movie houses – Page 11 – IAMNOTASTALKER

September 21, 2009September 21, 2009

The Matchstick Men House

Another location I dragged my fiance to while in Venice last weekend was the house used in the 2003 movie Matchstick Men. I found this spot thanks to fellow stalker Chas, who made it his mission to find EVERY SINGLE Matchstick Men location in the L.A. area. And find them all, he did! Chas’ entire catalog of Matchstick Men locales can actually be found on the Seeing Stars website, but the spot I was most interested in stalking, of course, was the residence belonging to obsessive-compulsive con man Nicolas Cage in the flick. I had absolutely fallen in love with the unique Mid-Century Modern-style home with a tree growing through its front porch when I first saw Matchstick Men in the theatre six years ago. So, when Chas mentioned that he knew where the house was located, I just about died of excitement and immediately ran right out to go stalk it! 🙂

I am very happy to report that the Matchstick Men house looks exactly the same in person today as it did onscreen six years ago. For those who don’t remember, Nicolas Cage’s residence in the flick was a very unique, very flat, one story white 50’s-style abode. But the coolest feature of the house actually had to be the large tree growing right through the roof of the front porch. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in my entire life and when I first saw the movie, I remember wondering if the tree was real or just a prop added for the filming. Well, as it turns out, the front porch tree is a real feature of the house and is still there today. Love it!

The Matchstick Men house is located on a very cool street that is actually chock full of similar looking Mid-Century Modern-style homes. More than a few of them even have a tree growing through their front porch roof, too. Love it! 🙂 According to Zillow, the MM house, which was built in 1948, has 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, and measures a tiny 1,016 square feet.

Chas also told me that, according to the Matchstick Men DVD’s director’s commentary, the scenes that took place in Nicolas Cage’s backyard in the movie were actually filmed at another location altogether – a house located somewhere in the San Fernando Valley near Woodland Hills.

The home’s real life backyard is pictured in the above aerial image, and as you can see, is much smaller than the backyard portrayed in the movie and does not have a pool.

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If you were at all a fan of the movie – or of Mid-Century Modern-style architecture in general – I highly recommend stalking the Matchstick Men house.

Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Matchstick Men house is located at 3508 Meier Street, just outside of Venice, in West Los Angeles.

September 18, 2009September 18, 2009

The Girl Next Door Houses

Located just a block away from the Beethoven house, which I blogged about yesterday, are the two main homes used in the 2004 movie The Girl Next Door. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, took me by this location on the same day that we stalked the Beethoven house a few months back. And, even though I had never seen The Girl Next Door, I was still extremely excited to be stalking the homes. So excited, in fact, that I went right out that night and rented the movie. And, let me tell you what a disappointment that turned out to be! LOL The Girl Next Door is absolutely horrible – I was so bored that I didn’t even get through the first thirty minutes before turning it off. LOL The movie is, for lack of a better word, just plain “dumb”! But, since I did really like the houses featured in it, I decided they were worth a blog post. You know I have a serious stalking problem when I not only stalk, but also blog about, locations from a movie that I didn’t even like – or finish watching, for that matter! 🙂

The Girl Next Door centers around nerdy high school senior Emile Hirsch whose life changes dramatically when a beautiful girl, played by Elisha Cuthbert, moves in next door to his family’s home. The two, of course, become romantically involved, but trouble ensues when Emile discovers that the girl he has fallen in love with is actually an adult film star. Nice premise for a movie, huh? LOL Roger Ebert pretty much hit the nail on the head in his review when he said that the movie tried – but failed miserably – to imitate fave flick Risky Business. LOL You can read Roger’s entire Girl Next Door review here.

The two houses from the movie are, obviously, located right next door to each other. Emile Hirsch’s house is shown several times through the flick and is vaguely reminiscent of the house featured in the 1970’s television series Family – which is ironic, being that that house is located just up the street!

The house belonging to Elisha Cuthbert in the movie is never actually shown in full view, which is odd being that it is a very beautiful home, as you can see in the above photograph.

Milan Avenue is actually chock full of beautiful homes and is, not surprisingly, one of South Pasadena’s most oft-filmed streets. My good friend and fellow stalker E.J. over at The Movieland Directory emailed me this morning to let me know of two other noteworthy Milan Avenue locations. The first is one of the homes that Jason Biggs and his friends paint while on vacation in “Grand Harbor, Michigan” in the teen comedy American Pie 2.

The second is the former residence of famed architect Norman Marsh, who designed the vast majority of prominent buildings in Venice, California. Marsh’s former home is an absolutely adorable little Craftsman abode that looks like it belongs on a lake back East somewhere. So cute! 🙂

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Milan Avenue is absolutely beautiful in person and I highly recommend stalking it. One drive down the tree-lined street and you’ll understand why filmmakers have returned to film there again and again.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: In The Girl Next Door Emile Hirsch lived at 1504 Milan Avenue in South Pasadena. Elisha Cuthbert lived next door at 1500 Milan Avenue. The house from the 1970’s television series Family is located just up the road at 1230 Milan, the house from the movie Beethoven is located at 1405 Milan, the American Pie 2 house can be found at 820 Milan, and Norman Marsh’s former residence is at 1934.

September 17, 2009September 16, 2009

The Beethoven House

Got a challenge from Debbie a few weeks back to find the house used in the 1992 movie Beethoven and its many subsequent sequels. Debbie had just read my post on the Camden house from the television series 7th Heaven and was struck by how similar it looked to the home used in the Beethoven movies. Due to their similarities, she thought the two houses might be located in the same neighborhood and wanted me to find out. Well, while Debbie was certainly right that the Beethoven house does bear a striking resemblance to the 7th Heaven home, the two are actually located about 25 miles apart from each other. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, had actually shown me the Beethoven house a few months back during one of our many stalking trips. I had yet to blog about it, though, as I could not seem to find a copy of the movie anywhere and I needed one to make screen captures. For some reason, none of the Blockbuster stores in my area carry the title. Ugh! Then, last week, out of the blue, my fiancé caught an airing of Beethoven’s 2nd on TV, remembered that I had been looking for a copy of the movie, and TiVo’d it for me. Yay! I’m so glad I’m marrying this guy!!! 🙂

I am very happy to report that the Beethoven house looks EXACTLY the same today as it did back in 1992 when the movie was filmed – right down to the exterior paint color!!! So love it! In fact the ONLY difference I noticed between the onscreen house and the real life house were the trees in the front yard. Today those trees are considerably larger than they were at the time of filming, which isn’t at all surprising being that the movie was shot over 17 years ago.

Interestingly enough, fellow stalker Amanda told me that when she went on the Universal Studios Hollywood Tour a few years back, her guide pointed out a home on the Wisteria Lane set (which was then known as “Colonial Street”) and said that it was used in the Beethoven movies. And while it’s quite possible that a replica of the real life home was re-created on the Universal backlot and used for some filming, I believe that the majority of the exterior scenes were actually shot at the real life house in South Pasadena. According to this fabulous website, the Wisteria Lane set was in fact used in the first Beethoven movie, but not for any of the house scenes. Apparently, the backlot street was featured in the scene when the dogs escape out of the back of a van.

Surprisingly enough, I’ve never actually seen any of the Beethoven movies, so I am not sure how many of the installments were filmed at this house. I do know for sure that it was used in the first Beethoven movie and in Beethoven’s 2nd, but from what I’ve been able to discern online, the other four sequels (yes, the movie had a total of FIVE sequels!) were filmed elsewhere.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Beethoven House is located at 1405 Milan Avenue in South Pasadena. The home from the 1970’s television series Family is located just up the road from the Beethoven house at 1230 Milan Avenue.

September 11, 2009September 15, 2009

Kirsten Dunst’s Bring It On House

Well, as Vanessa Williams once sang, I definitely “saved the best for last” regarding my Bring It On posts this week. As you might have already guessed, the BIO filming location I was most excited about stalking was, of course, the ultra-cool, modern-style abode belonging to Kirsten Dunst’s character, Torrance Shipman, in the movie. Fellow stalker Owen found this location by, again, getting a hold of a Bring It On crew member who remembered that the house was located on a cul-de-sac about twenty-five miles north of San Diego in a small beach community named Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Owen got to cyber-stalking and, sure enough, found the house pretty much immediately. So, on our way home from San Diego this past Saturday morning, I dragged my parents out to Cardiff-by-the-Sea to stalk the house. And, let me tell you, the stalking gods were definitely smiling down on me that day, because when we pulled up to the house the owners happened to be standing outside and they ended up giving us a TOUR OF THEIR HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 But I’ll get to that in a minute.

When I first hopped out of the car, camera in hand, and noticed the owners standing outside, I asked them if their house had been used in Bring It On and they said, “You found us!” LOL The owners honestly could NOT have been nicer and literally talked to us for over twenty minutes and answered all of my silly little questions about the filming. They also told us all sorts of cool behind-the-scenes information, like the fact that the movie was originally titled Cheer Fever and that the flick was not expected to be released in theatres, but to instead go straight to DVD. No one had any idea it would turn out to be such a huge hit! The owner, Cindy, also told us that producers were considering three different houses in the area to stand in as Torrance’s home in the movie – hers, one just around the corner, and another in Point Loma. They ended up choosing Cindy’s because they liked the fact that it was located on a cul-de-sac. So interesting! Then, when I asked Cindy if she had gotten to meet Kirsten Dunst during the filming, she said “Hold on a minute!”, ran inside, and grabbed a photo album that she had made of the shoot!!!! It was at that point that I just about keeled over from excitement!!! 🙂

As you can probably imagine, I was absolutely mesmerized by Cindy’s photo album! It contained numerous pictures of the filming, including candid photographs of the actors hanging out on set and getting their make-up done, and photographs of the house being dressed up for the shoot. Cindy told us that producers actually changed the front of her home quite significantly for the filming. In real life, the home has two separate garages – a single car garage on the right hand side and a two car garage on the left. For a reason that she was unsure of, set dressers built a false exterior to cover up the two-car garage, as you can see in the above photograph. They also added a significant amount of foliage in front of that fake exterior, I am guessing to hide that part of the driveway.

One part of the home that was not changed for the movie was the little circular address plaque situated on the front of the single car garage. Yay!! I so loved seeing that! 🙂

Another cool tidbit of information that Cindy told me what that prior to the filming of Bring It On, she did not have a bench in her front porch area. But when producers brought one in for the shoot, Cindy and her husband really liked how it looked and ended up purchasing one to put in the exact same spot where Jesse Bradford sat in the above scene. Love it!

Included in Cindy’s Bring It On scrapbook were pictures of the interior of her home all dressed up for the filming. As I had been under the assumption that all of the interior scenes had taken place on a soundstage, I just about fell over when I found out that they had actually filmed inside of the real house! And it was then that Cindy asked – are you sitting down for this??? – if my mom and I wanted to come inside her home to see the areas that were used in the movie! DID WE WANT TO COME INSIDE? DID WE WANT TO COME INSIDE? LOL OF COURSE WE DID! 🙂 The area of the home that I was most excited about seeing was the cool spiral staircase located off of the living room, as my fiancé and I have a very similar stairwell in our apartment! 🙂 When I mentioned that fact to Cindy, she insisted that I pose for a picture on the stairs. SO COOL! 🙂 Thank God she did, too, as it was the ONLY photograph I ended up taking inside of the house. 🙁 I was so incredibly overwhelmed at seeing everything in person that I totally forgot to take any pictures! LOL I am such an airhead sometimes, I swear!

Needless to say, the Bring It On house is absolutely beautiful inside. The areas of the home that were used in the filming include the kitchen and the living room, which both look a bit different in real life, as producers changed the color of the walls and brought in all new furnishings for the shoot.

The home’s master bedroom – which we did not get to see – was also used in the movie as Kirsten Dunst’s room. Producers not only had the room painted a mustard yellow color (yuck!) for the filming, but also paid a young girl to decorate the walls with magazine pin-ups, photographs, and cheerleading memorabilia. Oh, how I would have LOVED to have had that job as a kid! LOL So would have been right up my alley. 🙂

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I cannot tell you how cool it was to see the Bring It On house so up close and personal and to get to speak with the real life owners at length about their experiences during the filming. My mom was completely floored, too, and she’s never even seen Bring It On! LOL As I was leaving the house, I texted Owen to let him know the awesome news and he wrote back “How do you always get so darn lucky???” To tell you the truth, I often find myself asking that very same question! LOL Sometimes the stalking stars just align, I guess, but, let me tell you, I often have to pinch myself when thinking about all of the amazingly cool things I’ve gotten to do while stalking! 🙂

A big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location. And another BIG THANK YOU to the owners of the Bring It On house for COMPLETELY making my day by inviting my mom and me into their home and spending so much time chatting with us! You guys ROCK! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Kirsten Dunst’s house from Bring It On is located at 2002 Bruceala Court in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, just North of San Diego. If you stalk this home, please respect the owners’ privacy and do not trespass, ring the doorbell, or ask to be let inside. My mom and I were extremely lucky to meet the residents and be given a tour of the home, but as this is not common practice, please don’t bother the owners about doing it yourself.

September 4, 2009September 3, 2009

The Obsessed House

A few weeks ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, called me up and said, “Where is that big pink house in Altadena that you stalked a while back?” Well, I had absolutely no idea what on earth he was talking about! For some reason, a “big pink house in Altadena” just wasn’t ringing any bells with me. And it really should have, being that I actually know the house he was speaking about quite well. I mean, it’s practically an Altadena institution! Heck, I’ve even blogged about it before! LOL But that’s the blonde in me, I guess. 🙂 Anyway, about an hour after Mike’s phone call, it all of a sudden hit me like a ton of bricks – he had been asking me about the famous Balian Mansion, or, as I like to call it, the real Clark W. Griswold house. 🙂 Mike had been inquiring about the mansion because it was featured briefly in the 2009 movie Obsessed, which he had just finished watching. Mike had an inkling that Beyonce Knowles’ house from the film (pictured above) was most likely located in the same area. And, sure enough, he was right! Just a few clicks through Google Maps later and the two of us were able to locate it, literally right around the corner from the Balian Mansion. 🙂 So, of course, we immediately ran right out to stalk both homes. 🙂

Because only one view of the Obsessed house – the view pictured above – was ever shown in the movie, it looks quite different in person than how it appeared onscreen. For some reason, producers filmed at an angle which cut out the entire garage area. (You can see what the garage looks like in the first picture featured in this post.) The only reason I can think of behind this decision is that producers wanted the home to appear smaller than it really was.

Which makes absolutely no sense to me! You see, while watching the movie I became completely obsessed (ha ha) with the fact that the interior of Beyonce’s home looked a whole lot bigger than the exterior. It’s as if the two just didn’t match up. The inside of her house was absolutely HUGE, yet the outside appeared quite average in size. It was bizarre and completely distracted me throughout the entire movie. I just couldn’t seem to get past it! I kept pausing the DVD to ask my fiance if the dichotomy in sizes was bothering him as much as it was bothering me. (It wasn’t, by the way. LOL) Anyway, as you can sort of see in the above screen capture, the interior of the house appears to be GINORMOUS, which does not at all fit with the exterior that was shown.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that the exterior of the Obsessed house is Mediterranean in style, painted in bright terracotta colors, yet the interior has a classic Colonial style feel. Needless to say, the whole thing just didn’t work for me and I spent the entire movie distracted by the discrepancies between the interior and exterior of the house. LOL Now, it’s quite possible that these variances were not necessarily a production decision and that the studio based their sets on the home’s real life interiors, but somehow I really doubt that. Ironically enough, Mike and I got to see the interior sets of the Obsessed house while taking the Sony Pictures Studio Tour last November. Sadly, though, we weren’t allowed to take any photographs of them. 🙁

Another thing I became obsessed with while watching Obsessed, was the home’s gorgeous, intricately carved mailbox. I absolutely FELL IN LOVE with it! Being that the mailbox was so unusual, I was fairly certain it was a prop that had been brought in solely for the filming. So, you can imagine how FLOORED I was when Mike and I pulled up to the house to find that mailbox standing there! So cool! 🙂 As soon as I buy my first house, I am SO getting one of those! In fact, I’d buy one right now, but I think it’d look a little silly standing out in front of my apartment. LOL

After stalking the Obsessed house, Mike and I made our way down the street to stalk the Balian Mansion. The mansion is actually only featured very briefly in the movie, in the scene when Beyonce turns her car around after realizing she forgot to turn on her home’s security system.

On a humorous side note – As you can see in the above screen capture, the Google Maps Street View photograph of the Obsessed house was apparently taken after the property had just been TP’ed. LOL LOL LOL Talk about your bad timing! Can you imagine your house being forever immortalized on Google Maps with toilet paper strands hanging from every tree??? LOL LOL LOL Too darn funny! The kids who pulled this off must be seriously patting themselves on the back right now!!!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Obsessed house is located at 2345 Midlothian Drive in Altadena. The Balian Mansion is located just down the street at 1960 Mendocino Lane.

August 26, 2009August 25, 2009

The Almost Famous House

Thanks to fellow stalker Chas, way back in the beginning of July, I was able to stalk the main house used in the 2000 award winning movie Almost Famous. Somehow, though, in all this time, I’ve yet to blog about it. What can I say – so many places to stalk, so little time to write about them. 😉 Anyway, back in early July I happened to mention to Chas that I would be spending the day in the Santa Monica area and he asked me if I wanted the address of the little bungalow featured in the movie Almost Famous, as he had just located it. IF I wanted address??? IF I wanted the address??? Hello!!!! Is the pope Catholic??? Of course I wanted the address! 🙂 And once Chas gave it to me, I was on my way!

In the movie, the tiny little bungalow pictured above belongs to Frances McDormand, Zooey Deschanel, and Patrick Fugit, who plays main character William Miller, and is supposedly located in the San Diego area. And, while some scenes from the film were actually filmed in San Diego, such as William’s high school and the opening concert scenes, for the Miller’s family home producers chose to use a residence located about 130 miles North of San Diego, on a sleepy little street in Santa Monica. And a little bit of movie trivia for you – Almost Famous is loosely based on the real life teenage years of director Cameron Crowe and the high school he chose to use in the movie is his real life alma mater – University of San Diego High School. He even cast his real life high school journalism teacher in a small role in the flick, which is just about the coolest thing ever! 🙂

And I am happy to report that the Almost Famous house looks very much the same today as it did when the movie was filmed over nine years ago. In fact, the only difference I noticed – besides the abundance of Fourth of July decorations 🙂 – was a change in paint color from blue to yellow. Otherwise, the adorable little bungalow looks pretty much identical to how it appeared in the movie. And, while the house pops up several times throughout Almost Famous, unfortunately the entire exterior was never shown all at once, so I was not able to make any good screen captures. : (

I was actually very surprised to hear that the Almost Famous house was located in Santa Monica, as it really doesn’t look like the typical Santa Monica area home to me. I would have expected to find it in Pasadena, instead. So, I’m really glad that Chas decided to track down the house, as I’m pretty positive I never would have been able to.

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Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Almost Famous house is located at 1047 Maple Street, at the corner of Maple and 11th Streets, in Santa Monica.

August 24, 2009August 23, 2009

The Independence Day House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

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

August 20, 2009August 20, 2009

The “Twins” House

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

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

August 14, 2009August 13, 2009

The “Mr. Deeds” House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

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

August 13, 2009August 13, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

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