“The Hangover” Gas Station

The Hangover Gas Station (4 of 16)

The Grim Cheaper and I spent last week in Las Vegas on a business/pleasure trip (hence the lack of recent blog posts).  While there, we were lucky enough to stay at Caesars Palace (post on that location coming soon!) and found ourselves constantly quoting lines from The Hangover.  So one evening we decided to watch the 2009 flick and I have to say it was pretty epic to be viewing it while in a room at the very hotel where filming had taken place.  One location that I wondered about while watching was the “gas n gulp” station that the boys – Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha) –  stopped at on the way to Las Vegas.  I figured it was most likely located in the Palmdale area (where many of the desert driving scenes were shot), but The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations clued me into the fact that the station was actually the Jean Fuel West Shell in Jean, Nevada, just east of the California border.  So we dropped by to stalk it on our return trip home.

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Jean Fuel West Shell only appeared once in The Hangover, in the rather brief, but hilarious scene in which Alan admonished an old man for looking at his car and Stu tried to defend the actions of his girlfriend who cheated on him with a Carnival Cruise Line bell hop sailor pilot waiter bartender.

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The station’s signage was changed to read “gas n gulp” for the shoot.

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The Hangover Gas Station (7 of 16)

The fact that filming took place at a Shell, though, was still fairly obvious due to the yellow and red coloring of the station’s carport roof.

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The Hangover Gas Station (5 of 16)

Other than the change in signage, the site looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

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The Hangover Gas Station (15 of 16)

Some filming also took place inside the Shell’s food mart.

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The Hangover Gas Station (16 of 16)

The super nice woman working behind the counter informed me that the interior was changed a bit for the shoot.  In real life, the cashier stand is located in the center of the store.

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The Hangover Gas Station (13 of 16)

But for the filming of The Hangover, a fake cashier stand was built near the store’s south windows, in the area pictured in the photograph below.

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The Hangover Gas Station (12 of 16)

The camera then cheated to the right so that the real cashier stand was not visible behind the actors.

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On a side-note – One Hangover location that I will not be stalking, sadly, is the home where Mike Tyson – and his tiger – lived.  While I did find the address of that humongous dwelling – 22634 La Quilla Drive in Chatsworth – it is located inside of a gated community and is therefore unstalkable.  Sad smile

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Jean Fuel West Shell, aka the gas n gulp from The Hangover, is located at 1 Goodsprings Road in Jean, Nevada.

Daniel McCormick’s House from “Forever Young”

Daniel's House Forever Young (1 of 11)

Back in my early stalking days, I purchased a Scott’s L.A. Audio Tour of Pasadena CD.  I loved every minute of it and learned about quite a few new locations while listening, one of which was the home where Claire Cooper (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her son, Nat (Elijah Wood), lived in the 1992 movie Forever Young.  This was long before I had a blog, though, so I never wrote down the address and actually completely forgot about it until last week while stalking in South Pasadena.  I did not have my Scott’s L.A. CD with me at the time, so used my trusty iPhone to do some Googling to see if I could find the place.  I wound up coming across this Facebook post which gave the location of a different residence used in the movie – the bungalow where Capt. Daniel McCormick (Mel Gibson) lived.  So I ran right on over to snap some pics.  (I ended up tracking down the Cooper house, too, but not until after I had already returned home to Palm Springs, so that will be a different post for a different day.)

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For those who have yet to see Forever Young (and if you haven’t, you really should, it’s a fabulous movie!), the story (which was written by none other than Lost creator J.J. Abrams) centers on Daniel, a test pilot living in 1939, whose girlfriend gets into a terrible accident that lands her in a coma.  Not bearing to see the love of his life dying, Daniel volunteers for the latest experiment that his best friend, scientist Harry Finley (George Wendt), is conducting –  cryogenic freezing.  Harry agrees to freeze Daniel for one full year, but things go terribly wrong and Daniel does not end up being removed from the suspended animation chamber until 1992 – 53 years after initially stepping inside.

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Daniel’s small Craftsman-style bungalow is only shown once in Forever Young, in the very beginning of the movie, prior to Daniel being frozen.

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Daniel's House Forever Young (7 of 11)

Despite a change in paint color, the residence still looks much the same today as it did onscreen in 1992.

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According to Zillow, the tiny dwelling, which was built in 1915, boasts two bedrooms, one bath and 864 square feet of space.

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Daniel's House Forever Young (10 of 11)

I was actually quite shocked to see that the home boasts such a scant square footage as it appears to be much larger from the street.

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Daniel's House Forever Young (6 of 11)

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the property was also used in the filming, but I could not find any photographs of the interior online with which to verify that hunch.

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Daniel's House Forever Young (2 of 11)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Daniel McCormick’s house from Forever Young is located at 612 Meridian Avenue in South Pasadena.

Hotel Angeleno from “Heat”

Hotel Angeleno Heat (3 of 19)

The Grim Cheaper and I travel back and forth to L.A. so often that sometimes I feel like I live in a hotel – which is not a bad thing, I ADORE hotels.  One that we checked into recently that I absolutely loved was the Hotel Angeleno.  Not only is the place’s architecture unique, vibe spectacularly retro and views breathtaking, but it is also a filming location!  I mean, come on now!  What’s not to love?

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Hotel Angeleno was originally constructed in 1970 as the Holiday Inn Brentwood/Bel-Air.  Its cylindrically-shaped configuration was a popular one for the hotel chain.  The first of its kind was designed by architect Leonard Lundgren and still stands overlooking Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas.  Lundgren went on to design several similarly shaped structures for the Holiday Inn company, including the Brentwood/Bel-Air outpost.

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Hotel Angeleno Heat (5 of 19)

During its tenure as a Holiday Inn, the property offered mid-level lodging.  In April 2005, it was taken over by the Joie de Vivre hospitality company and a massive renovation process was started.  The site re-opened in February 2006 as the much more upscale Hotel Angeleno.

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Hotel Angeleno Heat (11 of 19)

Thankfully though, its unique exterior was left largely untouched.

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The 17-story structure sits above the Interstate 405, just north of the Sunset Boulevard exit.  Each room features a private balcony (as well as complimentary parking and free Wi-Fi), most of which offer amazing views.  Our room boasted views of the freeway and it was fascinating to watch traffic start accumulating on the northbound side at around 2 p.m. and remain at a standstill until well past 10.

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Our room also had a spectacular view of the Getty Center.

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Not to mention a vertigo-inducing view of the street below.  The GC is not a fan of heights and he couldn’t even bring himself to step out onto the balcony.

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Hotel Angeleno Heat (7 of 12)

Occupying the top floor of the Angeleno is the circularly-shaped restaurant West.

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We had the pleasure of dining at West while staying at the hotel and not only is the food spectacular, but the views are simply uh-ma-zing.

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The Holiday Inn Brentwood/Bel-Air was most notably featured in the 1995 action classic Heat, as the spot where Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) moved upon leaving his wife.  Very little of the hotel can actually be seen in the movie, though.

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In the Season 1 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “Death Ride,” which aired in 1975, Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) stopped by the Holiday Inn to pick up a witness named Andrew Mello (Jeff Corey).

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Thanks to the Dear Old Hollywood blog, I learned that the 1976 film Two-Minute Warning opened with a scene of a sniper taking a shot from a balcony at the Holiday Inn Brentwood/Bel-Air.

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The hotel’s interiors were also shown in the movie, including a room;

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a hallway;

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the lobby;

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and the front desk.

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In the 2004 hit Sideways, Miles (Paul Giamatti) drove by the Holiday Inn on his way to pick up Jack (Thomas Hayden Church).

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There was even some filming going on when we were staying there!  Just as we were checking out, my mom spotted Justin Jedlica, aka the “Human Ken Doll,” filming a segment for a reality show.  So I, of course, just had to ask for a pic.

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.

Hotel Angeleno Heat (1 of 19)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Hotel Angeleno, from Heat, is located at 170 North Church Lane in Brentwood.  You can visit the hotel’s official website here.