Tag: filming locations

Brandi Glanville’s Former House

After watching the latest season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, I can say that Brandi Glanville is, without a doubt, my favorite cast member. I absolutely ADORE her. (I also love Lisa Vanderpump and Yolanda Foster. As for the rest of the Housewives? Well, to borrow one of my grandma’s catch-phrases, they can go take a long walk off a short pier for all I care. ) So I was practically chomping at the bit to get my hands on a copy of her new autobiography, Drinking & Tweeting: and Other Brandi Blunders, which I finally did two weeks ago. I then promptly devoured the thing in two sittings. My favorite part of the book was the chapter dealing with the pitfalls of social media, in which Brandi says, “Just ask yourself how many times you have interrupted a wonderful night with friends and family to post on Facebook or Twitter that you’re having a wonderful night. How many times have you stopped midsentence to ask a waiter to take a photo and then spent the next five minutes f*cking with filters to post it on Instagram?” #sotrue Besides being a good read, Drinking & Tweeting also, of course, provided a few stalking locations, which I was over the moon about. And while the residence that Brandi referred to most often throughout the tome is, unfortunately, unstalkable due to the fact that it located inside of the gated Mountain View Estates community in Calabasas, I did manage to track down (via fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory website) and stalk the Encino residence where the reality star lived with her philandering husband, Eddie Cibrian, just prior to that.

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Eddie and Brandi purchased the 8,560-square-foot abode pictured below in May 2002, a year after their wedding, for $2,020,000. The dwelling, which was originally built in 1992 and was renovated at some point during the couple’s tenure there, boasts a 0.48-acre plot of land, six en-suite bedrooms, including two master suites (one with two walk-in closets and dual showers), eight bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen, a banquet-sized formal dining room, a professional theatre with bi-level seating for 15 people, a rooftop sundeck, four fireplaces, a pool, a library, travertine and hardwood flooring throughout, a porte-cochere, and a three-car garage.

The then happy couple put the property, which was dubbed “Rancho Estate”, on the market in 2007 for a whopping $4,395,000. You can check out the real estate listing from that time here.

Your Mama, from the Real Estalker website, ripped the home apart in a November 2007 post, saying, “Oh dear. Somebody please get Your Mama a silver spike that we can drive through the heart of the decorating demon who is responsible for this Encino mess that luscious looking actor Eddie Cibrian and his model wifey Brandi (with an “i,” of course) call home. Dear Jeezis in heaven, Your Mama just prefers not to know that there are people in the world who actually want to live in houses with porte-cocheres meant to make the house look elegant and grandiose but really just make it look like a damn Ramada Inn.” And while Your Mama is absolutely right about the porte-cochere, I have to say that I rather like the interior of the residence, especially the open entryway, the curving staircase, and the wood-beamed ceilings.

Brandi and Eddie wound up selling the home to comedian Carlos Mencia in January 2008 for $4.3 million – well over two times what they had paid for it just five and a half years prior.

That same month they purchased their Mountain View Estates residence for $2.5 million. That home, which was originally built in 1994, features six bedrooms, seven baths (including his-and-her baths in the master bedroom), 6,610 square feet of living space, a 0.83-acre plot of land, custom-built closets (yes, please!), covered patios, and a pool with a slide and multiple waterfalls. Two years later, in early 2010, Brandi and Eddie put the home on the market for $2,349,000 as part of their divorce proceedings and eventually sold it in June for $2.2 million. The photographs below are from the real estate listing during that time.

And yes, that is a stripper pole in the master bedroom (classy!), of which the Real Estalker’s Your Mama said in a February 2010 post, “Listen babies, we’re all for folks getting down, dirty and fuh-reeky in the bedroom, but let Your Mama offer all you married ladeez a word to the wise: Iffin your man wants to install a stripper pole in your marital bedroom, you can be pretty damn sure he’s going to want to see scantily clad beehawtchas who are not you working that thing. Don’t believe Your Mama? Install a damn stripper pole and let us know what happens.” True dat! Notice that the pole was removed (either digitally or physically) for some of the real estate photos.

It was as Brandi was driving up to the “ostentatious neighborhood gates” of the Mountain View Estates community that she learned, via a text message from a friend, of her husband’s affair with LeAnn Rimes. So while I knew that I could not stalk her actual former home there, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to Calabasas to do a little drive-by of those gates. I was so hoping to see an “open house” sign displayed out front, but, alas, that was not to be.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to my buddy E.J., from The Movieland Directory, for finding these locations.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Brandi Glanville’s former home is located at 4743 White Oak Avenue in Encino. Her other former house is located at 5497 Amber Circle, inside of the gated Mountain View Estates community, in Calabasas.

April 3, 2013
The “Burning Love” Mansion

This past February, thanks to Reality Steve and the E! Channel, I was introduced to the brilliance that is the Ben Stiller-produced parody of The Bachelor titled Burning Love. The Hose Ceremonies along with the catchphrase “Will you accept my hose?” are pure comic genius! The last time I found myself laughing so much over a television series was when I first started watching The Office. Anyone who is at all a fan of The Bachelor will LOVE Burning Love. As of yet, I have only seen the Season 1 episodes that have aired on E! (the show started as a web series and was later picked up by the cable channel), but am already eagerly awaiting Season 2 – although I cannot imagine a better lead character than Mark Orlando (Ken Marino – who also directs the series and whose wife, Erica Oyama, is the head writer). So when I saw that fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, had tracked down the mansion where the contestants live on the show, I just about passed out from excitement and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it while we were in L.A. this past weekend.

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Back in June 2012, Geoff came across this Yahoo TV article about the series in which Ken Marino stated that the Burning Love mansion was located in Calabasas, in the same area as the ranch from The Biggest Loser (which I blogged about here). I so love that Ken knew that, by the way! Most people in the industry could care less about filming locations, but I digress. Anyway, Geoff started looking for the ginormous Tuscan-style estate in the Calabasas hills, but the hunt proved to be a bit of a tough one. Because the property was recently constructed in 2008, most angles of Google and Bing Maps show its location as a vacant plot of land. It was not until Geoff randomly switched the map view to a different direction at one point during his search that the abode appeared and he realized it was the place he had been looking for.

In real life, the massive manse boasts seven en-suite bedrooms, eight baths, 9,684 square feet of living space, a 7.29-acre plot of land, a media room, a play room, an office/library, five fireplaces (!), a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, hand-crafted ceilings, 360-degree views of the Santa Monica Mountains, a sauna, a pool, a spa, and a built-in BBQ. The property last sold in April 2011 for $2,600,000 and is currently for sale for $3,950,000. You can check out the home’s real estate listing here.

Before arriving at the residence, I was nervous that it would not be visible from the street, so I was completely floored to discover that it was, for the most part, in open view!

Burning Love, which is so spot-on in its parody of The Bachelor that I constantly have to remind myself that the show is not actually a reality series, centers around several woman, most of whom are dental hygienists, hoping to find love with Mark, the boneheaded fireman who in the premiere episode announced that his soul mate was “someone who can make me laugh, but isn’t afraid of robots.” LOL The mansion was used extensively in the filming, which according to this Yahoo TV article, took only eight days to complete. The areas of the estate that appeared on the show include the front exterior;

the entryway;

the kitchen [and yes, contestant Haley (Chelsea Lately’s Natasha Leggero), who is pictured below, does not wear pants on the series, causing Mark to say in one scene, “I can definitely see us starting a family together, maybe in a town where they accept people who don’t wear pants.” LOL];

the living room;

the family room, where the Hose Ceremonies take place;

the master bedroom (check out the old school back pillow sitting on the floor – again LOL) . . .

. . . where Mark gazes at himself longingly in the mirror;

and the pool, where Mark throws a pool party because “I thought it would be a great chance to see the girls let loose . . . uh, also to see a lot of top and side-boob and, if we’re lucky, a little butt cleavage.” As Dan Casey said in his post about the show on Nerdist, “From the needlessly confusing rules, the preposterous theme dates and the plucked-from-Guess Who contestants, Burning Love hits the nail on its vapid, empty head.” That it does, Dan. And I couldn’t love it more. If you are at all a fan of The Bachelor (or just simply love to hate it), Burning Love is a must-watch!

You can watch the first episode of Burning Love, which features a cameo appearance by Jennifer Aniston, as well as a handful of other stars, by clicking below.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Burning Love mansion is located at 2760 Country Ridge Road, just off of Stokes Canyon Road, in Calabasas. King Gillette Ranch, aka The Biggest Loser ranch, is located just down the street at 26800 Mulholland Highway.

April 2, 2013
The “Easy A” House

The Easy A location that I was most excited about stalking while in the Ojai area almost two years ago was, not surprisingly, the charming clapboard residence where Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) lived with her unique family (notice they are all named after a food of some sort) – dad Dill (Stanley Tucci), mom Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson) and brother Chip (Bryce Clyde Jenkins). So imagine my disappointment when we arrived there only to discover that the home was located inside of Persimmon Hill, which the sign outside the entrance stated was “a private community”. And while there was no gate restricting access to the neighborhood, nor any “No Trespassing” signs posted, I have always been a by-the-book kind of girl, so I decided to pose for a picture by the Persimmon Hill sign instead of venturing past. Well, as luck would have it, a community resident happened to drive by while I was posing for the photo and asked what I was doing. When I explained that I was a huge fan of Easy A and had come to see Olive’s house, he told me that it would be absolutely fine to head on over there and snap some pics. WAHOO!

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Many months prior to my and the GC’s visit to Ojai, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, had spent copious hours trying to track down Olive’s residence, all to no avail. Then, one day, he happened to notice the number 300 painted on the curb outside of the home in the scene in which Lobster Todd (Penn Badgley) dropped Olive off after her disastrous date with Anson (Jake Sandvig) at the local Lobster Shack (which I blogged about here). And voila! Once he had a house number, finding the location was a snap.

As you can see below, Olive’s house was absolutely idyllic onscreen in Easy A.

And I am very happy to report that in person it did NOT disappoint. I love, love, love this residence. It reminds me a bit of the house where the Newton family lived in the 1992 comedy Beethoven, which I blogged about here.

And while I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the home was also used in the flick, I could not find any interior photographs with which to verify that hunch.

According to fave website Zillow, in real life, the residence, which was originally built in 1986, boasts four bedrooms, four baths, 2,894 square feet of living space, and sits on a huge 2.11-acre plot of land.

The property was last sold in 1998 (for $700,000) – and it’s not very hard to see why. If I owned that place, I would never let go of it either!

Best closing shot ever, by the way. I am a sucker for any ’80s movie reference.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Olive’s house from Easy A is located at 300 Longhorn Lane in Ojai. Please remember that this home is inside of a private community and that permission is needed to enter.

March 14, 2013
The “Easy A” Coffee Shop

Last Friday, while reading the latest post on Emily Schuman’s fabulous Cupcakes and Cashmere blog, in which she mentioned a recent overnight trip she had taken to Ojai, I was reminded of a stalking adventure along Highway 126 that the Grim Cheaper and I had embarked upon almost two full years ago. We had originally headed up that way to stalk Georgia Rule locations in Santa Paula (which I have yet to blog about), but wound up in Ojai, aka the “Shangri-La of Southern California”, in the late afternoon hours and both absolutely fell in love with the place. While we were there, I happened to text fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, to see if he knew of anything that had been filmed in the area and, as luck would have it, he did! He texted me right back with a list of pretty much every locale featured in fave movie Easy A, one of which was the Ojai Coffee Roasting Company. Well, as you can imagine, once I read the word “coffee”, I immediately told the GC to head on over there.

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Ojai, the name of which was taken from the Chumash Indian word for “moon” and is pronounced “oh-high”, is an absolutely idyllic little community nestled about 12 miles inland from Ventura. The quaint town (it is the smallest city in Ventura County) is known for its picturesque geography, health-minded resorts and charming downtown area. Thanks to a city ordinance, chain stores are, for the most part, restricted from setting up shop (there is no Starbucks within the city limits – egad!), which makes for a unique collection of family-owned and operated specialty stores and restaurants that attract thousands upon thousands of tourists each year. And while I badly wanted to nab a room for a spontaneous little staycation while we were there, because Ojai hotel rates are pretty astronomical, the GC was having none of that.

I was able to sample a latte from the Ojai Coffee Roasting Company, though, so there’s that. The small java shop was originally founded in 1995 by Stacey Jones and I am very happy to report that it serves up some great coffee and tea. The baristas were also incredibly nice and answered all of my silly little questions about the filming. And the place is even something of a celebrity hot-spot! Reese Witherspoon apparently gets her java on at Ojai Coffee Roasting Company wherever she is in town and her friend Renee Zellweger stopped by while visiting Ojai for Reese’s wedding to Jim Toth.

Ojai Coffee Roasting Company popped up only once in Easy A, in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene in which Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) learns that her friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) has run off with a “big, hulking black guy.”

The baristas were even nice enough to tell me where Emma Stone stood in the scene so that I could pose for a picture there, although my positioning was a little too far forward. As you can see below, the blue and white ceramic water dispenser that was visible behind Emma in the scene was there in real life, too. Love it!

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Ojai Coffee Roasting Company from Easy A is located at 337 East Ojai Avenue in Ojai. You can visit the shop’s official website here.

March 11, 2013
54 Holly from “1600 Penn”

Way back in April of last year, my good friend Marci, owner of my very favorite gift shop, Lula Mae, texted me to let me know that something was being filmed at a vacant diner (that was once the site of an eatery named 54 Holly) located just down the street from her store. And while I was absolutely itching to get down there to watch the filming, at the time that I received Marci’s text I was all the way across town in Hollywood stalking a premiere with my girl, Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog. When I was finally able to stalk the restaurant the following day, it had already been stripped and returned to its bare bones self, which is a shame because set decorators had apparently gone all out with their embellishment of the place. I did manage to snap some pics of the empty eatery, though, and from there set out to discover what exactly had been filmed on the premises.

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Because Marci had told me that all of the production trucks had Glee signs posted in their front windows, I emailed the pictures to my go-to Glee source, fellow stalker April, to ask her to watch out for 54 Holly in upcoming episodes. (Yes, I was at one time a diehard Gleek – then I met the cast and my fandom went right out the window. They are absolutely horrid. I have not seen a single episode since. You can read a great write-up on Mike the Fanboy about the early days of the show when the cast was nice here.) April scoured several episodes of the series for me during the time period that the restaurant would have appeared, but did not see it pop up anywhere. It was then that I took to cyberstalking and came across a post on fave website OnLocationVacations which stated that the filming at 54 Holly was actually for an episode of 1600 Penn. So I finally sat down to watch the series last night – and I have to say that I was not impressed. In fact, I am thankful that the diner appeared in the show’s pilot, which spared me from having to see more than one episode.

54 Holly was originally founded by Ernie Tan and Irene Pan in 1984, which makes me so incredibly sad. I hate to see restaurants that have been around for decades close their doors, especially when the spaces that once housed them then sit empty for months or even years, which is exactly what happened in this case. Such a shame. Anyway, 54 Holly looks to have been shuttered sometime in early 2012 after almost thirty years in business, and the storefront has remained vacant ever since. While it was in operation, the eatery maintained a retro feel. The blogger Foodoofus visited 54 Holly back in September 2011 and spoke with Ernie who informed him that he kept the place looking like an old time coffee shop because, “It’s the ambiance that keeps people wanting to come back. The ambiance is first and the food is second.” Apparently he did want to make changes to the décor at one point in time, but his customers wouldn’t hear of it. You can see photographs of what the place used to look like here. Quite a few celebrities, including Dustin Hoffman and Elizabeth Hurley, had even been known to pop in from time to time.

The tiny, 1,053-square-foot property is currently still for lease at a rate of $2,632.50 per month. You can check out its LoopNet listing here. As you can see, almost all of the fixtures, including the tops of the stools, have been removed and the site is now pretty much just a skeleton of its former self – which made it perfect for filming as set dressers were given a blank slate with which to work.

54 Holly showed up at the very end of the pilot episode of 1600 Penn, which was titled “Putting Out Fires”, in the scene in which President Dale Gilchrist (Bill Pullman) took his family – Emily Nash Gilchrist (Jenna Elfman), Skip Gilchrist (Josh Gad), Becca Gilchrist (Martha MacIsaac), Marigold Gilchrist (Amara Miller), and Xander Gilchrist (Benjamin Stockham) – out for a “normal” dinner at a supposed Washington, D.C.-area pizza joint. Both the interior . . .

. . . and the exterior of the restaurant were shown in the episode.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to my good friend Marci, from Lula Mae, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The site of the former 54 Holly restaurant, from the pilot episode of 1600 Penn, is located at 54 East Holly Street in Old Town Pasadena.

February 28, 2013
Bahooka Family Restaurant from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

This past Sunday morning, my mom emailed me a link to a Los Angeles Magazine article about the upcoming closure of a veritable San Gabriel Valley institution, Bahooka Family Restaurant in Rosemead, with the admonishment, “You’d better take pictures! It HAS to have been in movies.” And she was right. Bahooka has starred in no less than three films over its 37-year history, most notably in a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that featured Johnny Depp. I was absolutely shocked to learn that the iconic restaurant would soon be shuttered. While I had never dined there, I worked as a substitute teacher in Rosemead for over eight years and would drive by the oddly-decorated eatery almost every single day. I also used to hear quite colorful stories about the place from fellow teachers who had grown up in the area. So when I found out that Bahooka’s days were numbered, I was a bit heartbroken and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there that very afternoon with the hopes of grabbing some Polynesian-style lunch. Sadly though, we were not able to do so as there was a two-plus-hour wait for a table and the GC was having none of that. I was at least able to snap some photographs of the place for posterity’s sake, though.

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The first Bahooka Family Restaurant, or Bahooka Ribs & Grog as it is also known, was founded by siblings Betty Twigg and Jack Fliegel in 1967 in a building located at 1312 West Francisquito Avenue in West Covina. The tiny eatery featured a scant 13 tables. The second, and much larger, Bahooka location opened in 1976 at 4501 Rosemead Boulevard. And while the West Covina outpost closed its doors in 1980 (allegedly due to a property dispute), the Rosemead outpost, which boasts seating for 350 patrons and a banquet room that serves 80, had been going strong ever since with a loyal following of neighborhood regulars.

When Twigg and Fliegel decided to retire years ago, they handed Bahooka, which supposedly means “shack”, over to their respective children, Steve and Stacey. Now Steve and Stacey are looking to hang up their aprons, as well, but unfortunately, according to this LA Weekly article, have no children to pass the restaurant along to. So on the market it went – with a $3.3 million price tag. The 8,598-square-foot establishment sold in just one day. The new proprietor apparently purchased the Bahooka building, its hundreds upon hundreds of fish (which I’ll get to in a minute) and the site’s liquor license. The Bahooka name, though, was not for sale, as the Twiggs and Fliegels (as well as co-owner Suzanne Schneider) plan on continuing to sell their signature salad dressing, which comes from a 47-year-old family recipe, at grocery stores, including Ralphs and Costco.

Bahooka’s decidedly unique tiki- and nautical-themed décor was collected from various antique shops and scrap yards over the years, creating what countless websites and reviewers have described as a “flotsam and jetsam” dining experience.

Just a few of the whimsical touches include an actual set of antique post office boxes in the restaurant’s entrance area . . .

. . . and a cannon in the parking lot.

The tables, most of which were empty while we were there (which does not coincide with the supposed two-hour wait time), are fashioned with nautical – and Christmas! – adornments.

A few tables are even situated inside of an old jail cell.

The eatery’s most notable décor, though, has to be the 105 (yes, 105!) built-in aquariums which house countless fish, with varieties including pacus, silver dollars, catfish, Jack Dempseys, Oscars, clown knives, and koi. Almost every booth in the place is flanked by at least two aquariums.

The bar, which inexplicably does not have any bar stools, was even fashioned out of a fish tank.

Thanks to the site’s truly unique look, it is not hard to see how it ended up onscreen numerous times over the years. In 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Bahooka masqueraded as a Hollywood-area restaurant where Dr Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) stopped to use a pay phone, while his friend Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) ordered drinks at the bar.

The restaurant’s legendary 34-pound, 36-year-old pacu fish, Rufus, was even featured in the movie.

Rufus is absolutely HUGE in real life. The photograph below does not even begin to do him justice.

On a Rufus side-note – in a typo worthy of fellow stalker Owen’s When Write Is Wrong blog, the poor fish’s name is misspelled on the sign displayed below his tank.

Rufus’ “twins”, who are both also huge, are pictured below.

In 2007’s The Number 23, Bahooka was the site of the Christmas party where Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) was hit on by his co-worker Sybil (Michelle Arthur).

In the 2010 comedy Barry Munday, Bahooka was where Barry Munday (Patrick Wilson) met Ginger Farley (Judy Greer).

And while IMDB states that the 1993 movie Kalifornia also did some filming at Bahooka, I scanned through the flick yesterday and did not see the restaurant pop up anywhere.

Besides being a filming location, Bahooka is also something of a celebrity magnet. Such stars as Topher Grace, Valente Rodriguez, Oscar De La Hoya, Kirstie Alley, and David Hasselhoff have all been spotted dining there over the years.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Bahooka Family Restaurant, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is located at 4501 Rosemead Boulevard in Rosemead. You can visit Bahooka’s official website here. The restaurant will only be open until Sunday, March 10th, after which time its doors will be closed for good.

February 27, 2013
The Marina del Rey Marriott from “90210”

One location that has been on my To-Stalk List for ages now is the Marina del Rey Marriott, which appeared in the Season 1 episode of fave show 90210 titled “That Which We Destroy” – in two different scenes featuring my girl Shannen Doherty, no less! And while I had planned on stalking the locale last July when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were in the area for a full-day stalking adventure, as so often happens when the two of us get together, we had far too many locations and far too little time. Thankfully though, my and the Grim Cheaper’s new L.A. home-base is in Santa Monica, just a few miles north of the hotel, so, while we were in town last weekend, I made it a point to finally visit the place.

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The Marina del Rey Marriott, which is within walking distance of both Venice Beach and Mother Beach, features an outdoor pool, a fitness center, views of Marina del Rey’s gorgeous waterways (and, ironically enough, the parking lot where Jack McKay was killed on Beverly Hills, 90210, which I blogged about here), 24 different meeting rooms comprising a total of 18,000 square feet of space, and a ginormous rooftop ballroom named the Bayview Ballroom, which boasts 360-views of Los Angeles, a huge outdoor patio area and a helipad!

The Marina del Rey Marriott has won several accolades over the years, including being named an LA’s the Place Top Pick in 2010. Playboy Magazine also recognized the hotel’s outdoor bar, Glow Ultra Lounge, as one of the top ten lounges in Los Angeles.

With its dark red pillars, shining marble floors and glowing accent candles, the Marina del Rey Marriott gives off a very hip and trendy vibe and it is not at all hard to see how it ended up onscreen on 90210.

The Marriot actually popped up three times in the “That Which We Destroy” episode of 90210. First, one of the hotel’s hallways masqueraded as the hallway of the theatre where Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty) starred in a local performance of Hamlet.

It is thanks to the carpet in that hallway that I was able to figure out this particular location. For a while I was stumped as to where filming of the theatre scene had taken place, but after watching the episode for the umpteenth time, I noticed that the carpeting looked very much like hotel carpeting – Marriott carpeting in particular. (My dad has been a Marriott Rewards Member for years, so I am extremely familiar with the chain’s carpeting, which seems to be the same at every single property.) So I started looking through photographs of the various Marriotts in the L.A. area, starting with the ones nearest to Manhattan Beach Studios where the series is lensed and working my way outward, and it was not long before I came across the right one.

Once I figured out the “theatre” location, I realized that two other scenes from the “That Which We Destroy” episode had also been shot at the Marriott. The hotel’s Stones restaurant was used as the spot where Debbie Wilson (Lori Loughlin), Harry Wilson (Rob Estes), Tracy Clark (Christina Moore), and Sean Cavanaugh (Josh Henderson) went for a getting-to-know-each-other dinner.

Again, the carpet was a dead giveaway that the dinner scene had taken place at a hotel.

And finally the lobby bar was where, in my favorite scene from the episode, Brenda told Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) that she could no longer be friends with her because “I don’t want to fight over Dylan or Ryan or whoever. You know, I’m over all of that drama.” You tell her, Brenda! Tables were brought in for the filming of the scene in order to make the lobby bar look like a sit-down restaurant. In reality, there are couches situated in that area, as you can see below. Ironically enough, it looks like 90210 was filming at the Marina del Rey Marriot once again this very week.

90210 was hardly the first production to film at the hotel. In 1989’s Lethal Weapon 2, the exterior of the Marina del Rey Marriott was used as the establishing shot of the hotel where Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) first met Leo Getz (Joe Pesci).

The Marriot was only used for the brief establishing shot, though. All actual filming took place about ten miles away at the InterContinental Los Angeles Century City hotel, which was at the time a JW Marriott, the same JW Marriott that was featured in the 1990 thriller Pacific Heights.

In 2006’s Drake and Josh Go Hollywood, the Marina del Rey Marriott stood in for The Chambrulay, where Drake Parker (Drake Bell), Josh Nichols (Josh Peck) and Audrey Parker-Nichols (Nancy Sullivan) stayed while (accidentally) visiting L.A.

The Marina del Rey Marriott also stood in for the Grand Saville Hotel where almost all of the Season 1 episode of Chuck titled “Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover” took place.

Glow Ultra Lounge also appeared briefly in one of Chuck’s mind flashes in the episode.

Only the interior of the Marriott was used in “Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover.” The establishing shot was of the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, which is currently in the process of being torn down in order to make way for what will be the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

In the Season 3 episode of fave show Dexter titled “I Had a Dream”, the Marriott stood in for Hotel Belvedere, the supposed Miami, Florida motel where Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) stalked his former partner-in-crime, Asst. District Atty. Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the property were used in the episode.

One of the Marriott’s actual rooms was also utilized in the filming.

As you can see below, though, some CGI trickery was used to cut off the top floors of the hotel in the episode, making it virtually unrecognizable. In fact, had it not been for fellow stalker Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, I never would have realized Hotel Belvedere was the Marina del Rey Marriott.

The Season 9 episode of American Idol titled “Los Angeles, CA Auditions” was also filmed at the Marina del Rey Marriot. The actual auditions took place in the hotel’s Bayview Ballroom.

Some scenes from the episode were also lensed in front of the hotel;

and in the lobby. And while the judges apparently arrived via helicopter and landed on the Marriott’s roof in the episode, I could not footage of that anywhere online.

In the 2010 movie Valentine’s Day, football player Sean Jackson (Eric Dane) made a speech on the rooftop of the Marina del Rey Marriott. Check out those views!!

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Marina del Rey Marriot, from the “That Which We Destroy” episode of 90210, is located at 4100 Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

February 22, 2013
Espresso Profeta from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”

A couple of years ago, the Grim Cheaper and my cable service stopped providing Bravo TV (and E!) as a part of their basic subscription, which absolutely crushed me being that I was no longer able to watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, one of my very favorite shows. (Don’t even get me started on not being able to watch The Soup regularly!) So when we moved to the desert and realized that our new cable company offered Bravo (and E!), we immediately went on TRHOBH overload and watched almost all of Season 2 and 3 in one evening. Let me tell you, I was in reality TV heaven! Especially when, while checking out Season 2’s “The Lost Footage” special, I was introduced to Espresso Profeta, the most adorable little coffee shop that I had ever laid eyes on, in the scene in which Taylor Armstrong asked Adrienne Maloof to be her daughter’s godmother. I quickly Googled the name and discovered that the quaint little café was located on Glendon Avenue in Westwood. Being that I am a coffee connoisseur AND a stalker, I have no idea how in the heck I had never heard of the place before! So I immediately added the site to my To-Stalk list and when the GC and I were out in Los Angeles this past weekend, it was our very first stalking stop.

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Espresso Profeta, which translates to “The Prophet of Coffee”, was first founded on September 8th, 2008 by Samantha Langford and Mitch Hale. Prior to that date, the space that now houses the café (a brick-walled structure that, I believe, is named either the El Encanto Building or The Harrison Patio Building and dates back to 1924, 1927, or 1929, depending on which website one happens to be reading) was occupied by a different espresso bar, West Burton Coffee & Tea, that was owned solely by Langford. At the time, Hale, who was one of the very first baristas to be employed by the world famous Espresso Vivace in Seattle, was managing Caffe Luxxe in Santa Monica, but had decided it was time to open up his own place. While doing research on founding his shop, he learned that West Burton Coffee & Tea was one of the only sites in Los Angeles to serve Vivace beans. He contacted Langford and the two decided to partner up. In just three days time, the duo closed West Burton, remodeled the space and re-opened it as Espresso Profeta. It has been going strong ever since. And it is not very hard to see why – once I stepped through the front doors, I never wanted to leave!

In real life, Espresso Profeta is every bit as charming as it was made to appear on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Especially the front courtyard area.

And their coffee is to die for! Espresso Profeta takes their java very seriously. While there, I ordered an iced latte and asked the barista to hold back one of the espresso shots as I prefer my lattes more creamy than strong. He explained that it would not be nearly as good sans that second shot, but I convinced him to make it my way, anyway. And he was right. While good, when I returned to Espresso Profeta the following day (did you not see that coming? ), I let the barista make my latte his way and it was sheer perfection!

On The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 2 “The Lost Footage” special, both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of Espresso Profeta were shown.

In the rather awkward scene that took place there, Adrienne turned down Taylor’s request to be her daughter’s godmother. And while I never thought I’d refer to Adrienne Maloof as wise or sage, she was exactly that in her handling of the situation, telling Taylor that being a godmother is “an extremely important position to be in,” and that she should “really put thought into” whom she chooses as her child’s godparent and that she has “to take it seriously.” Um, ya think?

And while I assumed that the beautifully-crafted libations shown in the episode were most likely fabricated for the filming, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all of Profeta’s espresso drinks, which are pulled using a Syneso machine, really do come out looking like works of art. It was mesmerizing to watch the baristas perform their special brand of frothy magic.

Thanks to the book Location Filming in Los Angeles, I learned that the building that now houses Espresso Profeta masqueraded as the art gallery owned by Carolyn Ellenson Grant (Marie Windsor) in the 1955 film No Man’s Woman.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Espresso Profeta, from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 2 “The Lost Footage” special, is located at 1129 Glendon Avenue in Westwood.

February 20, 2013
Alfred Hitchcock’s House from “Hitchcock”

Hold on to your hats, my fellow stalkers, ‘cause today’s post is going to be a long one! A couple of months ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, called me up to let me know that he had just watched a screener of the 2012 biopic Hitchcock (he works at a high-profile production company) and, knowing my penchant for the Master of Suspense, suggested I run right out and see it for myself as soon as possible. Thankfully, because Helen Mirren, who played Alma Reville, Hitch’s wife, in the flick, had been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award, Fox Searchlight had made a digital screener available for SAG members and I was able to watch it shortly after Mike’s call. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film and learned quite a bit lot about the legendary director that I had not previously been aware of. The locations (all of which are in L.A.) and design of the movie were quite stellar, to boot! And while I recognized that the exterior of the Hitchcock household had been portrayed by Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ former Beverly Hills manse (which I blogged about here), what I did not realize (until Mike told me) was that the interiors were filmed at a residence in Pasadena – one that I was actually quite familiar with and had even blogged about before, way back in October 2008. Because the post did not cover the full filming history of the home, though, I figured the place was most-definitely worthy of a re-stalk and ran right out to do just that a few days before our move.

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The gargantuan Tudor mansion pictured below was originally constructed in 1902 as a Craftsman-style winter home for a Chicago novelist named Gertrude Potter Daniels. Just three years later, in 1905, the property was sold to a new owner, Salt Lake City mining magnate Susanna Bransford Emery Holmes, aka “Utah’s Silver Queen”, and her husband Colonel E.F. Holmes. The couple moved into the property fulltime in 1910 and immediately began an extensive $37,00- renovation project that significantly altered the dwelling. Holmes dubbed her new residence, which was completed in 1922, “El Roble” in honor of a massive oak tree that once stood on the premises.

Today, the dwelling, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, boasts a three-story, twenty-room, 7,300-square-foot main home, ten bedrooms, six baths, a 1.35-acre plot of land, a two-story freestanding gate house (pictured), chauffeur’s quarters, a pergola, and formal gardens. You can check out some fabulous photographs of what lies behind the mansion’s front gates here.

As you can see below, the land on which the home sits is absolutely gargantuan in size – as is the home itself.

The beautiful residence, which once belonged to Occidental College, was featured as the Pasadena Showcase House of Design in both 1975 and 1996 and its gardens have appeared twice in Sunset Magazine. The place has also been spotlighted countless times onscreen.

As I mentioned above, the exterior of Alfred and Alma’s mansion in Hitchcock was actually that of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ former Beverly Hills home. (Big THANK YOU to Mike for making the Hitchcock screen captures which appear below.)

The interiors were a mixture of both El Roble in Pasadena and studio sets. The areas of El Roble that appeared in Hitchcock include the wood-paneled study, which you can see a real life photograph of here;

the living room, which you can see a real life photograph of here;

and the entryway, which you can see a real life photograph of here.

The Hitchcocks’ bedroom;

bathroom;

and kitchen were all sets constructed on a studio soundstage.

To create the rich interiors of the Hitchcock homestead, production designer Judy Becker consulted historic photographs of the couple’s actual former residence in Bel-Air (which I blogged about here). Of the refrigerator pictured below, set decorator Robert Gould (whose father, as fate would have it, served as a second unit director on the original Psycho) said in a fabulous November 2012 Los Angeles Times article , “We chose the fridge because of the interesting handle with the round detail. It had an innuendo of a peep hole, a subtle way of referencing Hitchcock’s voyeurism throughout the film.” I absolutely love learning little tidbits like that! God is in the details, as they say.

In the fabulous 1978 comedy Foul Play, El Roble stood in for the supposed San Francisco-area residence belonging to Archbishop Thorncrest (Eugene Roche).

During Season 4 of Falcon Crest, El Roble appeared several times as the mansion where Cole Gioberti (William R. Moses) and Melissa Agretti Cumson Gioberti (Ana Alicia) lived.

In the Season 2 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled “Cross Jurisdictions”, the house was where former chief of detectives Duke Rittle (John Kapelos) was tortured and killed.

In the Season 3 episode of Ghost Whisperer titled “Unhappy Medium”, El Roble was where the Drake family – Susan (Dawson’s Creek’s Mary-Margaret Humes), Nikki (a very young Elisabeth Moss), and Sydney (Austin Highsmith) – lived.

In the Season 4 episode of The Closer titled “Fate Line” (which I actually got to watch being filmed – you can read my blog post about the experience here), El Roble was the residence of murdered horror movie producer Sean Thompson (who was never actually seen onscreen).

In the Season 4 episode of Greek titled “Agents for Change”, El Roble stood in for the home belonging to Evan Chambers’ (Jake McDorman’s) parents, Mr. Chambers (Kevin Kilner) and Mrs. Chambers (Kathryn Harrold).

According to fave website OnLocationVacations, the yet-to-be released movie The Pretty One, starring Zoe Kazan and Jake Johnson, did some filming at El Roble this past June. And while an April 1996 issue of Los Angeles Magazine stated that The Godfather was also filmed on the premises, I scanned through the flick while doing research for this post and did not see the mansion pop up anywhere.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location and for providing all of the Hitchcock screen captures.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The home used for the interior of Alfred Hitchcock’s residence in Hitchcock is located at 141 North Grand Avenue in Pasadena. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ former mansion, which stood in for the exterior of the Hitchcock house, is located at 918 North Alpine Drive in Beverly Hills.

February 8, 2013
Lester Siegel’s House from “Argo”

Today’s post is the very first blog written from my new home in the desert. The Grim Cheaper and I moved last Wednesday (it took over 15 hours!) and are finally getting settled in to our Palm Springs pad. There is still quite a bit left to complete, though, and, while the hyper-organized/anal/OCD-side of me has a hard time doing anything while there are still boxes to be unpacked and rooms to be organized, I decided to do a little blogging today, regardless. My posts over the next couple of weeks will most likely be intermittent, though, while we continue to settle in. And now, on with the post! Another filming location from fave movie Argo that I found thanks to the fabulous Los Angeles Times article forwarded to me by Mike, from MovieShotsLA, was the home where Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) lived. And I just have to say here how desperate I am to stalk LA/Ontario International Airport, which masqueraded as the Tehran airport in Argo. I have a flight scheduled out of there in early March and, let me tell you, I canNOT wait! But I digress. Anyway, I dragged the GC right on out to stalk Lester Siegel’s mansion a few weekends ago, shortly before our big move.

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In real life, Lester’s mansion actually belongs to actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and her longtime husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt, who seems to be a rather accident-prone individual – in October 2010, Frederic swallowed a bee that then stung him in the throat; in December 2010, after mistaking nail glue for eye drops, he accidentally glued his own eye shut; and in September 2011, he was hit by a car while walking in Beverly Hills. Yikes! Although there are quite a few conflicting reports about the property’s history online (many of which seem to have been propagated by Gabor and Frederic themselves), the fact of the matter is that the residence was originally built in 1955 for John and Gladys Zurlo. And while famous recluse Howard Hughes did rent the dwelling for a time in the 1960s (and apparently wore a hole in the carpet thanks to his notorious pacing), he never owned the place nor was it built for him. Gabor has also reportedly stated that she bought the pad directly from Hughes, but according to the Zurlos’ granddaughter, Barbara Yobs, the couple themselves sold the home to Gabor in 1973 for $250,000. For the record, it is further untrue that Elvis Presley ever lived on the premises, as Gabor has also claimed. Anyway, due to failing health and mounting medical bills, Gabor and Frederic put the property on the market in June 2011 for $15 million. It has yet to sell, though, so in the meantime the couple has been leasing the place out to film crews. HBO’s yet-to-be released Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra also made use of the estate last year.

Sadly, as you can see below, aside from the front gate, very little of the dwelling is visible from the street. Back in June 2011, fave website CurbedLA posted quite a few real estate photographs, though, which you can check out here. As stated in a Huffington Post article, the home “was built in the ‘50s and doesn’t look as if it has been redecorated since. It is lavish and sings old over-the-top Hollywood glamour.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up. The Hollywood Regency-style dwelling boasts seven bedrooms, seven baths, 8,878 square feet of living space (or 6,393 depending on which real estate listing you check), one acre of land, 270-degree views of downtown Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, a grand salon, staff quarters, a bar, a rooftop terrace, indoor and outdoor entertaining areas, and a pool. Supposedly, Zsa Zsa swam naked in said pool every morning (yuck!) and also entertained such luminaries as Queen Elizabeth, Bob Hope, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Frank Sinatra, and Henry Kissinger on the premises.

Quite a few areas of the house were used in Argo, including the front exterior;

the circular entry-way (LOVE those red walls!);

the formal living room;

the bar;

and the backyard and pool.

A great aerial view of the house was also shown in the flick. Man, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place!

On an Argo side-note – for those interested in how much of the movie was actually true (and the vast majority of it was – even the part about the Iranian government hiring professional carpet-weavers to piece together documents and photographs that had been shredded by American diplomats just prior to the embassy being taken hostage!), you can check out a fabulous Slate.com article here.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Zsa Zsa Gabor’s house, aka Lester Siegel’s mansion from Argo, is located at 1001 Bel Air Road in Bel Air.

January 29, 2013