Christmas movie locations – IAMNOTASTALKER

December 21, 2018August 24, 2020

The Majestic Downtown from “The Holiday”

The Holiday has definitely been on my brain as of late. I wrote about two of the houses used in the 2006 film for the December issue of Los Angeles magazine and recently got to tour Thorne Hall at Occidental College, the setting of one of its most poignant scenes. So I figured it was only appropriate to dedicate a post to another of the movie’s locales, DTLA’s SB Spring building, more specifically its lower level former bank space known as The Majestic Downtown, which masqueraded as the supposed London office of The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the flick. I have blogged about this spot twice before, once in 2010 for my own site and then again in 2014 for L.A. mag. The last time I did some stalking of it, though, an event was being set up and the friendly security guard manning the front door happened to invite me inside for a closer look! I have yet to share the photos I snapped that day, so I decided it was definitely time for a third go-round.

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SB Spring was originally erected in 1924 as the headquarters of the Hellman Commercial Trust and Savings Bank.

Commissioned by Isaias Hellman at a cost of $2.5-million, the Beaux Arts-style structure was designed by the Schultze & Weaver architecture firm.

Featuring an Indiana limestone façade with sweeping arched windows and doors and terra cotta carvings, the 12-story building originally housed offices on the upper levels . . .

. . . and a two-story Spanish Revival-style bank on the ground floor boasting 40-foot-tall hand-painted coffered ceilings, marble columns, stairs and flooring, intricate bronze chandeliers, and a large mezzanine. You can check out a photo of what the grand space looked like during its early days here.

Soon after construction of the property was complete, Hellman Commercial merged with Merchants National Bank and then was taken over by Bank of America shortly thereafter. The 250,000-square-foot structure became the financial institution’s Los Angeles headquarters and, as such, was known largely as the “Bank of America Building.”

When B of A moved its headquarters to a new location on Flower Street in 1972, the upstairs offices of the Spring Street building were leased out to various companies. The ground floor bank, however, remained in operation until its doors were finally closed due to a decline in business in March 1988.

Developer Barry Shy purchased the structure in 2009 and converted the upstairs offices into a 174-unit loft-style apartment building known as SB Spring.

Thankfully, the bank space, now a special events venue known as The Majestic Downtown, has been left largely intact over the years, making it the perfect spot for filming. And locations scouts have definitely taken note!

In The Holiday, The Majestic Downtown is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) works as a newspaper writer.

It is during the paper’s Christmas party at the beginning of the film that Iris learns her total cad of an ex-boyfriend, Jasper Bloom (Rufus Sewell), has proposed to the girl that he cheated on her with.

SB Spring has appeared in countless productions in addition to The Holiday. So many, that it would be impossible to chronicle all of its onscreen appearances here, but below are a few of my personal favorites.

Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) has Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) fill out a signature card under a fake name at the bank in 1990’s Ghost.

The Majestic Downtown masks as the Fourth Reich Bank of Hamburg where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) provides his financial records in an attempt to secure a dinner reservation at L’Idiot restaurant in the 1991 comedy L.A. Story.

The site portrays Edge City Savings & Loan, where Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) works, in the 1994 comedy The Mask.

Robbie Hart (Adam Sandler) applies for a job there in the 1998 romcom The Wedding Singer.

In 2001’s Heartbreakers, Max Conners (Sigourney Weaver) and her daughter, Page Conners (Jennifer Love Hewitt), attempt to withdraw money from their accounts at the bank, but are thwarted by the IRS.

Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) saves a party at The Majestic Downtown by performing the Zombie Dance from Thriller in the 2004 comedy 13 Going on 30.

And, yes, I did, of course, imitate Jenna doing a Thriller move while I was there, but unfortunately the lighting in the building was extremely low, so my photo did not come out. (Many of the images I took that day suffered the same fate, unfortunately.)

The exterior of SB Spring masquerades as Belle en Blanc bridal salon in the 2011 comedy Bridesmaids.

Me doing my best Helen (Rose Byrne) out in front. Too bad the shop’s ornate intercom isn’t actually there in real life.

Though the interior of the salon was a studio-built set, it is outside of SB Spring that the scene’s most memorable moment took place.

It is there that Lillian (Maya Rudolph), ahem, loses her sh*t in the middle of the street.

Had to do it! (Though I accidentally posed a bit too far to the north.)

SB Spring plays Capitol Trust Bank, where Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and the gang attend a Homeland Security counterterrorism drill, in the Season 2 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “Windbreaker City,” which aired in 2014.

In 2018, the exterior of the bank popped up in the music video for the Lil Dicky/Chris Brown song “Freak Friday,” which you can watch here.

And E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) unsuccessfully attempts to secure a loan there in the hopes of saving his practice in the Season 1 episode of the new HBO series Perry Mason titled “Chapter 4.”

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 Majestic Downtown, aka The Daily Telegraph newspaper office from The Holiday, is located at 650 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the venue’s official website here.

December 19, 2018December 20, 2018

Cordon’s Ranch Market from “Christmas with the Kranks”

Christmas with the Kranks has got to be one of the oddest movies I’ve ever come across location-wise. The 2004 holiday flick not only used the backlots of three (count ‘em!) three different L.A. studios to portray Riverside, Illinois, the Chicago suburb where the story takes place (as I chronicled in this post), but the soundstages of yet another area studio, The Culver Studios in Culver City, were utilized for several interior sets. And as I only recently discovered, production also played a bit fast and loose with the store where Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) finally got her hands on – and then promptly lost – a Hickory Honey Ham for a last-minute Christmas party. (The entire ham storyline is problematic, in fact, but more on that in a bit.) I figured the location trickery would make for a great holiday post, so I ran right out to stalk Cordon’s Ranch Market in Glendale, where the majority of the grocery store scene was lensed.

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Sadly, Cordon’s Ranch Market, which was originally established in 1999, shut its doors in April 2015. If only I had identified the location a few years sooner!

After Cordon’s shuttering, the site underwent a heavy remodel and subsequently re-opened as Moss Supermarket a few months later.

Moss did not last long, unfortunately, closing its doors in October 2017, a little more than two years after opening, and the space has sat vacant ever since.

In Christmas with the Kranks, Nora heads to Cordon’s Ranch Market to buy a ham – not just any ham, mind you, but a Mel’s Hickory Honey Cooked, Boneless, Skinless Ham with Natural Juices and Gelatin Added (um, gross!) – for her annual Christmas Eve party that she and her husband, Luther Krank (Tim Allen), have decided to throw at the very last minute upon learning their beloved daughter, Blair (Julie Gonzalo), is unexpectedly returning home from the Peace Corps to celebrate the holidays with them. Hickory Honey Ham, you see, is Blair’s absolute favorite dish.

The shop’s name and signage are both clearly visible at the top of the scene when Nora is shown parking her car. I always assumed both had been faked for the shoot, though, due to the fact that the sign’s lettering and coloring looked very Christmas-y. Then, on a whim a few months ago, I decided to input “Cordon’s Ranch Market” into Google and was shocked when a result was kicked back for a since-closed grocery store in Glendale! One look at the place on Street View confirmed it was where filming had occurred. What amazed me even more was that the signage that appeared in the movie was real, as you can see in this image of Cordon’s exterior from when it was still in operation! Turns out it wasn’t altered to appear more holiday-ish at all!

Nora’s visit to the grocer does not go well. And neither does the scene’s continuity because as soon as filming shifts to the inside of the market, we are at a different location altogether. The store where Nora races another shopper in an attempt to nab the very last in-stock Hickory Honey Ham before ultimately crashing into a floor display at the beginning of the segment does not match these images I found of Cordon’s. The shop that appears onscreen features a muted color scheme and some sort of a village-scape painted on its upper walls, while Cordon’s operated under the Apple Market brand and, as such, boasted bright red, green, and yellow coloring. The movie market also has a checkered brown and white floor, which does not line up with Cordon’s blue and white tiling.

Unfortunately, I am unsure of what grocery store was utilized for the filming of that portion of the scene.

After Nora crashes into the display and loses her chance at grabbing the shop’s sole remaining ham, she comes across a family in the check-out line who happens to have one and she convinces them to sell it to her for an above-market price. And that’s where things get really weird because that segment was shot at Cordon’s! As you can see in these images of the shop, the cashier stands, general décor, and color scheme match what appeared onscreen perfectly.

The fact that two different market interiors were utilized for the rather brief segment makes me wonder if some of the scene was re-shot. Or if Nora was originally supposed to be shown venturing into multiple stores looking for the hard-to-get ham and, at the last minute, producers decided to combine the bits instead. Your guess is as good as mine, though.

Purchase safely in hand, Nora then heads out of Cordon’s, where she is promptly bumped by a passerby, causing her to drop the ham.

It subsequently rolls through the store’s parking lot . . .

. . . and into the street . . .

. . . where it sits for a brief moment . . .

. . . before getting run over by a big rig . . .

. . . which almost hits Nora in the process.

Though she manages to escape unscathed . . .

. . . the ham does not. (Per production designer Garreth Stover, 26 hams were destroyed during the making of the scene.)

As if the market location switch-up isn’t enough, there’s more! Though Nora returns home defeated and sans ham, a guest named Marty (Austin Pendleton) unexpectedly brings one to the Krank’s party, saving Christmas pretty much, and Nora is shown proudly serving it later in the evening to her future son-in-law, Enrique Decardenal (Rene Lavan). But in an unexpected twist, in one of the movie’s final scenes Luther grabs an uncooked ham off of his kitchen counter and brings it over to his neighbors’ house as a sort of peace offering – which begs the question, where in the heck did that second ham come from? Did another guest bring it? Did Nora reconstruct the ham that was run-over by the big rig? Did it show up as some sort of Christmas miracle? Unfortunately, a DVD commentary was never created for the film, so, short of a sit-down with director Joe Roth, we may never know. It seems to me a pretty huge gaffe, though, especially considering the Hickory Honey Ham storyline is so central to the movie. I am shocked that no one caught it in post-production.

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 former Cordon’s Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks is located at 2931 Honolulu Avenue in Glendale. The store is currently closed and vacant.

December 20, 2017May 11, 2020

Cindy’s Restaurant from “Surviving Christmas”

I have made no secret of the fact that I majorly ration Christmas locations from year to year. The sad truth is that few holiday flicks are lensed in the L.A. area (the city’s constant sunshine and lack of snow doesn’t exactly scream “Noel!”), which translates to a very minimal amount of holiday locales. So I tend to dole out my Yuletide-themed blog posts slowly for fear of exhausting the limited supply. Today’s location is a major throwback, though, even for me – one I stalked way back in 2014 with my friends Lavonna, Kim, Melissa and Maria, who were in town visiting from the Midwest. I’m talking about Cindy’s Restaurant, which made an appearance in Surviving Christmas. While I wrote a brief Scene It Before post on the Eagle Rock eatery for Los Angeles magazine later that same year, considering the place is a virtual onscreen juggernaut I figured it was high time I penned a proper write-up on it.

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Though there seem to be some discrepancies regarding the diner’s history floating around online – this Los Angeles Historic Resources Survey contends that the eatery was built as an “L.H. Boody Restaurant” in 1940 and has been in continuous operation as Cindy’s Restaurant since 1963, while the Los Angeles Times asserts that the café first opened its doors in 1948 – I can safely say that the Googie-style property, which is situated on historic Route 66, has been attracting hungry patrons for at least six decades. Sadly, I was unable to dig up anything else about the place’s history – no mention of the site on newspapers.com, no blurbs on the café in my many books about L.A.-area restaurants, not even a reference to the Cindy for whom the eatery was named.

The diner’s recent years were far easier to chronicle. In January 2014, Cindy’s was purchased by Monique King and Paul Rosenbluh, the husband-and-wife-team behind South Pasadena’s popular Firefly Bistro, which sadly shuttered that same December after 12 years in business.

Monique and Paul immediately set about revitalizing the historic site’s interior and exterior, which required shutting the place down for several months. During the renovation, the couple brought new life to the café, which had grown somewhat tired over the years. Thankfully though, the original countertops, booths and wallpaper were left intact, as was the vintage signage, which was refurbished via a Kickstarter campaign. The restaurant re-opened, fresh from its facelift, in April 2014.

Cindy’s menu was given a reboot, as well. Typical diner fare like meat loaf and fried chicken are still offered, but patrons can also nosh on more high-brow items like chicken-fried mushrooms, falafels, and crab hash. While some local denizens were not fans of the changes, most took to the new Cindy’s like moths to a flame. As Paul said to the West Coast Prime Meats website, “There’s a certain amount of people who hate us. We’re not the old Cindy’s. We’re ‘hipsters.’ There are other people who love us for it and tell us, ‘We’ve been coming here for 30 years and this is the first time we’ve had good food.’ You get a little bit of everything.”

In a sad twist, a drunk driver crashed a truck through Cindy’s front windows in June 2016, just two short years after its re-opening, and the restaurant was subsequently shuttered for months while Paul and Monique rebuilt. (Oddly, that was not the first time a car plowed through the eatery – it suffered the same fate in July 2007.) The damage, which you can see photos of here, was extensive, though quite a bit of the décor was able to be salvaged. Cindy’s finally re-opened to much fanfare on December 9th of that same year and has been going strong ever since.

The restaurant boasts an extremely nostalgic palette, one that can be tweaked to represent an Americana diner from pretty much any era, so it is no surprise that studios have flocked to the place to shoot a slew of productions over the years.

Cindy’s portrays the supposed Chicago-area diner where the Valcos – Tom (James Gandolfini), Christine (Catherine O’Hara), Alicia (Christina Applegate), and Brian (Josh Zuckerman) – and Drew Latham (Ben Affleck), the millionaire advertising executive who hired them to pose as his family for the holidays, enjoy Christmas dinner at the end of 2004’s Surviving Christmas.

In the Season 6 episode of Sons of Anarchy titled “Poenitentia,” which aired in 2013, Cindy’s masks as the Reno café where Robert ‘Bobby Elvis’ Munson (Mark Boone Junior) meets up with several Men of Mayhem members.

The restaurant pops up a few times in the 2014 horror flick Ouija as the diner where Isabelle (Bianca Santos) works.

In the Season 5 episode of Parenthood titled “Promises,” which aired in 2015, Zeek Braverman (Craig T. Nelson) takes to eating at Cindy’s while his wife, Camille (Bonnie Bedalia), is out of town and soon befriends a fellow patron named Rocky (Paul Dooley).

Marc Maron, Dave Anthony, and Andy Kindler (all of whom play themselves) grab a couple of meals at Cindy’s in the Season 3 episode of Maron titled “Ex-Pod,” which aired in 2015.

Cindy’s masquerades as a Sunset Strip café named “Gladner’s Coffee Hut” on three episodes of the short-lived television series Aquarius. It first pops up in the 2015 pilot, titled “Everybody’s Been Burned,” in the scene in which undercover detective Brian Shafe (Grey Damon) busts Mike Vickery (Jason Ralph) for drugs and then subsequently gets arrested himself amidst a massive protest.

Shafe returns to Gladner’s Coffee Hut with his partner, Sam Hodiak (David Duchovny), to confront owner Art Gladner (Shaun Duke) in the episode that follows, titled “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game.”

Art eventually winds up dead in a back area of the restaurant in Aquarius’ third episode, “Never Say Never to Always.”

A subject interview is conducted in one of Cindy’s iconic orange booths in David Farrier’s 2016 documentary Tickled (which looks super interesting).

That same year, Cindy’s popped up in the Season 2 episode of Secrets and Lies titled “The Parent” as the spot where Kate Warner (Jordana Brewster) meets with her son’s adoptive mother, Belinda Peterson (Romy Rosemont).

The diner’s most famous onscreen appearance, though, is in Justin Timberlake’s 2016 “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” music video, which you can watch here.

As was noted on Cindy’s Facebook page shortly after the car crashed into the restaurant that same year, the booth where Justin sat in the video remains unscathed from the accident. Love it!

Most recently, Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) and Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini) popped by Cindy’s Restaurant on their way home from Los Angeles National Forest in the Season 2 episode of Dead to Me titled “Between You and Me,” which just hit Netflix.

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: Cindy’s Restaurant, from Surviving Christmas, is located at 1500 Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

December 16, 2016December 21, 2016

Du-par’s Restaurant and Bakery from “Christmas with the Kranks”

I don’t know what it is about Christmas movies, but I cannot watch them without crying. Even the not-so-great ones make me bawl. Case in point – the 2004 comedy Christmas with the Kranks. While admittedly not one of the best Yuletide films, the Grim Cheaper and I watch it each year and I cry every.single.time. After our recent annual watch, I decided to attempt to track down some of the flick’s unknown locales. The spot at the top of my list was the Irish pub where Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) ate with her husband, Luther Krank (Tim Allen). Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a place I have dined at many times!

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In Christmas with the Kranks, upon facing the prospect of spending the holidays without their daughter who has just joined the Peace Corps, Luther convinces Nora to skip Christmas. Their friends and neighbors don’t take the decision lightly. While dining at an Irish pub towards the beginning of the movie, Nora complains to Luther that she is the one having to deal with the fallout. As she explains, “It’s us women who handle Christmas, not men. I am the one taking the brunt for your harebrained scheme! I am the one on the front lines!”

Besides the fact that the pub looked incredibly cozy in the scene, there’s pretty much nothing I love more than dining at movie restaurants, so it was a no-brainer that I wanted to track this spot down. Unfortunately, I had a little trouble doing so due to the fact that not much of the eatery was shown onscreen and no notable clues were visible in the background.

The more I re-watched the scene, though, the more I had a sense that the restaurant was familiar to me – that I had been there before. Then, all of a sudden, the green-hued bar-top visible behind Nora jumped out at me and I immediately knew where filming had taken place – the Hamburger Hamlet located at 214 South Lake Avenue in Pasadena.

I have dined at the Hamlet countless times over the years. In fact, ironically enough, when I lived in Pasadena the eatery was a regular pit stop during the holidays. Every December, my mom and I would inevitably pop in for a bite to eat while out Christmas shopping in the area. Even more ironic, we would invariably sit in the bar, the exact area where Christmas with the Kranks was filmed!

Why I had such a tough time identifying the place is beyond me, but I am guessing it is because Hamburger Hamlet is not actually an Irish pub as was depicted in the movie and therefore is not decorated as such, it is not nearly as dark as it was portrayed to be onscreen, and only a tight shot of it was ever shown. I really should have recognized the restaurant’s unique back room, though, which is visible behind Luther in the screen capture below.

Hamburger Hamlet’s rear room, which is strewn with spacious red leather arm chairs, is situated around a large central brick fire pit, made complete with a metal hood affixed to the ceiling. As I said, it’s unique. Being that the chains that anchor the hood to the ceiling were visible in the background of Christmas with the Kranks, this one really should have been an easy find.

Now you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute, the title of this post is ‘Du-par’s Restaurant and Bakery’ not ‘Hamburger Hamlet!’” Sadly, the Pasadena Hamlet, which was originally established in 1967, shut its doors after almost fifty years in business on January 3rd, 2014. A Du-par’s outpost was opened at the site the following morning.

I had yet to visit the location since Du-par’s took over and assumed that all of the décor had been changed. I was thrilled to see, via the hundreds of photographs on Yelp, that that was not the case! The eatery still looks exactly as it did during its Hamburger Hamlet days, i.e. wood paneling and red leather galore!

The GC and I headed over there to grab a bite a few days later and I am happy to report that the restaurant looks just as great in person as it did in the Yelp images. And the food is darn good, too, though that did not come as a surprise being that I’ve always been a big fan of Du-par’s fare. Any eatery that serves a hot turkey meal with all the fixings on a daily basis is A-ok in my book!

As I mentioned earlier, in Christmas with the Kranks, Nora and Luther sat in the restaurant’s bar area, pretty much in the exact spot where the pub table is situated in the images below.

I would like to wish a VERY happy birthday to my dad (and my uncle – his twin) – today! Thank you for all the light and laughter you bring us on a daily basis (as evidenced by the photo below – I remember exactly what you said to me in that moment and still crack up whenever I think about it!), despite all your suffering! I love you!

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: Du-par’s Restaurant and Bakery, aka the former Hamburger Hamlet, aka the Irish pub from Christmas with the Kranks, is located at 214 South Lake Avenue in Pasadena.

December 7, 2016December 6, 2016

Atlas Sausage from “Surviving Christmas”

My blog is likely to be light on content over the next month, as I have quite a few trips and excursions planned. As such, I figured there was no time like the present to begin my Christmas-themed postings. So here goes. (I also have a very exciting non-Christmas-related article hitting the blog next week, so stay tuned for that!) Finding filming locations is often akin to solving puzzles for me – and I love solving puzzles. So when I spot a clue in the background of a movie or television show, no matter how brief or insignificant the scene, it seems to call to me and I cannot help but attempt to figure out where the segment was shot. Such was the case with the butcher shop featured fleetingly in Surviving Christmas.

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For those who have yet to watch the 2004 Christmas comedy (and you really should – it’s fabulous), it centers around millionaire ad exec Drew Latham (Ben Affleck), who, after finding himself alone at Christmastime, returns to his childhood home in Arlington Heights, Indiana and pays the family who now lives there $250,000 in exchange for them allowing him to move back in for the holidays. During his stay, he upsets patriarch Tom Valco (James Gandolfini) by polishing off all of his beloved salami. So Tom heads to his local butcher to replenish his processed meat supply, donning a Santa hat per Drew’s request.

While watching the scene, I spotted a sign pasted on the butcher shop door. Though pictured backwards and partially cut off, it was apparent that the lettering spelled out “Atlas Sausage.” Even though the segment was brief (like blink-and-you’ll-miss-it brief), seeing that sign was like kryptonite to me – I couldn’t not at least attempt to track the place down. It turned out to be a short hunt – one quick Google search for “Atlas Sausage” and “Los Angeles” yielded a listing for a market by that name at 10626 Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood. While the exterior of the butcher shop was not shown in Surviving Christmas, I knew I had hit pit dirt when I saw that the diagonally-placed entrance door visible via Street View matched the diagonally-placed door that appeared onscreen. Sadly, Atlas Sausage closed down in the summer of 2003, shortly after Surviving Christmas filmed there in February of that same year, but I still headed right on out to stalk the locale nonetheless.

Atlas Sausage, or Atlas Sausage Kitchen as it was also known, was established in the 1940s and was a Valley landmark for the 60-plus years it remained in operation. All of the sausages sold at the market were made by hand – on the original wooden smokehouse that was in place since the day the store opened.

After the market closed in July 2003 (much to the chagrin of SoCal meat lovers, some of whom would travel from as far as San Diego to get their hands on Atlas’ links), the site sat vacant. In August 2006, Big Papi’s Rib Shack, or Big Papi’s Barbeque as it was also called, set up shop on the premises. Google Street View images of the property during its Big Papi’s tenure are pictured below.

The eatery did not last long, shutting its doors in January 2008.

Today, the space houses State Automotive Supply, which is rather ironic as a 1992 Los Angeles Times article about Atlas Sausage described the market as being “located in an industrial neighborhood with more than its share of automotive repair shops.”

I ventured inside State Automotive while I was stalking the place and, sadly, the interior looks entirely different today than it did when it appeared in Surviving Christmas. The space has actually been remodeled twice since Atlas Sausage closed, first when Big Papi’s moved in. The inside of the restaurant is pictured below via images I snapped from this “How to Serve BBQ Sausage” tutorial that was filmed on the premises. As you can see, it does not resemble the Surviving Christmas butcher shop in the slightest, though the rear brick wall that was visible in the movie was still intact at the time. The site was then remodeled once again prior to State Automotive’s opening. I did not take any photos of the inside as it is now rather cramped due to the fact that the vast majority of the building is currently used as storage for the shop’s inventory, which leaves just a small alcove area accessible to the public. When Atlas Sausage was in operation, the Los Angeles Times said this of its interior, “Plain shelves on plain walls hold scores of mustards and dozens of rye breads. The enormous collection of German beers, hidden away in a nondescript cooler, could easily be overlooked. A deceptively modest display of sausages and unsliced cold cuts occupies several utilitarian butcher cases.” All of that gibes with what was shown in Surviving Christmas. Oh, how I wish I could have seen the place back then! I absolutely love local specialty shops!

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: State Automotive Supplies, aka the former Atlas Sausage from Surviving Christmas, is located at 10626 Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood.

December 18, 2015December 16, 2015

The Old Towne Orange Starbucks from “Surviving Christmas”

There’s nothing this stalker loves more than a filming location that serves coffee. When that filming location is a Starbucks? Well, I’m in hog heaven! So when I spotted an Old Towne Orange outpost of the java giant pop up in the 2004 holiday comedy Surviving Christmas, I immediately added it to my To-Stalk Iist – and was especially excited because it meant another visit to the adorable town. I have never been shy about my adoration of Old Towne Orange. I first visited the historic city back in October 2013 and it was pretty much love at first sight. The quaint district is situated around a manicured circular park and boasts dozens of adorable boutiques and restaurants housed inside of charmingly aged facades. Being there is like stepping back to a simpler time and it is not hard to see why countless movies and television shows have been filmed in the area. You can read a few of my previous Old Towne Orange posts here, here and here.

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In Surviving Christmas, millionaire advertising executive Drew Latham (Ben Affleck) faces the prospect of spending the holidays alone. In the hopes of avoiding that isolation, he returns to his hometown of Arlington Heights, Illinois and proceeds to pay the Valco family – Tom (James Gandolfini), Christine (Catherine O’Hara), Alicia (Christina Applegate), and Brian (Josh Zuckerman) – who now live in his childhood house, a cool $250,000 to spend Christmas with them. The Grim Cheaper and I only just watched the flick for the first time two years ago, but really enjoyed it and have since added it to our regular holiday movie rotation. I especially enjoyed the fact that although set in Illinois, much of it was lensed in L.A. Old Towne Orange was featured in the scene in which Drew takes his rented family Christmas shopping in what is supposedly downtown Arlington Heights.

Upon arriving in town, Tom parks the family station wagon in front of a Diedrich Coffee shop situated in the southwest corner of Old Towne’s Plaza Square. Now you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute, I thought this post was about a Starbucks!” Well, at the time that Surviving Christmas was filmed, a Diedrich outpost was housed in that spot (you can check out a photo of what it looked like here), but in late 2006 the company sold many of its stores to Starbucks. The Old Towne Orange location was one of the casualties of that sale.

Thanks to the café’s unusual exterior, I recognized it immediately from our previous visits to Orange, despite the change in ownership.

The Old Towne Orange Starbucks is housed inside of the former Orange Daily News building, a Mediterranean-style structure that was originally built around 1920. There’s actually another unique Starbucks located right across the street that is also a filming location, but I’ll save that information for a future post.

Surviving Christmas utilized the entire southwest corner of Plaza Square.

The area was dressed considerably for the shoot with manufactured snow, prop awnings and embellished façades, and therefore looks a bit different in real life than it did onscreen.

Later in the scene, Drew spots Alicia and Brian walking across the street from him and he enthusiastically rushes through traffic to greet them.

That sequence was shot just a bit north of Starbucks, in front of Laurenly Boutique, which is located at 142 North Glassell Street. Though Laurenly is one of my favorite shops in the area (I purchased an adorable thumb ring there that I wear virtually everyday), I do not have any photographs of it, so you’ll have to make due with Google Street View images for comparison.

The Old Towne Orange Diedrich Coffee also masked as Village Java in the pilot episode of Ghost Whisperer.

The real life interior of the café was also featured in the episode.

You can read a really interesting article about the filming of Surviving Christmas here written by a man who lived in the Chicago, Illinois neighborhood where the Valco house scenes were shot. He does not paint a very good picture of Ben Affleck, saying “By almost every account, he was arrogant and scornful of his adoring fans.” I was surprised by the description. I’ve met Affleck twice, once around the time that Surviving Christmas was filmed, and found him to be exceptionally affable and courteous on both occasions. (He does not look particularly happy in the below photo, but I assure you, he was friendly and kind and happily posed for pictures with all of the fans who happened to be nearby.) If the stuff about the nanny is true, then the guy is obviously a cad in his personal life, but as far as his interactions with fans go, I’ve never heard of him being anything other than vastly accommodating. (Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, has like ten photos with Ben – no joke! – and only has good things to say about him.) While researching this post, I also came across a link to a book written by Affleck’s Surviving Christmas stand-in, John Wight. The author doesn’t seem to be a very positive person (he calls Orange “a suburban shithole of a small town”) and the tome paints a very sad picture of the behind-the-scenes goings-on (apparently, the director of photography was a nightmare to work with), but I am dying to read it nonetheless, especially since the movie’s locations are talked about throughout.

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 Surviving Christmas shopping scene was shot in the southwest corner of Plaza Square in Old Towne Orange. Tom parks in front of the Starbucks located at 44 Plaza Square in the scene. Drew later spots Alicia and Brian while standing in front of Laurenly Boutique, located at 142 North Glassell Street.

December 17, 2015December 14, 2015

New “L.A.” Mag Post – About The Federal Bar Long Beach from “Four Christmases”

Don’t forget to read my latest Los Angeles magazine post today – about The Federal Bar Long Beach from Four Christmases. My articles typically get published in the early afternoon hours.

December 25, 2014December 17, 2014

New “Los Angeles” Mag Post – About Cindy’s Restaurant from “Surviving Christmas”

I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a very merry Christmas today! You can check out my new Los Angeles magazine post here – about Cindy’s Eagle Rock Restaurant from Surviving Christmas. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

December 23, 2014December 22, 2014

Blockbuster Video from “The Holiday”

I cannot believe that Christmas is only two days away! This whole month (year, in fact) has flown by! Sadly, this will be my last post of the season (excluding one that will run on L.A. magazine’s website on Thursday). I will be taking the rest of the week off to do some last-minute shopping and to celebrate Christmas with my family. For my final holiday-themed post, I thought it would only be fitting to write about another The Holiday location – the Blockbuster Video featured in the 2006 romantic comedy.

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I had read online a while back that the Blockbuster used in The Holiday was located somewhere in Brentwood, so I did a simple Google search for “Blockbuster” and “Brentwood” and was led to a former location of the once-popular video store chain at 11770 San Vicente Boulevard. Today, the space houses a branch of the First Republic Bank, but thanks to the fact that several of its features have remained the same despite the change of hands, I was able to determine that it was the right spot.

First, I was able to match a tree located on San Vicente Boulevard across from First Republic Bank to the tree visible outside of the Blockbuster in the scene (though my photograph below was taken from a slightly different angle than that of the film).

For those who have never visited the area, San Vicente Boulevard is lined with a large central median that is dotted with numerous unusually-shaped trees, as you can see below.

Thanks to their highly unique formations, it was not hard for me to pinpoint the one featured in The Holiday.

The store’s large three-paned windows (denoted with Christmas tree arrows below) also match what appeared onscreen.

The windowed corner doorway from the Blockbuster in the movie also correlates to that of First National Bank, although it has been altered slightly in order to make room for the addition of an ATM vestibule.

In The Holiday, Blockbuster is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) and Miles (Jack Black) shop for the next videos on their friend Arthur Abbot’s (Eli Wallach) list of movies featuring strong, gumption-filled female characters. It’s funny to think about the fact that if the movie was being filmed today, only eight years after it was actually shot, this scene would be an impossibility considering the fact that video stores simply do not exist anymore – at least not in the L.A. area. (Outside of Vidiots, that is.) If The Holiday was shot today, Miles and Iris would instead have to peruse titles at a Redbox kiosk inside of a grocery store or online via the Netflix catalog, neither of which would have made for a very compelling scene.

In the scene, Miles, a film scorer, walks around Blockbuster picking up various DVD titles and humming their theme songs loudly to Iris. He happens to pick up The Graduate at one point and sings Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” at which time the camera pans over to reveal Dustin Hoffman perusing titles in a different part of the store. Hoffman shakes his head and says, “Can’t go anywhere!” Amazingly, that bit was not planned. According to director Nancy Meyer’s DVD commentary, Dustin happened to be eating next door to the Brentwood Blockbuster at the time the scene was being filmed. Upon leaving the restaurant, he noticed the film trucks and popped in to see what was being shot. He knew Nancy and decided to hang out for a bit to watch. When The Graduate portion of the scene was being filmed (the scene had been included in the original script and was not simply added because Hoffman was randomly on set), Dustin asked if he could make a cameo and Nancy, of course, said yes. He then adlibbed the “Can’t go anywhere!” line. Such a great story behind what turned out to be one of the movie’s funniest moments.

You can watch Dustin’s cameo by clicking below.

While doing research for today’s post, I learned that the same retail complex that formerly housed the Blockbuster from The Holiday also once housed the infamous Mezzaluna restaurant, where Nicole Brown Simpson ate dinner the night of her murder and where Ronald Goldman worked as a waiter. Today, that portion of the property is home to a Peet’s Coffee & Tea outpost. You can check out a photo of what it looked like when Mezzaluna was still in operation here.

On a side-note – The Grim Cheaper and I have recently become obsessed with the new podcast Serial. We are currently in the midst of listening to Episode 6: The Case Against Adnan Syed, so, please, no spoilers from those who have finished the series! Sarah Koenig, the podcast’s host, reminds me quite a bit of myself when it comes to doing research. Her investigation into the existence of a payphone at the Security Boulevard Best Buy in Baltimore, Maryland was exactly on par with many of the location hunts I have been a part of over the years. Speaking of the payphone mystery, I am absolutely fascinated by it! It is the one detail of the story that remains constantly stuck in my head and I am convinced that my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, and I could get to the bottom of the whole thing and prove once and for all whether or not the Best Buy in question ever had a payphone on the premises. Are you listening, Owen? Let’s get on this!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Blockbuster Video from The Holiday was formerly located at 11770 San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood. Today, the site houses a branch of First Republic Bank. Pete’s Coffee & Tea, the former site of Mezzaluna restaurant, is located at the opposite end of the same shopping complex at 11750 San Vicente.

December 19, 2014April 19, 2015

My Latest Discover L.A. Article – About Christmas Movie Locations

I typically cover only one location each day on my blog, but today I’m giving you ten! Head on over to Discover Los Angeles to check out my latest article about holiday movie and television locations. Enjoy!