Be sure to read today’s Scene It Before post for Los Angeles magazine – about the dojo from the 1984 classic The Karate Kid. You can find it here. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Mr. Miyagi’s House from “The Karate Kid”
One of the greatest filming location mysteries to ever exist was that of the house where Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) lived in the 1984 classic The Karate Kid. It was common knowledge that the residence had been demolished in the late ‘80s, but no stalker had ever been able to track down its former whereabouts – until now that is. While I had long been aware of the enigma surrounding the locale, I had never actually seen The Karate Kid until two weeks ago. (Well, I saw it in the theatre when it first came out, but did not remember it at all.) The Grim Cheaper did not learn of this fact until two Saturdays ago and he was so upset when he did that I’m surprised he did not divorce me on the spot. He immediately purchased the flick on iTunes and forced me to watch it. Now that I have, I am in utter shock that the movie remained off my radar for so long. I absolutely LOVED it. And as soon as the credits started to roll, I became hell-bent on tracking down Mr. Miyagi’s house. I quickly sent out texts to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog and Chas, of It’sFilmedThere, asking them for any information they had. Those texts got everyone started on an intense search which led to the locale being found just a few days later! Woo to the hoo!
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Chas informed me that the best tip he had ever gotten regarding the location of Mr. Miyagi’s house was in June of last year when an anonymous commenter posted this on his site: “Mr. Miyagi’s house is torn down but was located on Gault St. between Independence Ave. and DeSoto in Canoga Park. My family has lived in the neighborhood forever and I remember as a kid being able to witness the filming of the movie.” While seemingly a great lead, because the area had changed so much in the ensuing years, Chas had a hard time verifying it. Then, the day after receiving my text, he managed to track down Karate Kid executive producer R.J. Lewis, who checked his files and reported back that Mr. Miyagi’s house was formerly located at 20924 Gault Street in Canoga Park. As it so happens, 20924 Gault lies smack dab between Independence and DeSoto Avenues, which fell in line with the comment on Chas’ site. Two unrelated people coming forward with the exact same information was enough to convince me, so since I was in L.A. at the time, I headed right on over there the following day.
Thankfully, the stalking gods were smiling down upon this particular venture because shortly after arriving at the location, I happened to spot a man pulling into a driveway down the street. Hoping he would be able to verify R.J.’s information, I asked how long he had lived on the premises and when he answered, “Since 1971,” I practically started salivating. Not wanting to alter or steer his memories in a certain direction, I decided to keep my questioning as vague as possible and asked if he happened to know if the movie The Karate Kid had been filmed in the area. He immediately pointed in the direction of 20924 Gault and said, “See that short palm tree there next to the three tall palm tress, that’s where Mr. Miyagi’s house used to be, but it was torn down a long time ago and a duplex has since been built in its place.” Upon hearing those words I almost passed out from excitement. The gentleman, who could NOT have been nicer, wound up speaking with me for a good twenty minutes or so filling me in on the filming. He told me that the railroad tracks and oil derricks seen in the movie were fake and that both the first and second Karate Kid movies had been shot on the premises.
With those three confirmations under our belt, Owen, Mike, Chas and I got to work in searching for any visual markers that might still be in existence at the site. According to The Karate Kid press kit, Mr. Miyagi’s house was “a rundown shack in a weedy yard until the construction crew descended upon it. When they were finished, the interior became a modest and beautifully austere Japanese dwelling with mats, screens and other authentic Oriental accoutrements. The yard itself was landscaped with miniature mountains, lanterns, decking, a pond complete with expensive koi (Japanese fish) and hundred-year old bonsai.” The section of the house shown most often in the film is pictured below. In real life, Mr. Miyagi’s property stretched from Gault to Vose Street. This portion of the house faced Vose Street. Knowing what I now know, I believe it was actually the rear of the residence, although it was made to look like the front in The Karate Kid.
The area shown as the backyard in the movie is pictured below. It faced Gault Street and was, I believe, the real life home’s front yard.
An unobstructed aerial view of the property circa 1980 from the Historic Aerials website is pictured below. Mr. Miyagi’s house is the residence surrounded by trees, located just south of Gault Street.
The home is circled in pink below.
In the first scene that features Mr. Miyagi’s house in The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi and Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio) are shown entering the property from Vose Street, not Gault. In the scene, they are initially heading east on Vose before turning north onto the vacant land located just southwest of the residence. The fake train tracks were set up in the spot denoted with two pink lines below. Daniel and Mr. Miyagi’s route is denoted with a blue arrow. The two make a right turn across the tracks, heading east, and then another left turn, heading north, towards the home. (Big THANK YOU to Chas for explaining this to me. I cannot read a map or figure out spatial directions for the life of me!)
The house seen in the background as Daniel and Miyagi first make the turn off of Vose is located at 20948 Vose Street. As you can see, it still looks much the same today as it did back in 1984 when The Karate Kid was filmed.
The garage with the pyramid-shaped roofline visible in the scene is located at 20941 Vose Street. A current aerial view of that garage as well as a 1980 aerial view are pictured below.
Mike happened to find videos of the entire movie being rehearsed on YouTube, which you can watch by clicking below. In the scene in which Miyagi and Daniel first arrive at the house, you can see that the fake railroad tracks have yet to be installed.
The Gault Street house was also used in a few scenes in the beginning of The Karate Kid, Part II.
In the movie, the house located across from Mr. Miyagi’s, at 20919 Gault Street, is visible. As you can see below, it looks much the same today as it did in 1986 when filming took place.
By the time that The Karate Kid, Part III was filmed in 1989, the Gault Street house had been torn down, so a replica of it was built for the shoot on the Warner Bros. Ranch backlot in Burbank. It was then demolished once filming was completed.
Thanks to a source Mike has at the Ranch, we now know that the house was built in the eastern portion of the lot, in the area denoted with a pink circle below. At the time, that space was vacant land. The building and parking structure visible in the current aerial view below were not constructed until later. The edifice that is visible in the upper right hand corner of the two screen captures above is denoted with a blue circle below.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big, huge THANK YOU to R.J. Lewis for his information about this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, from When Write Is Wrong, and Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for all of their work in helping to verify it.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Mr. Miyagi’s house from The Karate Kid was formerly located at 20924 Gault Street in Canoga Park. Sadly, it was demolished in the late ‘80s and no remnant of it remains.
The “Kill Bill” Church
One location that my dad and I visited while stalking in the Lancaster and Palmdale areas last week was the Sanctuary Adventist Church which was used prominently in the 2003 and 2004 Quentin Tarantino movies Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2. And although I have never actually seen either of the Kill Bill flicks, I was dying to stalk the church because, thanks to fave book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, I found out that it also had a very small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the 2002 Britney Spears movie Crossroads, in which I was an extra. I should mention here that if you are planning to spend a day stalking in Palmdale – and I do HIGHLY recommend doing so – I suggest you print out maps of each and every location that you are wanting to visit before heading out the door. I failed to do so and had planned on using my navigation system to lead me to each locale, but, let me tell you, that did NOT pan out very well. At most points during our journey, my navigator had no idea where on earth we were – more than once it told me I was driving on a road that didn’t exist! LOL – and a few times it even took us on routes through dirt roads that wound up at dead ends. And while Palmdale and Lancaster are not exactly desolate – there’s even a Starbucks there! – most of the filming locations in that area are pretty far removed from civilization. I suggest that you not make a stalking journey out there alone and that you arrive with a full tank of gas and a car that is in good working order.
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The Sanctuary Adventist Church, which up until recently was known as the Calvary Baptist Church, is an actual working religious facility that, sadly, does not appear to currently be in the best of shape. The tiny Spanish-style chapel definitely has a Southwestern feel to it and it is not very hard to see why Quentin Tarantino chose to use it as the site of the wedding day massacre in his two-part action flick. Especially with that lone Joshua tree that stands in front of it and gives the church a very picturesque, very cinematic feel.
As you can see in the above photograph, the church is also located on a very desolate and very remote stretch of desert road, which gives it a very non-L.A., non-California feel. In fact it is hard to believe that the place is located just a scant sixty miles away from the hustle and bustle that is Los Angeles.
In Crossroads, the church stood in for the supposed Arizona-area Native American souvenir stand that Lucy (aka Britney Spears), Kit (aka Zoe Saldana), Mimi (aka Taryn Manning), and Ben (aka Anson Mount) stop at during their journey from Louisiana to California. It is while at the stand that Lucy asks her friends for advice on whether she should show up at her estranged mother’s house unannounced or call her beforehand.
Ironically enough, even though the church is supposed to be a roadside souvenir stand in the movie, for whatever reason producers decided to leave the Calvary Baptist Church sign up during the filming.
In Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2, the Sanctuary Adventist Church stood in for the supposed El Paso, Texas-area Two Pines Wedding Chapel where the Deadly Viper Assassination Team (aka Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, and David Carradine) attempt to kill “the Bride” (aka Uma Thurman).
I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the church, which you can see a photograph of here, was also used in the production of both films.
The church has also been featured in numerous other productions, as well. In fact, the intersection of 198th Street East and East Avenue G, where the church is located, is quite a famous little stretch of land. In the 1981 movie True Confessions, the Sanctuary Adventist Church is where Detective Tom Spellacy (aka Robert Duvall) visits his brother Father Des Spellacy (aka Robert DeNiro).
The 1999 Jean-Claude Van Damme action flick Dessert Heat (which, for some reason, is also named Inferno), was filmed almost in its entirety in both the former High Vista Diner and the sundries store located directly across the street from the Sanctuary Adventist Church. The church is visible in the background throughout the vast majority of the movie.
Jubal Early (aka Pat Morita) is also shown ringing the church bell at one point in the movie, although that bell is no longer there in real life.
In Desert Heat, the High Vista Diner is where both Rhonda Reynolds (aka Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) and Dottie Matthews (aka Jaime Pressly) worked. In real life, the place was not a real working restaurant, but, much like Four Aces and Club Ed, was solely built for use as a filming location. Sadly though, the structure was torn down back in early 2008 and is now nothing more than a dirt lot. You can see a photograph of what it used to look like here and here.
Right next to the former High Vista Diner location is another vacant building which stood in for the Elis Emporium Sundries and Surplus store in Desert Heat. And while that structure is still currently standing, I am not sure for how long that will be the case.
As you can in the above photographs, the building does not look to be in the best of shape, although it is apparently still available for filming. 
The Elis Emporium structure was also visible in the background of the opening scene of True Confessions and I do believe that it was a real working grocery store at one point in time.
The little motel that Henry Howard (aka Robert Symonds) and his wife (aka Priscilla Pointer) owned in Desert Heat used to be located directly behind the Elis Emporium building, but it has also since been torn down.
In Nurse Betty, the High Vista Café stood in for the supposed Williams, Arizona-area Canyon Ranch Bar where Betty (aka Renee Zellweger), and later Wesley (aka Chris Rock) and Charlie (aka Morgan Freeman), stop while making their way towards California.
I am fairly certain that the interior of the Canyon Ranch Bar was filmed elsewhere though, as it looks nothing like the interior of the diner from Desert Heat and also appears to be quite a bit larger than the former High Vista Diner building. My guess is that the interior Canyon Ranch Bar scenes were filmed on a soundstage somewhere in Hollywood.
The Kill Bill church is also just barely visible in the background of Nurse Betty in the scene in which Charlie and Wesley arrive at the Canyon Ranch Bar.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Sanctuary Adventist Church, aka the Kill Bill church, is located at the intersection of 198th Street East and East Avenue G in Lancaster. The High Vista Diner was formerly located directly across the street from the church at the southeast corner of 198th Street East and East Avenue G. The Elis Emporium Sundries and Surplus Store from Desert Heat is located at the southwest corner of 198th Street East and East Avenue G.