Twin Peaks filming locations

A couple of months ago, I set out to find the lake house belonging to Donna Meagle (Retta) and her family in the Season 4 episode of fave show Parks and Recreation titled “Sweet Sixteen”. (It was that search that led me to discover Johnson Lake in Pasadena, which I blogged about here.) And while I was absolutely convinced that Donna’s home was located on the banks of the oft-filmed-at Lake Sherwood, I scanned through aerial views of pretty much every single property in that area and came up completely empty-handed. Then fate took a hand and led me to some information about another oft-filmed-at lake in the vicinity – one that I had never before heard of – named Malibou Lake in Agoura. I immediately became intrigued with the place and, after a few minutes of searching, found Donna’s house. Yay! Unfortunately though, because Malibou Lake is a bit of a hike from Pasadena, I was unable to drag the Grim Cheaper out there to stalk it until a couple of weekends ago. But, let me tell you, it was well worth the wait!

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Malibou Lake Mountain Club, as the area has come to be known, was originally founded in 1922 by fishermen George Wilson and Bertram Lackey, who had purchased 350 acres of land in the Santa Monica Mountains with the intent of turning them into a lakeside community, resort and social club. According to a November 2007 Los Angeles Times article, the development was named Malibou Lake with an “o” to avoid being confused with the nearby Malibu Lagoon.

To create their idyllic development, Wilson and Lackey built a clubhouse, sold plots of land for housing, dammed up two nearby creeks, and waited for the 65-acre central basin to fill with water and become a lake. That water took four years to arrive, though, to the consternation of the many new homeowners who had built what they thought were lakeside residences. Finally in the spring of 1926, thanks to a long-overdue bout of storms, twenty million gallons of rainwater fell into the basin and Malibou Lake was born.

I can honestly say that Mailbou Lake is one of the coolest, most picturesque places that I have ever stalked.

Not to mention one of the most unique. Pictured below is a sign that I never thought I would see in L.A.

I cannot even imagine what it would be like to live there! As you can see below, one lakeside house even had a sailboat docked nearby! Sigh!

And while the club, lake and surrounding houses are gated and private, I am very happy to report that much of the area is visible from public streets.

Malibou Lake Mountain Club has appeared in hundreds upon hundreds of productions since its founding and it would be absolutely impossible for me to catalog them all here, but I will do my best to mention its more notable onscreen appearances. In the “Sweet Sixteen” episode of Parks and Recreation, Donna’s lake house is where the gang threw a surprise party for Jerry Gergich (Jim O’Heir). Sadly, the property is not visible from the road, so I was not able to snap any photographs of it.

The interior of the house – which is uh-ma-zing, by the way – also appeared in the episode. You can check out some interior pictures of the property here.

The iconic drowning scene from 1931’s Frankenstein was filmed at Malibou Lake. You can read a FABULOUS article about the exact spot where filming took place penned by screenwriter John Cox (a man truly after my own heart) on the Frankensteinia blog here.

In the 1940 film The Great Dictator, Malibou Lake was where Hynkel – Dictator of Tomania (Charlie Chaplin) shot ducks and was later captured.

In 1956’s The Bad Seed, Malibou Lake stood in for Fern School – the private school attended by Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack).

The Malibou Lake Mountain Club clubhouse masqueraded as the Havenhurst Motel in the Season 4 episode of Perry Mason titled “The Case of the Angry Dead Man”, which aired in 1961. The lake and its environs have actually appeared in countless episodes of Perry Mason over the years, some of which are detailed on the Perry Mason TV Series website here.

Malibou Lake was where Lane Meyer (John Cusack) first met Beth Truss (Amanda Wyss) in 1985’s Better Off Dead.

In 1990 and 1991, Malibou Lake stood in for “Easter Park” in several episodes of Twin Peaks, including the Season 1 episode titled “Cooper’s Dreams” (pictured below).

The Malibou Lake Mountain Club office also appeared throughout the series as the Timber Falls Motel. You can see some real life photographs of the office along with comparison screen captures on the In Twin Peaks blog here and on the Brad D Studios website here.

Malibou Lake was used extensively as Urbania, Ohio in 1994’s Little Giants.

In 1998’s Mr. Saturday Night, Malibou Lake stood in for the Catskills resort where Buddy Young Jr. (Billy Crystal) regularly performed his comedy routine and also met his future wife, Elaine (Julie Warner).

In the 1999 dramedy The Story of Us, Malibou Lake masqueraded as the lake at Camp Pinewood, the summer camp where Ben Jordan (Bruce Willis) and Katie Jordan (Michelle Pfeiffer) spent Parents’ Weekend with their children, Erin (Colleen Rennison) and Josh (Jake Sandvig).

In the 2002 horror flick The Ring, a house on Malibou Lake was used as the office of Doctor Grasnik (Jane Alexander), where Rachel (Naomi Watts) went to seek out more information on Samara Morgan (Daveigh Chase).

The real life interior of the house was also used in the movie.

Sadly, that property was torn down to make way for a new, larger residence sometime in 2010 or 2011. The original home is still visible via Bing aerial maps, though, as you can see below.

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A view of the vacant plot of land that remained after the residence was torn down, which I found on fave website Zillow, is pictured below.

And the new abode, which is currently for sale for a cool $1.29 million, is pictured below. The GC and I had actually been gushing over it while stalking the lake. You can check out its real estate listing here. Um, yeah, I could live with that. Winking smile

John Cusack returned to Malibou Lake in 2005 to film the scene for Must Love Dogs in which Sarah Nolan (Diane Lane) chases down his character, Jake, to ask for a second chance.

Thanks to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, I learned that in the Season 4 episode of The Office titled “Dunder Mifflin Infinity”, which aired in 2007, Malibou Lake stood in for Lake Scranton where Michael Scott (Steve Carell) drowned his car due to “faulty” GPS directions.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out the latest post – about trying to track down a diabetic-friendly evening bag – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Malibou Lake Mountain Club is located at 29033 West Lake Vista Drive in Agoura Hills. Donna’s lake house from the “Sweet Sixteen” episode of Parks and Recreation is located at 2140 East Lakeshore Drive, inside of the gated Malibou Lake Mountain Club community. It is, unfortunately, not visible from the road. The home that was used as Doctor Grasnik’s office in The Ring was formerly located at 29175 South Lakeshore Drive, but it has since been torn down and replaced with a new home.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from a fellow stalker named Brad who runs a website named Brad D Studios where, among other things, he chronicles filming locations from David Lynch productions. I spent the next few hours perusing Brad’s site and was ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED to discover that every episode of the television series Twin Peaks, excluding the pilot, had been shot right here in Los Angeles. I was obsessed with the show as a teen and had always been under the incorrect assumption that it was filmed in its entirety in the state of Washington. Jubilant, I started jotting down locations left and right, one of which was The Old Place restaurant in Cornell.

I had actually first learned about The Old Place earlier this year when it was featured in the “Hidden L.A.” article from the February 2011 issue of Los Angeles Magazine. The rustic restaurant was pictured on the issue’s front cover and caught my attention immediately. And even though I was unaware that it was a filming location at the time, I made a mental note to drag the Grim Cheaper there to grab a bite to eat in the near future. Well, believe you me, as soon as I discovered that the eatery had been featured in an episode of Twin Peaks, it immediately moved to the very top of my “To-Stalk” list and the GC and I headed out there, with my good friend Erika in tow, just a few days later.

The Old House was first founded in 1969 by a writer/pilot/actor named Tom Runyon (nephew of Carmen Runyon, whom Los Angeles’ Runyon Canyon was named after) and his wife, Barbara. The couple purchased the former Cornell post office and general store, a building which dates back to 1914, and transformed it into an Old-West-style eatery and saloon. The restaurant featured just two menu items – hand-carved steak, which was cooked by Tom over a Red Oak fire, and steamed littleneck clams. On Sundays, only beef stew was served. The bar menu featured wine, apple juice, and whatever beer was in the refrigerator. Barbra was the eatery’s only waitress, while Tom acted as both chef and dishwasher. Tom, a former military man, was apparently a very direct, no-frills type of guy who ran his cash-only, five-booth, 40-seat watering hole with the mantra, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” The Old Place was a success from the very beginning, attracting the likes of Billy Gale, Bob Dylan, Ali McGraw, Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, Burgess Meredith, Sam Peckinpah, Katharine Ross, Jason Robards, Linda Ronstadt, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Peter Strauss, Sissy Spacek, Twiggy, Robert Blake, Goldie Hawn, Jack Lemmon, Larry Hagman, Jackson Browne, Dolly Parton, Peter Yarrow, Emilio Estevez, and Nancy and Ronald Reagan. When Tom Runyon passed away on July 17th, 2009, Tom and Barbra’s son, Morgan, took over the restaurant, along with Tim Skogstrom, who runs the Cornell Winery & Tasting Room next door. The two made a few improvements to the property, tripled the size of the menu, and added a credit card machine. Other than those minor tweaks, though, little at The Old Place has changed since Tom first opened it over four decades ago.

To say that The Old Place is unique would be a vast understatement! It is hands down one of the coolest restaurants that I have ever visited in my entire life! I literally felt like I was eating in the middle of a movie set. Tom created the restaurant’s booths out of actual doors which once hung in a San Francisco hotel, the columns located at the end of each booth originally stood in the Santa Barbara Mission, and the bench at the 30-foot antique bar was fashioned from an actual wooden diving board.

But not only does the place just exude character and ambiance, the food is DIVINE! In his write-up of the restaurant, Brad stated, “If I had the choice of one last meal on earth, it would be from this place.” And I have to say that I would agree. The GC opted for the night’s special, Thai-themed mussels, which he said were simply INCREDIBLE; Erika ordered the beef stew, which she loved; and I devoured all that I could of my larger-than-life serving of the rosemary-pale-ale chicken. The three of us also shared an absolutely sinful order of the noodle-and-cheese bake, which can only be described as OH-MY-GOD-GOOD. Needless to say, I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED The Old Place and absolutely cannot recommend stalking it enough!

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In the Season 1 episode of Twin Peaks titled “Episode 3” or “Rest in Pain”, the interior of The Old Place stood in for the interior of the Bookhouse where Special Agent Dale Cooper (aka Kyle MacLachlan) and Sherriff Harry S. Truman (aka Michael Ontkean) interrogated Bernard Renault (aka Clay Wilcox). That scene was filmed at the very rear of the restaurant, just to the left of the side door which leads out to the restrooms.

One of the restaurant’s bartenders also informed me that The Old Place was where the “Tequila” scene from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was filmed, but, as you can see in the screen captures above, I do not believe that information to be correct. While similar, the bar which appeared in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure seems to be much larger than The Old Place. And, according to this 2007 article which ran in the Pepperdine University Graphic, the interior of the restaurant was once recreated on the MGM backlot for the filming of a Charles Bronson movie, although, unfortunately, I am unsure of which movie.

Big THANK YOU to Brad, from Brad D Studios, for informing me of this location’s Twin Peaks’ connection! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Old Place, from the “Episode 3” or “Rest in Pain” episode of Twin Peaks, is located at 29983 Mulholland Highway in Cornell, or Agoura, depending on your GPS. The eatery is open for dinner Thursday through Sunday, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., and for brunch Saturday and Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. Reservations are strongly suggested!

Tag: Twin Peaks filming locations

Malibou Lake from “Parks and Recreation”

The Old Place Restaurant from “Twin Peaks”