Newhall filming locations – IAMNOTASTALKER

August 1, 2013August 1, 2013

The “Little Miss Sunshine” Gas Station

A few months back, while doing research on Wokcano from Get Shorty (which I blogged about here), I came across a Chowhound message board titled “Restaurants Seen in the Movies.” One of the eateries mentioned on the page was Pann’s restaurant at 6710 La Tijera Boulevard in Ladera Heights, which a commenter named Kevin said was used in 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine – a film that I absolutely LOVED. (That information actually turned out to be incorrect – Pann’s did not appear in Little Miss Sunshine, but that’s a different story for a different post.) Prior to visiting the message board, I had no idea whatsoever that LMS had done any filming in the L.A. area (outside of a very brief driving scene near Vasquez Rocks). So that night I popped in our Little Miss Sunshine DVD to re-watch it and hopefully track down some of its locales. And track some down, I did, the first of which was the supposed HartCo gas station that the Hoover family – Richard (Greg Kinnear), Sheryl (Toni Collette), Dwayne (Paul Dano), Olive (Abigail Breslin), Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin), and Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) – stopped at during their road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach.

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This location was actually quite an easy find. While watching the movie, I spotted the back of an address number through the gas station’s front window that I was fairly certain read “24518”.

Thanks to the station’s red, blue and gray color scheme (which you can see below), I was fairly certain that it was a Chevron. So I did a Google search for “Chevron”, “Los Angeles” and “24518” and, sure enough, the first result returned was for a station located at 24518 Lyons Avenue in Newhall, which turned out to be the right place. Yay! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk it this past weekend while we were in L.A.

The gas station pit stop is a bad (but absolutely hilarious) experience for the Hoover family in Little Miss Sunshine. While there, Frank, who has just recently been released from the hospital after trying to kill himself, runs into his ex-boyfriend, Josh (Justin Shilton), and Josh’s new uber-successful boyfriend, Larry Sugarman (Gordon Thomson); Richard learns via a phone call that his new business venture has fallen through; and Olive, who has been practicing a dance routine on the side of the property, gets accidentally left behind when her distracted family later drives away.

Because the clutch on the Hoover’s Volkswagen bus is broken, when they return to the station to retrieve Olive a few minutes later, they are unable to stop and Olive has to run alongside the car and hop inside while it is still moving! I swear, the scene never fails to make me laugh (like hysterically laugh!), even though I have seen it about 25 times!

While this location is technically “just a gas station”, I could NOT have been more excited to stalk it. I was literally jumping up and down when we arrived. Looking back, though, I really think the GC and I should have rented a yellow VW bus for the occasion. Winking smile

Adding to my excitement was the fact that the station looks pretty much EXACTLY the same in person as it did onscreen in Little Miss Sunshine!

The payphone that Richard used in the scene was just a prop, though, that was brought in for the filming and is not actually there in real life.

Which is odd because the property does have two working payphones that could have been utilized in the scene.

The interior of the Chevron station also appeared in the movie and the manager who was on duty when we stalked the place was nice enough to let me snap a picture of it. As you can see, it was altered significantly for the filming, with the cigarette and chewing tobacco racks taken out to make room for the pornographic magazine display that played a significant role in the scene.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The HartCo gas station from Little Miss Sunshine is actually the Chevron station located at 24518 Lyons Avenue in Newhall.

December 7, 2012December 6, 2012

Justine’s House from “The Good Girl”

Today’s post is going to be a rather short one as I spent most of the day yesterday with my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, attending the annual craft fair at her work – which was loads of fun, but, unfortunately, did not leave much time for blogging. So please pardon my brevity. Anyway, last Tuesday morning, when I texted Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to let him know that I was heading back out to Santa Clarita to stalk Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from Bridesmaids, he suggested that I also make a stalking stop at the house where Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston) and her pothead husband, Phil Last (John C. Reilly), lived in The Good Girl. And even though I was not a huge of the ultra-depressing 2002 film, because Justine and Phil’s residence was only a short two miles away from the auto body shop, I figured why not. Then, when I found out there was a Starbucks in between the two locations, that pretty much sealed the deal. Winking smile

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Mike, who does not live too far from Santa Clarita, first learned about this location way back in 2001 when The Good Girl was being filmed. I never had occasion to stalk the place, though, as I do not get out to Canyon Country very often and, for some reason, whenever I did happen to be in the area, I completely forgot to drive by.

Justine and Phil’s house was one of the main locations used in The Good Girl and the pad showed up repeatedly throughout the movie. As you can see below, though, the residence looks quite a bit different in person than it did onscreen. The front door that appeared in the film has since been swapped out with a new, glass-paned one, a stone façade has been added to the home’s exterior, the garage door has been replaced, and the wood paneling removed from the side of the garage. Boo! Thankfully though, the abode is still, for the most part, recognizable as The Good Girl house.

Justine's House The Good Girl (5 of 7)

Of the locale, The Good Girl production notes state, “Although the design concept was naturalistic, finding locations in sunny California to pass for small town Texas was difficult, specifically the search for Justine and Phil’s house, which is painstakingly defined in the script. ‘Our principal character lived physically and emotionally in the very last house on the street, out from which stretched miles of dry, barren nothingness,’ clarifies [production designer Daniel] Bradford. ‘And of course, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere there are palm trees which are not appropriate for West Texas.’” I really have to give kudos to The Good Girl location managers for finding the property because when I pulled up and saw the large telephone poles, flat streets and general ruralness of the area, my first thought was, ‘This neighborhood does not look AT ALL like an L.A. neighborhood.’

In real life, Justine’s house, which was originally built in 1961, boasts three bedrooms, two baths, 1,125 square feet of living space, and a 0.16-acre plot of land.

And while I would have bet money on the real life interior of the home being used in The Good Girl, that does not appear to have been the case. As you can see in the photographs below, which I got off of an old real estate listing for the property, while the living room very closely resembles what appeared onscreen . . .

. . . the kitchen area does not. And while the real estate listing does mention that the kitchen was “recently remodeled”, it differs far too much from the Last kitchen for me to believe it was used in the flick.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Justine’s house from The Good Girl is located at 25103 Fourl Road in Santa Clarita. Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery, aka Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from Bridesmaids, is located nearby at 24347 Main Street. Judy’s home from Bridesmaids is located right around the corner from Ricardo’s at 23418 8th Street. And Officer Rhodes’ residence is located directly across the street from Judy’s at 23425 8th Street. Note – the Bridesmaids houses cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive. To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

December 6, 2012December 5, 2012

Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from “Bridesmaids”

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

Judy’s House from “Bridesmaids”

The one location from Bridesmaids that I was most determined to track down – the one that I would not stop bugging poor Mike, from MovieShotsLA, about – was the yellow ranch-style dwelling where Annie’s (Kristen Wigg’s) mom, Judy (Jill Clayburgh, who was ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE in the role, which was, sadly, her last), lived in the 2011 flick. Thankfully, once Mike managed to find Officer Rhodes’ (Chris O’Dowd’s) house, which I blogged about yesterday, tracking down Judy’s was a snap because, in an odd twist, the two properties are located right across the street from one another. While I had told Mike when we first began the search that I had a hunch that the residences would most likely be found in the same vicinity, perhaps even the same town, never in a million years did I think that they would be directly across the street from each other!

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Mike had an inkling that they would be, though. While scanning through Bridesmaids, he noticed that the fake address numbers that producers had given the properties for the filming – 8409 and 8410 – were sequential, which would, in fact, put the two structures across the street from one another. He figured that the residence’s actual addresses had most likely just been shortened – from 28409 to 8409 and from 28410 to 8410, perhaps – for the shoot. So, when he ended up finding the locations, we were both absolutely flabbergasted to learn that the real life numbers – 23418 and 23425 – are not actually in any sort of sequence. Why on earth producers would give two homes that are not supposed to be located anywhere near each other random, but sequential address numbers is absolutely beyond me!

Judy’s house shows up numerous times throughout Bridesmaids, especially towards the end of the movie when Annie moves in with her mother.

As you can see below, the abode looked quite a bit different onscreen than it does in real life. While I figured that the pad had most likely been remodeled in recent months, a super-nice neighbor informed us that the enclosed front porch area that appeared in Bridesmaids was actually a fake that had been built specifically for the filming. I actually think the front porch makes the house much more appealing, which is most likely why it was added.

You can see the home’s real life front door behind Judy, inside of the fake enclosed front porch, in the screen capture below.

The exterior of the home is actually quite deceiving as it looks to be fairly moderate in size. In reality, though, the property, which was originally built in 1948, boasts two bedrooms, one bath, a scant 882 square feet of living space, and a 0.21-acre plot of land. It’s teensy!

And while I originally thought that the residence’s actual interior was used in the filming, that does not seem to be the case. You can check out some photographs of the home’s real life interior here. As you can see, it looks nothing at all like Judy’s wood-paneled, 70s-style abode.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Judy’s house from Bridesmaids is located at 23418 8th Street in Santa Clarita. Officer Rhodes’ house is located directly across the street at 23425 8th Street. Note – these properties cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive. To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

December 4, 2012December 3, 2012

Officer Rhodes’ House from “Bridesmaids”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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