North Hollywood filming locations

August 19, 2013August 19, 2013

Sherman Way Adult Books from “Behind the Candelabra”

Today’s location is a bit of a risqué one, so brace yourselves, my fellow stalkers! Back in May, after Behind the Candelabra first premiered, I received an email from my buddy E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, listing a few of the locales that he had tracked down from the HBO biopic. He ended the email with, “You only need to find the adult film store, the condo penthouse in L.A., Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) and Liberace’s (Michael Douglas’) Valley-area house, and the Thorson family’s ranch which is somewhere in Santa Clarita.” Challenge accepted, E.J.! Thankfully, with a little help from Mike, from MovieShotsLA, I was able to find the four locales. The condo penthouse is at 7461 Beverly Boulevard in the Fairfax District (which I blogged about here); the Valley house is at 4238 Olympiad Drive in View Park-Windsor Hills (I have yet to stalk it, though); the Thorson family’s ranch is the Main Ranch House at Disney’s Golden Oak Ranch in Newhall (a property that is, sadly, closed to the public); and the adult bookstore is Sherman Way Adult Books at 11841 Sherman Way in North Hollywood. Booyah!

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This location was a simple find thanks to the 11841 address number that was visible when Liberace and Scott first arrived at the bookstore. I just popped “11841” and “adult book store” into Google and, voila, the first result that came back was for Sherman Way Adult Books. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it a few weekends ago while the two of us were in L.A. (And yes, I actually stalked an adult bookstore for this post. Smile )

The 2,742-square-foot store, which was originally built in 1950, was recently on the market for $800,000. And, apparently, the place next door buys pallets. Winking smile

In Behind the Candelabra, a tipsy Liberace dragged his very reluctant and drugged-out then boyfriend Scott into a supposed Las Vegas-area adult bookstore, where Scott proceeded to then get sick. Sherman Way Adult Books was only shown very briefly in the short scene.

Because the store was supposed to be located in Las Vegas in the movie, its name was changed from “Sherman Way Adult Books” to “XXX Adult Books.” You can see the alteration made to the signage in the below screen capture and photograph. Aside from the signage, though, the site looks exactly the same in person as it did on screen – and just as colorful!

And while I am fairly certain that the real life interior of Sherman Way Adult Books was used in the filming, I opted not to step inside to verify that hunch. For anyone looking to frequent the store, it actually has a very favorable Yelp review, though. Yes, someone actually filled out a Yelp review for the place, which I could not stop laughing about when I came across it.

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.

Big THANK YOU to E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for challenging me to find this location. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Sherman Way Adult Books, from Behind the Candelabra, is located at 11841 Sherman Way in North Hollywood.

August 17, 2012August 16, 2012

The 7-Eleven from “Say Anything . . . “

Located directly across the street from North Hollywood Park – aka the spot where the iconic Boombox scene from Say Anything . . . was filmed, which I blogged about yesterday – is the 7-Eleven that appeared in the 1989 flick. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I found out about this locale once again thanks to Mike’s fiancé, Ame, who grew up in the North Hollywood area and had heard about the filming when it took place 24 years ago (yikes, has it really been that long?!?!). So, after stopping by the park – where we, of course, re-enacted the Boombox scene – Mike and I headed right across the street to stalk the 7-Eleven.

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At the beginning of Say Anything . . . , Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) takes Diane Court (Ione Skye) to a supposed Seattle, Washington-area 7-Eleven convenience store to grab a Big Gulp and some coffee on their way home from a high school graduation party in the wee hours of the morning.

Amazingly enough, despite a fairly minor roof alteration, the store looks very much the same today as it did when Say Anything . . . was filmed almost two-and-a-half decades ago.

While we were there, Mike pointed out that even the brick border separating the parking lot from the sidewalk that Lloyd and Diane walked over in the flick is still there to this day – albeit a little worse for the wear. Love it, love it, love it!

In the movie, while leaving the 7-Eleven, Lloyd spots some broken glass on the ground and, almost instinctively, brushes it out of Diane’s way so that she does not walk through it. Now that’s chivalry at its finest!

So I, of course, just had to pretend to step on broken glass while we were there. Smile

North Hollywood Park – pretty much the exact spot where Lloyd stood during the Boombox scene, in fact – is visible in the background behind Lloyd and Diane as they walk off-screen after leaving the 7-Eleven.

Say Anything . . . is not the 7-Eleven’s only claim to fame. According to the Rob Dyrdek Foundation website, on May 18th, 2010 the convenience store was converted into an urban skate shop for the day in conjunction with the grand opening of the charity’s third Safe Spot Skate Spot – a state-of-the-art skating plaza located inside of North Hollywood Park.

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 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: The Say Anything . . . 7-Eleven is located at 11340 Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. North Hollywood Park, where the iconic Say Anything . . . Boombox scene was filmed, is located directly across the street at 11455 Magnolia Boulevard.

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.

October 18, 2011September 29, 2017

The “Psycho” Car Dealership

While putting together a list of spooky-type locales to stalk during my Haunted Hollywood month a couple of weeks ago, I decided to peruse through fave book James Dean Died Here: The Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks by Chris Epting for a little inspiration. And, let me tell you, I just about died of excitement when I saw a blurb about the North-Hollywood-area car dealership that appeared in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho. In the blurb, Epting mentioned that not only was the place still standing, but that it was also still a car dealership – over fifty years later! How incredibly cool is that?!? So because Psycho is arguably one of the most well-known and best-loved horror movies of all time, I decided that I just had to include the location in my Haunted Hollywood postings and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to the Valley to stalk it a few days later.

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In Psycho, Marion Crane (aka Jamie Lee Curtis’ mother, Janet Leigh), who is on the run from the police after having stolen $40,000 in cash from her boss in Arizona, stops by the supposed-Bakersfield-area “California Charlie’s Used Car Lot” in order to trade her car in for one with California plates. While there, her brusque, hurried attitude causes California Charlie (aka John Anderson) to say his famous line, “Well, it’s the first time the customer ever high-pressured the salesman.” At the time of the filming, the dealership was known as Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot and, because the Ford Motor Company was a sponsor of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maher was required to swap out his real life inventory with a supply of Fords for the one-day shoot. Hitchcock was apparently such a perfectionist that, according to a fabulous article written on The Cabinet website, he sent assistant director Hilton A. Green all the way to Bakersfield to photograph real-life used car salesmen in order to see their clothing so that California Charlie’s costume would be realistic. He also commissioned Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano to observe car salesmen while writing the script so that Charlie’s dialogue would be legitimate. Talk about attention to detail!

Also according to The Cabinet article, the bathroom scene, in which Marion takes $700 out of her purse in order to pay for her new car, was not filmed on location at Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot, as the restroom there was too small to fit an entire camera crew. Hitch instead decided to shoot that brief scene at Universal Studios, on what I am assuming was just a set that was built on a soundstage.

Today, Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot is home to MINI of Universal City and it, sadly, does not look much like it did in 1960 when Psycho was filmed.

Because the lot has changed so considerably over the years, it was hard to discern the exact spot where filming took place. But if I had to venture a guess, I would say that the California Charlie’s scene was shot in the area denoted with a pink rectangle in the above aerial view. And I am fairly certain that the building denoted with a blue arrow was not in existence at the time that Psycho was filmed.

It is my guess that the screen capture and photograph pictured above show the same exact area of the lot. I believe that the California Charlie’s sales office is now the MINI dealership’s service office . . .

. . . and that the door shown in the screen capture above is in pretty much the same location as the door denoted with a pink arrow in the photograph.

I am also fairly certain that the MINI showroom was built in the portion of the lot that Marion walked through in Psycho . . .

. . . and that the above images show the exact same view, albeit 50 years apart. Even though the property has changed so drastically in the five-plus decades since the filming of Psycho took place, I was still absolutely elated to be standing on such hallowed ground. The thought that Alfred Hitchcock had once been in the same spot I was now stalking was literally mind-blowing. So incredibly cool!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: MINI of Universal City, aka the Psycho car dealership, is located at 4270 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. You can visit the dealership’s official website here.

September 22, 2010October 16, 2011

First Christian Church of North Hollywood – Where Phyllis Got Married on “The Office”

Brace yourselves, my fellow stalkers, ‘cause today’s post is going to be a long one! A few months back, I dragged my then-fiancé and my parents out to re-stalk the First Christian Church of North Hollywood – a location which is most commonly known as “the 7th Heaven church”, thanks to its recurring role as the Camden Family’s local parish throughout the Aaron Spelling series’ ten-year run. Even though I never watched 7th Heaven, I stalked and blogged about the church way back in April of 2008 after receiving a challenge to find it from my Aunt Lea. So, when the very same location popped up on new favorite show The Office as the spot where Phyllis Lapin (aka Phyllis Smith) married Bob Vance (aka Robert R. Shafer) – of Vance Refrigeration – in the Season 3 episode titled “Phyllis’ Wedding”, I decided I just had to re-stalk it and do a more in-depth write-up of its extensive filming history.

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The First Christian Church of North Hollywood was originally built in 1949 on the corner of Moorpark Street and Colfax Avenue in what is, contrary to what the name might suggest, actually Studio City. Construction on the 19,000-square foot, Colonial-style structure took just under a year to complete and the first mass was said there on March 12, 1950. Today the church boasts one of the largest Protestant congregations in the entire San Fernando Valley. Location scouts have long been drawn to the property, which includes a main sanctuary, several offices, a kitchen, a garden, a nursery school, a social hall, and a courtyard, for decades due to its Anytown, U.S.A.-style facade. Countless upon countless productions have been filmed there over the years – far too many for me to properly catalog here, but I’ll do my best to try. I must give major props to whoever runs the First Christian Church of North Hollywood website, by the way, because it boasts a very well-organized Film Shoots” page that chronicles all of the filming that has ever taken place there. Love it!

The “Phyllis’ Wedding” episode of The Office was filmed almost in its entirety on location at First Christian Church of North Hollywood and both the interior and the exterior of the property were used extensively in the production. The areas which appeared in the episode include the front entrance;

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the entryway and front stairwell;

the main sanctuary;

the altar;

the social hall (which we unfortunately did not get to see);

the top of the exterior side stairwell, where Pam Beesly (aka Jenna Fischer) and Roy Anderson (aka David Denman) danced;

the north exterior side of the church, where Dwight Schrute (aka Rainn Wilson) danced with Angela Martin (aka Angela Kinsey);

and the side courtyard, where Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) “found” Phyllis’ Uncle Al (aka George Ives).

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here that it is while in the First Christian Church of North Hollywood that Dwight utters fellow stalker Owen’s very favorite television line of all time. While filing into the church with the other wedding guests, Dwight turns to Jim Halpert (aka John Krasinski) and says, “Why are all these people here? There’s too many people on this earth. We need a new plague.” LOL LOL LOL Love it! So, of course I just had to stand in the exact spot where Dwight was standing during that scene and repeat his famous line.

As I mentioned above, the First Christian Church of North Hollywood is most well-known for its countless appearances on 7th Heaven where it popped up almost weekly during the series’ eleven season run.

It is also at First Christian Church that Indiana Jones (aka Harrison Ford) marries Marion Ravenwood (aka Karen Allen) while Mutt Williams (aka Shia LaBeouf) looks on at the end of 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Shia LaBeouf returned to First Christian Church that very same year to film his character’s brother’s funeral scene for the movie Eagle Eye.

The church was also where Barbara Keeley (aka Calista Flockhart) married Val Goldman (aka Dan Futterman) at the end of the 1996 movie The Birdcage.

In What About Bob?, the church was where Bob Wiley (aka Bill Murray) tied the knot with Lily Marvin (aka Fran Brill).

The church was also the wedding location in the music video for Katy Perry’s hit song “Hot & Cold” –

– which you can watch by clicking above.

Most recently, the church appeared in the Season 6 opener of How I Met Your Mother, which was titled “Big Days” and which aired this past Monday evening.

The First Christian Church of North Hollywood was also used in the movies Death Becomes Her, Nothing to Lose, and The Suburbans, and in episodes of United States of Tara, Desperate Housewives, Parks and Recreation, Samantha Who?, Crossing Jordan, Swingtown, Hart to Hart, Ghost Whisperer, Gilmore Girls, and Melrose Place.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The First Christian Church of North Hollywood is located at 4390 Colfax Avenue in Studio City. You can visit the church’s official website here. The areas of the church used in the “Phyllis’ Wedding” episode of The Office are denoted above. Pam and Roy danced at the top of the church’s north-side stairwell, which is located on Moorpark Street and is marked with the blue arrow above. The windows where Dwight and Angela danced are located just below the stairwell and a few feet east, also on Moorpark Street. Michael’s courtyard is located on Colfax Avenue, in between the main church building and the nursery school, and is denoted with the pink arrow in the above aerial view. The social hall, where Bob and Phyllis held their wedding reception, is located on the second floor of the nursery school building.

July 9, 2010July 22, 2010

The Hungry Fox Restaurant from “The Office”

Another location that I stalked back in April while fellow stalker Lavonna and her daughter Melissa were in town was the Hungry Fox Restaurant, which appeared in the Season 3 episode of The Office titled “The Negotiation”. We found this location thanks to fellow stalker “Snidely Whiplash”, who posted a comment on my site a while back that listed an entire slew of Office locales. Snidely currently lives in the Valley, where most Office filming takes place, and often recognizes area locales when they pop up on the show. So, thank you, Snidely! Unfortunately though, because at the time I had never before seen an episode of The Office, when we went to stalk the Hungry Fox I had no idea what it was exactly that we were looking for – or looking at, for that matter. To further complicate things, Lavonna was under the mistaken impression that the restaurant stood in for Poor Richard’s Pub, the bar where Pam Beesly (aka Jenna Fischer) confessed to her ex-fiancé Roy Anderson (aka cutie David Denman, who also starred as hearing-impaired football player Brian Murphy in one of my very favorite movies – The Replacements) that she had cheated on him with Jim Halpert (aka John Krasinski) in the episode titled “Cocktails”. Because the Hungry Fox looks absolutely nothing like Poor Richard’s, though, we figured we had gotten the location wrong. It wasn’t until I recently sat down to watch The Office on DVD that I figured out which particular episode and which particular scene the Hungry Fox had actually appeared in.

As it turns out, the Hungry Fox, which, according to the sign put up for the filming, serves up “Scranton’s Best Breakfast” (LOVE IT!), stood in for the restaurant where Roy took his ex-fiancé Pam to talk about their recent break-up and his rather violent reaction to finding out that she and Jim had kissed. The two say their final good-byes to each other at the restaurant and Roy also rather meaningfully states, “I don’t get you, Pam”, to which she replies, “I know.”

Roy and Pam’s good-bye scene was filmed at the table located immediately to the left of the Hungry Fox’s front door (as you enter the restaurant), right next to the place’s resident fish tank. I have to say that the owner of the Hungry Fox was INCREDIBLY nice when we came in to stalk the place and told us that we were welcome to take as many pictures as we wanted, even though we weren’t actually eating there. Yay! And from what I’ve read on Yelp, we really missed out by not eating there, as the place apparently serves up some fabulous grub!

As I mentioned above, none of us stalkers were entirely sure what scene exactly had been filmed at the Hungry Fox, so we all pretty much just took some random photographs of the place. Whoopsie! Looks like I’m just going to have to go back there in the near future!

On a side note – After returning home, Lavonna did some cyber-stalking and found out that the bar which stood in for Poor Richard’s Pub on The Office is actually a place called Pickwick’s Pub in Woodland Hills. Besides the “Cocktails” episode, Pickwick’s also made an appearance in the Season 4 episode of The Office titled “Local Ad”. Thank you, Lavonna! I will FOR SURE be stalking this one! 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Snidely Whiplash for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Hungry Fox restaurant from “The Negotiation” episode of The Office is located at 13359 Sherman Way in North Hollywood.

February 16, 2010February 16, 2010

Paul Rudd’s Parents’ House from “I Love You, Man”

A few weeks ago while doing some stalking in the Valley, I dragged my fiancé out to visit the house where Peter Klaven’s (aka Paul Rudd’s) parents, Oswald and Joyce Klaven, who were played by J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtin respectively, and his brother Robbie (aka Andy Samberg) lived in fave movie I Love You, Man. And even though the Klaven house only appeared in one very brief scene in the movie – a scene which barely lasted over 2 minutes – because fellow stalker Owen had tracked down the location for me a few months back, I just had to go see the place in person. I also wanted to stalk the residence because fellow stalker Gary, from fave website Seeing Stars, recently put together a highly detailed catalog of all of the filming locations featured in I Love You, Man – all of the locations, that is, except for the Klaven house. So, to complete Gary’s collection, I just had to run right out and stalk the place. 🙂

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The Klaven house shows up at the very beginning of I Love You, Man in one of my favorite scenes in the movie – the absolutely hilarious scene in which Peter takes his new fiancé Zooey (aka Rashida Jones) to his parents’ house for dinner and they get into a detailed discussion about his lifelong lack of male friendships. It is at this dinner that Peter learns the shocking fact that, along with a random man named Hank Mardukis, his younger brother, Robbie, is his father’s very best friend. LOL

Besides the exterior of the house and the front door area, I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the home was also used in the filming of the dinner scene, as well.

Because the Klaven’s house from I Love You, Man is extremely long and has that Anywhere, U.S.A.-type look to it, it actually reminds me quite a bit of Matthew Perry’s residence from fave movie 17 Again, a location which I stalked back in September of last year. In person, the Klaven house is very large, much larger than it appeared onscreen in I Love You, Man. The residence, which was built in 1942, boasts three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and measures 3,224 square feet. The home is very cute in person and is located on an absolutely ADORABLE street in an absolutely ADORABLE neighborhood. According to fave website Virtual Globetrotting, actress Jo Anne Worley lives just across the street from the I Love You, Man house and from 1993 to 2000 Denzel Washington lived just around the corner. Love it!

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Paul Rudd’s parents’ house from I Love You, Man is located at 4727 Arcola Avenue in either North Hollywood or Toluca Lake, depending on which map you consult.

January 8, 2010January 8, 2010

The “Dude, Where’s My Car?” Houses

About six or seven years ago, my best friend Robin came to visit me from Switzerland for a few weeks and one night we found ourselves renting the 2000 cult comedy Dude, Where’s My Car? Being that the entire premise of the flick centers around two guys who lose their car, I honestly didn’t have very high expectations for the movie, but, let me tell you, Robin and I were pretty much dying laughing throughout the entire thing. And if I’m not mistaken, I believe we even re-watched it again the following evening. 🙂 What can I say – I’m a big fan of lowbrow humor. 🙂 Robin and my catch phrase for a good year or two after that was “And then? And then? And then?” LOL I should admit here that I’ve also always had a special place in my heart for Ashton Kutcher (even though it’s truly difficult to like anyone who Twitters as much as he does) thanks to a story told to me by an acquaintance who spent an evening with him about a decade ago. According to my friend, who worked in PR at the time, back in the late 90s before Ashton had become a household name, she attended some sort of showbiz party with the rising star and a group of his friends. After the party, the entire group ended up crashing at Ashton’s house. The following morning, my friend awoke when Ashton Kutcher entered the room she had been sleeping in, pounced on her bed, grabbed her pillow out from under her head and proceeded to smack her in the face with it while screaming “PILLOW FIGHT!” Well, let me tell you, my friend was NOT happy about her unexpected wake-up call. Of the incident, she later said to me – and I quote – “All I could think was, did Ashton Kutcher honestly just pillow fight me????” LOL LOL LOL Needless to say, she and Ashton didn’t speak much after that, but once I heard the story I couldn’t help but love the guy. If someone had woken me up with a pillow to the face like that, I can honestly say that they would have become my new best friend! 🙂 What can I say, I love childish antics! Anyway, every time I see Ashton Kutcher onscreen now, I can’t help but think of my friend’s story and smile. So, when fellow stalker Chas texted me to let me know that Robert Patterson – not to be confused with actor Robert Pattinson 🙂 – from the website Movie Locations and More had tracked down two of the main houses used in Dude, Where’s My Car?, I just about died of excitement and immediately ran right out to stalk both of them. Thank you, Robert! 🙂

The first Dude, Where’s My Car? location Robert tracked down was the house belonging to Chester and Jesse (aka Seann William Scott and Ashton Kutcher) in the flick. And as you can see in the above screen captures and photographs, the residence has been cleaned up quite a bit since filming took place there ten years ago. I am not sure if the house was in a state of disarray prior to the filming and that’s why it was chosen or if producers had the place dressed down for the production, but either way it looks quite different today than it did when Dude, Where’s My Car? was filmed. And while I would normally be upset over someone altering a movie house, being that the dudes’ home was pretty much in shambles in the movie, this is one case where I really can’t fault the owner for changing things around. I am pretty sure I would do the very same thing. 😉 But even with a new walkway, new windows, a new paintjob, and new landscaping, I am happy to report that the Dude, Where’s My Car? house is still recognizable from the movie. The porch steps, porch light, porch awning, and address plaque all still look exactly the same today as they did in the flick. 🙂 YAY! (On a side note – I really have to apologize for the photos that appear in this post – they were taken right at dusk after a long day of stalking and unfortunately, due to the poor lighting, did not come out very well.)

The second house that Robert located was the residence belonging to the Twins (aka Marla Sokoloff and a very young Jennifer Garner) in the flick. The Twin’s house also looks quite a bit different today than how it appeared in the movie. And I have to say that I actually prefer the home’s movie appearance to the way it looks in real life, because, like all girls, I am a fan of Tiffany Blue and I just love that it was used as the house’s trim color in Dude, Where’s My Car? So darn cute! Also missing in real life is the circular popped out window that is located above the home’s front porch in the movie – a feature that I am assuming was added solely for the filming and then later removed. I am happy to report, though, that the white picket fence that got destroyed in Dude, Where’s My Car? is in fact a real feature of the house. In real life, though, it’s in a bit better shape than how it was portrayed in the movie. 😉

And a little bit of movie trivia for you – a pre-Bachelor Charlie O’Connell, brother of actor Jerry O’Connell, had a fairly large role in Dude, Where’s My Car? playing Kristy Swanson’s jerk boyfriend, Tommy.

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On a side note – For some odd reason, for the past few months I have been having a hard time responding to the comments on my blog and neither my fiancé nor I can figure out what the problem is. So, if you’ve been wondering why I haven’t responded to comments lately, that’s why. Hopefully we can get the problem worked out soon, but in the meantime keep commenting and I will try to respond when I can. Thanks for your patience with this and thank you to everyone who has been responding to the comments for me. I really appreciate it. 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Robert from Movie Locations and More for finding these locations! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Jesse and Chester’s house from Dude, Where’s My Car? is located at 4177 Bakman Drive in North Hollywood. Wanda and Wilma’s house from the movie is located just around the corner at 4160 Klump Avenue, also in North Hollywood.