Amanda Peet’s Apartment Building from “A Lot Like Love”

One of my favorite romantic comedies of all time is A Lot Like Love starring Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher – and while I was watching it I absolutely fell in love with the building used as Amanda Peet’s apartment. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to find this location by searching Google or any of my go-to filming location sites.

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For this location, I turned to the director’s commentary on the DVD.  Many times, during a DVD commentary, a director will mention in what part of town a scene was filmed, which helps to narrow locations down.  In this case, the director mentioned the exact street where her apartment was located- Vine St. in Hollywood- and from there I was on my way!

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My boyfriend and I drove south down Vine Street until we found the red brick apartment building near the corner of Fountain and Vine.  While it definitely looks better on the big screen, the building is pretty incredible in person.  The front doors happened to be open, so we ventured inside.

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It is amazing how quiet and peaceful the interior courtyard is, being that it is located only a few blocks from the busy corner of Hollywood and Vine.

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The courtyard is full of flowers and plants of all sizes and wrought iron benches and looks like an amazing place to spend a summer afternoon.  The courtyard is where Ashton sang his heart out to Amanda Peet towards the end of the film.  Her front door was the first door on the right hand side when you enter the courtyard.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Amanda Peet’s character lived in the Villa Elaine Apartment building, located at 1245 Vine Street in Hollywood.  Frank Sinatra, Orson Wells, May Ray, and Remy Zero have all called the building home at one time or another.  You can park in the Payless Shoe Source parking lot across the street and walk to the building.  If the front doors aren’t open, you can peek inside them to see the amazing center courtyard.

Celebrity Fit Club!

judge.jpeg If you happen to be a member of a Hollywood area gym, be sure to keep your eyes open for famous people – the person on the treadmill next to you just might be Britney Spears! Or her judge! The buzz around my gym lately is that the judge in the Britney Spears custody battle, Scott Gordon, is a gym member. As I was running on the treadmill Thursday night, it turns out I was running right next to him! And he just happened to be on the phone (while running!?!) asking for a change of courtrooms for his next day’s case. Anyway, I was way excited and I just had to snap a pic of him! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Kelly and Donna’s Beach Apartment

img_1163.jpg Just got a comment from La on my 90210 post – she wishes I had taken my stalking a little further and stalked Kelly and Donna’s beach apartment from 90210’s college years. Come on – don’t you know me by now? Of course I’ve stalked Kelly and Donna’s place. 🙂 This location I found a few years ago – thanks to my good friend Stew. One day he happened to be jogging along the Strand, a beach-side path in Hermosa Beach, and ran right by Kelly and Donna’s apartment. He immediately called me and told me the location so I could stalk it myself.

The beach apartment is adorable – right on the beach in a really cute area of town. How lucky was Kelly to get the cute apartment on the show and the cute guy! No one was hotter than Dylan McKay!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It:Kelly and Donna’s apartment is located right on the sand at 3500 The Strand in Hermosa Beach, just south of where Hermosa Beach borders Manhattan Beach. Kelly and Donna lived in the second floor apartment on the show. According to one of my favorite stalking sites, Seeing Stars, the house was also used in the movie My Step-Mother is an Alien. The O.C. also used the Strand and Hermosa Beach for much of its filming.

The Central Park Boathouse – Where Carrie and Big Went Swimming

home1-test.jpg One of my very favorite episodes of Sex and the City (oh, who am I kidding – every episode is my favorite episode!) was the Season Three Finale when Carrie decides, after much deliberation and a big fight with Miranda, to meet Mr. Big for lunch. Just before the lunch, Carrie promises Miranda that no matter what happens she will NOT kiss Mr. Big.

img_03222.jpg Of course, that is easier said than done! When Big sees Carrie standing on the small dock outside the restaurant, he leans in to kiss her and as she tries to back away from him, they both fall into the pond and start cracking up hysterically. God, I love Sex and the City!

This scene was shot at The Boathouse Restaurant, which I happened to spot on my very first trip to New York as we were walking through Central Park. It is an adorable little restaurant that sits right on the lake. According to my Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell book, SJP cut her foot when she fell in the water shooting this scene and had to be given a tetanus shot right after.

The Boathouse is a great place to eat lunch during the spring and summer months. You can eat lunch and watch the pedal-boaters float by. After lunch you can stop by the boat rental dock and take a nice afternoon boatride across the lake.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Boathouse Restaurant is located in the middle of Central Park at E. 72nd Street and Park Drive North. The restaurant is only open during the months of April through November. You can visit their website here – The Boathouse. Carrie and Big fell off the boat rental dock to the left of the restaurant’s entrance. Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell is a great resource for SATC fans – it contains a map with locations of many SATC filming locations and a lot of behind the scenes info.

The Grease High School

grease.jpg Growing up I absolutely loved the movie Grease. My friend Nat and I used to dress up in her mother’s wigs and act out scenes from Grease in front of the TV. So how excited was I to discover the location of Rydell High School in my go-to stalking book “The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book“? Although three different high schools in Los Angeles were used to depict Rydell during the filming of Grease, Venice High was the one used for all exterior shots. The first day of school scenes, the Summer Lovin’ number, Danny’s track practice and sports team tryouts were all shot at Venice High. If you venture out behind the school, you will definitely recognize the bleachers from Summer Lovin’ and the track Danny jogged on.

The producers of Grease: You’re the One That I Want, the reality show from 2006, chose Venice High as the location for their Grease Boot Camp. Contestants sang and danced for two weeks in the famous footsteps of John Travolta and Olivia Newton John.

image2.jpg Besides gaining infamy as the Grease high school, Venice High was also the filming location for Britney Spears’ very first music video, . . . Baby One More Time. So, of course, I had to venture inside the school on my visit there, so that I could shimmy down the hallways, too! BritBrit used the interior hallways, the gym, and the lunch area to film the video. Venice High was also used as Nicolas Cage’s daughter’s school in Matchstick Men, and in the movie American History X and the TV show American Dreams.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Venice High School is located at 13000 Venice Boulevard in Venice. There used to be a statue in front of the high school of actress Myrna Loy and the statue can actually be seen in Grease. It’s interesting to note that Myrna modeled for the statue while she was still a Venice High School student, long before she became famous. The statue was vandalized in recent years and removed from its home in front of the school, but a restoration is currently in progress. I recommend visiting the school during off hours or on a weekend, when there is more freedom to walk around and see the sites. 🙂 Don’t be afraid to break into song!

Lauren’s House – Part Two (Or Should I Say Les Deux)

img_1875.jpg At the risk of becoming a stalking site solely about The Hills, I just had to share my pics from visiting LC’s house this weekend. Conveniently, Lauren’s new pad is located only half a mile from Speidi’s apartment building on the cutest street in the world! 🙂 Her house is gorgeous in person – I absolutely loved it! I must say, I would definitely be plonking down $2.3 million for this house, too, if I had it! Ahh, if only I had my own reality show!!

img_1827.jpg Last weekend I also visited LC’s home away from home – Les Deux nightclub. Les Deux is in an unmarked building on Las Palmas Avenue in Hollywood and you’d never know it was there if you weren’t looking for it. One of these days I am going to have to stalk it at night, when it is actually open! 🙂 It looks like a pretty cool place – part of it is an old Craftsman style house which backs up to a huge outdoor patio. I believe that patio is the very site where Lauren and Heidi had their first big public showdown – “You know what you did! You know what you did!”

of50332442.jpg Les Deux is located just down the street from another famous location from the big screen – Julia Roberts’ hotel from Pretty Woman. Her character lived at the Las Palmas Hotel in the beginning of the movie and it’s also the same site where Richard Gere climbed up the fire escape to rescue her!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: LC’s new house is located at 1627 N. Orange Grove Avenue in Hollywood. Les Deux is located nearby at 1638 N. Las Palmas Avenue. I think Thursday nights are the big nights to hang out there. You can find the Las Palmas Hotel just a few blocks north of Les Deux at 1738 N. Las Palmas Avenue. It’s a bit of a shady place, so exercise caution!

Spencer and Heidi’s Apartment – the Holy Grail of Filming Locations!

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I don’t know what’s sadder – that it took me as long as it did to locate Speidi’s apartment building or the fact that I was so completely consumed with finding it in the first place! I keep asking myself – Why am I so fixated on these two idiots? I have no logical answer. All I can say is that even though I think Spencer and Heidi are both complete douchebags, I am still totally obsessed with them!

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For the past few months I have spent countless hours on Los Angeles apartment websites searching for Speidi’s building, with no luck whatsoever. I was beginning to think I was losing my touch! (Gasp!) So, this weekend, as a last resort, I bought Season Two of The Hills in the hopes that I could find some clue as to their apartment’s location on the DVDs. A side benefit in purchasing Season 2 on DVD is that I can now watch the scene where Heidi tells Spencer that her answer to moving in with him is “No” and he says “Sweet! My answer is get out of my car!” over and over again! I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that! 🙂

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Anyway, success came pretty quickly because on the Season 2 Finale, in the scene when Spencer first shows Heidi the apartment, I found a few clues that led me to the right spot. I first noticed the address number “1333” behind Spencer’s head as he was sitting on the front steps of the building waiting for Heidi. After they tour the apartment, he takes her out onto the balcony and points out various Hollywood hot spots that he and Heidi frequent. That let me know the apartment had to be in Hollywood, west of Las Palmas Ave. From there I just googled the terms “1333” and “Hollywood Apartments” which led me to a listing Craig’s List  and I knew I had found it!

I dragged my boyfriend to the La Fontaine apartments this afternoon to check out the place – and since I just happen to be in the market for an apartment myself, I buzzed the manager to take us on a tour of the available units. 🙂 The apartments are really nice on the inside – dark hardwood floors, high ceilings, granite counter-tops. If only the one we viewed had the word “Hollywood” graffiti-ed on the living room wall, I just might have taken it right then and there! 🙂

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Stalk It: Spencer and Heidi’s apartment building, La Fontaine, is located at 1333 N. Curson in Hollywood. You can check out the La Fontaine website here – http://www.frostchaddock.com/. For $2700 and up, you can be Speidi’s neighbor! To take a tour of the available apartments, buzz the manager at the sister building across the street at 1322 N. Curson.

Where It All Began

img_0986.jpg Since I’ve blogged about LC’s homes past and present for the last few days , I thought I’d come full circle and write about where it all began – LC’s home in Laguna Beach, California. One day last year, back when I was on Team Kristin, I dragged my boyfriend to Laguna Beach to stalk all of the Laguna Beach: The Real O.C. filming locations. LC’s house was pretty easy to find actually. We just stopped into one of the local motels in Laguna and I asked the front desk clerk, who was about 19, where some of the Laguna Beach filming spots were located. Turns out he went to Laguna Beach High with LC and the gang and he pointed me in the direction of a few of the locations, the best one being Lauren’s house.

img_0984.jpg He told me to just drive south on Coast Highway a few miles and that I couldn’t miss Lauren’s house up on the hill overlooking the Pacific. Sure enough, there it was! Lauren’s house is absolutely beautiful in person and incredibly huge. I can’t even imagine living there!! Unfortunately LC’s house is located on a private road in a gated community, so you can’t drive by it.

img_0987.jpg LC’s guard shack – the only thing that can stop a stalker.

img_0979.jpg Another location I was also pretty intent on finding was Golden Spoon, the frozen yogurt spot where Kristin and a friend met for dessert and she talked about the pasta she made Steven for dinner the night before and how it “smelled like feet.” I recognized this spot right away when we drove down Broadway to Downtown Laguna.

img_0980.jpg Pasta Pomodoro, the site of every single date that ever took place on Laguna Beach is located just a few blocks away on Forest Aveune. It must be the only restaurant in Laguna that allows cameras. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: LC’s guardshack is located at 32350 Coast Highway, at the corner of Vista Del Sol, a couple miles south of Downtown Laguna. I would recommend parking across the street and a little bit north from the guard shack for the best views of the house. The actual house is located at 29 Vista Del Sol. The Golden Spoon and Pomodoro are both located in Downtown Laguna, at 272 Broadway St. and 234 Forest Avenue, respectively.

Lauren Conrad’s Park La Brea Apartment

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Since LC will soon be moving on up, I thought I’d put up her old address for people to stalk while they still have the chance. On The Hills, Lauren’s apartment was always referred to as “The Hillside Villas in West Hollywood”, but LC’s apartment was actually located in Los Angeles in a complex called The Villas at Park La Brea.

I found this location last year on one of my favorite sites – www.tvgasm.com. Apparently there had been some disagreement between fans as to whether LC lived at the Pallazo in Park La Brea or at The Villas at Park La Brea. TVgasm set the record straight and right after reading the article I set out for The Villas, camera in hand.

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You will definitely recognize the entrance on South Burnside Avenue as the spot where Heidi, looking quite sullen, waved goodbye to Lauren as she drove off in a UHaul with Spencer. (That’s why I’m pretending to look sad in this pic.) 🙂 It’s also the spot where Brody said good-bye to Lauren this season when she left for Paris.

You can check out the website for The Villas at Park La Brea here. The site even shows what availability they have. I wonder if Lauren’s old apartment is up there yet!

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Stalk It: The Villas at Park La Brea are located at 5555 W. 6th Street in Los Angeles. right at the corner of Burnside Avenue and West 6th Street. You can make an appointment to view available apartments by calling (877)230-6271. For $2135 a month you, too, can live at Lauren’s former stomping grounds!