Tag: famous homes

Jesse James and Sandra Bullock’s Former House

Another Orange County location that the Grim Cheaper and I stalked this past weekend while spending time in Huntington Beach was the former home of actress Sandra Bullock and her ex-husband, West Coast Choppers CEO and reality television star Jesse James. As it was the GC’s birthday weekend, I was not actually planning on doing any stalking – outside of the 90210 Beach Club, of course, which I blogged about yesterday – during our time in the South Bay, but while we were checking out, the super nice concierge we spoke with informed us that Sandra and Jesse’s former home was located just a few miles north of the hotel in the beachfront community of Sunset Beach. And even though I am not a particularly huge fan of either one of the stars, because we were in the area I immediately got to cyberstalking the residence on fave website Virtual Globetrotting and dragged the GC right on over to stalk the place on our way out of town.

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And I am so glad that I did! Despite the numerous nasty commenters on more than a few celebrity real estate websites who state how ugly the house is, I actually think it is pretty darn beautiful. Sure, it is a bit boxy-looking, but heck I’d live in an octagon if it meant being right on the ocean. Jesse James purchased the 4 bedroom, 5 bathroom Mediterranean-style home, which boasts a whopping 3,626 square feet of beachfront living space, for $3.5 million in 2003, when he was still married to adult film star Janine Lindemulder. The residence was originally built in 1976, but was completely remodeled in 2002 shortly before Jesse purchased it. He put the house up for sale for a cool $6.75 million in May of 2010, shortly after the news of his infidelity hit the blogosphere, and eventually sold it in mid-December of last year, after a pretty major reduction in price, for $4.5 million.

The home is situated on a fairly-large corner lot located directly on the beach . . .

. . . and boasts pretty incredible ocean views, although, as you can see in the above photograph, the weather was fairly dreary while we were there.

Jesse and Sandra’s former residence also features a glass-enclosed lanai which sports an outdoor pool with a waterfall and a waterslide and automated tiki torches, which you can sort of see in the above photographs. According to the property’s real estate website, on which you can see some great interior pictures of the house, the place also boasts a media room, a wet bar, stone floors, coved ceilings, an en-suite guest room, a master suite with a fireplace, and a three car garage with a custom tool crib. Now I am not quite sure what a “custom tool crib” is, but I’d be willing to be that, whatever it is, the GC – and most other men on the planet – would absolutely love it. In a very random turn of events, I happened to spot Jesse James and his pit bull Cinnabun on Tuesday afternoon while on my early afternoon coffee run. Jesse did not seem to be in any way open or friendly – in fact he shot me a VERY dirty look as I walked by for some odd reason – so I did not attempt to go up to him or engage him in any way. I was still pretty excited to see him in person, though, nonetheless.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Jesse James and Sandra Bullock’s former house is located at 16905 South Pacific Avenue in Sunset Beach.

March 31, 2011
Architect Frank Gehry’s House

One location that I stalked quite a while back, but have yet to blog about is the residence belonging to legendary 81-year old Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, a man who is perhaps best known for his contemporary designs of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Dancing House in Prague, the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and his new line of jewelry for Tiffany & Co. Gehry and his wife, Berta, purchased their pink Dutch Colonial-style Santa Monica home in 1977 and the architect immediately began a process of “deconstructivism” on it. Interestingly enough, he left the exterior of the home completely intact and untouched, but stripped down the interior to the point that only bare studs and wood framing remained. He subsequently set about rebuilding the interior with more modern-style elements and then proceeded to wrap the exterior of the original house with a new frame made of corrugated metal, plywood, glass, aluminum, and chain-link fencing, essentially wrapping the entire house with a brand new exterior.

According to the Arch Daily website, of the unusual design, the architect said, “I loved the idea of leaving the house intact. I came up with the idea of building the new house around it. We were told there were ghosts in the house . . . I decided they were ghosts of Cubism. The windows . . . I wanted to make them look like they were crawling out of this thing.” He also stated, “Here we are being surrounded by material that’s being manufactured in unimaginable quantities worldwide and is used everywhere. I don’t like it, no one likes it, and yet it’s pervasive. We don’t even see it. I noticed and started to find ways to beautify it. I wanted to take the curse off the material. It’s also why I made cardboard furniture. Cardboard is another material that’s ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made the furniture with it everybody loved it.” Ironically enough, although he had received quite a bit of recognition prior to the remodel, it is Gehry’s Santa Monica house that is largely credited with putting the now-iconic architect on the map.

And while the unique abode became an architectural phenomenon virtually overnight, Gehry’s neighbors were not quite as appreciative of his aesthetic. Legend has it that one even went so far as to shoot at the house late one night in a show of protest! In 1991, Gehry angered both his neighbors and architectural enthusiasts alike when he once again remodeled the property, this time to meet the needs of his family – he had two growing teenage boys at the time who each wanted a room of their own. Architectural purists apparently feel that the most recent remodel makes the house appear too “finished”, but, as you can see above, the new design still retains quite a bit of rawness and the place is definitely still an acquired taste. In fact, the Grim Cheaper used to live just a few blocks away from the property and we would often drive by and marvel at the residence’s atrocity. It wasn’t until years later that we realized who the house belonged to and its architectural significance.

The oddest part of the property, in my mind at least, is the extensive use of chain-link fencing, which in most instances seems to appear virtually out of nowhere. And even though the residence is not really my cup of tea, I can’t recommend stalking it enough for the mere fact that there is literally no other place like it in the entire world.

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Gehry’s house was hilariously recreated – animation-style – for the Season 16 episode of The Simpsons titled “The Seven-Beer Snitch”, in which Marge Simpson commissions Gehry, whom she calls “the bestest architect in the world”, to build a concert hall in Springfield. That concert hall winds up going bankrupt on its opening night and is later turned into the Springfield Prison.

You can see some great interior and close-up photographs of the Frank Gehry residence here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Frank Gehry’s house is located at 1002 22nd Street, at the corner of Washington Avenue, in Santa Monica.

December 29, 2010
Granville Towers – Portia de Rossi’s Former Home

I just recently finished reading Portia de Rossi’s new memoir Unbearable Lightness and I have to say that it was easily one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life! I literally could NOT put it down. The memoir is a harrowing account of the actress’ long-time eating disorder which consumed her life during the years she portrayed Nelle Porter on the hit television series Ally McBeal. Besides being a fabulous read, the book’s topic really hit home with me as I was once told by an acting teacher that I was “stocky” and needed to lose weight if I wanted to make it in this business. I was a size two at the time. Needless to say the notion of “there is no such thing as too thin” is alive and well in Hollywood. Thankfully I had a strong foundation to fall back on at home and was able to blow off my acting teacher’s words – and eventually her class. But it is easy to see why someone like Portia, who was already deeply insecure over the fact that she was gay and whose family lived a world away in Australia, would falter in that sort of environment. Her story is both heartbreaking and fascinating and I honestly cannot recommend reading it enough. Anyway, in the book, Portia talks about living in a penthouse unit at the legendary Granville Towers in West Hollywood, so as soon as I finished reading the tome, I immediately ran right out to stalk the place.

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The Granville Towers, which was originally an apartment building named The Voltaire, was built in 1930 in the French Revival style by architect Leland Bryant, who also designed one of my favorite hotels in Southern California – the Sunset Tower Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. The 7-story, 40-unit property was a celebrity magnet from the very beginning and such stars as Ann Sothern, Jack Lord, Arthur Treacher, Janet Gaynor, and Rock Hudson called the place home. My girl Marilyn Monroe even stayed there for a brief while after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio in 1954. In the 1980s, the property was transformed into a luxury hotel at which point it was renamed The Granville. A few years later it was transformed yet again, this time into an upscale condominium building, and Hollywood luminaries once again began calling the place home. Just a few of the celebrities who have lived there in more recent years include Nicole Scherzinger, Ashley Greene (her boyfriend Joe Jonas is a frequent visitor), Mickey Rourke, Brendan Fraser, David Bowie, Amy Locane, and Michael Michele.

Portia de Rossi lived in the building’s north tower penthouse from the late 1990s through mid-2002. Of first seeing the penthouse apartment, she said, “I felt as though I had been transported to an artist’s loft in a city like Philadelphia, which was much more exciting to me than where I actually was. Where I was, was predictable. But the apartment made me think there was more to life than being an actress on a David Kelly show.” She signed the papers on the spot and immediately set about transforming the upstairs attic loft into a workout room. Of her makeshift gym, she says, “The treadmill was really the only thing up there and was perfectly centered in the attic, between the wall of windows that showcased the industrial city that was the roof of the Sunset 5 and the east windows through which I could see all the way downtown. The wall opposite the smokestacks acted as a bulletin board where I had taped pieces of paper. Mostly the pieces were exaggerated to-do lists. I say ‘exaggerated’ because they said things that were more like goals that I wanted to achieve than things that needed to be done. The largest piece of paper with the boldest writing stated ‘I WILL BE 105 POUNDS BY CHRISTMAS’.” She also fastened a list of cards to the wall just to the left of her to-do list. Each card featured a number, beginning at 111 and running backwards. Portia was 111 pounds at the time and each time she lost a pound, she would remove a card. Of her weight wall, she says, “It helped keep me focused and it helped me to remember that once I’d achieved the new lower weight and the card stating my previous weight was gone, that I could never weigh that much again; that the old weight was gone. It was no longer who I was. It was getting more difficult to lose weight as I got thinner, so I needed all the incentive and motivation I could muster. Putting my weight on the wall was a clever thing to do as it always needed to be in the forefront of my mind, otherwise I might’ve forgotten and walked on the treadmill instead of run, sat instead of paced. I once saw a loft where a famous writer lived, and all over the wall was his research for the novel he was writing. He described the book to me as his life’s work, his magnum opus. I felt like controlling my weight was my magnum opus, the most important product of my brain and was worthy of devoting a wall to its success.” See what I mean? Absolutely riveting – and harrowing – stuff!

The Granville is a truly beautiful building and features a 24-hour doorman, valet parking, a lobby with a piano, an indoor pool and spa, and a large garden patio area complete with statuaries and fountains. You can view some great interior photographs of the building here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Granville Towers is located at 1424 North Crescent Heights Boulevard, just south of Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood.

December 14, 2010
The House Where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Lived While Writing “Good Will Hunting”

A few months back, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, was doing some research on the town of Eagle Rock when he came across a Wikipedia page which mentioned that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had lived in the Los Angeles neighborhood – in a home on Hill Drive – while writing the screenplay for their 1997 Oscar-winning movie Good Will Hunting. I found it a bit hard to believe that Matt and Ben, two twenty-something actors trying to make it in “the biz”, would have been living in a San Gabriel Valley suburb and not in the heart of Hollywood, but as it turns out Ben had previously attended Occidental College, which is located in Eagle Rock, for a brief period of time, so he would have been familiar with the area. According to IMDB, of his living situation at the time, Ben said, “I lived all over the place. I lived in Hollywood, then I moved. [Matt Damon] and I got money from School Ties and we blew it all in a couple of months. We made $35,000 or $40,000 each and thought we were rich. And we were shocked later on to find out how much we owed in taxes. We were appalled: $15,000! What? But we rented this house on the beach in Venice and 800 people came and stayed with us and got drunk. Then we ran out of money and had to get an apartment. It was like everything was exciting.   So we lived in Glendale and Eagle Rock and we lived in Hollywood, West Hollywood, Venice, by the Hollywood Bowl, all over the place. We’d get thrown out of some places or we’d have to upgrade or downgrade depending on who had money.” So, while Mike and I were in Eagle Rock this past Monday, we decided to try to track down the exact house where they twosome had lived while writing their famous screenplay. As it turns out, it wasn’t too hard to locate. Using my Blackberry, I fairly quickly came across this Curbed LA Article about an Eagle Rock home for sale in which a reader had commented that it was “rumored to be the house where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck allegedly wrote Good Will Hunting”. I then Googled the property’s address and found countless other websites which further substantiated that the twosome had once called the place home. So, we immediately headed right on over to stalk the place.

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Come to find out, Mike and I had actually already stalked this location earlier that same day! We had come across the Tudor/fairytale-style home while driving to another locale in Eagle Rock a few hours prior and Mike immediately noticed its odd gate and even odder architecture, so he stopped to snap some pics. When we pulled back up to the property a few hours later after finding Matt and Ben’s former address online, we both just about died!

Matt and Ben’s former residence, which is known as both the ‘”Brauch House” and “Ma Castle” in architectural circles, was originally built in 1923 by the architecture team of Egasse & Brauch. Of the design, Brauch, who built the house as his personal residence, said, “In this particular instance, Norman lines, such as were left by the descendents of the Vikings, following their peregrination of the ante-medieval period, were the main source of inspiration.” Apparently, when it was first built, the interior of the home featured numerous wall murals depicting the Norse warriors in action. The Brauch House is actually made up of two separate dwellings – a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 2,187-square foot main house . . .

. . . and a detached guest cottage which is located directly behind it. And while I can’t say with absolute certainty that Matt and Ben ever actually lived on the premises, it is my best guess that if they did, the two stars, who were struggling financially at the time, most likely lived in the guest property and not in the main house.

Matt had originally written Good Will Hunting as a play while in a creative writing class when he was a student at Harvard University. After landing a role in the 1992 film Geronimo: An American Legend, Damon dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career full time. He eventually moved in with his long-time friend Ben, at one point crashing on his couch for an extended period of time. One fateful night, Matt showed the play to Ben and the two decided to turn it into a movie in which they would star. They ended up selling the screenplay to Miramax a few years later for a reported $600,000 and the rest, as they say, is history! You can see some great interior photographs of the Brauch House on the Curbed LA website here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (supposedly) lived at 2327 Hill Drive in Eagle Rock while writing the screenplay for Good Will Hunting.

October 18, 2010
Liberace’s Former Home

A couple of weeks ago, while doing some stalking in the Valley, I became a bit obsessed with locating the home where legendary pianist Liberace lived back in the 1950s. I first heard about this location, ironically enough, from comedian and Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Ryan Stiles, who also owned the property at one point in time. I got to know Ryan – and several other members of The Drew Carey Show cast and crew – after some extra work I did on the series in the summer of 2000. For about a year I would fairly regularly meet up with “the Drew Crew”, as I liked to call them, after the show taped every Tuesday night at the now-defunct Dalt’s Grill in Burbank. During one of those outings, Ryan mentioned that he lived in a Sherman Oaks-area home that had once belonged to Liberace and that the home had a piano-shaped swimming pool in the backyard, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever! Being that that conversation took place almost a decade ago, though, I’m not quite sure what made me think of it two weeks ago, but for whatever reason, as my fiancé and I drove through the Valley my mind flashed on that piano-shaped pool and I immediately pulled out my blackberry and started cyberstalking the place. I fairly quickly stumbled upon this Los Angeles Times article from July of 2007 which listed the address of Liberace’s former house and immediately dragged my new husband right on over to stalk it.





Liberace himself designed the L-shaped house, which, of course, was decorated with a piano motif throughout, in 1953 and he and his mother, Francis, moved in that very same year. As his fame grew, fans would reportedly hop the fence into his backyard to catch a glimpse of the entertainer at home and the property was eventually deemed far too accessible for a man who was, at the time, the highest-paid entertainer in the entire world. Liberace moved out of the 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom, 3,907-square foot home sometime in or around 1958 and migrated to the Palm Springs area, while Francis stayed behind. Amazingly enough, the property still looks much the same today as it did when Liberace first built it over 57 years ago. So darn cool!

The residence made headlines in July of 1957, when Francis was attacked by two masked men while throwing away trash in the garage. At the time, Liberace was involved in a $20 million libel lawsuit against Confidential Magazine which had featured a recent cover story insinuating that the entertainer was gay. Liberace had given a deposition earlier that day and it is widely believed that the attack on his mother was a direct result of the lawsuit, although the perpetrators were never identified.

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Sadly, the piano-shaped pool that I had so loved hearing about from Ryan Stiles cannot be seen from the street. But thankfully it is visible via Bing’s aerial views and was also featured in a Life Magazine photoshoot from 1954. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see that pool in person!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Liberace – and Ryan Stiles’ – former home is located at 15405 Valley Vista Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

September 27, 2010
The “Thirteen Days” House

While I mentioned last week that today’s blog would be most likely be about the Cabo San Lucas rocks where Jennifer Aniston posed for her recent Jennifer Aniston Perfume advertisement, I’ve actually decided to postpone that post until a later date and instead write about a location that can be found right here in Los Angeles – the supposed Washington, DC-area home where top presidential aide Kenny O’Donnell (aka Kevin Costner) lived with his family in the 2000 movie Thirteen Days. I found this location thanks to my one of my mom’s co-workers, Teresa, who attended last year’s Alhambra Historic Home tour, which is put on annually by the Alhambra Preservation Group. One of the stops on the tour just so happened to be the residence located at 504 North Almansor Street, and when the tour guide mentioned the property’s cinematic history, Teresa wrote down the address so that my mom could pass it along to me. The place has been on my ever-growing To-Stalk list ever since. So, when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, mentioned that he wanted to do some stalking in the Pasadena-area this past Tuesday, I told him that we first had to head over to Alhambra so that I could finally stalk the Thirteen Days house.

The Thirteen Days house was originally built in 1924 and boasts 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and 3,383 square feet of living space. Because of its distinct “All-American” feel, it’s not very hard to see why producers chose to use it as the Washington D.C.-area residence of one of John F. Kennedy’s top-ranking aides.

Even though Thirteen Days was set in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, not much of the residence was changed for the filming. In fact, it looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did in the flick. Love it! 🙂

And, as you can see in the above photographs, which I got off of the home’s real estate website, the real life interior of the residence, right down to the window curtains hanging in the kitchen, were also used in the flick. So darn cool!

And, as you can see in the above photograph of the real life bedroom which stood in for the Connelly’s master bedroom in the flick, the owners even have a Thirteen Days poster out on prominent display. Love it!

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The very same residence also appeared in the 2006 made-for-television movie Though None Go With Me, where it was used as Will Bishop’s (aka David Norona’s) home.

Ironically enough, the Thirteen Days house is located right next door to the residence where Percy Jones (aka Bernie Mac) and his family lived in Guess Who, which just so happens to be the very same residence where the backyard scenes from both Father of the Bride movies were also filmed. So darn cool!

Big THANK YOU to Teresa for finding this location for me!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Thirteen Days house is located at 504 North Almansor Street in Alhambra, directly next door to the Guess Who/Father of the Bride house, which is located at 500 North Almansor.

September 8, 2010
Holly’s Nashua House from “The Office”

Another location from The Office that I stalked recently was the supposed Nashua, New Hampshire-area house that Holly Flax moved into in the Season 5 episode titled “Employee Transfer”. I found this location, yet again, thanks to fellow stalker Owen who went on a mission a while back to try to track down as many Office locales as possible. So, thank you, Owen! Ironically enough, though, I actually didn’t need his help on this one because as soon as I first saw the “Employee Transfer” episode, I was fairly certain that the Nashua house scenes had been filmed either on or near Carroll Avenue in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles – an area which boasts the city’s largest concentration of Victorian-era homes. I was already quite familiar with Carroll Avenue and its architecture as the haunted house from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and the Halliwell residence from the television series Charmed are both located there. And, sure enough, my stalking instincts were right on! While Holly’s house is not actually located on Carroll Avenue, it can be found just around the corner from it.

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In the “Employee Transfer” episode, Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) and Darryl Philbin (aka the hilarious Craig Robinson) move Michael’s girlfriend Holly Flax (aka Amy Ryan) into her new home in Nashua, after she has been transferred back to the Dunder Mifflin branch where she formerly worked.

And I am very happy to report that the residence looks EXACTLY the same in person as it did on the show. Holly’s house is absolutely GORGEOUS and it is not very hard to see why producers chose to film there, although, in my mind at least, it looks far more like a San Francisco-area home than one that would be found in Nashua. I’ve never been to New Hampshire, though, so don’t quote me on that one. 😉

Holly’s Nashua house, which is known as the Jesse Hall Residence in real life, actually has quite a bit of history to it, as do most properties in the neighborhood. The Hall Residence was designed by contractor John M. Skinner in 1887 for $6,000 and it is a carbon copy of the property located directly to the east of it, which is known as the Henry G. Hall Residence. Because the homes are identical in appearance and were both owned by families with the last name of Hall, they are known in architectural circles as “the Hall Twins”. And while the house was originally a single-family dwelling, in 1915 Jesse Hall’s son, Tracey, transformed the property into a duplex and it remains so to this day. The Hall Twins were both designated Historic-Cultural Monuments in June of 1979. You can read more about their history on the Big Orange Landmarks blog here.

On an Office side note – EW Magazine is reporting that Amy Ryan will be back for a whopping eight episodes during the show’s upcoming seventh season. YAY! You can watch a clip of Amy appearing on fave show Chelsea Lately in which she talks about how she landed her recurring role as Michael Scott’s love interest Holly Flax. Apparently, after she was nominated for an Oscar for the movie Gone, Baby, Gone, she told her agent that she wanted to use her newfound Hollywood clout to land a guest spot on The Office, which was her favorite show. She ended up landing the part of Holly and when she arrived on the set the first day and told Rainn Wilson the story of how she booked the role, he told her “You really should aim higher.” LOL I first watched that interview long before I had ever seen an episode of The Office and remember being absolutely fascinated by the fact that Amy loved the show THAT much. But now that I’ve become an Office devotee, I TOTALLY get it. If I was nominated for an Oscar, I, too, would so try to use my clout to land a role on that show. 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Holly Flax’s Nashua house from The Office is located at 1347 Kellam Avenue in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The house from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video is located just around the corner at 1345 Carroll Avenue and the Charmed residence is located at 1329 Carroll Avenue.

August 17, 2010
The “Date Night” House

Last night, the Grim Cheaper and I sat down to watch the movie Date Night which FINALLY came out on DVD this week. We somehow missed seeing the flick in theatres when it first came out in April and I have been not-so-patiently waiting for it to be released on DVD ever since. Especially since Mike, from MovieShotsLA, tracked down the house which belonged to Phil and Claire Foster (played by Steve Carell and Tina Fey, respectively) in it over four months ago. Because I suffer from the need for immediate gratification, I actually stalked the place immediately after Mike told me its location and, as you can imagine, have been ABSOLUTELY DYING to see the movie ever since – even though the previews didn’t look especially promising. I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised while watching it, too – despite what the reviews said, Date Night is a really cute movie! It’s heartwarming and sweet and laugh-out-loud funny. Not to mention the fact that Tina Fey and Steve Carell are exceptional in it! Loved it, loved it, loved it! But I digress!

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Mike tracked down the Date Night house pretty much immediately after seeing the movie in theatres. He knew from the get-go that the supposed New Jersey-area home was actually located somewhere in Pasadena thanks to these JFX Online paparazzi photos taken of Tina Fey and Leighton Meester during the filming. He also spotted an address number of “620” while watching the movie and from there used Google Street View to search all of the 600 blocks in the Pasadena area until he found the right residence. Thank you, Mike!



The Foster house actually shows up only a few times in Date Night, most notably in the ending scene in which Phil and Claire return home after their disastrous date in New York City.



And I am very happy to report that not only does the home look exactly the same in person as it did in the movie, but it is also ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE. In fact, it is almost too adorable. Had Mike not found the property’s real life location and had I not seen the place with my own two eyes, I would have been absolutely convinced that it was a fake house located on a studio backlot somewhere in Hollywood. The residence has that “studio” feel to it even in person and looks like it belongs on Wisteria Lane and not in the real world. 😉

As you can see in these photographs of the inside of the home, the real life interior of the property was also used in the filming.

And, ironically enough, the “Byzantine/Mediterranean” house that Claire tries to sell at the beginning of Date Night is located right next door to the Foster home, which makes things convenient for us stalkers.

On a Date Night side note – If you haven’t yet watched the bloopers reel featured at the end of the flick, you REALLY need to and can do so by clicking above. They are absolutely hilarious and really show how much fun the movie must have been to work on. It was actually watching stuff like this that first made me want to be an actor. Yes, the hours are long and the work is tedious, but in what other kind of career does one get to laugh as much as this??? 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding these locations! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Phil and Claire Foster’s house from Date Night is located at 620 Vallombrosa Drive in Pasadena. The home that Claire tries to sell at the beginning of the movie is located right next door at 608 Vallombrosa Drive.

August 11, 2010
Jessica’s House from “Sleepless in Seattle”

One of the locations that I was most excited about stalking while visiting Seattle this past May was the home where Jonah Baldwin’s (aka Ross Malinger’s) best friend Jessica (aka Gaby Hoffman) lived in fave movie Sleepless in Seattle. Fellow stalker David, who I had the pleasure of meeting and doing some stalking with during my brief three-day vacation, managed to track down Jessica’s house just about a week before I headed up to the Pacific Northwest. He found the locale after posting an inquiry on this area filming locations thread on the West Seattle Blog website. David had spent quite a bit of time trying to find the house on his own without much luck, so thankfully the West Seattle Blog readers offered to lend a hand and through some amazing detective work came up with the right address. YAY! So, I immediately put the home high up on my must-stalk-while-in-Seattle-list and could NOT have been more excited about seeing it!

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The exterior of Jessica’s house was actually only featured in one very brief scene in Sleepless in Seattle in which BFF’s Jonah and Jessica mail a letter to Annie Reed (aka Meg Ryan) which they have written on behalf of Jonah’s father, Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks). After putting the forged letter in Jessica’s mailbox, the two sit on her front porch and wait for the mailman to come pick it up.

Even though the home appeared only once, and very briefly at that, I was still absolutely floored over seeing it in person because, as I’ve mentioned before, Sleepless in Seattle is one of my very favorite movies of all time. And I am happy to report that Jessica’s house still looks very much the same today as to how it appeared onscreen in Sleepless, which is pretty darn amazing being that filming took place over 17 years ago! Sadly, though, the mailbox where Jessica and Jonah mailed Annie’s letter is not there in real life. I am fairly certain that it was never truly a part of the house, but was a prop that was brought in solely for the filming. 🙁 So sad! Also missing, of course, was Jessica’s mom’s “Four Winds” travel agency sign that was displayed on the home’s front porch in the movie.

I am fairly certain that the actual interior of the house was used in the filming, as well.

According to a comment posted by a West Seattle Blog reader named “westseattledood”, a home located just a few doors down from Jessica’s stood in for the Chicago-area residence where Sam and Jonah lived during the beginning of Sleepless. Only the interior of that house was shown in the movie in the scene in which Sam’s sister, Suzy (aka Rita Wilson), tells Sam how to prepare the food she has made for him.

And even though the residence’s exterior was never shown in Sleepless, since we were less than a block away, I just had to stalk that property, too! 🙂

Big THANK YOU to David and to the West Seattle Blog readers for their help in finding these locations! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Jessica’s house from Sleepless in Seattle is located at 1816 4th Avenue North in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. The home used for the interiors of Sam and Jonah’s Chicago residence can be found just down the street at 1701 4th Avenue North.

August 10, 2010
David Wallace’s House from “The Office” – Part II

Another filming location from The Office that I dragged my fiance out to stalk two weekends ago was the large Colonial-style estate belonging to Dunder Mifflin Paper Company CFO David Wallace (aka Andy Buckley) on the show. This is not the same Pasadena-area property that stood in for the Wallace residence in the Season 3 episode of the series titled “Branch Closing” that I blogged about two weeks ago, however. For an unexplained reason, after shooting the “Branch Closing” episode, producers chose to use a different, but similar-looking home located in the Encino-area, to stand in for the Wallace residence. I found this location, as usual, thanks to fellow stalker Owen, who tracked down a slew of Office filming locales long before I ever even watched the show. So, thank you, Owen!

Owen had warned me before I stalked the house that the property was not only gated, but set quite a ways back from the street and was most likely not at all visible to the public. I am very happy to report, though, that the stalking gods were smiling down upon us when we arrived to stalk the house because miraculously the front gates were standing WIDE OPEN! YAY! I am also happy to report that the home looks exactly the same in person as it did on the show.

I honestly can’t get over how large the Wallace residence is! The place is absolutely gargantuan! And it is currently for sale! According to its real estate listing, the home, which is currently being offered at $4,998,000, boasts 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, 6,000 square feet of living space, and sits on a whopping 3 acres of what the listing describes as “park-like” land. The home also features a separate 700-square foot guest house, working horse stables, a tennis court, a pool, and a spa.

The home first appeared in the Season 3 episode of the series titled “Cocktails”, in which David Wallace and his wife, Rachel, throw a party at their house for all of the Dunder Mifflin managers.

And, as you can see in the above screen captures as compared to these interior photographs of the home, the real life inside of the house and even some of the actual furniture was used in the filming of that episode.

I have to say here that I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE the scene in “Cocktails” in which Dwight Schrute (aka Rainn Wilson) turns to a party guest who is eating shrimp and says, “You know that line on the top of the shrimp? That’s feces.” LOL LOL LOL That scene especially resonates with me because someone once told me that very same thing when I was a little girl and I have NEVER forgotten it and now can’t eat shrimp unless that “line” has been removed.

One VERY odd anomaly that I noticed while watching the “Cocktails” episode today was that the trash cans pictured in the background of the scene in which Michael and Dwight trade shirts were all spray-painted with the number “1485”. And while the home where that episode was filmed is numbered “5133”, the Pasadena residence that stood in for David Wallace’s house in the previous “Branch Closing” episode was in fact numbered “1485”. I don’t even know what to make of this development, as that shirt-trading scene was obviously not filmed at the Pasadena location. I guess I’ll just have to chalk it up to being a very, very bizarre coincidence.

David Wallace’s house also appeared in the Season 6 episode of The Office titled “Sabre” in the scene in which Michael goes to David’s home to get some advice on how to deal with the new corporation that has just taken over Dunder Mifflin.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: David Wallace’s (second) house from The Office is located at 5133 Louise Avenue in Encino. You can visit the home’s real estate listing here.

July 29, 2010