Glee filming locations – Page 2

April 7, 2010April 7, 2010

The “Glee” Vanity Fair Photo Shoot

In early December of last year, I came across these Fan Sites Network photographs of the male stars of Glee – including my latest love, cutie Matthew Morrison – posing for an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair at the Urban Light display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and I just about died. I absolutely COULD NOT WAIT for the article to be published so that I could stalk the display and blog about it. I’m really not kidding – on January 1st, February 1st, and March 1st of this year, I literally ran to my local newsstand to check out the latest issue of the magazine to see if the Glee pics were in there. Well, the photos – ahem – photo was finally published this past Thursday in the magazine’s May issue and I have to say that I was sorely disappointed with it. I had whole-heartedly been expecting the Glee actors to garner a cover story or, at the very least, a full-fledged feature article, so, you can imagine my disappointment last Thursday upon discovering that the actual publication consisted of a single page. Yes, you read that right – ONE single, solitary page. In my never-to-be humble opinion ;), I have to say that Vanity Fair really dropped the ball on this one! I mean, HELLO! Glee is not only the biggest new show of the 2009 Fall television season and is finally returning to the airwaves after a FOUR MONTH hiatus, but it also recently won both a Golden Globe Award (for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy) and a SAG Award (for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series) along with countless other awards and nominations too numerous to list here – before its very first season had even been completed, no less! Shouldn’t that at least garner them more than a half page picture and tiny write-up buried all the way on page 181? Shame on you, VF! Not only that, but I wasn’t exactly crazy about the sole photograph that did get published, either. It is a pretty dark and dreary picture, especially considering that Glee is a show chock full of . . . well, glee! But, even though I wasn’t very happy about the finalized product, I still just HAD to stalk the place where the photo shoot took place. So, this past weekend I dragged my fiancé out to Wilshire’s Miracle Mile District and did just that.

I’ve actually driven by the Urban Light display countless times over the past few years and have always found it a bit odd, to say the least. As you can see in the above photographs, the large scale art installation consists of a group of grey-colored lights standing right smack dab in the middle of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s central courtyard which is located along the heavily trafficked Wilshire Boulevard in Mid-Town L.A. Trust me when I say that the whole thing looks very bizarre when driving by at 35 miles per hour. And even though I’ve always admired the many vintage street lamps that are in still in use around the Los Angeles area, the Urban Light display always seemed out of place to me and I never had any interest in stopping my car to get a closer look.

That is, until my good friend Renae sent me the above picture of her family taken earlier this year, which I thought was just about the coolest family photograph I had ever seen! I absolutely loved, loved, loved it and, in turn, realized what an amazing display the Urban Light installation actually was. I mean can you even imagine taking wedding photographs there?? They would be A-MA-ZING!

The Urban Light display, which is comprised of a group of 202 actual working 1920’s and 1930’s era Los Angeles street lamps that took over seven years to collect, was created by performance artist and sculptor Chris Burden in early 2008. Burden is perhaps best known for his highly controversial performance pieces from the early 1970s, the most famous of which was entitled “Shoot” and involved an assistant actually shooting him in the arm while onstage. Not surprisingly, he was made to see a therapist after that production. 😉 Burden also once had himself nailed to a Volkswagen Beetle during a show. Needless to say, the guy’s a bit out there. According to this article which was written by Susan Freudenheim and appeared in the January 30th, 2008 issue of the Los Angeles Times, in recent years Burden has shifted his attention from performance art to “large-scale assemblage sculptures”. He first stumbled upon the vintage street lamps that would become the foundation of his “Urban Light” display in December of 2000 at the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena. Even though he had no plan for them at the time, he immediately purchased a pair of the vintage lights for $1600. An avid collector of a wide array of tchotchkes, Burden soon found himself in possession of 150 of the street lamps and used them to build a small scale display outside of his studio. Eventually, a few big wigs at LACMA viewed the installation and knew it would be the perfect piece to stand in the middle of the new courtyard that was being built outside of the museum. Andrew M. Gordon, a chairman on the LACMA board, donated the money to purchase the display, to which Burden had added 52 more lamps, and the rest, as they say, is history. The installation’s first lighting was on February 7, 2008 and coincided with the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA. In a humorous side note, not only did each of the 202 lamps have to actually be installed per Los Angeles City Code, but they were also all inspected by the Bureau of Street Lighting. No that’s not a joke, Los Angeles actually has a Bureau of Street Lighting!

Seeing the Urban Light sculpture up close and personal is extremely jarring as the display is absolutely HUGE, much more so then it appears to be when simply driving by. Burden designed the piece so that visitors could actually walk through each of the lights to experience what he describes as “architecture without walls”. And let me tell you, one can easily get lost in the middle of the installation, as I obviously did in the above photograph. 🙂 I honestly can’t recommend stalking the Urban Light display enough. It is an absolutely beautiful and truly unique place that everyone should see in person at least once.

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And, of course, I just had to pose in the exact spot where the Glee picture was taken, which is on the northwest corner of the installation. 🙂

Note – The Glee photograph which appears in this post does not belong to me, but remains the sole property of photographer Michael Roberts and Vanity Fair Magazine.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” display, where the Glee guys’ Vanity Fair photo shoot took place, is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in Mid-Town L.A. The Glee boys posed in the display’s northwest corner, which is pictured above. The May issue of Vanity Fair, which features the Glee photograph, will be on sale throughout the end of April. If you would like to check out a more in-depth photoshoot of the cast, pick up this month’s Glamour.

February 8, 2010February 5, 2010

April’s House from “Glee”

As I have mentioned countless times before, I am absolutely, irrevocably, one hundred percent obsessed with the television show Glee. So obsessed that I’ve been watching my “Road to Sectionals” DVDs over and over and over again to bide my time until the series returns from its absurdly long hiatus on April 13th – which still seems like such a far off date. I honestly don’t know how I am supposed to wait another 65 days before getting my Glee fix. Why, oh, why are you holding out on us Fox? But I digress. As you’ve probably ascertained by now, I literally cannot get enough of the show! So, imagine my absolute – pardon the pun – glee when I stumbled upon the house where April Rhodes (aka Kristin Chenowith) was caught squatting in the Season One, Volume 1 episode entitled “The Rhodes Not Taken”. I happened to be doing be some cyberstalking of the Encino area at the time – looking for a Beverly Hills, 90210 location, no less – and randomly happened upon the Glee house. And, let me tell you, I just about died from excitement! And, since my fiancé and I were already in the area last weekend enjoying our little “staycation” at the Westlake Village Inn, I just had to drag him out to stalk the place. YAY!

In “The Rhodes Not Taken” episode, Will Schuester (aka cutie Matthew Morrison) decides to reenlist former Glee club star April Rhodes at William McKinley High School so that she can join his glee team and lead them to glory at the upcoming sectionals competition. He tracks down April, whom he hasn’t spoken with in years, via a Google search and ends up sending her an instant message asking if she remembers him from their high school days. She immediately responds with an address where he should meet her along with an instruction to bring buffalo wings. LOL

That address is 35 Bontempo Road in Lima, Ohio and producers even went so far as to put a fake address placard on the front of the house for the filming. As you can see in the above photograph and screen capture, though, the fake address sign is an exact match to the home’s real one. 🙂 In reality, of course, April’s home is not located on Bontempo Road in Ohio, but about 2,000 miles west on White Oak Avenue in Encino. I swear, it’s a good thing I accidentally stumbled upon this location, otherwise I never would have found it in a million years! When I first watched “The Rhodes Not Taken” episode, actually, I had wrongly assumed the property was located in Pasadena, so my search would have been way off!

While Will is visiting with April inside the home, a real estate agent barges in and informs him that April is a squatter who been residing in foreclosed-upon, bank-owned properties as of late. And, as you can see in these photographs from a 2007 real estate listing, the home’s real life interior and real life furniture were used for the filming of that scene. So cool!

After being booted out of the house, Will and April – and her box of wine LOL – then head outside and have a conversation on the sidewalk, whereupon he convinces her to return to high school to finally graduate – and to join glee, of course.

While stalking the house, I just had to take a picture while sitting in the same spot where Will and April were sitting in that scene. 🙂 I guess my memory was a little off on this one, though, as I wound up taking the picture about four feet too far to the left. Whoopsie!

In reality, April’s house is a 6 bedroom, 7 bathroom dwelling, which was built in 2001 and measures a whopping 7,280 square feet. It boasts maid’s quarters, a central vacuum system, a second family room located upstairs, Viking appliances, and a 400 square foot back patio with a built-in BBQ, fire pit, fireplace, and a large pool and spa. It looks like a pretty plush pad – no wonder April was squatting there. 😉

On a Matthew Morrison side note – I just recently re-watched the Sex and the City episode from Season Two that he guested on back in June of 1999. The episode was entitled “They Shoot Single People, Don’t They?” and Matthew played a very young busboy who waits on Carrie in the final scene. His sole line in the episode is “Waiting for someone?” The spot was Matthew’s first ever television appearance and he was so very young in it and oh so darn cute. 🙂 Sigh!

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The house where April Rhodes’ was caught squatting in “The Rhodes Not Taken” episode of Glee is located at 4777 White Oak Avenue in Encino.

January 28, 2010February 5, 2010

The IHOP Restaurant from “Glee”

As I have mentioned a few times in the past, I am a diabetic. And in order to combat my currently out-of-whack blood sugars, I recently picked up Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution, a best-selling book which proposes a VERY low carbohydrate diet to maintain blood sugar control. Which is a problem, because this stalker loves to eat! And the foods I am naturally drawn to are, of course, those high carbohydrate entrees that the book proposes steering clear of. I mean, I honestly can’t think of any better meal than chicken strips and ranch dressing, can you? Nor can I think of a better place that serves them up than the International House of Pancakes, aka IHOP. So, you can imagine my disappointment when I found out – thanks to a reader who happened to be in the know – that an episode of Glee had been filmed at an IHOP in Tarzana, because, honestly, how was I going to stalk the place without consuming carbs?? I mean, a stalker’s gotta eat, right? So, I made the command decision to put my diabetic diet on hold for a couple of hours – for my blog’s sake, of course – and dragged my fiancé right out to Tarzana to do a little Glee stalking.

The IHOP in Tarzana appeared in one very brief scene at the beginning of the Season One episode of Glee entitled “The Rhodes Not Taken”. In the episode, Will Schuester (aka cutie Matthew Morrison) is out dining with his wife Terri (aka Jessalyn Gilsig) when he recognizes his waiter as a student he used to teach over five years ago. Once the former student informs Will that he is now enrolled at Carmel High School and is continually flunked year after year so that he can stay in Vocal Adrenaline – despite the fact that he is 24 years old, LOL – Will gets inspired to re-enroll high school dropout and former glee club star April Rhodes (aka Kristin Chenoweth) at McKinley High School so that she can perform with his group, New Directions. And, of course, hilarity ensues.

Some of you out there might find it silly that I stalked a Glee location that appeared in only one very brief, barely sixty second long scene, but being that the show is currently on hiatus until April 16th – what am I going to do with myself until then???? – I needed to get my fix somehow. And, thankfully, IHOP provided me with that. 🙂 Not to mention the fact that my current celebrity crush Matthew Morrison was in said scene, so I had no choice but to stalk the place! I so wanted to sit in Matthew’s seat while there, but unfortunately a group of three was already occupying it when we arrived – and something tells me that they had absolutely no idea of the significance of their particular booth. Ah well, such is life. The staff at IHOP could NOT have been nicer to me, though, and answered all of my silly questions about the filming. And, of course, the chicken strips were A-MA-ZING. And I did manage to snap a quick pic while sitting in a booth sort of near the one used in the Glee scene.

The purple arrow above denotes the exact booth where Will and Terri were sitting during the scene.

On a side note – For those Gleeks out there who have yet to see the behind-the-scenes video of the filming of Emma and Will’s kiss from the “Sectionals” episode, you really need to check it out. It is ADORABLE! I absolutely love Jessalyn Gilsig’s little cameo appearance in it. 😉

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The IHOP that appeared in “The Rhodes Not Taken” episode of Glee can be found at 19100 Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana. If you stalk the place, I highly recommend ordering the chicken strips meal. 😉

January 13, 2010February 5, 2010

William McKinley High School from “Glee”

My Hollywood obsession as of late is the new Fox musical dramedy Glee. Actually, stating that I am obsessed with the series is a rather gross understatement. To say it’s more of an all-out, withdrawal-symptom inducing addiction would be closer to the truth. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been this enamored of a show since, dare I say it, high school when Beverly Hills, 90210 was on the air. Let’s face it – I am ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT A DOUBT, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE with Glee! In fact, the “Sectionals” episode was so fabulous that I watched it three times in a row (not kidding!), mostly because of the big “My Life Would Suck Without You” grand finale number, which was just about the cutest thing ever – especially the kiss at the end! 🙂 To illustrate just how smitten I am with the show (and its leading man Matthew Morrison – sigh!), I’d like to share the following little anecdote with you. This past Friday, my dad had a minor surgery in the West L.A. area and, being the nice daughter that I am, I volunteered to drive him to and from the hospital. Well, I guess it’s true what they say about no good deed going unpunished because I later found out that Glee would be filming on location on Larchmont Boulevard that very same day. Of all the bum luck! 🙁 Anyway, my dad’s surgery went off without a hitch and while leaving the hospital I realized that Larchmont Boulevard was (sort of) on our way home. So – and I can’t even believe I’m about to cop to this in a public forum – I just HAD to stop by. I mean, don’t I owe at least that much to you, dear readers? 😉 So, yes, while my dad was drugged out of his mind on anesthetic, sleeping in the passenger seat of my car right next to me, trying to recover from surgery, I drove over to Larchmont Boulevard to stalk the Glee set. Unfortunately, because they were filming inside of a store, I couldn’t see a whole lot via a simple drive-by. And while deciding if I should park my car – with my dad inside – to venture closer to where they were filming, my conscience got the best of me and I turned around and drove on home. So sad! 🙁 Ironically enough, though, my mom, who is also a big “Gleek” and who knew about the filming, called me up about five minutes later to ask if I had stopped by the set. When I told her that I just couldn’t do it because I was worried about my dad, she said, “Why?? He’ll never know the difference!” LOL LOL LOL As the author of the I Am A TV Junkie blog said recently of his own Glee addiction, “It’s becoming a little ridiculous. I may have to join a support group.” Well, if you find one, TV Junkie, please sign me up, as well! 🙂 Until that time, though, I figure if you can’t beat ‘em, stalk ‘em! So, this weekend I headed down to Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo High School in Long Beach, which stands in for William McKinley High School on Glee.

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo High School is featured extensively on Glee. In fact, according to this article, filming takes place there on a very regular basis. The areas of the school which appear in the series include the football field, track, and bleachers, which were unfortunately completely locked up at the time;

the staff parking lot area, which is located directly in front of the gym;

and the outdoor stairwell located just to the left of the gym. (Please excuse the above photographs – the position of the sun was making it very difficult to take pictures that day.)

The Cabrillo High School location that I most wanted to stalk was the arched-over outdoor hallway where Emma and Will shared a brief chat in the episode entitled “Showmance”. Ironically enough, that outdoor hallway can be found at the top of that very same staircase located to the left of the gym, but unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until after I got home and re-watched the episode. 🙁

While stalking Cabrillo, I was lucky enough to run into two teachers who could NOT have been nicer and even went so far as to point out all the areas of the school used on Glee. Both teachers I spoke with were quite amused over my excitement at seeing the Glee locales in person, especially since one of the them had yet to ever even watch the show! I tried to explain to him that not watching a series that regularly films at his workplace is tantamount to sacrilege in my eyes, but I don’t think he much cared. 🙂 Most of the filming of Glee is relegated to the one small section of Cabrillo High’s 64-acre campus (and no, that’s not a typo, the school actually measures a whopping 64 acres!) pictured above. The football field, staff parking lot, and gym, which are all located near the school’s main entrance just off of West Willard Street, are denoted with pink circles in the above aerial image.

A more close-up view of the staff parking lot is pictured above.

According to the teachers I spoke with, several interior areas of the school, which I unfortunately could not stalk, are also used on Glee, including the cafeteria;

and the auditorium. You can see interior photographs of the school here.

From what I understand, though, McKinley High’s gym is actually located on the campus of another school altogether – Helen Bernstein High School in Los Angeles.

And a little bit of Glee trivia for you – according to one of the teachers I spoke with, Cabrillo High’s real life steel drum band was featured in the series’ pilot episode in the scene pictured above. So cool! 🙂

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Besides regular episodic filming, a photo shoot with the cast of Glee was also recently held at the school, which you can watch a behind-the-scenes video of here. Cabrillo High School has also been featured in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, an episode of the television series Bones, and both Cheaper by the Dozen movies.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo High School, aka William McKinley High School from Glee, is located at 2001 Santa Fe Avenue in Long Beach. Please remember that even though Cabrillo is a “public” school, it is still considered private property. Take good care not to trespass, especially when students are present. If you do want to visit the school, I suggest doing so on a Saturday or Sunday, and always ask permission from a faculty member before gaining access to the property.