Ron Livingston filming locations

September 16, 2013September 15, 2013

Derek’s Apartment from “Little Black Book”

The Little Black Book location that I was most interested in tracking down was the supposed New Jersey-area apartment building where Derek (Ron Livingston) lived and where his girlfriend, Stacy (Brittany Murphy), spent most of her time. I fell in love with the adorably charming building upon sight when first watching Little Black Book and while it continually lingered on my mind as a must-find spot, because I thought it was located somewhere on the East Coast, I never put much effort into it finding it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, while on my Little Black Book kick, I emailed some screen captures of the building to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, and he wound up tracking it down – right here in Southern California. Sadly though, the place is no longer standing. As it turns out, Derek’s apartment was located on New England Street at the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot and was, unfortunately, one of the structures that was destroyed during the fire that took place there on June 1, 2008. Because I spent so long wondering about the locale, though, I figured it was still worthy of a blog post.

[ad]

As you can see below, in Little Black Book Derek’s building was extremely picturesque and idyllic – so picturesque and idyllic that I really should have realized it would be found on a backlot. In my defense, though, the CGI-ed backdrop of New York City that appeared behind it was pretty darn convincing!

Fortunately, Owen wasn’t so easily tricked. Thanks to the apartment’s backlot-y feel, he realized immediately that it was most likely located at a studio and, since I know both Paramount and Warner Bros. like the back of my hand, decided to start his search at Universal. After scouring countless Flickr images of the backlot, he wound up coming across this picture of Universal’s New York Street area in which a small section of Ron’s building was visible on the left-hand side. Heartbreakingly, it was that area that was destroyed in the 2008 fire. I cannot tell you how devastated I was to learn that I would never be able to stalk this particular locale.

After Owen told me the bad news, I did some Flickr scouring of my own and happened upon the below image on Kevin Garrett’s fabulous photostream in which the front of Ron’s building can be seen on the right. Kevin was even nice enough to allow me to post the picture here. Thank you, Kevin! I also came across this side view image of the façade. As you can see, Ron’s building was very thin in real life and producers added a side section – either via CGI or actual bricks and mortar – to the structure for the Little Black Book shoot.

The interior of Derek’s apartment was also, of course, just a set, built inside of a soundstage at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Owen also clued me in to the fact that the scene in Little Black Book in which Stacy walked Derek’s dog, Bob, at night – and wound up at the home of Derek’s ex-girlfriend, Dr. Rachel Keyes (Rashida Jones) – took place in the New York area of the Universal backlot, as well.

That scene was shot on Brownstone Street, which also, sadly, was burned in the 2008 fire. The area has since been rebuilt, but, unfortunately, does not look anything like it did prior to 2008. You can check out some great photographs of Brownstone Street before the fire and also what it looks like now on the fabulous The Studio Tour website here.

I was floored to discover that the brownstone where Rachel lived in Little Black Book was located right next door to the brownstone where Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) battled Harry Lime (Joe Pesci) and Marv Merchants (Daniel Stern) in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The stills pictured below are from Little Black Book . . .

. . . while the ones below are from Home Alone 2.

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 fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location and to Kevin Garrett, with the fabulous Flickr photostream, for sharing his photograph of it. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Derek’s apartment building from Little Black Book was formerly located on New England Street on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot. The site was sadly destroyed in a fire on June 1st, 2008 and no longer exists. Brownstone Street, where Dr. Rachel Keyes lived in the movie, was also destroyed in the fire. While the area has been rebuilt, it no longer resembles the neighborhood that appeared onscreen. Universal Studios is located at 100 Universal City Plaza in Universal City. You can visit the theme park’s official website here.

September 13, 2013September 12, 2013

Mission Street from “Little Black Book”

Back in November 2010, a fellow stalker named Clayton wrote a comment on my post about Fair Oaks Pharmacy from Mr. Deeds (which you can read here) alerting me that fave movie Little Black Book and the 1985 classic Back to the Future had also done some filming at the 50s-style soda fountain. And while he was actually wrong on both counts, his comment led me to the discovery that part of the opening sequence from Little Black Book had been filmed just down the road from Fair Oaks Pharmacy, at three different locations along South Pasadena’s picturesque Mission Street. So I ran right out to stalk them. For whatever reason, though, I completely forgot about writing the spots up for a blog post until a couple of weeks ago when I got on my kick of tracking down the remainder of the locales from the flick. Better late than never, though, right?

[ad]

Mission Street first popped up in Little Black Book’s opening scene (which was also featured at the end of the movie), in which Stacy (Brittany Murphy) is shown crying, while listening to Carly Simon and blocking what is supposed to be New Jersey city traffic, in her bright yellow Volkswagen bug.

That scene actually took place in front of Ellen’s Silkscreening on the corner of Mission Street and Mound Avenue. As you can see below, a few fake street signs were added for the shoot, but otherwise the location looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen.

Mission Street pops up again just a few minutes later in Little Black Book’s opening montage in which Stacy is shown falling in love with her new boyfriend, Derek (Ron Livingston). In one of the montage scenes, the couple goofs around in a store window, making it appear as if they can fly.

That sequence took place in the doorway of Space Arts Center, just a few storefronts east of Ellen’s Silkscreening. I absolutely LOVE that the little bulletin board visible behind Stacy and Derek in the scene is there in real life, albeit in a different color.

Had to do it. Smile

Later in the montage, Stacy and Derek are shown walking Derek’s dog, Bob, in front of a large brick building, also supposedly located in New Jersey.

In reality, that building is the former Mission Arroyo Hotel, located about four blocks west of Space Arts Center. The 1923 structure no longer serves as a hotel, but is a commercial space comprised of offices and shops.

That same building masqueraded as the supposed Haddonfield, Illinois-area Nicol’s Hardware store, where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis) ran into Annie’s father, Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), while he was investigating the robbery of “some Halloween mask, a rope and a couple of knives” in the 1978 classic horror film Halloween.

As you can see below, the building hasn’t changed much over the years.

The former Mission Arroyo Hotel can also be seen in the background of the 2008 comedy Step Brothers, in the scene in which Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly), after a failed job interview, realize that their destiny is to start an entertainment company.

And although the camera was facing the opposite direction and the Mission Arroyo Hotel can’t actually be seen, it was at that same intersection that an adult Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) dissed her childhood crush, Chris Grandy (Jim Gaffigan), in all-time favorite movie 13 Going on 30. You can read my November 2007 post about that location here.

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 fellow stalker Clayton whose comment led me to find this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: In the beginning and end of Little Black Book, Stacy’s car is parked in front of Ellen’s Silkscreening, which is located at 1500 Mission Street in South Pasadena. The “flying” window from the movie’s opening montage is the doorway to Space Arts Center at 1506 Mission Street. Later in the montage, Stacy and Derek walk past what is now WOD Gear Clothing Company at the former Mission Arroyo Hotel, which is located at 956 Mission Street. Nicol’s Hardware from Halloween is now Radhika Modern Indian restaurant at 966 Mission Street, also a part of the former Mission Arroyo Hotel. The Mr. Deeds soda fountain, aka Fair Oaks Pharmacy, is located at 1526 Mission Street. And the hardware store from Teen Wolf can be found at 1518 Mission Street, but I have yet to blog about that particular locale.

September 12, 2013March 17, 2019

Phil’s Bar from “Little Black Book”

A couple of weeks ago, I got on a kick of tracking down locations from fave movie Little Black Book. Now I should mention here, before I go any further, that the 2004 romantic comedy really isn’t all that good. I can’t explain why I love it as much as I do, but I think my adoration stems from the fabulous soundtrack and the lead character, Stacy’s (Brittany Murphy), propensity to break out in song. For whatever reason, I find myself watching and re-watching the flick on a fairly regular basis – I just cannot get enough of it! So I was floored when I learned that, while set in New York, the vast majority of the movie was lensed right here in Southern California. One of the locales that I was most interested in finding was the fictional Phil’s Bar, which, as luck would have it, turned out to be a Starbucks – one that I had visited countless times in the past. It just took me a while to realize it.

[ad]

In Little Black Book (the storyline of which focuses on how past relationships can come back to haunt us), Stacy is shown walking with her new friend Joyce (Julianne Nicholson) by a place called Phil’s Bar, where they see Stacy’s current boyfriend, Derek (Ron Livingston), through the window. Derek also just so happens to be Joyce’s ex-boyfriend and he is at Phil’s to meet Joyce, not Stacy, for a drink. (Like I said, it’s really not that great of a movie. Winking smile ) While the two women are observing Derek, they walk by a large building that looked to me like it might be a bank. I sent some screen captures of said building to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and he recognized the place immediately as The Crocker Club in downtown L.A.

How in the heck Mike managed to recognize a building from a screen capture in which very little was visible is beyond me! My hat is definitely off to him!

Several things were added to the site for the filming, including some foliage, a fake street sign with what I believe says “Washington St” and a building sign that reads “Hoboken Savings and Loan.” Otherwise though, The Crocker Club looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen. Even the yellow fire hydrant and electrical box flanking the sides of the building are there in real life! Love it!

And here’s where things start to get weird. In Little Black Book, Phil’s Bar is shown to be located in a fairly ornate building directly across the street from where Stacy and Joyce are standing. But I could find no such building across the street from The Crocker Club.

I was at a complete loss, until I looked more closely at the scene and spotted the back of a logo on the window behind Derek – a logo that looked a lot like that of Tully’s Coffee. (What can I say? This stalker knows her coffee!) Once the logo resemblance dawned on me, a light switch went off in my head and I realized that I had been to Phil’s Bar before – many, many times.

As it turns out, Phil’s Bar is the Starbucks located at West 6th Street and South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. (It occupies the corner space of an oft-filmed at building that I will be blogging about soon.) That particular Starbucks happens to be just steps away from the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, where the Grim Cheaper and I have stayed on many occasions, so, I, of course, have patronized it often. The storefront looks quite a bit different today than it did when Little Black Book was filmed, though, which is why I failed to recognize it.

What I did not realize until later (and what most-definitely added to my failure to recognize the location) was the fact that the image of the building that appeared onscreen was, for whatever reason, flipped. (Yes, producers will sometimes flip their film in post-production to achieve a certain orientation. Only one half of the Titanic was built for the filming of Titanic for instance. For the scenes involving the portion of the ship that had not been constructed, James Cameron simply flipped the film during the editing process and, voila, it appeared to be a full vessel. He even went so far as to print any sort of signage seen in those particular scenes backwards, so that when the image was flipped, the signs would appear in their correct orientation.) As you can see below, when I tried to photograph the angle of Phil’s Bar that was shown in Little Black Book, things did not quite match up. The lower portion of the bar exterior in the movie had a carved lip reaching from the sidewalk up to the bottom of the window, while the front of Starbucks did not. The front doors of Phil’s Bar were also on the opposite side of the building from where Starbuck’s front doors are located.

When I ventured around to the other side of Starbucks, though, things did match up. (And darn that scaffolding that ruined all of my photographs!)

Thanks to a little Pic Monkey magic, I was able to flip one of my photographs (check out the backwards watermark! Winking smile ) and, as you can see below, the result matches perfectly to what appeared onscreen.

The location pops up again in one of the final scenes of Little Black Book, in which Stacy is shown driving through what is supposedly downtown New York. In an odd twist, the space was a Grand Central Coffee store during the time of that shoot, as you can see below. When I first spotted the Grand Central Coffee sign, I thought that my initial identification of the Tully’s logo had been wrong, but then I came across this online listing for a Tully’s Coffee at that location. I also came across a listing for a Grand Central Coffee at the same location, though. So what I believe happened is this – either the driving-through-New-York scene or the Phil’s-Bar scene were pick-up shots, filmed months after Little Black Book had wrapped. In the interim, either Grand Central or Tully’s (whichever was there first) closed down and the other café opened in its place. That is just a guess, though.

The very same storefront was also visible in the background of the 1999 hit Fight Club, in the scene in which The Narrator (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) blew up a computer store. And while the café looks to have had a name beginning with a “G” at that time, I was unable to make out any of the other letters on the sign in the front window.

In 2002, Tully’s appeared in the Season 3 episode of The West Wing titled “Posse Comitatus” as the supposed Washington, D.C.-area coffee shop where Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) discussed the president’s welfare reform bill with girlfriend, Amy Gardner (Mary-Louise Parker).

The Tully’s logos visible behind Derek in Little Black Book can clearly be seen in the episode.

In 2012, the Starbucks popped up in the Season 1 episode of Touch titled “Safety in Numbers,” in the scene in which Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland) tried to talk to a homeless man named Walter King (Robert Patrick Benedict).

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 Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for helping me find this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Phil’s Bar from Little Black Book is actually the Starbucks located at 523 West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. The building that Stacy and Joyce walked by in the scene, which is supposedly located across the street from Phil’s Bar, is The Crocker Club, which can be found five blocks away at 453 South Spring Street. You can visit The Crocker Club’s official website here.