Tag: filming locations

El Pollo del Mar from “L.A. Story”

One location that I had been dying to find for years was El Pollo del Mar (yes, that translates to The Chicken of the Sea LOL), aka the supposed Santa Barbara-area resort featured in the 1991 flick L.A. Story. Try as I might, though, I just could not seem to track the place down. So, when a fellow stalker named Scott wrote a comment on my L.A. Story gas station post informing me of the site’s location, my head just about exploded from excitement! In reality, the Mediterranean-style hotel is an absolutely gargantuan private residence that overlooks the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that El Pollo del Mar was a) someone’s home (!!!) and b) located in the LBC. I honestly would have bet money on the fact that it was an actual hotel in Santa Barbara. Mind officially blown! And while I was chomping at the bit to stalk the locale just as soon as Scott told me about it, because I do not get down to the Long Beach area very often, I was not able to do so until this past December.

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Sadly, the El Pollo del Mar house is located on a gated street, so only a small portion of it is visible to the public. Man, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that thing!

In real life, the gargantuan residence, which was originally built in 1926 and is named Casa Oceana, boasts three bedrooms, five baths, 7,576 square feet of living space, and a 1.28-acre plot of seaside land.

El Pollo del Mar pops up towards the end of L.A. Story as the charming resort where disgruntled weatherman Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) takes his girlfriend SanDeE* (my girl Sarah Jessica Parker) for the weekend. While there he runs into his dream girl, Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant), who is on a reconciliation trip with her ex-husband, Roland Mackey (Richard E. Grant). Drama, of course, ensues. As you can see below, the property is absolutely huge and can easily masquerade as a hotel. In fact, I am surprised that it hasn’t been used more frequently in productions.

And, as I mentioned, while the majority of the residence cannot be seen from the road, I was BEYOND floored to discover that the front gate . . .

. . . and archway that appeared in the movie were visible. Yay!

And for the rest, there’s always Bing Aerial Views! I still can’t believe the place is a private house! I mean, look at that thing!

I am kicking myself for not having walked down to the beachside of the property while we were there because it, too, appeared in L.A. Story, in the scene in which Harris and Sara get into a fight over their respective significant others.

All of the interior El Pollo del Mar scenes were filmed (I believe) twenty miles north of Long Beach at the now-defunct Ambassador Hotel, which used to stand at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown.

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 fellow stalker Scott for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The El Pollo del Mar hotel from L.A. Story is actually a private home located at 20 37th Place in Long Beach.

January 9, 2013
Shaheen’s House from "Into the Night"

Last week, fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, emailed me with the following message, “I know you aren’t big on blogging about popular movie locations, especially those discussed elsewhere on the Internet (which is why I have SADLY never been able to read about Marty McFly’s house on your site!!!), but I have a location that may be of interest.” His logic was five-fold: “The reasons I think it may be worth an IAMNOTASTALKER post: 1. It’s from Into the Night — not exactly a popular movie or a location that has been discussed ad nauseam online. 2. The house is in San Marino, which isn’t too far from where you live … or at least where you live for the next few weeks. 3. The house is definitely unique. It has mosque-like architecture yet is in the midst of a neighborhood of typical suburban homes. It seems soooooooo out of place. 4. Because it’s so out of place, I’m curious if there is a story behind it. If there is, I suppose it’d make for an interesting blog. 5. In addition to the house’s uniqueness, its grounds are impeccably manicured … or at least look that way from the ‘street view’ on Google Maps. It would probably make for some nice photos.” I was, of course, intrigued by Owen’s email and immediately popped the address he provided into Google. Well, let me tell you, once I saw the Street View image of the place, I knew that it was a must-stalk and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there less than 24 hours later. Thank you, Owen!

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I did not tell the GC anything about the house prior to us stalking it and I believe his exact words upon first pulling up to the place were, “What the #&%@!& is that?” LOL To say the dwelling is unique would be an understatement. In fact, I think it is safe to say that I have never seen anything quite like it before in my entire life. Well, outside of Disneyland, anyway.

Owen was certainly correct in his assertion – the abode is definitely out of place in the neighborhood and bears a significant difference from the Anywhere, U.S.A.-style residences located directly to its left and right, both of which are pictured below.

You can see its disparity from the neighboring homes below.

According to An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, the home has been dubbed “The Mosque” by neighboring residents. And while the book states that the four-bedroom, four-bath, 5,283-square-foot structure, which sits on 0.54 acres, was originally built in 1980, all of the property records that I was able to dig up dated its construction at 1973. Amazingly enough, though, outside of the one-sentence blurb in An Architectural Guidebook, I could not find any history of the place online or in print, which is absolutely bizarre! I mean come on, a house like that must have some sort of a backstory. The only information that I was able to gather online was that the same people who originally purchased the property in 1973 (and who also most likely commissioned the place) still own it to this day.

Even odder still was the fact that I could not find a copy of Into the Night anywhere! For whatever reason, the 1985 flick is not available to stream on iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, or YouTube. None of my local Blockbusters had the DVD, either, nor did Vidiots in Santa Monica, which usually stocks every movie known to man. I think it is safe to say that I spent more time trying to track down a copy of the flick than I did researching the house! Thankfully, I was finally able to find the DVD at Videotheque in South Pasadena, which wound up being one of the coolest video stores that I have ever been to. I highly recommend a visit if you are looking for a hard-to-find rental. But I digress. The Moorish-style residence, which is supposedly located in Beverly Hills’ Trousdale Estates neighborhood, only appears once in Into the Night, in the scene in which Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) goes to the home of Shaheen Parvici (Irene Papas) to sell some stolen jewels.

As you can see below, the home has not changed much in the 28 years since Into the Night was filmed.

Although, the reflecting pool shown in the flick featured a fountain that is no longer there. And while the façade of the home appeared to be gray in Into the Night, I am not sure if the exterior was actually that color at the time of the filming or if it appeared to be so due to the movie’s lighting.

The real life interior of the home was also used in Into the Night.

As was the property’s massive pool and central courtyard area.

You can check out some fabulous aerial views of the pool and courtyard on Bing Maps. What I wouldn’t give to see the pool in person! It looks pretty amazing.

Fellow stalker Gilles informed me that the house also appeared in the Season 5 episode of Dynasty titled “Domestic Intrigue” as the supposed Istanbul, Turkey-area hotel where Adam Carrington (Gordon Thomson) met with Dominique Deveraux (Diahann Carroll).

The interior of the property masqueraded as the interior of the palace belonging to Rashid Ahmed (John Saxon) in the episode. For the exterior of Rashid’s palace, an incredibly unique mansion named Casa Blanca in Carpinteria was used – a place I am definitely going to have to stalk in the near future! You can check out some photographs of it 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.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Shaheen’s house from Into the Night is located at 2250 Montecito Drive in San Marino.

January 8, 2013
Ben and Leslie’s New House from “Parks and Recreation”

Back in October, while watching the fabulous Season 5 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Halloween Surprise”, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with tracking down the Anywhere, U.S.A.-style home that Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) leased with her longtime boyfriend, Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott – whom I just saw the other day at my local Target, but I digress). I had a pretty strong inkling that the residence was most-likely located in the Sherman Oaks area, in the same vicinity as the dwelling used as Diane’s (Lucy Lawless’) house on the series, where most of the “Halloween Surprise” episode had taken place.

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Luckily, while watching “Halloween Surprise”, I had spotted what I thought was an address number of 4620 on the curb in front of Leslie and Ben’s rental, so I immediately started searching through all of the 4600 blocks in Sherman Oaks. Sure enough, I found the place just a mile or so south of Diane’s home. Woot woot! It was not until two weekends ago, though, that I finally managed to drag the Grim Cheaper out there to stalk it.

In “Halloween Surprise”, Leslie takes her BFF Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) to look at a home she is thinking of renting because, as she explains it, “Ben is coming back from D.C. in ten days and we are moving into a house together. He would move in my place, but it’s a scary, nightmare, hoarder nest. His words. And Ann’s. And the official report filed by the Health Department.” LOL While there, Leslie decides to lease the place (despite the fact that it does not have her desired “trampoline room”), but those plans get thwarted when Ben is offered a new job in D.C. When Leslie later returns to the residence to tell the agent that they will no no longer be taking the place, Ben shows up and (SPOILER ALERT), in a tear-inducing moment, proposes to Leslie on bended-knee. And while the property has yet to appear in any other Parks and Recreations episodes and it was never actually made clear in “Halloween Surprise” if the newly-betrothed couple did actually lease the place or not, I am assuming that they did.

While the house, which was originally built in 1938, looks very much the same in person as it did onscreen, I was not expecting it to be so large. Because the angle featured in the episode was a tight one, showing only one side, I assumed that it was a fairly modest residence with only one or two bedrooms.

In actuality, though, the house boasts four bedrooms, four baths and a spacious 2,688 square feet of living space.

And while I would have bet money on the fact that the real life interior of the property had been used in the episode, that was actually not the case. As you can see in these photographs of the home, aside from the massive stone fireplace, nothing about the actual interior matches what appeared onscreen.

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: Ben and Leslie’s new house from Parks and Recreation is located at 4620 Wortser Avenue in Sherman Oaks.

January 7, 2013
Redwood Bar & Grill from “Bridesmaids”

Once the rain finally stopped falling this past Saturday morning, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to downtown Los Angeles to stalk a Bridesmaids location that has been at the very top of my To-Stalk list for months now – Redwood Bar & Grill, where Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) and Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) went on a spontaneous date towards the end of the movie. I found this locale thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, who has a page dedicated to a few of the spots featured in the 2011 flick.

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Before arriving at Redwood Bar & Grill, I knew virtually nothing about the place, other than the fact that it had been used in Bridesmaids. And because so little of it was shown in the movie, I had no idea what to expect of the interior. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

While fairly non-descript on the outside, the interior of Redwood Bar & Grill is all dim lighting, dark wood paneling and themed nautical décor. Dining there feels like dining in the middle of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, only better. Unfortunately, because the lighting was so low, though, the vast majority of my pictures did not come out. Ugh! Mike, from MovieShotsLA, has promised that he will teach me how to use the aperture settings on my camera in the near future, but in the meantime, you can check out some cool photos of the bar here. (Now why couldn’t my pics have come out that clear?)

Redwood Bar & Grill actually saw its origins as a 1930s-era hamburger stand where Philadelphia native Samuel “Eddie” Spivak sold 10-cent burgers out of a small storefront located at 234 West 1st Street, just downstairs from the Los Angeles Times newsroom. In 1942, Eddie expanded his eatery, as well as its menu, added a bar, and renamed the place the “Redwood House”. Due to its proximity to the newspaper offices, the restaurant became extremely popular with the journalist set, who dubbed the site the “Red Dog”. According to the obituary of Alice Broude, who worked at the Redwood House for more than 50 years, a certain unnamed reporter would place his daily order by stomping his feet three times loudly on the floor. Ha! You can see a photograph of the original Redwood House here and a picture of its former menu here. When the Times Mirror Co., owner of the L.A. Times, decided to expand into the Redwood space in January 1970, Spivak moved his restaurant one block south, where it remains to this day. Despite the move, the watering hole remained popular with Times journalists. So much so that for years the bar was equipped with a special red phone that was connected directly to the paper’s main news desk, just in case any last minute tips came in. It was not only journalists who were drawn to the site, though. Over the years, the Redwood House was frequented by the likes of actors Burt Reynolds and Jack Warden, former presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and such notorious gangsters as Frankie Carbo (who, according to Broude, refused to eat meat on Fridays) and Mickey Cohen (who, also according to Broude, was a fabulous tipper).

At some point in time, the establishment’s name was changed to the Redwood 2nd Street Saloon and it was taken over by new owners In and Ho Park. Sadly, in June 2005, due to dwindling business and failed lease negotiations, Ho and In closed the eatery, which most regulars had described as a real life Cheers (where everybody knows your name). Thankfully though, restaurateurs Christian Frizell and Dev Dugal stepped in, signed a new lease, renovated the interior, and, in September 2005, re-opened the site as a pirate-themed watering hole named the Redwood Bar & Grill. The décor is now decidedly unique and swashbuckler-esque. I absolutely fell in love with the skeleton candelabra pictured below. I so need to find one for myself to add to my Halloween decorations!

Besides spicing up the décor, Frizell and Dugal also revamped the Redwood menu, and, let me tell you, the food is to-die-for! I opted for the Redwood’s Veggie Burger, made on the premises out of mushrooms, vegetables, and quinoa, and not only was it divine, but absolutely HUGE! The GC ordered a cup of the restaurant’s New England Clam Chowder, which was also fabulous, especially considering the chill in the air that day. I honestly cannot more highly recommend stalking Redwood Bar & Grill! It is a shame that we only just discovered the place as I have a feeling that, were we not moving to Palm Springs in three weeks, it would have quickly become a favorite.

In Bridesmaids, Redwood Bar & Grill is where Rhodes and Annie grabbed a drink after her ill-fated flight to Las Vegas. It is there that Rhodes uttered the super-cute line, “There’s something about you – something about you that sticks.” As you can see below, the place looked quite a bit different onscreen.

Because Bridesmaids was set in Milwaukee, the exterior of an actual Milwaukee-area watering hole – Norman One Step (which is now closed), located at 3218 West Cameron Street – was used for the establishing shot of the bar in the movie.

Redwood Bar & Grill also popped up in the 2009 flick (500) Days of Summer, as The Mill – aka the spot where Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and their greeting-card-writing co-workers karaoked on Day (28).

The stage where Summer and the rest of the gang performed is actually there in real life, too, although the Redwood does not actually host karaoke nights.

And the skeleton candelabra that I fell in love with was even pictured briefly in the flick. 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 Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Redwood Bar & Grill from Bridesmaids is located at 316 West 2nd Street in downtown Los Angeles. The eatery is open daily from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. You can visit the Redwood’s official website here.

January 3, 2013
Jerry’s House from “Parks and Recreation”

As the song goes, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and what better way to celebrate than by blogging about holiday-themed locales on each day leading up to the 25th? Hope y’all enjoy them! And now, on with the post! Two Thursday ago, while watching fave show Parks and Recreation, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with the charmingly picturesque home belonging to Jerry Gergich (Jim O’Heir) and his shockingly gorgeous family – wife, Gayle (Christie Brinkley), and daughters, Millicent (Sarah Wright), Gladys (Katie Gill), and Miriam (Maliabeth Johnson) – in the Season 5 Christmas-themed episode titled “Ron and Diane”. I mean look at the place! It’s like it was ripped right out of a Hallmark commercial or something! A-DO-RABLE!

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Thankfully, this one was an easy find. I thought the residence looked slightly familiar and had a vague recollection that I had seen photographs of it online while on the hunt for the Boy Meets World house back in mid-November. So I dashed over to my favorite locations library, Malibu Locations, to search for colonial-style residences in the Studio City area (the same parameters I used to track down the BMW abode) and, sure enough, I came across a listing for the place almost immediately. Fortunately, an address number of 11800 was visible in the listing photos, which made finding the home from there a snap. Yay! So I ran right out to stalk the place just a few days later.

In real life, Jerry’s house, which was originally built in 1939, boasts three bedrooms, three baths and 3,126 square feet of living space. As you can see below, the residence is absolutely idyllic in person – so much so that I am shocked it has not been used in more productions.

Oddly enough, while the house is nestled on what appears to be a gargantuan plot of land, in actuality the property only measures a scant 0.31 acres according to fave website Zillow .

Jerry’s house is featured quite extensively in the “Ron and Diane” episode, as the site of the Gergich family Christmas party where the Parks and Rec Department gang are all guests – well, except for Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza) and Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), whom Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) has banned from attending, and Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), who are at the Indiana Fine Woodworking Association Woodworking Awards. LOL

The real life interior of the home, which you can see photographs of here, was also used in the episode.

I so love the fireplace video that played in the background on Jerry’s TV during the party, by the way.

Oddly enough, an entirely different house – one located at 4203 Bellaire Avenue in Studio City – was used as Jerry’s residence in the Season 4 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Sweet Sixteen”.

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: Jerry Gergich’s house, from the “Ron and Diane” episode of Parks and Recreation, is located at 11800 Kling Street in Valley Village.

December 17, 2012
Diane’s House from “Parks and Recreation”

Back in mid-November, a fellow stalker named Vinnie tweeted me to ask if I knew the location of the house belonging to Diane Lewis (whom I had no idea was played by Lucy Lawless, by the way!) – aka the spot where Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) fixed a pothole – in the Season 5 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “How a Bill Becomes a Law”. As luck would have it, fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, had tracked down that particular abode and texted me its address on October 2nd, the very same night that the “How a Bill Becomes a Law” episode first aired. So I passed along the info to Vinnie and the following day he tweeted me to let me know that he had visited the location and that the pothole patch was still visible! Well, believe you me, once I heard that, I was bound and determined to stalk the place just as soon as humanly possible. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a few days after Thanksgiving.

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Finding this location was a snap for Owen because he had done some previous cyber-stalking on the very same street (Margate Street in Sherman Oaks) a couple of years ago while searching for the house where Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) and Jim Halpert (John Krasinksi) bought a lamp in the Season 4 episode of The Office titled “Fun Run” (which I blogged about here). As it turns out, the “Fun Run” home is located almost directly across the street from Diane’s dwelling. In fact, you can see a sign for Margate Street in the background behind Jim and Pam in the episode. Love it!

In real life, Diane’s house, which was originally built in 1955 and is absolutely adorable in person, boasts three bedrooms, two baths, 2,095 square feet of living space, and a 0.20-acre plot of land. You can check out some interior photographs of the place on an old real estate listing here.

As fate would have it, while we were stalking the house, the super-nice owners came out and chatted with us about the filming of Parks and Recreation and a few other productions that had been shot in the neighborhood. They also mentioned that they had met fellow stalker Vinnie while he was stalking the place just a few days prior.

In the “How a Bill Becomes a Law” episode of Parks and Recreation, Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) decides to implement a 311 phone line at the Parks Department so that Pawnee citizens can report any municipal-related problems that they might be having. While manning the line, Ron takes a complaint from Diane about a pothole that has remained unfixed for months on the street outside of her home. He responds to that complaint by saying, “Well, Diane, for potholes, you want to speak with Public Works . . . I understand you’ve tried them four times – government is inefficient and should be dissolved.” LOL LOL LOL Gotta love Ron Swanson! Ron then decides to take matters into his own hands and heads over to Diane’s house to fix the pothole himself, along with a little help from Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt). As you can see below, Diane’s residence looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did in the episode.

I was, of course, most excited to see the pothole patch that Vinnie had told me about, though.

I find it so incredibly cool that a vestige of the filming was left behind for all of us stalkers to appreciate for years to come. LOVE IT!

The house also showed up in the Season 5 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Halloween Surprise”, in the scene in which Ron apologizes to Diane for ruining her daughters’ Halloween.

While the real life address number of Diane’s residence is 13155, crew members dropped the first 1 to make it 3155 for the filming of the “How a Bill Becomes a Law” episode. Nothing unusual about that – house numbers are often changed for a film shoot. But in an odd twist, that number was changed even further – to 155 – just a few episodes later for “Halloween Surprise”. The Parks and Rec producers must think us stalkers aren’t paying attention or something.

The owners of Diane’s house also informed us that the residence across the street was used in the “Halloween Surprises” episode, in the scene in which Ron breaks Diane’s daughter’s tiara.

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: Diane’s house from Parks & Recreation is located at 13155 Margate Street in Sherman Oaks. The house where Ron broke Diane’s daughter’s tiara in the “Halloween Surprises” episode is located across the street at 13162 Margate Street. The residence where Pam bought a lamp in the “Fun Run” episode of The Office is located next door to the “Halloween Surprises” house at 5306 Longridge Avenue. And Oscar’s home from The Office is located just around the corner at 5232 Longridge Avenue. Quite a popular neighborhood for filming, I’d say!

December 13, 2012
Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from “Bridesmaids”

As I mentioned in my post about the apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in Bridesmaids, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I finally managed to track down all of the L.A.-area locations from the 2011 flick last week. Or so I thought. While scanning through the movie on Monday afternoon, making screen captures for my post about Officer Rhodes’ (Chris O’Dowd’s) house, I came across the scene that took place at Bill Cozbi’s (Richard Riehle’s) Auto Body Shop and realized that Mike and I had both somehow completely forgotten about the locale and failed to do any sort of search for it. I immediately shot him an email asking for some help in tracking the place down and five minutes later I received a text that said, “Oh no! You were just there!” As it turns out, the auto body shop that stood in for Bill Cozbi’s in the flick is located in Santa Clarita, right around the corner from Officer Rhodes’ and Judy’s (Jill Clayburgh’s) houses. UGH! So – after smacking myself in the forehead for being such a ditz – I drove all the way back out to the SC yesterday to stalk the place.

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Fortunately, finding this location was a snap. When Mike first received my email, he had to the foresight to do a Google search for Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop. Because that name was obviously a fake, it did not even occur to me to search for it – I had instead been Googling Bridesmaids and auto body shop. Thankfully though, Mike’s query led him to a page on the Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery website which identified the shop as a Bridesmaids filming location and also featured the photograph below. Whoo hoo – I so LOVE it when location owners embrace their property’s filming history!

Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop is first mentioned by Officer Rhodes towards the beginning of Bridesmaids, in the scene in which he pulls Annie (Kristen Wiig) over for having broken taillights. Rhodes tells Annie that she should go see his friend who has a body shop, “Bill Cozbi, with a z – different guy. And don’t mention the whole Bill Cosby thing to him. It drives him nuts. I mean it!” LOL Annie ends up going to the shop at the very end of the movie, after finally deciding to start getting her life back on track. Thankfully, as you can see below, Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen – aside from the name (and, therefore signage) change, of course.

I so love that a variation of one of the shop’s real life signs was used in the movie, though.

While I was stalking the shop, I happened to meet the super-nice owner, who is aptly named Ricardo. He was in absolute SHOCK that I had driven all the way from Pasadena just to see the location. Ricardo spent quite a few minutes filling me in on the filming of Bridesmaids, showing me photographs from the shoot, and he was even nice enough to take the picture of me that appears at the top of this post. He also informed me that producers had taken down a chain link fence that had originally surrounded his property during the shoot and that, after filming wrapped, he decided to replace the old fence with a nicer, more permanent metal one, as you can see below. Personally, I like the look of the place sans fence, but that’s probably because that is how it appeared in Bridesmaids.

Mike has most of the remaining Bridesmaids filming locations posted on his site. You can check out Annie’s Cake Baby shop here, the Brazilian restaurant here, the house where Annie went on a blind date here, and Joni’s Restaurant 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.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery, aka Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from Bridesmaids, is located at 24347 Main Street in Santa Clarita. You can visit the shop’s official website here. Judy’s home from the movie is located right around the corner at 23418 8th Street. And Officer Rhodes’ residence is located directly across the street from Judy’s at 23425 8th Street. Note – the Bridesmaids houses cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive. To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

December 6, 2012
Officer Rhodes’ House from “Bridesmaids”

As I mentioned in last Thursday’s post about the apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in Bridesmaids, I recently became just a wee-bit obsessed with tracking down all of the locales featured in the 2011 hit. One of the sites I was most interested in finding, of course, was the small blue ranch-style house belonging to Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). I bugged Mike, from MovieShotsLA, relentlessly to help me out with the search and he finally managed to track the place down last Wednesday morning. Needless to say, I was absolutely ecstatic and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it just a few days later – despite the fact that it was raining at the time. As I have mentioned before, this stalker absolutely HATES rain (thank goodness I am moving to the desert) and there are very few locations that I would actually venture out to stalk during a downpour. But Officer Rhodes’ house was one of ‘em!

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Finding this location took quite a bit of work, actually, so Mike definitely deserves a HUGE pat on the back! While scanning through Bridesmaids looking for clues as to the house’s location, I noticed an address number of 8410 behind Rhodes in the scene in which Annie (Kristen Wiig) leaves a cake on his doorstep. Mike and I both had an inkling that the number was a fake, though.

That inkling was solidified when I spotted a five-digit address number on the residence pictured behind Annie’s car in the same scene. And while I was unable to make out the number with any sort of certainty, I told Mike that I thought it read 23430. As luck would have it, I was right! I had read in the Bridesmaids production notes that towns surrounding Los Angeles had been used to stand in for Milwaukee and Chicago in the flick, so Mike and I decided to begin our hunt in the 23400 blocks of small towns surrounding L.A. proper. And, sure enough, although it took a while, Mike worked his magic and found the pad – in Santa Clarita of all places. Yay!

Officer Rhodes’ house shows up a few times in Bridesmaids and, as you can see below, has not been altered much from its silver screen appearance.

In real life, the tiny cottage, which was originally built in 1948, boasts 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 605 square feet of living space (that’s smaller than my apartment!), and a small 0.085-acre parcel of land.

As you can see below, the place is absolutely adorable in person – and does not seem like an L.A.-area house at all.

I was most excited to see the front porch area where the raccoons devoured Annie’s cake in the movie. LOL LOVE IT!

And while I am not certain, I have a hunch that the interior (LOVE the beamed roof and French doors, by the way!) of Rhodes’ house was just a set.

Tomorrow, I will be blogging about the residence where Annie’s mom, Judy (Jill Clayburgh), lived in Bridesmaids – which just so happens to be located directly across the street from Rhodes’ house! I was going to blog both properties together, but ran out of time today. So until tomorrow . . .

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Officer Rhodes’ house from Bridesmaids is located at 23425 8th Street in Santa Clarita. Note – the property cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive. To gain access to the site, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

December 4, 2012
Lillian and Sam’s House from “People Like Us”

After I tracked down Frankie (Elizabeth Banks) and Josh’s (Michael Hall D’Addario’s) house from 2012’s People Like Us (which I blogged about on Friday), the next item on my To-Search-For list was the gorgeous Craftsman-style abode where Lillian Harper (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her son, Sam Harper (Chris Pine), lived in the flick. Thankfully, this locale proved to be an easy find, despite the fact that very little of the exterior was ever shown.

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Towards the end of People Like Us, there is a scene in which a phone book listing of Lillian and Sam’s address is shown. And while the residence is said to be located at 2523 Wonderland Avenue in the Laurel Canyon area, I knew from this June 2012 Los Angeles Times article that the place could actually be found in L.A.’s West Adams District. Because the real life address of Frankie’s home had been used in the movie, I had an inkling that the address number of Lillian’s house was most likely real, as well. So I started looking at aerial views of all residences numbered 2523 in the West Adams area and, sure enough, found the place after just a few minutes. Whoo hoo! And I, of course, dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk it just a few days later.

As luck would have it, the SUPER-nice owner of the People Like Us house happened to come outside while we were stalking the place and filled us in on all sorts of filming information about the neighborhood. Ironically enough, the Eppes family’s home from the 2005 television series Numb3rs (pictured below), which I stalked and blogged about way back in March of 2008, is located right next door.

The owner answered all of my silly little questions about the filming of People Like Us and even said that if she was not running to appointment at the time, she would have invited us inside to see the interior of the house, which was used extensively in the film! OMG! That would have been amazing! Sigh! She also told me that I was welcome to go up onto the front porch to pose for a pic in the spot where Josh knocked on the door in the movie. Yay!

Lillian and Sam’s house popped up numerous times in People Like Us, although, as I mentioned above, not much of the exterior was shown.

The 6-bedroom, 5-bath, 4,030-square-foot abode, which was originally built in 1922 and sits on 0.16 acres, is quite spectacular in real life, as you can see below. Despite its large size, it does very much look like a Laurel Canyon-area home. I am guessing that the reason producers opted not to use an actual LC residence is that the streets there are extremely narrow and twisty and not very conducive to the transportation and parking needs of large production trucks.

As I mentioned above, the to-die-for interior of the home was used extensively in the flick. Of the fact that actual places and not sets were used in People Like Us, producer Bobby Cohen said, “There is something special about shooting in real locations. There is a texture to them that you can’t rebuild. It makes a difference.” I definitely agree. While some sets are absolutely spectacular (the bar from Burlesque comes to mind), I much prefer the look of real life locations. And the look of the interior of the People Like Us home is pretty darn spectacular. It would have been pretty foolish to use a set when an interior like that was available.

The home’s real life garage, which you can barely see in the background of the photograph below, was also used in the movie.

As was the majestic backyard. What I wouldn’t give to see that backyard in person!

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: Lillian’s house from People Like Us is located at 2523 4th Avenue in Los Angeles’ West Adams District. The Numb3rs house is located right next door at 2515 4th Avenue. The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from Six Feet Under (which I blogged about here) is located around the corner at 2302 West 25th Street.

December 3, 2012
Lillian’s Apartment from “Bridesmaids”

This past Monday, the Grim Cheaper and I both had some business to attend to on L.A.’s West Side, so we decided to drive out that way together. Because his meetings were going to run a lot longer than mine, I figured I would do some stalking in the area while I waited. And I really have to give myself a major pat on the back here as I managed to get quite a bit of stalking done using the GC’s car, which does not have a GPS. I am seriously directionally-challenged and typically cannot find my way out of a paper bag, but the direction gods were definitely smiling down upon me on Monday because I managed to get to several locales with no problems whatsoever . . . in Venice, mind you – an area I am not particularly fond of due to the crowds, the sketchiness, and the lack of parking places and public restrooms. So needless to say I am very proud of myself! I feel like I can conquer the world now! Anyway, one of the locations that I managed to successfully find my way to was the supposed Milwaukee-area apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in the 2011 hit Bridesmaids.

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I should mention here that I did not particularly enjoy Bridesmaids the first time I saw it – perhaps because I was home alone at the time and had no one to laugh with. But when the GC and I randomly caught the last half of it on TV while vacationing in La Quinta last August, I was practically rolling on the floor in hysterics. Then when my good friends, fellow stalkers Lavonna and Kim, came for a visit in November they quoted the movie constantly, so I re-watched it during their stay and became just a wee bit obsessed – the airplane scene (which you can watch by clicking below – caution, it is NSFW) is SO me, I cannot even tell you! Anyway, I spent the past few weeks bugging Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to help me track down all of the locations from the flick, the final two of which he did yesterday, after which he sent me a text that said, “Can we move on from this now?” LOL (I have to say that I was seriously disappointed to learn that Joni’s Restaurant, where Lillian and Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) had coffee at the beginning of the flick, was just a set built on the Paramount Studios backlot. But I digress.)

Lillian’s apartment was kind of a random find, actually. While the majority of the Bridesmaids establishing shots were taken in the Milwaukee area, all actual filming was done right here in Southern California. At one point in the movie, Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) mentioned that Lillian’s building was located on the corner of Craner and Rose. And while I was not aware of any L.A. street named Craner, I was, of course, aware of Venice Beach’s famous Rose Avenue and decided to begin my search there. Sure enough, I found Lillian’s apartment just a bit east of Rose Avenue, on the corner of San Juan and Cabrillo. Woot woot!

Amazingly enough, despite the fact that the building is quite beautiful and looks to be somewhat historic, I could find absolutely no information whatsoever about it online, outside of the fact that it was originally built in 1922 (thank you, Property Shark!). According to a Panoramio poster named “gregmaz”, the domicile was designed and constructed by Abbot Kinney, the father of Venice himself, but I could not find any other references which support that claim. And being that Kinney passed away in 1920, two full years before Property Shark states that the place was built, I am fairly certain that he had nothing to do with its creation.

The building shows up twice in Bridesmaids – first in a brief establishing shot before the scene in which Lillian tells Annie that she has just gotten engaged.

And next towards the very end of the movie, in the scene in which Annie and Helen (Rose Byrne) track Lillian to her apartment on the morning of her wedding.

The interior of Lillian’s apartment was just a set, though. You can check out the real life interior of two of the building’s actual units here and here.

The very same building was also featured very briefly (blink and you’ll miss it, in fact) in the 1990 movie A Girl to Kill For, in the scene in which Chuck (Sasha Jenson) and Sue (Karen Medak) are being chased by the police. (Please pardon the craptastic screen captures 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.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Lillian’s apartment building from Bridesmaids is located at 300 San Juan Avenue in Venice.

November 29, 2012