Michelle Pfeiffer filming locations

January 8, 2013January 11, 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! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

April 5, 2012April 4, 2012

The Historic Mayfair Hotel from “The Office”

Fellow stalker John Bengtson, from the SIlent Locations blog, sent me an email last week after reading my post on Red Studios Hollywood from The Artist (a location that I had learned about from his website) informing me that he had tracked down some locales from Season 7’s “The Search” episode of The Office that I might be interested in stalking, most notably The Historic Mayfair Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles where Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and Holly Flax (Amy Ryan) shared a rooftop kiss. Ironically enough, my good friend, fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, had also sent me this location on February 4th of last year, the day after the episode had originally aired, along with a list of all of the other places featured in “The Search”. And while I did stalk a few of them – Kung Pao China Bistro and Larry’s Chili Dog – for whatever reason, I never made it out to The Mayfair. So, this past weekend, I decided to change that and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there. (I am not sure what happened with the above photograph, but somehow it turned out a bit wonky and neither the GC nor I realized it at the time.)

The Historic Mayfair Hotel was originally designed in 1927 by Alexander E. Curlett and Claud W. Beelman, the same architecture team who gave us the Park Plaza Hotel near MacArthur Park (an extremely popular filming location that I have stalked, but have yet to blog about), the Cooper Arms condominium building in Long Beach, and the Los Angeles Board of Trade Building in Downtown L.A. The 13-story hotel, which at the time was named simply The Mayfair, was commissioned by Texas oil tycoons and was constructed at a cost of $1.5 million – and we’re talking 1920’s dollars! In its heyday, the luxury property hosted such luminaries as Mary Pickford and John Barrymore. Raymond Chandler even wrote and set his 1939 short story “I’ll Be Waiting” at The Mayfair, although he dubbed the place the “Windermere Hotel” in the tale.

The property, which originally boasted 350 rooms, but now has just 304, was the largest hotel west of the Mississippi at one time and featured an immensely popular supper and dance club known as the Rainbow Isle Room, from which George Eckhardts, Jr. and the Rainbow Isle Orchestra would broadcast a live radio show each night. In 2004, after suffering from a long period of neglect, the structure underwent a massive and much-needed $40 million renovation, at which point it was renamed The Historic Mayfair Hotel. You can check out some great photographs of the place during its early days on The Mayfair’s Facebook page here.

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In “The Search” episode of The Office, after being stranded at a supposed Scranton, Pennsylvania-area gas station, Michael Scott goes on a walkabout which ends on the rooftop of The Historic Mayfair Hotel. When Holly finds him there and Michael tells her how much he has missed her, the two finally kiss, ending several years worth of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-together storylines and allowing audiences to finally breath a long-overdue sigh of relief. Not surprisingly, the roof area of The Mayfair is closed to the public, so I was unable to snap any pictures of it.

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, figured out that The Mayfair stood in for the supposed Chicago, Illinois-area The Addison Hotel where Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer) attended her 15-year high school reunion in 1999’s The Deep End of the Ocean.

It was from the lobby of The Mayfair that Beth’s 3-year-old son, Ben Cappadora (Michael McElroy), was kidnapped.

As you can see above, despite the renovation, the lobby still looks very much the same today as it did back in 1998 when The Deep End of the Ocean was filmed.

The super-nice front desk clerk that we spoke with while we were there informed us that both the interior and the exterior of the property had also appeared in 1994’s True Lies, as the supposed Washington, D.C.-area Washington Mayfair Hotel where Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger), on horseback, chased motor-cycle-riding religious zealot Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik) through a lobby.

The Mayfair lobby was actually one of three different lobbies used in that particular scene. Harry is first shown chasing Salim across the length of The Mayfair’s lobby.

The two then turn a corner and are magically transported to the now-defunct The Ambassador hotel, the same lobby of which was used as the Regent Beverly Wilshire in 1990’s Pretty Woman.

The duo then heads outside, “across the street” and into The Westin Bonaventure Hotel. In reality, when the Ambassador was still standing, it was located a good two miles away from The Bonaventure. Ah, the magic of Hollywood!

Thanks to the Richard Dean Anderson Website, I learned that The Historic Mayfair Hotel was also used in the 1986 Season 1 episode of MacGyver titled “The Assassin”.

I am fairly certain that only the exterior of the property appeared in the episode, though, and that all of the interior hotel scenes were filmed on a set. And while IMDB states that The Mayfair was also featured in 2009’s Don’t Look Up, I scanned through the flick yesterday while doing research for this post and did not see it pop up anywhere.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers John Bengtson, from the SIlent Locations blog, and Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for telling me about this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for informing me of its appearance in The Deep End of the Ocean! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Historic Mayfair Hotel, from “The Search” episode of The Office, is located at 1256 West 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

August 29, 2011August 28, 2011

Vitello’s Italian Restaurant from “The Deep End of the Ocean”

A couple of weeks ago, after doing some stalking in Beverly Hills, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to head over to the Valley to grab dinner at one of our very favorite eateries in all of Los Angeles – Vitello’s Italian Restaurant in Studio City. And even though I have blogged about the place twice before – first in June of 2008 and then again later that November – due to the fact that it is set to undergo an extensive – and when I say extensive, I mean extensive – renovation and remodel in the near future, I figured that it was most definitely worthy of a re-post.

Vitello’s was originally opened by Sal Vitello, a native New York baker, in 1964. Ironically enough, at the time the place was not an Italian restaurant, but a modest subway sandwich shop which featured fresh, homemade bread. In 1977, Sal sold his little eatery to brothers Joe and Steve Restivo, Sicilian natives who migrated to Los Angeles via Chicago. The brothers added down-home, hearty Italian-style staples to the Vitello’s menu, quickly turning the restaurant into a Los Angeles institution.

Thanks to its proximity to the many area movie studios, along with its fabulous fare, it was not long before Hollywood took notice of Vitello’s. As you can see above, the restaurant’s main entrance is literally covered with autographed headshots. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted dining at Vitello’s over the years include Frank Sinatra, Sally Kellerman, Ana Ortiz, Tony Danza, Jason Alexander (the one from Seinfeld, not Britney Spears’ ex-husband Winking smile ), Life Goes On’s Chris Burke, Candice Bergen, Melissa Joan Hart, Frankie Muniz, Michael Landon, Joanna Kerns, Dom DeLuise, Rick Fox, Scott Baio, Tom Smothers, and Wilford Brimley.

The restaurant’s most famous celebrity guest, though, has to be actor Robert Blake, who used to be a regular patron of the eatery, dining there at least three times a week. On the evening of May 4, 2001, Blake notoriously grabbed dinner there with his then-wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, in a booth that, according to the above photograph, was located in the bar area.

The actual bar area is pictured above. Shortly after the couple finished their meal, Bonnie was shot and killed just around the corner from the restaurant. And while Blake claimed that at the time of the shooting he had been walking back to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had inexplicably left behind in his booth, he was arrested and charged with Bakley’s murder on April 18, 2002. He was then acquitted of those charges in March of 2005, but a few months later was found liable for Bakley’s wrongful death in a civil court. Unlike was the case with Brentwood’s Mezzaluna Restaurant, where Nicole Brown Simpson ate her last meal and which closed shortly thereafter, Vitello’s association with the crime only seemed to further the eatery’s fame and made the place even more of a Valley hot spot.

In 2005, Joe and Steve Restivo, seeking retirement, sold Vitello’s to Matt Epstein, a Sherman Oaks real estate agent who had been a regular patron of the restaurant since childhood. And while Epstein kept the menu and décor largely the same for quite some time, earlier this year he brought in a new chef, Tonino Cardia, and completely revamped the menu. And I am very sad to report that it is not nearly as good as it used to be. Gone are the vast majority of the hearty Vitello’s staples that the GC and I had come to know and love and the few items that the new menu did retain have been completed made over. The chicken marsala – which used to be my favorite entree – is a lackluster version of its former self and Vitello’s famous garlic bread now tastes much like the kind that can be purchased in the frozen food aisle of your local supermarket. Such an incredible shame!

There are also plans in the works to gut the interior of the restaurant and give it a completely new look. Even the famous Vitello’s wall mural will be coming down, as will the vintage leather booths. The new design will apparently feature French doors in the entryway and a huge olive tree in the middle of the dining room. And while it all sounds lovely, I am of the mantra that “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. Vitello’s has been a veritable Los Angeles institution for decades, always packed to the gills whenever we have dined there. It is widely noted that 59% of new restaurants close within three years of their opening, so for an eatery that has remained successful for over thirty-four years, you have to wonder why the owners would change a thing! It is such a shame! And while the super-nice manager came over to speak with us after we had expressed our disappointment with the new fare and even offered to comp our meal (which we turned down – we were not looking for a free meal, but just wanted to voice our opinion that the former cuisine was one hundred times better than the current), I am sad to say that I do not think we will ever be dining at Vitello’s again – the food was that bad!

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Besides being a celebrity hangout, our super-nice waitress also informed us that Vitello’s has been used as a filming location! Ironically enough, it stood in for two different locations in the 1999 movie The Deep End of the Ocean. The interior very briefly appeared as the supposed Madison, Wisconsin-area Italian restaurant where Pat Cappadora (aka Treat Williams) worked towards the beginning of the flick.

And the exterior later popped us as Cappadora’s, the supposed Chicago-area restaurant that Pat founded with his father, Angelo (aka Tony Musante), in the middle of the movie.

And while the interior was (I think) just a set, with its orange-toned walls, painted murals, and brickwork, it very closely resembles the real life interior of Vitello’s. Our waitress also informed us that the restaurant will be featured in an upcoming episode of Whitney, the yet-to-be released television series which stars Chelsea-Lately-regular Whitney Cummings.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Vitello’s Restaurant, from The Deep End of the Ocean, is located at 4349 Tujunga Avenue in Studio City. You can visit Vitello’s official website here.