, I asked him if he would play the part of MJ in our little production and he could not have been more excited to do so. He even hired a choreographer to teach him the dance in its entirety up in San Francisco where he lives and I purchased him a sequined jacket, glove, and bedazzled microphone to complete the look. Once I had the dance picked out and my team of dancers in place, I had to figure out a way for us to learn the darn thing. Enter my good friend, Chelsea, who has been a dancer her entire life. Chelsea readily agreed to not only perform the dance with us at my reception, but to also break it down into easy-to-learn steps and then teach it to me and Robin. She first taught the steps to us upon Robin’s arrival in Los Angeles from his native Switzerland two weeks prior to the wedding. And while Chelsea looked fabulous doing the routine, I am sorry to say that Robin and I were quite painful to watch. 😉

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But the two of us practiced every single night and I have to say that after two weeks I was incredibly impressed with our skills!!! We had that dance down and looked pretty darn good performing it, if I do say so myself. 🙂

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Stew came down to Pasadena a few days before the wedding so that we could all practice the routine together as a group. To say that this little endeavor was a labor of love is a gross understatement! There were countless man hours put into learning the dance and rehearsing it, but I cannot tell you how much fun we all had with the whole thing! Learning the steps and practicing the dance are some of my fondest memories of the entire wedding. 🙂



And the dance turned out ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, if I do say so myself!! Sadly though, we do not have a video of it. 🙁 As Murphy’s Law would have it, while almost all of our wedding was video-taped, the camera malfunctioned during our big dance number. Such a bummer! Our photographer Rob Greer did get some fabulous photographs of it, though.



Especially of the grand finale, which was my favorite part. 🙂 I cannot tell you how much fun it was to dance the “Jackson 5 Medley” at our reception and how much our guests loved our performance. If you are thinking of rocking your own wedding reception, I cannot more highly recommend doing so! It is one of the most fabulous memories of one of the most joyous days of my life!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: There is no stalking location for this particular post.

March 15, 2011