Movie Locations – Page 2

August 16, 2012August 15, 2012

North Hollywood Park from “Say Anything . . . “

A few months back, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, informed me that his fiancé, Ame (who grew up in North Hollywood), had just told him that the iconic Boombox scene from the 1989 classic Say Anything . . . was filmed at, of all places, a park – North Hollywood Park in North Hollywood to be exact. I was absolutely shocked to hear this information because, not only had I always assumed that the flick was filmed in its entirety in Seattle, Washington, but the scene was made to look as if it took place in a residential area, directly outside of the house where Diane Court (Ione Skye) lived, and not at a public park. As we both came to find out, though, thanks to the Washington State Film Locations website, while the vast majority of the movie’s establishing shots were lensed in the Pacific Northwest, all actual filming took place right here in Southern California! Well, believe you me, once Mike and I learned that bit of information, we set about tracking down some other locales from the flick and had quite a bit of success. And we also ran right out to stalk North Hollywood Park.

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In the brief, but iconic Say Anything . . . scene, shortly after Diane breaks up with him, a heartsick Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) stands outside of Diane’s bedroom window (or so producers would have us believe) at night, holding a large Boombox that is playing Peter Gabriel’s hit 1986 song “In Your Eyes”. The memorable scene has been duplicated and parodied countless times since, on everything from Saturday Night Live and South Park to The Colbert Report and fave movie Easy A.

In an interesting twist, Peter Gabriel came thisclose to turning down director Cameron Crowe’s request for “In Your Eyes” to be featured in the movie. In a November 2009 Entertainment Weekly article, Crowe explains that he was on the phone with Gabriel a few days after sending him a Say Anything . . . screener, but Gabriel refused to sign off on the song’s use. Of the call, he says, “I just remember being in the kitchen and just going, ‘Oh man.’ I said I understood and I appreciated it and was he sure and he said yes, he was sure, and I was saying goodbye to him and I remember the phone was like on its way to the cradle, I think we’d already even said goodbye. And I just, like, was seized with this thing and I pulled the phone back up and I go, ‘Why? I got to ask you why. Why can’t we have the song? Why was it wrong?’ And he said, ‘Well when he takes the overdose it just didn’t feel like the right kind of use of the song.’ And I’m like, ‘When he takes the overdose?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you’re making the John Belushi story [Wired], right?’ I said, ‘No, no, no. It’s a movie about the guy in high school with the trench coat.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, the high school movie. We haven’t watched that yet.’ Hallelujah! ‘Please watch the high school movie and let me know if it works in the high school movie.’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah yeah yeah, okay, great.’ And then we got the word back that he said yes.” And the rest is (very often re-enacted) history.

Before heading out to the park, Mike had told me to wear a trench coat and that he would be bringing along a Boombox from work so that I could recreate the iconic scene. As fate would have it, though, the Boombox went missing a few days before our stalk, but Mike was thankfully able to work his magic by digitally adding the stereo into the below picture. Love it!

I would venture a guess that North Hollywood Park was also the park featured in the Say Anything . . . montage scene, but I, unfortunately, have not been able to verify that hunch.

And thanks to the Hollywood Lost and Found blog, I learned that Pee-wee Herman (Paul Ruebens) rode his beloved red bike through North Hollywood Park – in almost the exact same spot that appeared in Say Anything . . . – at the very beginning of 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

Sadly, I can’t say that I would really recommend stalking North Hollywood Park. While the tree-lined, 99-acre space, which was originally founded in 1927, is quite beautiful and boasts countless amenities, including a library, three baseball diamonds, a public pool, tennis courts, a playground, a skate park, and a recreation center, the place seemed to be a haven for the homeless and a den of criminal activity. The police were actually called and wound up arresting someone in the brief ten minutes that we were there.

And let me tell you, when you’re standing around in shorts, wedges and a trench coat and holding a non-existent Boombox above your head, the “locals” tend to get just a wee-bit rowdy. LOL

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER and you can take a look at my latest post – about low-carb chicken noodle soup – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and his fiancé, Ame, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: North Hollywood Park, where the iconic Say Anything . . . Boombox scene was filmed, is located at 11455 Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. In the scene, Lloyd Dobler was standing on the southwest corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Tujunga Avenue, in the area denoted with a pink arrow above.

August 15, 2012November 28, 2016

Griffith Park’s Pote Field from “Jerry Maguire”

Another location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I stalked way back in early June (shortly before we stalked the legendary Perino’s restaurant, which I blogged about yesterday) was Pote Field in Griffith Park, which was featured in the closing scene of one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time – 1996’s Jerry Maguire. Mike had discovered this locale quite a few years back and while I was beyond excited about it and had immediately added the address to my To-Stalk list, for whatever reason, I had just never gotten over there to see the place. Then, in June, while we were in Griffith Park doing some stalking of nearby Harding Municipal Golf Course, which has appeared in several movies, Mike reminded me about Pote Field and I just about had a heart attack right there on the spot. So, we quickly headed over there to stalk it. Yay!

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In the closing scene of Jerry Maguire (which was easily one of flick’s cutest scenes), the film’s title character, who was played by Tom Cruise, is shown walking hand-in-hand with his new wife, Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger), and her son, Ray (Jonathan Lipnicki), next to a little league game taking place on Pote Field, when a runaway baseball lands in front of the trio. Young Ray picks it up and tosses it high over the fence back towards the waiting players. Jerry, who is a sports agent, is thoroughly impressed by Ray’s throw and says, “Whoa! Did you see?”, causing Dorothy to exclaim, “Oh no! Let’s go!” The three then walk off into the sunset as the strains of Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From The Storm” start to be heard over Jerry’s pleas to Dorothy to let Ray play baseball.

As you can see below, Pote Field, which was named in honor of Major League Baseball scout Phil Pote, looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did back in 1996 when Jerry Maguire was filmed. And while this stalker is not AT ALL into sports, I cannot tell you how excited I was to see this location in person. So incredibly cool!

And I, of course, just had to imitate Jerry walking and swinging Ray’s hand while we were there. Smile

Mike found the field thanks to the large hill that was visible in the background of the baseball-throwing scene. He had played ball at Pote several times as a teen and, as soon he spotted that hill while watching Jerry Maguire, he recognized the place immediately. Ironically enough, upon first moving to Southern California in 2000, I had attended a special exhibit on area filming locations at the Pasadena Central Library. One of the movies featured in the exhibit was Jerry Maguire and the display piece on it mentioned that some filming had taken place at Villa-Parke Community Center in Altadena. Well, as soon as I saw the word park in the write-up, I immediately assumed that the scene alluded to was the baseball-throwing scene and just about had a heart attack. I drove over to the park immediately upon leaving the exhibit (not kidding!), but when I got there nothing about the place looked familiar. After doing some cyber-digging later that night, I learned that Villa-Parke’s gym had been used in one of the movie’s auxiliary scenes (although I can no longer find any mention of that online, so now I am even more confused than I was before!) and not the closing scene as I had originally thought. So when Mike told me about Pote Field years later, I was absolutely floored!

I am fairly certain that Pote Field was also featured in Jerry Maguire’s opening montage as the supposed Indio, California-area baseball field where Jerry’s client Art Stallings (Jordan Ross) is shown swinging a bat. Because the shot is so incredibly tight, though, it would be extremely hard to verify that hunch, but, as you can see below, the scoreboard behind Stallings is a match to Pote’s real life scoreboard, as is the foliage visible in the background.

Pote Field also appeared in the 1991 flick Hook as the location of Jack ‘Jackie’ Banning’s (Charlie Korsmo) final little league game of the season – a game that his workaholic father, Peter Banning (Robin Williams), shows up extremely late for and winds up missing entirely.

On a Jerry Maguire side-note – a very young Emily Procter (aka CSI: Miami’s Calleigh Duquesne) was featured as one of Jerry’s ex-girlfriends in the mini-movie that was shown during the bachelor party scene. And, according to IMDB’s Jerry Maguire trivia page, the film was originally written with Tom Hanks and Winona Ryder in mind for the lead roles. All I can say to that is blech! THANK GOD that never came to be, because Jerry Maguire would have been just about the worst movie ever with those two at the helm!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Pote Field, from the closing scene of Jerry Maguire, is located on Crystal Springs Drive, just east of where it intersects with Fire Road, inside of Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Jerry Maguire was filmed in the northeast section of the field, in the area denoted with a blue arrow above.

August 2, 2012August 1, 2012

Holden’s House from “The Good Girl”

Another Simi Valley location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, suggested I stalk this past Saturday after my and the Grim Cheaper’s American Jewish University Brandeis-Barden Campus snafu (which you can read about here) was the supposed Texas-area home where Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal) lived in my favorite movie of all-time, The Good Girl. Ha, just kidding! As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about the Retail Rodeo, I actually hated the 2002 Jennifer Aniston flick. But because the GC and I were pretty much right around the corner from Holden’s house when Mike texted me its address, I figured we might as well stalk the place.

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In real life, the charming one-story, Anywhere, U.S.A.-style residence was constructed in 1964 and measures two bedrooms, two baths and 1,267 square feet. Mike, who lives in Simi Valley, actually tracked this location down way back in 2002 thanks to some local buzz that he heard while The Good Girl was being filmed.

In The Good Girl, Holden lives at the house – after getting kicked out of college – with his spiritless, emotionless parents, Mr. Worther (John Doe – and yes, that is his actual stage name!) and Mrs. Worther (Roxanne Hart), neither of whom utter more than a single word during the entire movie. As you can see below, the property looks very much the same in person as it did onscreen. Even the number plaque next to the garage door is still exactly the same! Yay!

I find it pretty ironic that producers ended up choosing a home with a large mountain range visible behind it to stand in for Holden’s in the flick. As I mentioned above, The Good Girl is supposed to take place in a small Texas town and the Lone Star State isn’t exactly known as being mountainous.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the house was also used in the flick, but I, unfortunately, could not find any photographs online with which to verify that hunch.

On an interesting The Good Girl side note – according to IMDB, director Miguel Arteta had Jennifer Aniston wear wrist weights prior to and during the filming in order to give her character, Justine Last, a worn-down look. The trick worked as Justine was light years away from Rachel Green. Her wardrobe only added to the effect, especially the drab shoes. And while I realize that I have posted this quote before (back in October 2011 in my column about the What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? house), I absolutely love it, so I figured it bore repeating. In the September 2009 issue of Elle Magazine, Jennifer Aniston said of her process of creating a character, “I‘ll never forget my high school acting teacher, Anthony Abeson, who said, ‘It starts with the shoes.’ When I think about a character, it does start with the shoes: What kind would she wear? How would she walk in them? If I’m going to put on a dress for a role – I don’t care if it’s the hardest dress to put on – I have to put the shoes on first. The physicality leads me to the character . . . Like Justine in The Good Girl: She was so disconnected from how she looked, that’s what led to the discomfort of who she was.” She’s right – Justine’s shoes – and her flood pants – definitely made that character.

And on a Simi Valley side-note – the GC and I stumbled into Aubergine Emporium – the coolest, most unique antique store that I have ever been to in my life – while stalking in the area on Saturday. The place is worth a visit just to check out its decor alone! My favorite adornment was the antique ladder above the cash register, which the owners placed a sheet of glass on top of and now use as a shelf. SO INCREDIBLY COOL AND UNIQUE! Love, love, love it! Aubergine was chock full of creative, whimsical touches like that and I honestly could have spent all day there, walking around gathering interior design ideas. I cannot more highly recommend stalking the place!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And you can take a look at my latest post – about road trip eats – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Holden’s house from The Good Girl is located at 5368 Leland Circle in Simi Valley. While in the area, be sure to stop by Aubergine Emporium at 4385 Valley Fair Street for a little antique shopping.

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012

Mitch Hiller’s House from “Enough”

One location that I have been absolutely obsessed with for what seems like ages now is the ultra-modern beach house where Mitch Hiller (Billy Campbell) lived in the 2002 thriller Enough – which I just recently discovered is the very same spot that stands in for the exterior of the Indianapolis loft belonging to Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) on fave show Parks and Recreation. Mike had long known where the property was located thanks to a former co-worker of his whose husband was on the Enough crew. So, while we were in the Marina Del Rey-area on Saturday (which, as I mentioned yesterday, was completely dreary and overcast – I thought it was supposed to be summer, folks!), he took me right on over to stalk the place. And I am very happy to report that it is just as spectacular in person as it was onscreen. Looks like this stalker may just have herself a new dream house! Winking smile

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The Enough house, which was originally constructed in 1996 out of glass, cement and weathering steel, boasts four bedrooms, five baths, an upstairs office, an elevator, a gourmet kitchen, a detached two-car garage, private balconies off of each bedroom, floor-to-ceiling windows, a media room, and sweeping views of Marina Del Rey’s Grand Canal and the Pacific Ocean. There seems to be some discrepancy online over the abode’s square footage, though, as Zillow (and most property record sites) report it as measuring 5,758 square feet, while the pad’s real estate website claims it to be “almost 3,000”. From viewing the place’s exterior, I would guess the 3,000 measurement to be the better bet. And while the dwelling was just recently for sale for a whopping $4,850,000, it appears to have since been taken off the market.

In Enough, Slim Hiller (Jennifer Lopez) stalks her abusive ex-husband Mitch and sets up an extensive trap to kill him at the home.

And while I would have bet money that the real life interior of the home was used in the filming, that does not appear to have been the case.

As you can see below, the real life property is not nearly as open as its onscreen counterpart and its ceilings are not nearly as high.

The actual home also has a more polished and less industrial look than what appeared in the movie. So while I love, love, love the exterior of the place, I have to say that I much prefer the onscreen design of the interior to the reality.

And while we were there, I, of course, just had to sit where JLo sat at the end of the flick. Smile

As I mentioned last week in my post about the loft where Chris lives on Parks and Recreation, the exterior of the Enough house also popped up as the exterior of Chris’ pad in the Season 3 episodes titled “Indianapolis” and “Road Trip”.

Mike, who, as I have mentioned countless times before, knows the City of L.A. and its surroundings like the back of his hand, also pointed out that retired Laker Rick Fox and then wife, actress Vanessa Williams, used to live right across the canal from the Enough house at 5518 Pacific Avenue. The home was sold to new owners, though, sometime after the couple divorced in 2004.

And while we were stalking the Enough house, Mike and I discovered a gorgeous garden named Channel Pointe located directly across the street. Apparently gardens like the one pictured below are quite common in Marina Del Rey (which is quickly turning out to be one of my favorite cities in Los Angeles). Love it!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mitch’s house from Enough is located at 5417 Via Donte in Marina Del Rey. Rick Fox and Vanessa Williams formerly lived across the canal in the home located at 5518 Pacific Avenue. And the Channel Pointe Garden can be reached from Via Donte, directly across the street from the Enough house.

May 3, 2012May 2, 2012

Steff’s House from “Pretty in Pink”

This past Saturday afternoon, a fellow stalker named “Pookie” posted a comment on my site in which she mentioned that the mansion where Steff (James Spader) lived in 1986’s Pretty in Pink was located just up the street from the the Residence of the Los Angeles British Consuls-General where Kate Middleton and Prince William stayed in July 2011, which I blogged about last month. As it turns out, Pookie’s parents live right around the corner from the Pretty in Pink dwelling and she was lucky enough to have witnessed some of the filming of the iconic 80s flick when it took place back in 1985. Well, as you can imagine, I was extremely excited about learning the location of Steff’s house, and, since we were only a few miles away at the time, asked the Grim Cheaper to take me right on over there to stalk the place.

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In real life, Steff’s house is absolutely stunning and looks like it belongs in a neighborhood somewhere on the East Coast and not in the heart of Los Angeles’ Hancock Park. The French chateau-style property, which was originally designed in 1927 by the Webber, Staunton & Spaulding architecture firm, boasts seven bedrooms, a whopping eight baths, 7,140 square feet of living space, over half an acre of land, four fireplaces, original chandeliers and wall sconces, formal gardens, a reflecting pond, a three-car garage, a separate guest apartment, and (according to a comment left by Evan on The Houses of Hancock Park blog) a third floor that inexplicably houses a disco. The mansion was recently sold, in May of last year, for a cool $5 million. You can check out the real estate listing here.

One odd thing I noticed about the house, though, was that one of its windows has been completely cemented over, as you can see below. Even odder still is the fact that the cemented-over space still remains flanked by shutters.

Most odd of all, though, is the fact that the window even appears to have been covered over way back in 1985 when Pretty in Pink was filmed. Why in almost three decades worth of time did the homeowners not remove the shutters? Or re-install the window? Very, very strange.

Steff’s mansion, which is supposedly located in Elgin, Illinois, shows up three times in Pretty in Pink. It first pops up towards the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald) and Duckie (John Cryer) are shown driving through a ritzy neighborhood late at night. As Andie stops to admire the residence, she announces that it is her favorite on the whole street and then poignantly says, “ You know what the really sad thing is, though? I bet the people that live there don’t think it’s half as pretty as I do.“

The mansion next shows up in the scene in which Blane McDonnagh (Andrew McCarthy) brings Andie to a party at his best friend Steff’s house.

As you can see from the screen captures and photographs (which I got off of the property’s real estate listing) below, the home’s actual interior was used in that scene, as well. It is amazing how little the residence has changed over the past 27 years. Love it!

It even appears that the very same headboard that was used in the movie is still there in real life! So incredibly cool!

Finally, the mansion’s library area popped up towards the end of Pretty in Pink in the scene in which Steff tells Blaine that he will stop being friends with him if he continues to date “trash” like Andie. As you can see in the screen capture and photograph below, the very same curtains, chair, desk, and stool which appeared in the movie are still there in real life. INCREDIBLE!

Thanks to the Scarecrow and Mrs. King forum, I learned that Steff’s house also appeared extensively in the Season 1 episode titled “Waiting for Godorsky” as the supposed Washington, D.C.-area mansion of Princess Sophia Valosky (Hildegard Knef).

As you can see, the window was even covered over way back in early 1984 when the episode was filmed.

The interior of the mansion also appeared briefly in Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

Back in June 2010, the Before the Trailer website mentioned that Dior was filming at the residence and, after doing some digging online, I discovered that the filming was actually for the Miss Dior fragrance campaign that starred actress Natalie Portman. Ironically enough, while the spot was supposed to take place in Paris and the vast majority of it was, in fact, lensed in the City of Light, a small portion of it was shot at Steff’s mansion! As you can see below, the awning and wading pool which appeared in the Dior commercial match up exactly to those which can be seen on the home’s real estate listing, although a fountain was added to the pool for the shoot.

The statues affixed to the plant pots that can be seen in the background of the shoot also match up to the statues that appear in the listing.

And finally, the large swan statue that is visible in the background of the ad matches the one that appears in the home’s listing.

You can watch the Dior ad by clicking below.

Natalie Portman Dior Ad Filmed at Steff’s Mansion from “Pretty in Pink”

On a Pretty in Pink side-note – my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, and I were lucky enough to meet James Spader a couple of weeks ago after we randomly spotted the star leaving a movie theatre. And while we had heard that he could be unfriendly, I am very happy to report that he was extremely nice and seemed quite amused at our excitement over seeing him.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Steff’s mansion from Pretty in Pink is located at 366 South June Street in Hancock Park. The Erle M. Leaf House, aka the Residence of the Los Angeles British Consuls-General where Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, stayed in July 2011, is located right down the street at 450 South June Street.

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.

March 30, 2012March 29, 2012

“The Bodyguard” Mansion – aka The Beverly House Compound

After the sad passing of singer Whitney Houston last month, I mentioned to fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, that we should try to track down the mansion where one of Whitney’s most legendary characters, pop star Rachel Marron, lived in 1992’s The Bodyguard. For some very odd reason, I thought that the place had yet to be found, but Mike told me that way back in 2007 he had come across an article on fave website The Real Estalker about “The Beverly House Compound”, the most expensive home then for sale in the United States. In the comments section of the post, someone had reported that the very same mansion had been used as Rachel’s residence in The Bodyguard. How I had not previously come across that information in all my years of stalking is absolutely beyond me, especially considering that the location is one that I have long been itching to stalk. Well, believe you me, once Mike gave me the address, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to Beverly Hills to see the place for myself.

The Beverly House Compound has a vast and storied Hollywood history. It was originally designed by Gordon B. Kaufmann, the very same architect who also designed the Hoover Dam, the Los Angeles Times Building, Scripps College, and the Athenaeum at the California Institute of Technology, a very popular filming location that I have yet to blog about. The Compound was commissioned by banker Milton Gerz in 1927 and cost over $1 million to construct – and we’re talking 1920’s money! In 1947, William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies purchased the lavish three-story, 27-room estate, which sat on over 7 acres of land, for $120,000. Hearst died at the residence in 1951, as did Davies in 1961. Legend has it that John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier spent part of their 1953 honeymoon at the property and supposedly the mansion was also used as the West Coast headquarters for the Kennedy Presidential Campaign in 1960.

In 2007, financier Leonard Ross, who purchased The Compound in 1976, put it up for sale for a whopping $165 million, making it the most expensive home on the market in the entire country at the time. In 2010, the estate, minus three acres of land, was re-listed at the reduced price of $95 million. According to several articles, the lavish property, which has been expanded over the years, currently boasts four separate houses, a cottage, an apartment, 72,000 square feet of living space, 29 bedrooms, a two-story library, two movie projection rooms, a living room with a 22-foot arched ceiling, two tennis courts, a tennis pavilion, staff accommodations, a 50-foot entry hall, an 82-foot cascading waterfall, a disco, and three separate pools. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the mansion on the This and That and More of the Same blog here.

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In The Bodyguard, the exterior of The Beverly House Compound stood in for the exterior of the palatial home where Rachel Marron lived.

All of the interiors of Rachel’s estate were filmed at the nearby Greystone Mansion, though. You can see photographs of the room that was used as Rachel’s fake bedroom here and here.

And you can see a photograph of the Greystone Mansion kitchen here

And for the gate to Rachel’s home a third location was used! The gate actually belongs to the mansion located at 10231 Charing Cross Road in Beverly Hills, which just so happens to be the very same residence where Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) lived in The Big Lebowski.

A current Google Street View image of that gate is pictured above. And while it looks considerably different today than it did in The Bodyguard, you can see that the basic positioning remains the same.

I tracked down the location of Rachel’s gate thanks to an address number of “10224” that was visible in the background of the scene in which Frank Farmer (Kevin Costner) first arrived at Rachel’s mansion.

That gate also looks considerably different today, but, as you can see above, much like was the case with Rachel’s gate, the basic positioning remains the same.

The Beverly House Compound has been the site of constant filming over the years. In The Godfather, it was used as the mansion where movie producer Jack Woltz (John Marley) lived. Yes, that mansion.

According to The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations website, only the exterior of The Compound was used in the filming, though. All of the interior scenes – including the infamous horse head scene – were shot at an estate located at 95 Middleneck Road on Long Island.

In the Season 1 episode of The Colbys titled “The Turning Point”, the residence stood in for the supposed Rome mansion where Francesca “Frankie”Colby (Katharine Ross) vacationed with Lord Roger Langdon (David Hedison).

Ironically enough, though, in the following episode, which was titled “Thursday’s Child”, Greystone Mansion stood in for that same Rome mansion.

In the 1979 movie The Jerk, the grounds of The Compound were used as the backyard of the home where Navin (Steve Martin) lived after he became rich.

As you can see above, though, the front of Navin’s home was a different location entirely.

In 1985’s Fletch, The Compound was where Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson) lived.

The real life interior of the property was also used in the filming.

In 1985’s Into the Night, the mansion was where Jack Caper (Richard Farnsworth) lived.

The real life interior of The Compound was used in the filming of that movie, as well.

Way back in 1966, The Compound was used as the home of Mrs. Sampson (Lauren Bacall) in the thriller Harper.

At that time, the backyard and pool area of the property looked considerably different than they do today.

In the Season 3 episode of Charlie’s Angels titled “Rosemary, for Remembrance”, the mansion was where Jake Garfield (Ramon Bieri) lived.

The real life interior of the mansion was also used in the filming of that episode.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Beverly House Compound, aka Rachel Marron’s mansion from The Bodyguard, is located at 1011 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills. Greystone Mansion, which was used as the interior of Rachel’s home, is located at 905 Loma Vista Drive in Beverly Hills. The gate to Rachel’s mansion, which looks considerably different today, is located at 10231 Charing Cross Road in Beverly Hills.

March 28, 2012March 27, 2012

AFI’s Warner Bros. Building – aka the Hospital from “The Artist”

Another locale from The Artist that I found thanks to John Bengtson’s fabulous Silent Locations blog was the Warner Bros. Building on the American Film Institute campus in Los Feliz, which stood in for the exterior of the hospital where George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) was admitted after being injured in a fire towards the end of the Academy Award-winning flick. Amazingly enough, despite the fact that I have lived in Southern California for over twelve years now, for whatever reason, while I had heard of the legendary film school, I had never before visited it. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place two weekends ago, shortly after we stopped by Red Studios Hollywood, aka Kinograph Studios from The Artist which I blogged about yesterday.

The American Film Institute, or “AFI” as it is more commonly known, was founded in 1967 by the National Endowment for the Arts in order to “preserve the history of the motion picture, to honor the artists and their work and to educate the next generation of storytellers.” Such luminaries as actor Gregory Peck, director Francis Ford Coppola, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., actor Sidney Poitier, and longtime Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president Jack Valenti sat on the organization’s original Board of Trustees. The institute was first headquartered inside of the famous Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, but moved to its current location, an eight-acre property which formerly housed Immaculate Heart College, in 1983. AFI Conservatory, the establishment’s fully accredited graduate film school which, in 2011, was named the #1 film school in the world by The Hollywood Reporter, boasts such notable alumni as David Lynch, Edward James Olmos, Darren Aronofsky, Terrence Malick, Amy Heckerling (the writer/director of fave movie Clueless!), Marshall Herskovitz (one of the Executive Producers of fave show My So-Called Life!), Edward Zwick (another of My So-Called Life’s Executive Producers!), and Gary Winick (the director of fave movie 13 Going on 30!). Talk about a Who’s Who of the film industry! The Warner Bros. Building (pictured above) is AFI’s main facility and houses classrooms, a soundstage, screening rooms, computer labs, and production offices.

Thanks to AFI’s hilltop location, the place boasts some rather incredible views of Downtown Los Angeles, as you can see above!

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The Warner Bros. Building only shows up once in The Artist – in the scene in which Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) arrives at the hospital to check on George. According to the Los Feliz Ledger website, the short, one-day shoot took place on November 14th, 2010.

Only the exterior of the Warner Bros. Building was used in the filming. All of the interior hospital scenes were shot about four miles away at The Ebell of Los Angeles, a private women’s club that I have stalked twice, but have yet to blog about. And while hundreds upon hundreds of movies have been filmed at the historic property over the years, for today’s post I would like to concentrate on The Artist. A few different areas of The Ebell appeared in the flick. When Peppy runs through the hospital hallway and asks a nurse where she can find George’s room, she is actually running through the site’s Garden Arcade. And while I do not have a photograph of the actual Arcade, the area where it is located is denoted with a pink arrow above. (You may recognize the courtyard pictured above from the prom scene in fave movie Never Been Kissed.)

Peppy is then shown running through The Ebell’s Solarium Hallway into the 3rd Floor Terrace (both of which were also used prominently in Forrest Gump).

John at Silent Locations was lucky enough to speak with Carol Kiefer, the Art Department Coordinator for The Artist, who informed him that The Ebell had also appeared in several other scenes in the movie. The club’s Art Salon was used as the auction house where George sold all of his belongings after his career took a downturn.

When leaving the auction, George is shown walking down The Ebell’s Lounge Stairway, followed by his loyal chauffer, Clifton (James Cromwell).

The club’s Dining Room masqueraded as the storage room in Peppy’s mansion where George discovered all of his former possessions.

And while the Dining Room was made to appear much smaller than it actually is for the filming and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance onscreen, I recognized this location thanks to the unique circular-shaped decoration above the window that was visible in the background of the scene.

Supposedly, the Kinograph Studios office of director Al Zimmer (John Goodman) was also located somewhere inside of The Ebell, but I did not see any areas of the property on either tour that looked even remotely like the screen captures pictured above. So I am guessing that a room of the property was either completely redone for the filming or that that information is incorrect.

The anteroom to Zimmer’s office is located at The Ebell, though. In actuality, it is a small room located on the building’s third floor.

Big THANK YOU to John Bengtson, from the Silent Locations blog, for finding these locations! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Warner Bros. Building at the American Film Institute, aka the exterior of the hospital from The Artist, is located at 2021 North Western Avenue in Los Feliz. You can visit the official AFI website here. The Ebell of Los Angeles is located at 743 South Lucerne Boulevard in Hancock Park. Sadly, The Ebell is not currently open to the public, but you can visit the property’s official website here.

March 27, 2012March 26, 2012

Red Studios Hollywood – aka Kinograph Studios from “The Artist”

In early March, my friend Tony, the fellow stalker who has the amazeballs On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream, wrote a comment on my post about the duplex where George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) lived in The Artist alerting me to a blog named Silent Locations. The blog, which is authored by business lawyer/film historian John Bengtson, features a six-part column chronicling several locales that appeared in The Artist and their connection with various silent films made during Hollywood’s heyday. I highly recommend checking out the feature and the site in general. It is fabulous! Anyway, one of the places mentioned in the column was Red Studios Hollywood, the exterior of which stood in for both the exterior of Kinograph Studios in The Artist and Maroon Cartoons in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place on a very windy Sunday afternoon two weekends ago.

The site where Red Studios Hollywood now stands was originally founded as Metro Pictures Back Lot #3 in 1915, long before the company joined forces with Goldwyn Pictures and became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. During its Metro heyday, such films as Scaramouche, Little Robinson Crusoe and The Champ were filmed on the premises. Beginning in May 1946, the lot went through a series of different owners, the most prominent of whom were Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The showbiz powerhouse couple leased the property in 1953 and turned it into the very first Desilu Studios, where they shot seasons 3 through 6 of I Love Lucy. In 1974, the lot became known as Ren-Mar Studios, an independently owned and operated facility where various production companies were able to rent out studio space. Legendary television producer David E. Kelley made his home there in the 80s and shot Picket Fences (one of my faves!), Chicago Hope, The Practice and the first two seasons of Ally McBeal. In January 2010, the lot was sold yet again, this time to Red Digital Camera Company, who renamed the place Red Studios Hollywood.

A few of the countless other productions that have been filmed on the premises over the years include The Golden Girls, The Dick Van Dyke Show, the first four episodes of Seinfeld, The Andy Griffith Show, Make Room for Daddy, Lizzie McGuire, NewsRadio, Empty Nest, Monk, and, most recently, True Blood. The series Weeds was also filmed on the lot, back when it was Ren-Mar, and during Season 4, after Agrestic burned down, producers had Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) move to a fictional seaside town named “Ren Mar” in honor of the historic studio. Love it!

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In The Artist, the back entrance of Red was used as the main entrance of Kinograph Studios, where George Valentin worked at the beginning of the flick.

As you can see above, that area was changed drastically for the movie – so much so that it is virtually unrecognizable today. A huge false front was built over the actual studio entrance for the filming and the Hollywood Rounder blog was lucky enough to get to watch it being constructed. You can check out some very cool pics of the construction here and here, the fake security guard kiosk here, and the finished product here.

Interestingly enough, when Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) is shown being dropped off at a location that is supposedly directly across the street from the Kinograph entrance, she is actually on New York Street at Paramount Studios, in front of the building that is used regularly as the Boston police station on Rizzoli & Isles.

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At one point in The Artist, George is also shown walking in between some of the Red Studios Hollywood soundstages.

The area where he walked is denoted with a pink circle above.

In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Red’s main entrance on Cahuenga Boulevard stood in for the entrance to Maroon Cartoons, where the famous animated hare worked.

The courtyard just beyond that entrance was also used in the filming.

That area is denoted with a pink circle above.

On a Who Framed Roger Rabbit side-note – while doing research prior to writing this post, I came across a blurb in The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations book which, in reference to the flick’s title, stated, “No, there is no question mark, as it’s considered bad luck in a film title.” I had never before heard that bit of trivia and found it interesting, especially since my good friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong grammatical errors blog, had recently written a post which mentioned WFRR’s punctuation error. Superstition or not, I think the flick really needed the mark in its title and I found myself inadvertently adding one each time I typed “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” in this post. I guess some habits are hard to break.

The music video for Britney Spears’ hit 2000 song “Lucky” was also shot at Ren-Mar and the exterior of the studio is visible in the MTV Making the Video special about the production.

You can watch Part I of the Making the Video of “Lucky” by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker John Bengtson, from the Silent Locations blog, for finding this location and to fellow stalker Tony, from the fantastic On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream, for pointing me to John’s site! Smile

Stalk It: Red Studios Hollywood, aka Kinograph Studios from The Artist, is located at 846 North Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the official Red Studios Hollywood website here. The area of the studio used in The Artist can be found on Lillian Way, in between Willoughby and Waring Avenues. The studio’s main entrance on Cahuenga Boulevard is the entrance that stood in for Maroon Cartoons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Red Studios Hollywood is not open to the public and does not currently offer a tour.

March 8, 2012March 8, 2012

Runyon Canyon Park from “The Hills”

A few years ago, after my good friend Nat happened to spot Runyon Canyon Park pop up in an episode of fave reality series The Hills, she sent me an email asking if I had ever stalked the place. And while I had long known that the locale was not only a big-time celebrity hangout, but also a popular filming location, because I am not a fan of hiking (or working out in general, if we are really being honest here), I had never added it to my “To-Stalk” list. But I assured Nat, who is very much into calisthenic-type activity and who, unlike me does not actually consider walking to Starbucks a form of exercise, that the next time she came to visit, we would definitely hit the place up. Which is how, bright and early a few Sundays ago, the Grim Cheaper, Nat and I found ourselves in Hollywood about to embark upon a morning hike at Runyon Canyon Park. I even bought some new workout pants for the occasion! (Now, shopping – that is definitely a type of exercise that I can get behind!) Unfortunately for Nat, though, because there did not seem to be any restrooms on the trail and because I had downed a Venti iced latte shortly before arriving there, our trek was pretty short-lived. See what I mean? I was just not made for the outdoors. The GC made fun of me relentlessly while we were hiking, by the way, due to the fact that I was carrying my Louis Vuitton purse. Men! I mean, what the heck else was I supposed to do with it? Leave it in the car? As if!

The 160-acre parcel of land that now makes up Runyon Canyon Park was originally named “No Man’s Canyon”. It came to be known by its current moniker thanks to one of its early owners, coal baron Carman Runyon, who used the sprawling site as a hunting and riding venue. In 1929, the grounds were purchased by Irish tenor John McCormack, who had a large mansion built on the premises which he dubbed “San Patrizio”, in honor of St. Patrick. When A&P Supermarket heir Huntington Hartford bought the estate in 1942, he renamed it “The Pines” and commissioned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build a pool house on the site. Hartford’s friend Errol Flynn was a frequent guest at the pool house and is rumored to have thrown some wild parties there. Sadly, when Jules Berman, a wealthy liquor importer, purchased the property in the late 1960s, he demolished “The Pines”. The Lloyd Wright-designed pool house was subsequently destroyed by a fire in 1972. All that remains of the two historic structures are some ruins located near the Fuller Avenue entrance to the park. So incredibly sad! In 1984, the City of Los Angeles stepped in and acquired the vacant acreage, subsequently turning it into a public park, as it remains to this day.

Thanks to Runyon Canyon Park’s proximity to Hollywood and the stunning views that it boasts (which you can see above), the place has long been a stomping ground of the rich and famous. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted working out there include Gilles Marini, Famke Janssen, Eriq La Salle, Josh Hartnett, Hayden Panettiere, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Matthew McConaughey, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kathy Griffin, Scarlett Johansson, Josh Duhamel, Kellan Lutz, Ryan Gosling, Dane Cook, Orlando Bloom, Sheryl Crow, Ashley Tisdale, Haylie Duff, Anne Hathaway, Ali Fedotowsky, Amanda Bynes, Matthew Perry, Ali Larter, Joe Jonas, Amanda Seyfried, Adrian Grenier, Natalie Portman, and Chris Pine. And while we did not see any celebs during our hike, when fellow stalker Lavonna was in town this past November, she spotted B.J.Novak, aka Ryan Howard from The Office, walking the trails.

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In the Season 3 episode of The Hills titled “With This Ring . . .”, Whitney Port had a one-on-one training session/date with her personal trainer, Jarett Del Bene, at Runyon Canyon Park.

And in the Season 4 episode of The Hills titled “Who To Choose?”, Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge discussed Audrina’s love life while on a hike at Runyon Canyon. And I could swear that the park showed up in yet another episode of the series in which Lauren and Whitney were shown working out, but I cannot seem to find it anywhere.

In the Season 4 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Trip, Part 2”, Jerry Seinfeld (who played himself), George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and Kramer (Michael Richards) visited Runyon Canyon Park immediately after Kramer was released from jail, where he was being held as the supposed “The Fog Strangler” serial killer.

In the 2009 flick Funny People, Runyon Canyon Park was where Ira Wright (Seth Rogan), Leo Koenig (Jonah Hill) and Mark Taylor Jackson (Jason Schwartzman) discussed the illness of fellow comedian George Simmons (Adam Sandler).

Thanks to fave book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors (and I just figured out how to write in color on my blog, by the way! In heaven!!!!), I also learned that in the ultra-weird 2001 flick The Anniversary Party, Runyon Canyon was where Joe Therrian (Alan Cumming) and his wife Sally (Jennifer Jason Leigh), along with their friends Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Levi Panes (Michael Panes), searched for their missing dog, Otis.

Hollywood Escapes also states that 1983’s Breathless and 2005’s Undiscovered were filmed at Runyon Canyon Park, but, unfortunately, I could not find copies of either movie with which to make screen captures for this post.

Some filming locations are also visible from the various Runyon Canyon trails, including the abandoned Solar Drive mansion from Law & Order: Los Angeles that I blogged about last December;

and the John Lautner-designed Garcia House from Lethal Weapon 2, which I blogged about way back in February of 2008. And there is a also private home known as Runyon Ranch located inside of the park that has been featured in countless movies and television shows over the years, including my fave, Beverly Hills, 90210, but I am saving that location for a different post.

Big THANK YOU to my good friend Nat for forcing me to suggesting that I stalk this location. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Runyon Canyon Park from The Hills is located at 2001 North Fuller Avenue in Hollywood. You can visit the park’s official website here.