famous places – Page 49 – IAMNOTASTALKER

August 24, 2009August 23, 2009

The Independence Day House

One of the locations at the very top of fellow stalker Owen’s “To Find” list was the house belonging to Captain Steven Hiller, aka Will Smith, and his girlfriend Jasmine Dubrow, aka Vivica A. Fox, in the 1996 blockbuster movie Independence Day. So, a few weeks ago, Owen enlisted the help of master stalker Chas and, amazingly enough, the two of them found the house in just a few short hours!!!! So, of course, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I immediately ran right out to stalk it! Mike had actually been looking for this house for quite some time, but had become convinced that it was a fake house that had been built solely for the production on a studio backlot somewhere. Well, thanks to Owen and Chas, we can now say for certain that the Independence Day house was, in fact, very real! 🙂

Both Mike and I were absolutely SHOCKED to discover that the Independence Day house looks EXACTLY the same today as it did thirteen years ago when the movie was filmed!!! The paint color, the shutters, and the foliage are all still pretty much identical to how they appeared in the movie. SO LOVE IT! Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good screen capture from the movie which showed the entire house. 🙁

The thing I was most shocked about seeing in person was the little “6033” address plaque hanging from the front porch which was also featured in the movie (pictured above). I could NOT believe that little plaque was there in real life, too! I thought for sure it had been a movie prop. SO DARN COOL!

The Independence Day house only pops up in a few brief scenes at the very beginning of the movie. It is first shown in the scene when Will Smith walks outside to get his morning paper only to discover a large flying saucer hovering above his neighborhood. We next see it when Will says goodbye to his girlfriend and her son before driving off to go save the world from alien invaders. And, from how it appears in the movie, I am pretty convinced that the real life interior of the home was used for the filming, as well.

There actually was one major part of the house that was changed for the filming of the movie – the view. Producers actually cheated quite a bit regarding the home’s location in the movie. In the scene when Will Smith first notices the flying saucer while standing in his front yard, he looks to his left and sees the above pictured valley and freeway system.

In reality, though, while the home is located on a bit of a hill, it doesn’t really overlook anything. What Will really would have been looking at in that scene is pictured above. 🙂

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I highly recommend stalking the ID4 house to all fans of the movie! Especially since it still looks so similar to how it appeared onscreen! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Captain Steve Hillard’s Independence Day house is located at 6033 74th Street in the Westchester area of Los Angeles.

August 21, 2009August 21, 2009

The “Twins” Mansion

Another day, another Twins location. 🙂 Unbelievably, before writing my post about the Twins house yesterday, I had yet to actually see the movie. For some reason, even though we own a copy of it on DVD, I had never sat down to watch it. Until yesterday, that is. But, as often happens to me when watching a movie for the first time, I got more absorbed in the locations and behind-the-scenes information than the actual storyline. I kept having to pause the movie to run to my computer to look things up. LOL One of the locales that I became a bit obsessed with finding yesterday was the mansion belonging to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito’s father in the movie. Ironically enough, while doing some cyberstalking of the home, I came across this post on fave website ’80s Movie Rewind and was SHOCKED to see the location of the house listed with a special thanks to none other than my good friend Mike, from MovieShotsLA. LOL LOL LOL It’s such a small stalking world, isn’t it?? Granted, I’m sure Mike had told me the address of the Twins mansion before, but when the two of us get to talking about locations I get so excited that half of what he says doesn’t even register. I’ll ask him about a movie locale months later and he’ll say “I ALREADY told you where that was!” LOL Needless to say, the Twins mansion address is one of the bits of information that, for whatever reason, my brain didn’t store.

Anyway, as soon as I had the address yesterday, I ran right out to stalk the house. And I am very happy to report that – over TWO DECADES later – the Twins mansion looks pretty much EXACTLY the same today as it did when the movie was filmed! I mean, even the paint color is still the same! LOVE IT! In fact, the only differences I noticed were some very minor changes in foliage. Movie location owners really need to take lessons from the people that live in this house! LOL

The Twins mansion shows up very briefly in the scene when Arnold is out looking for infomation about his mother who passed away in childbirth. He winds up at this home and ends up meeting his father for the very first time. A scene takes place in the front yard of the house and then, later, in the father’s study. And, from how it looked in the movie, I believe a real room inside the house was used as the study.

The Twins mansion, which in real life is known as the A.L. Garford House, was built in 1916 by the prominent Pasadena architectural firm of Marston & Van Pelt. Sylvanus Marston built over 1,000 residences in the Pasadena area throughout his twenty-two year career, including America’s first ever bungalow motor court apartment complex, and has even been called “Pasadena’s Quintessential Architect”. Marston built homes and buildings in an eclectic array of styles ranging from English Tudor to Imperial Chinese. The Garford House was actually one of the first Pasadena area homes to be built in the elaborate Churrigueresque, or Spanish Baroque, style, and, according to this article, was the first ever Spanish style home to have a painted stucco exterior. It truly is a very beautiful and absolutely ginormous home!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito’s father’s house from Twins, aka the A.L. Garford House, is located at 1126 Hillcrest Avenue, on the Northeast corner of Hillcrest Avenue and South Oak Knoll Avenue, in Pasadena.

August 20, 2009August 20, 2009

The “Twins” House

A few weeks ago, fellow stalker Owen asked for my help in locating Danny DeVito’s Mediteranean style home from the 1988 comedy Twins. Owen had already done quite a bit of stalking legwork on this one and had managed to contact one of the movie’s crew members who told him that the house was located on a numbered street near Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Unfortunately, though, due to the fact that many of the numbered streets in Santa Monica aren’t featured in Google Maps Street View, Owen was not able to cyberstalk the home. Which is where I came in. 🙂 Because I am in the Santa Monica area quite frequently, I offered to drive around the numbered streets to see if I could locate the elusive Twins house. From watching the movie, Owen knew that the home had an address number of 323 and that the neighboring house was numbered 327, which narrowed down our search parameters quite a bit. So, a few weeks ago, with a screen capture of the house and those few bits of information in hand, I dragged my fiance out to find the Twins house. And find it, we did! 🙂

Amazingly enough, the house was actually located on the very first street we drove down. When I realized we had found it, I turned to my fiance in shock and said “Could it really have been this easy?” LOL Sadly, though, the Twins house looks MUCH different today than it did back in 1988 when the movie was filmed. While still recognizable, it looks as if quite a bit of remodeling has been done to it in recent years. I guess I really shouldn’t be all that surprised that the house has changed so significantly, though, after all the movie was filmed more than two decades ago!

Besides adding on a whole second story, the homeowners also removed the enclosed front porch area and popped out the home’s entry way and front door by a good couple of feet, as you can see in the above photograph and screen capture. A large tree which covers the front window has also since been planted.

But the most significant – and odd – change to the house has to be the complete removal of the driveway. Owen and I have actually been over the driveway removal issue ad nauseam and still can’t figure out the reasoning behind it. I mean WHY ON EARTH WOULD SOMEONE REMOVE THEIR DRIVEWAY? LOL It’s absolutely BIZARRE! My fiance brought up the point, though, that it’s quite possible the city refused to grant the homeowner’s remodeling permits unless they agreed to do away with their driveway. Santa Monica is known as something of an “alley city” – numerous homes in the area don’t have driveways and the garages are reached via a back alley – so it’s actually a pretty good possibility that my fiance hit the nail on the head about why that driveway is no longer there.

Ironically enough, the neighboring house, which shows up briefly in Twins, still looks EXACTLY the same as it did when the movie was filmed.

Even though the Twins house looks quite different today, it was still extremely exciting to be stalking it. And a little bit of movie trivia for you – a very young Heather Graham had a brief, uncredited role in Twins as Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mom. David Caruso also had a small role in the movie as parking attendant Al Greco. His voice is so different in the flick, though, that I literally almost didn’t recognize him!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Danny DeVito’s house from Twins is located at 323 11th Street in Santa Monica.

August 19, 2009August 20, 2009

The Wedding Singer Bakery

A few weeks ago, fellow stalker Owen asked for my help in locating the bakery featured in one of his all time favorite movies, the 1998 comedy The Wedding Singer. Owen had actually contacted one of the movie’s crew members who happened to remember that the bakery where filming took place was located somewhere in Montrose, a small town in the San Gabriel Valley where quite a few scenes from The Wedding Singer were filmed. Because Owen does not live in the area, he sent me out on a mission to stalk all of the bakeries located in the tiny town in the hopes that I would eventually find the right one. So, early one morning last week, I dragged my parents out to Montrose to hopefully stalk the Wedding Singer bakery.

And, sure enough, it was the very first bakery we walked into!! Ironically, I had ALREADY STALKED this location just last month while visiting some sites from the Will Ferrell comedy Old School. It turns out that the exterior of the Wedding Singer bakery was also used as the restaurant in Old School where Luke Wilson and his “brothers” have a meeting about saving their fraternity! I didn’t immediately recognize the place from my previous stalking trip because, due to the fact that only the exterior of the bakery was featured in Old School, I never ventured inside. But while walking by last week, I peeked in the window and immediately recognized the pink sign pictured above which reads “This is the same ol place”. That sign was featured pretty prominently in the Wedding Singer bakery scene, so as soon as I saw it I knew I had found the right spot. It was at that point that I pretty much started screaming “This is it! This is it! This is it!” to my parents right there on the street out in front of the shop! While I had figured that the bakery featured in the movie would still be around, never in a million years did I think it would still look EXACTLY the same today as it did when the Wedding Singer was filmed over a decade ago! YAY!

Montrose Home Bakery and Sandwich Shoppe actually pops up during my very favorite part of The Wedding Singer – at the beginning of the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler falling in love montage set to the Hall & Oates song “You Make My Dreams Come True”. 🙂 In the scene, Drew Barrymore and friends are first seen looking at wedding cakes in the bakery’s glass display counter. You can even see the bakery’s striped awning behind actor Allen Covert in the above screen capture.

Drew and friends then proceed to feed each other wedding cake in the scene. Although the bakery is only featured for a few brief moments, thanks to the awesome ’80s song playing in the background, it’s quite a memorable little part of the movie.

While stalking the bakery, I happened to start up a conversation with the owner who really could NOT have been nicer to us! He answered a whole bunch of my silly questions and told me to take all the pictures I wanted. It turns out that the Montrose Home Bakery and Sandwich Shoppe has been used for quite a bit of filming over the years. Besides The Wedding Singer and Old School, the shop was also featured in several episodes of the now-defunct television series Dirty Sexy Money. There is even a photograph of the owner and Donald Sutherland taken during the filming posted in the shop’s front window. Apparently, he used to have a picture of himself with Drew Barrymore in that same window, but it is now stored at his home. He told me that if he posted all of his celebrity photographs from all of the filming that has taken place at his little shop, his entire front window would be covered up! LOL LOL LOL LOVE IT!

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Montrose Home Bakery and Sandwich Shoppe is a super cute little place and I HIGHLY recommend stalking it. The shop smelled absolutely delicious inside, but, unfortunately, because I am diabetic, I wasn’t able to sample any of the sweets. 🙁 I am seriously thinking about having them make the cupcakes for my wedding, though. How fitting would it be to get my wedding cupcakes from the Wedding Singer bakery???? 😉

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Wedding Singer Bakery, aka Montrose Home Bakery and Sandwich Shoppe, is located at 2325 1/2 Honolulu Avenue in Montrose. The shop houses both a bakery and a restaurant, and, from what I’ve heard, the restaurant serves up a GREAT breakfast.

August 18, 2009August 18, 2009

The “7th Heaven” House

Got a challenge a few months back from a man named Glenn who wanted me to locate the house used as the Camden residence on the Aaron Spelling television series 7th Heaven. Unfortunately, though, this challenge proved to be rather difficult as there are quite a few conflicting rumors about the home’s location floating around online. The general consensus on most of the fan sites, though, was that the house only ever existed on a studio backlot somewhere in Hollywood. And, even though I didn’t really believe that to be the case, I am embarrassed to admit that I gave up on finding the home’s location rather quickly after reading that. Sorry, Glenn! But last week, I decided to enlist the help of fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Chas, and Owen and, sure enough, it wasn’t long before Chas had called me back with an address!!!!! YAY! Funny side note – after Chas gave me the 7th Heaven house address, I immediately texted both Owen and Mike to let them know that their searches could be called off. Well, ironically enough, Mike’s phone wasn’t working that day, so what did he do, but go out and rent EVERY SINGLE DVD of the series that he could find! I’m not kidding! The next day he called me and said “I’m going to watch every single hour ever made of this show if I have to, but we are going to find that house!” LOL LOL LOL I felt sooooooo bad as poor Mike was not only stuck with a hefty Blockbuster bill, but also a few hundred hours of cheesy television that he had no desire whatsoever to watch.

Even though I’ve never seen a single episode of 7th Heaven, I was still extremely excited to be stalking the Camden house! Sadly, though, the home has changed quite a bit in recent years as you can see in the above screen capture and photograph. In fact, the house looks so different from how it appeared on the series that when I first saw it in person I wasn’t sure I was at the right place. LOL Just a few of the alterations made to the home include a change in paint color from white to baby blue, the installation of a white picket fence around the exterior of the property . . .

. . . and the addition of quite a bit of thick foliage, which makes the home hardly visible at all from the street, as you can see in the above photograph. And while the Camden house is very cute in person, truth be told, I think it looked a whole lot better on the show. 🙂

Chas was able to track down this house by contacting a former 7th Heaven crew member who just happened to remember its exact location. The guy also gave Chas a brief history of the filming of the Camden home, finally allowing us to put those pesky location rumors to rest. The real story of the Camden house is as follows – For the pilot episode of the series, which was filmed in 1996, a house in Altadena that Mike and I have always refered to as the “Rubio House” served as the Camden residence. I’ve blogged about the Rubio House once before as it has appeared in COUNTLESS productions, including The Mentalist, NCIS, Bye Bye Love, and Can’t Hardly Wait, among numerous others. Anyway, for whatever reason, once the series got picked up, producers decided to ditch the Rubio house and use a Santa Monica residence instead. For the next six seasons, that Santa Monica house was used for all exterior filming and establishing shots. But, sometime during the sixth season, the owners of the house got a bit tired of the constant filming on their property and put an end to it. How one can become tired of filming taking place on their property is BEYOND me, but to each their own, I guess. 😉 Once the house was off limits for filming, the production crew built a very basic replica of it, consisting of only one exterior wall and a fake front yard, on the studio back lot. From then on all filming of the Camden house took place there. So, that explains how all of those different location rumors about the house got started! 🙂

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Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location and finally solving the mystery of the 7th Heaven house! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The 7th Heaven house is located at 527 Alta Avenue in Santa Monica. Courteney Cox’s former home is located just up the street at 606 Alta Avenue. The house used as the Camden residence in the 7th Heaven pilot can be found at 1090 Rubio Street in Altadena.

August 17, 2009August 17, 2009

The “Mr. Deeds” Soda Fountain

A few weeks ago, while giving my good friend Kerry and her husband a stalking tour of the Pasadena area, we happened to drive by South Pasadena’s Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, which was used in the 2002 Adam Sandler comedy Mr. Deeds. When I pointed out the corner drugstore to Kerry and told her of its cinematic history, she got so excited that she just about had a heart attack right there in my car!!!! LOL It was then that I realized that I had yet to blog about the tiny restaurant and that I really needed to do so. So, here goes!

Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain has been a South Pasadena tradition ever since it first opened up its doors way back in 1915! Yes, you read that right!!! When the tiny corner drugstore originally opened almost 95 years ago it was named the South Pasadena Pharmacy and it quickly became popular with the hundreds of visitors and tourists travelling down the legendary Route 66 highway. In the ’20s, the drugstore’s name was changed to the Raymond Pharmacy, but it still enjoyed the same popularity and success with highway motorists. In the 1990’s, a new set of owners took over, changed the drugstore’s name to Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, and restored the little soda shop to its original state, complete with vintage honeycomb tile floors, authentic pharmacy fixtures, and antique tin ceilings. An authentic old time soda fountain was even brought in, transported all the way from the Me Gee Pharmacy in Joplin, Mississippi. Fair Oaks Pharmacy is still as popular amoung tourists and South Pasadena residents today as it was back in 1915. In recent years, Sunset Magazine even named it “Best Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor in the West” and, according to the Los Angeles Times, it serves up the “Best Ice Cream Sundae”.

In Mr. Deeds, Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain stood in for the corner drugstore in Westchestertonfieldville, Iowa that Winona Ryder supposedly frequented as a child. In an early scene in the movie, when describing her hometown, Winona says that she used to walk down to the corner drugstore to get malted milkshakes. So, when Adam takes Winona back for a surprise visit to her supposed hometown, their first stop is the soda fountain, where the townspeople mistake her for a hunchbacked little girl they used to call “Quasimodo”. LOL After leaving the Westchestertonfieldville corner drugstore, Adam and Winona head to her childhood home, which I blogged about on Friday.

I actually saw the Mr. Deeds corner drugstore scene being filmed back in 2001. Well, sort of. My mom and I used to get our nails done just down the street from the Pharmacy and we happened to drive by on the very day that filming took place. Well, of course, I took one look at those white trucks out front and immediately made my mom pull the car over so that I could ask what was being filmed. Sadly, though, we had arrived too late, as filming had already wrapped for the day and the production crew was just finishing its clean up. 🙁 So, unfortunately, I never got to see Adam Sandler or Winona Ryder!!!! Such a bummer! But I did ask the employees on duty about the stars and they said that both Adam and Winona were very nice and that Adam had actually stopped to pose for photographs and sign autographs for every single person who asked him. SO COOL! Oh, how I wish I had been there!!!!

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I actually stopped by the Pharmacy a few weeks ago to grab a bite to eat. Whenever we spend a stalking day together, we, of course, always try to eat lunch at a restaurant that is also a filming location. 🙂 Anyway, I am happy to report that Fair Oaks Pharmacy serves up some GREAT food! I highly recommend stalking it – and ordering one of their homemade cherry cokes! 🙂 Besides being a real Pharmacy and a restaurant, the shop also sells a wide arrangment of tchotckes, including greeting cards, jewelry, retro memorabilia, vintage candy, make-up, home decor, and gifts. During the holiday season, the owners really go all out with their decorations. If you’re in the area in October, November or December, I highly recommend stopping by. 🙂 It’s worth a trip for the decorations alone!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, aka the Mr. Deeds soda fountain, is located at 1526 Mission Street in South Pasadena. They are open Monday through Saturday from 9 am to 9 pm, and Sundays from 10 am to 7 pm. You can visit their website here.

August 14, 2009August 13, 2009

The “Mr. Deeds” House

One location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, has being dying to stalk for ages now is Winona Ryder’s red-doored childhood home from the 2002 Adam Sandler comedy Mr. Deeds. Mike had asked for my help in tracking down this location a couple of months ago, but, for some reason, even our two heads working together couldn’t seem to find it. So, this past week, I enlisted the help of fellow stalkers Chas and Owen, and, incredibly, it wasn’t more than a couple of hours later that I got a text from Chas saying he had found the house! 🙂 I’m telling you, there’s nothing he can’t find!!! Thank you, Chas!

Even though in the movie Winona says that she grew up in the fictional town of Westchestertonfieldville, Iowa, Mike and I were fairly certain that her childhood home was located somewhere in the Pasadena area. And, sure enough, we were right!! 🙂 So, of course, once I had the address I immediately ran right out to stalk it. And I am happy to report that, aside from a pretty big difference in paint color, the house is still very recognizable from the film. The home is absolutely adorable in person and it’s not at all hard to see why producers chose to use it as Winona’s idyllic, small town childhood home.

The Mr. Deeds house only shows up in one very brief scene in the movie. In the scene, Adam Sandler takes Winona, who is posing as school nurse Pam Dawson, to what he thinks is her former childhood home in what he thinks is her former hometown. Pam had described her childhood home in Westchestertonfieldville as being “a big Victorian right off Main Street, with blue shutters and a big red door and a tire swing in the front yard.” Adam spots the house pictured above and – even though it doesn’t look at all Victorian to me LOL – assumes it is the one she had described.

Adam then proceeds to knock on the home’s red door and tells the three children who currently live there that Winona grew up in their house. Shocked, one of the kids says “My daddy built this house with his bare hands six years ago” to which Winona replies “Well, your daddy is a liar!” LOL LOL LOL Sadly, in real life the front door of the home is blue, not red, but I am guessing that the entire home was most likely repainted for the filming and then changed back to its original coloring after the production wrapped. If I was the homewoner, I so would have left the filming paint on the house, as I think it looked a lot prettier in the movie than it does now. 🙂

The filmmakers actually “cheated” quite a bit in the filming of this scene. When Adam and Winona first walk down her former street, they are supposedly walking on the sidewalk across the street from her childhood home. In actuality, though, they are walking in front of the home located directly next door to the Mr. Deeds house. While stalking the place, I immediately recognized the wooden fence pictured above, which actually surrounds the neighbor’s property. LOL

Making matters even more complicated is the fact that the home Adam and Winona stop in front of in the scene, which supposedly stands directly across from the Mr. Deeds house, is actually located about three houses down and across the street. Confused yet? So was I! 😉

Pictured above is the home that is actually located across the street from the Mr. Deeds house. I guess it didn’t have the look the producers were going for in the scene, but wow, it sure seems like a lot of trouble to go to to film one very brief scene that barely took up thirty seconds of the movie. LOL

Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Mr. Deeds house is located at 989 South Madison Avenue in Pasadena. The house that is supposedly located across the street from the Mr. Deeds house can be found at 1026 South Madison. The home with the wooden fence that Adam and Winona walk in front of is located at 999 South Madison.

August 13, 2009August 13, 2009

A Peek Inside the Pink House from “13 Going On 30”

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, this past weekend, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I actually got to GO INSIDE the pink house featured at the end of fave romantic comedy 13 Going On 30. Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I absolutely LOVE 13 Going On 30 and that Jenna’s pink Craftsman style home is one of my very favorite filming locations of all time! Mike actually found this location for me back in May of 2008, after what seemed like MONTHS of me begging him to track it down. LOL But even though Mike was the one who actually located the house, he had yet to stalk it himself. So, I just HAD to take him there on Saturday while the two of us were in the area.

As fate would have it, when I first blogged about Jenna’s pink house back in May of 2008, the real life homeowner, an AMAZINGLY NICE woman named Mimi, happened to stumble upon my site and was amazed to see a post dedicated to her residence. LOL Mimi ended up leaving me a comment where she mentioned that after the filming of 13 Going On 30 had been completed, she and her husband asked the production crew who were repainting the house back to its original color to leave one brick pink in memory of the movie. HOW COOL IS THAT???? So, when I took Mike to stalk the place on Saturday, the two of us stood there on the sidewalk for quite some time, scrutinizing every square inch of the house looking for that brick. LOL Well, Mimi happened to see us through her front window and came outside to say hello. She recognized me from my site and said “Do you want to see the pink brick?” Well, as you can imagine, I just about DIED. I had been itching to see that brick ever since I first read her comment over a year ago! 🙂

The brick is actually located on the rear side of a post in the driveway area of the home and I could NOT have been more excited to be seeing it in person!!!!! I can’t tell you how cool it is that Mimi and her husband left that one brick pink! I SO SO SO LOVE IT! Mimi is truly a woman after my own heart! 🙂 Except, knowing me, I probably would have left the whole house pink! LOL 🙂

Then, just as I was about to die of excitement over seeing that brick, Mimi asked us if we wanted to come inside to see the living room area where they had also filmed!!!! DID WE WANT TO COME INSIDE????? DID WE WANT TO COME INSIDE?????? LOL OF COURSE WE DID! Well, it turns out that the mantle area shown in the movie was a fake that was built solely for the filming in what is really Mimi’s dining room. The production crew covered over the large window pictured above with a fake wall, a fake fireplace, and a fake mantle. Mimi said that the crew spent about a week building one fireplace, only to have the producers not like it. So, they ended up having to rip it out and build a new one entirely from scratch. She said it was an amazingly intricate fireplace made out of tile, but, ironically enough, after what amounted to two weeks of construction on two different fireplaces, neither one was ever seen in the movie. LOL LOL LOL In the scene when Jenna is unpacking photographs, the camera never shows anything below the top right corner of the mantle area. So, all of that fireplace construction was pretty much for naught. Only in Hollywood, I swear!

Adding to the irony is the fact that there is already a fireplace and a mantle in the house that could have been used in the scene! LOL Too funny!

I can’t tell you how exciting it was to be able to see the interiors of the home in person and to hear all of the behind-the-scenes info! Truly a once in a lifetime! All in all, filming at the house took two weeks to complete, including the painting and construction time. The actual filming of the scene between Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo took less than one day to shoot. LOL And, amazingly enough, the pink house scene wasn’t the movie’s original ending, but a re-shoot that was filmed after the first ending didn’t fare well with test audiences.

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Mimi’s house has also been featured in a commercial and the Season 2 episode of Cold Case entitled “Who’s Your Daddy”.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The pink house from 13 Going On 30 is located at 1965 Fletcher Avenue in South Pasadena, just a few doors down from the Step by Step house, which is located at 2011 Fletcher. The house from Kelly Clarkson’s Because Of You video is located across the street at 2006 Fletcher Ave. Please respect the owner’s privacy and don’t trepass, knock on the door, or ask to be let inside. Mike and I were extremely lucky to be invited inside the house, but as this is not common practice, please don’t bother the owner about doing it yourself.

August 12, 2009August 12, 2009

The “Never Been Kissed” Prom

A couple of weeks ago, thanks to fellow stalker Chas, I was able to stalk the location of South Glen South High School’s prom from the 1999 movie Never Been Kissed. Chas and I both knew that the prom interiors had been filmed at the Ebell of Los Angeles – a women’s educational and philanthropic club which has a long and storied film history and which I promise to blog about in the near future – but the exterior scenes had actually been filmed at another location entirely. It was that exterior location that I asked Chas to find during my Never Been Kissed stalking kick a few weeks back. Ironically, he told me that it was the one location from the movie that he didn’t think he would be able to track down. Well, I guess he just doesn’t realize how good he really is because a few hours later he emailed me back with an address and, sure enough, it was the spot!! YAY!

Ironically enough, the exterior Never Been Kissed prom location can actually be found just a block and a half away from the Ebell. Why the two different locations you ask? Well, my best guess is that producers wanted to shoot Drew and the gang’s entrance to the dance at a building with a large drop-off area, which the Ebell unfortunately doesn’t have. So, when they found a suitable building located just two short blocks away, they decided to film the entrance scene there instead. Just another example of the magic of Hollywood at work! 🙂

For some odd reason I could not find much information about the Never Been Kissed prom location online, even though it looks like it could be some sort of historic structure. I’m actually very surprised that it is not on the National Register of Historic Places, as it is a truly beautiful place. The only information I was able to discover is that the Mediterranean style building, which used to be a private residence, was converted to commercial office space in 1981. While it is currently vacant, in the past the building housed the Metropolitan Talent Agency and, most recently, a wedding coordination company named the Ahn Gallery. You can see interior photographs of the building on its leasing website here.

Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Never Been Kissed prom site is located at 4526 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Note – if you search this location using Google Maps, the building will not show up. You have to move about a block to the West to see it. 🙂 The Ebell of Los Angeles, where the interior prom scenes were filmed, is located just down the street at 743 South Lucerne Boulevard. Unfortunately, both properties are currently closed to the public.

August 11, 2009August 10, 2009

The “Step by Step” House

One location fellow stalker Owen has been on the lookout for for quite some time now is the house where the Lambert Family lived in the 1990’s television sitcom Step by Step. Because of the house’s Crafstman style architecture, Owen was pretty convinced that it was located somewhere in South Pasadena, a city which is known for its Crafstman style homes. Well, back in June while doing some research for my blog, I was fortunate enough to meet a SUPER NICE woman who works in the South Pasadena film office, so I emailed her to ask if she might know the location of the house. The woman, who can usually name South Pasadena film locations right off the top of her head – SO LOVE IT! – didn’t happen to know anything about this particular location, but I did get an email from her a couple of hours later telling me that she had found the house! YAY!

While doing some preliminary stalking, Owen had been able to discern that the address number of the house was “201”. So, my SP film contact started playing around with different 201 address numbers in Google Maps until she landed upon the Step by Step house! In reality, the address number turned out to be “2011”, not “201”, but somehow my contact was able to find it anyway! See, I told you she was super nice! 🙂 Most film location people won’t even give me the time of day, let alone spending a couple of hours of their time looking for a house for me! Love it!!!!

So this past Saturday, with the address in hand, Mike from MovieShotsLA and I went out to stalk the Step by Step house. We actually had some amazing stalking karma that day, because not only did we get let into the Father of the Bride backyard and inside the 13 Going On 30 house (those posts will be written soon, I promise!), but we also got to speak with the owner of the Step by Step house who just happened to be standing on his front porch when we pulled up. He said NO ONE ever recognizes the house and was absolutely AMAZED that we had. LOL Apparently he didn’t know who he was dealing with. His grandmother owned the house at the time the show was filmed and he told us that no filming actually took place inside the house, nor does the inside look anything like the set that was built for the show. He also said that he never got to meet the actors as they were never a part of the filming that took place at the house. He was SUPER nice, though, and told us to take all the pictures we wanted. 🙂 And I am happy to report that the house looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did when Step by Step premiered over 18 years ago! Unbelievable!

Ironically enough, part of the Step by Step opening credits was also filmed in South Pasadena, just around the corner from the house. In the very beginning of the credits the family’s Ford Explorer is seen passing by a sign reading “Port Washington, Wisconson, Population 9,336”. Well, that scene was filmed a good 2,000 miles away from Port Washington on a street named Meridian Avenue in South Pasadena! You can watch the Step by Step opening credits here.

The building shown in the credits is actually South Pasadena’s oldest commercial building. It currently houses the South Pasadena Historical Museum and the South Pasadena Preservation Foundation, but way back in 1887 the building was the site of the city’s grocery store.

A little bit of television trivia for you – the remainder of the Step by Step opening credits were filmed at SixFlag’s Magic Mountain theme park in Valencia. Producers digitally added water over Magic Moutain’s real life parking lot to make it appear as if the roller coaster the family rides on was overlooking the beach.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Step by Step house is located at 2011 Fletcher Avenue in South Pasadena. The beginning of the series’ opening credits was filmed in front of the Meridian Iron Works Museum, which is located at 913 Meridian Avenue, also in South Pasadena.