Scream 2 filming locations

March 11, 2010March 11, 2010

The Omega Beta Zeta House from “Scream 2”

This past Saturday, while I was out stalking the Oscars, fellow stalker Tony spent his day trying to track down the large Victorian mansion which appeared as both the Omega Beta Zeta sorority house in Scream 2 and the Strong residence in Catch Me If You Can. Tony knew that the house was located somewhere in the Altadena area and, since I live in the vicinity, was hoping I could help him find it. We spent quite a bit of time emailing back and forth that day – me on my blackberry while out and about in Hollywood and Tony on his computer at home. I am sad to say that I was unable to provide him with any help whatsoever in this particular hunt, though, as I had long been under the incorrect assumption that the Woodbury Story House on Madison Avenue in Altadena was the residence used as the Strong mansion in Catch Me If You Can. Tony proved me wrong, though, and, as it turns out, didn’t need my help after all. He managed to track down the correct location fairly quickly, first using Google to make a list of all of the large Victorian-style houses in the Altadena area and then viewing each one using aerial maps. YAY! Thank you, Tony! So, once Tony gave me the address, I, of course, had to run right out to immediately stalk the place.

The Scream 2/Catch Me If You Can estate is actually known as both the Crank House and Fair Oaks Ranch and is something of a historical residence. The vacant property was first owned by a wealthy landowner named Dr. John S. Griffin. In 1862, Griffin sold the lot to his sister, Eliza Griffin Johnston, for $1000 after her husband, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, passed away during the Civil War. Eliza built a small abode on the property and dubbed her new home “Fair Oaks Ranch”, after the city of Fair Oaks in Virginia where she was born. In 1864, following the death of her son in a steamship accident, Eliza sold the property to Benjamin Eaton, one of Pasadena’s first founders. Eaton ended up splitting the land in half and in 1876 sold one of the halves to a New Yorker named James F. Crank. Crank had Eliza’s original home moved off of the property (it is currently located at 2072 Oakwood Avenue in Altadena) and in 1882 built a much larger, two and a half story, Victorian-style abode, named the Crank House, in its place. In 1910, after investing and subsequently losing his fortune in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroads, Crank was forced to sell the residence. And while his property was further subdivided after the sale, I am happy to report that his former house still stands and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. The seven bedroom, four bathroom home measures a whopping 6,450 square feet and currently sits on over one and a half acres of land. Sadly, though, the residence is situated behind a large gate and is not very visible from the street.

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But, as luck would have it, when I showed up to stalk the place yesterday, not only was the property’s back gate standing open . . .

. . . but, the front gate was, as well! So, I just had to stick my arm around the open gate and snap the above pictures! YAY! 🙂

And, being that the house is not visible from the street, I can’t really recommend visiting it in person. But if you are absolutely dying to catch a glimpse of it, I am happy to report that parts of it can actually be seen from the streets surrounding the property. 🙂

In Scream 2, the Crank House stood in for the Omega Beta Zeta sorority house located on the campus of the fictional Windsor College in Ohio.

The house is where sorority girl CiCi Cooper (aka Sarah Michelle Gellar) meets her untimely end thanks to a push off the mansion’s second floor balcony. In the movie, the house is supposedly situated within walking distance of the Delta Lambda Zeta house, where the “Martini Mixer” fraternity party was held, but in actuality it is located a good six miles away from that residence. On a side note – I have to admit that I must have jumped out of my chair at least ten times while making the above screen captures! LOL

In Catch Me If You Can, the Crank House stood in for the New Orleans residence belonging to Roger (aka Martin Sheen) and Carol Strong (aka Nancy Lenehan) and their daughter Brenda (aka Amy Adams). The house showed up in several scenes in the movie, most notably as the location of Frank Abagnale (aka Leonardo DiCaprio) and Brenda’s engagement party.

Both the interior and the exterior of the Crank House were used extensively in the filming of Scream 2 and Catch Me If You Can. As you can in the above screen captures, which were taken from both films, the interiors match almost exactly. Love it!

Big THANK YOU to Tony for finding this location! 🙂 And be sure to check out Tony’s Flickr site, as it features some fabulous photographs of filming locations in and around the L.A. area.

On a very sad side note – I was heartbroken today to learn of the untimely death of actor Corey Haim. Corey was one of my very first movie star crushes. I was eleven years old when I first layed eyes on him in 1988’s License to Drive and I think it’s safe to save I’ve been smitten ever since. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and loved ones at this difficult time. I hope that in death Corey has finally found the peace that he never seemed to have in life. Rest in peace, sweet Corey.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Crank Estate, aka Fair Oaks Ranch, is located at 2186 East Crary Street in Altadena. The property’s front gate is located around the corner, at the end of Layton Street. Remember, this is a private residence, so please do not trespass. To see the best views of the house, drive on Crary Street just a bit east of the property and look backwards or drive a block south to Garfias Drive and look north. I’ve marked the areas with the best views of the house on the map above.

October 17, 2008September 29, 2017

The Stab Premiere

This weekend I dragged my boyfriend out to South Pasadena to do some more stalking of the movie Scream 2. This time we set out to stalk the Rialto Theatre where the premiere of the movie within the movie, Stab, takes place. The interior and the exterior of the Rialto are both featured quite prominently throughout the opening scenes of Scream 2,and it is at the Rialto that Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps meet their untimely end.

Interestingly enough, my new book, The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, states that only the exterior of the Rialto was used in the filming of Scream 2 and that interior filming took place at the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz, but that information is actually incorrect. As you can see from the above screen capture and photo, the lobby area of the Rialto was featured in the movie. The only reason for this inconsistency that I can figure out is that quite possibly the actual auditorium where Omar and Jada watch Stab was not at the Rialto, but at the Vista. But since the Rialto was closed while we were stalking it, I was not able to get inside to verify. 🙁

I do believe, though, that the bathroom where Omar Epps is killed was, in fact, located inside the Rialto. The reason I believe this is that the bathroom in the movie features Egyptian style writing and hieroglyphics on the wall, and the Rialto’s first owner, L. Lou Bard, created all of his movie palaces with an Egyptian theme. But again, I could not go inside to verify this. Looks like I am going to need to re-stalk the Rialto in the near future. 🙂

The Rialto was built by designer Lewis A. Smith for theatre owner and entertainer L. Lou Bard and premiered its first movie, What Happened to Jones, in October of 1925. In July of 1976 the Landmark Theatre Corporation bought the Rialto and due to fledgling ticket sales made plans to tear it down. Residents of South Pasadena protested, saved the Rialto from the wrecking ball, and in 1978 the theatre was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But sadly, the Rialto still fell into a sad state of disrepair and closed its doors for good on August 20, 2007. Due to low patronage, the Landmark Corporation could no longer afford to keep the theatre open. And while the Historic Register prevents the theatre from ever being demolished, the Rialto currently sits vacant and delapidated, a distant memory of what once was. For those stalkers who want to see the inside of the historic theate – even though the Rialto is closed to the general public for day to day movie viewing, special events are still sometimes held there. In honor of Halloween there is even going to be a midnight performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show held there on Saturday, November 1st. You can check out this website for more information.

The Rialto has been featured in numerous productions over the years. Besides Scream 2, it also showed up in the movie The Player as the location where Tim Robbins first meets Vincent D’Onofrio and later kills him. The killing actually takes place in the alley behind the theatre (pictured above). The Rialto was also featured in Old School and Kentucky Fried Movie. The Rialto’s interiors were also featured in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, as the location where MJ and his girlfriend Ola watch the video’s movie within a movie. The Rialto’s exteriors, however, were not used in Thriller. Instead, all of the exterior theatre scenes took place at Downtown L.A.’s Palace Theatre, which I have also stalked. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Rialto Theatre is located at 1023 South Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena.

October 16, 2008September 29, 2017

Just Another Day In L.A.!

On Monday, I decided to do a little stalking of the horror movie Scream 2, a movie which I am sad to say was nowhere near as good as its predecessor. But since I had found the address of the fraternity house used in the movie and since the location fit in with my Halloween theme, I had to run right out to stalk it. The fraternity house was featured in the beginning of Scream 2 as the location of the party Sidney and her friends attend. It is while everyone is at this party that Sarah Michelle Geller gets thrown from the balcony of a supposedly nearby sorority house. Unfortunately I have yet to locate that sorority house and from what I can tell, in real life it is nowhere near the party house. LOL Anyway, the Scream 2 party house looks pretty much exactly the same as it does in the movie, minus all of the fraternity signs, of course. In real life, it is just a normal privately owned residence and it is not located anywhere near a college campus. But it was actually after leaving the Scream house, that my day got a whole lot more exciting.

My mom is always telling me to trust in the universe and it is times like this past Monday morning that convince me that I need to listen to her. While leaving the Scream house, I got a bit lost, as I have been known to do (I have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever!). So I put my address into my trusty GPS unit hoping that it would lead me home, but, instead, it led me right to the filming of one of my favorite TV shows ever – TNT’s The Closer. As I came around a bend after leaving the Scream house, I noticed some trucks and filming lights set up on the side of the road. Then all of a sudden, the next thing I knew, there were Kyra Sedgwick and G.W. Bailey (my fave actor on the show!) standing just a few feet from my car as I drove by! So, of course, I just had to pull over! 🙂

The policeman on duty at the set could not have been nicer to me and asked one of the A.D.’s if I could sit on the sidelines and watch the filming. The A.D. said no problem, so I got to sit down for about an hour and a half and observe the making of one of my favorite shows. And I have to say I could not have been more impressed with what I witnessed. Every single person on the crew was extremely friendly and it seems like a truly fun set to work on – and believe me, I’ve been on my fair share of sets and that is not always the case. The cast members were extremely friendly with each other – there was a lot of laughing and joking around in between takes. And I was super excited when the cast took a break and came to sit down right next to where I was sitting. Kyra’s director’s chair was set up very close to me, actually, and I could not have been more excited. I love me some Kyra! But instead of being starstruck by her, I was actually more struck by her level of professionalism. Out of all the actors and actresses that I have been fortunate enough to observe in person, she was by far the most focused on her work. During every single break, Kyra went straight to her director’s chair, took out her script, studied her lines and made notes in a notebook – much like I do in my acting classes. 🙂 As an actress, this was fascinating for me to watch and I could not have been more impressed. At her level, she could just as easily have goofed off during her breaks, or gone to grab an iced latte or something, but instead she was 100% focused on her work. I have always felt that I have learned far more from observing professional actors at work than I have from any of my acting classes and this was of course true yesterday as I watched Kyra. (I only took a couple of pictures of the filming as I did not want to disturb anyone – or get kicked off the set.) 🙂

After the producers wrapped up the filming and the actors were shuttled back to base camp, the policeman on duty told me they were moving to a new location and invited me to come along. So I immediately called my dad and asked him to join me, as he is a big fan of the show, too, and he has a better camera than I do. 🙂 The next location where The Closer filmed, also located in Pasadena, is a mansion that has actually been home to many a film shoot. Apparently the mansion has a resume as long as my arm, but unfortunately I don’t know the specifics of the filming that has taken place there. I do know, though, that it was used in the pilot episode of CSI: Miami, as the Las Vegas home of a swinging couple whose daughter is kidnapped during a party.

My dad took quite a few photos of the filming, but because we didn’t want to disturb anyone, unfortunately I didn’t get a pic with Kyra or any of the other cast members. 🙁 We had such a blast being on the set, though, and watching the filming! I can’t even believe I got to spend my day there! And to think, if I hadn’t gotten lost, I might never have experienced any of it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The party house from Scream 2 is located at 350 S. Grand Avenue in Pasadena. The Closer was filmed at 141 N. Grand Avenue, also in Pasadena, and on Arroyo Drive underneath the Colorado Street Bridge. Look for that Closer episode to air next January or February on TNT.