Oliver’s House from “A Lot Like Love”

A Lot Like Love is a movie I can’t not watch.  Even though I’ve seen it at least a dozen times and own the DVD, if I happen to catch it on TV, need to scan through it for a post, or it pops up in my Netflix recommendations, I’m pretty much viewing it in its entirety.  And thank goodness, too, because doing so led me to find a new location from the film recently, one that I thought I had already pinpointed – the house belonging to Oliver Martin’s (Ashton Kutcher) parents in the 2005 romcom.  First, let me back up a bit.

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Ten years ago (egads!), my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, tracked down what I thought was the Martin residence via a 2006 Los Angeles Times article chronicling homes featured onscreen.  In the blurb, author Danny Miller states, “Encino resident Ramona Hennesy creates brochures showing her house’s best features and sends them off to location scouts all over town.  Her efforts have paid off.  Several commercials have been filmed in her ranch home.  Last year, the house had a featured role in the film A Lot Like Love.  Both the interior and the backyard were used, and her carport was even transformed into Ashton Kutcher’s bedroom.”  A quick scan through public records provided us with the property’s address (17050 Magnolia Boulevard) and I ran right out to stalk the place shortly thereafter.  Upon arriving, I was surprised to see the pad fronted by large hedges that obscured it almost entirely from view, as you can see below.  What little was visible did not look familiar from the movie, as I mentioned in the post I wrote about the locale a few days later.

Google Maps imagery from 2007 (two years after the movie was released) show the hedges in a much less mature state, so figuring they were a post-A Lot Like Love addition, I did not think much further on the subject.

Flash forward to this past April.  While making screen captures of the flick in preparation for this post, I fell into the familiar trap of viewing it through to the end and was shocked to see an address number of “17204” posted by the front door of the house across the street from Oliver’s parents’ place in the closing scene in which Oliver and his longtime on-again/off-again paramour Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) finally get together.  That number, though close, did not exactly coincide with the 17050 address of the property I’d blogged about all those years ago.  What the whaaat?  So I headed over to Google to search for homes numbered 17204 in the Los Angeles area and quickly came across one at 17204 Otsego Street in Encino that matched the residence Emily and Oliver kissed in front of, albeit with quite a bit more foliage.

From there, I flipped Google Street View’s little yellow man around to see the property across the street and, sure enough, Oliver’s parents’ house was staring me right in the face (again, with quite a bit more foliage).  Had the article gotten things wrong?

Confused, I pulled up the old Los Angeles Times article and quickly realized that I had read too much between the lines all those years ago (that was back when I was an amateur stalker, after all ).  I’d simply assumed the Magnolia Boulevard residence had been used for exteriors and interiors, as well as backyard shots, but the article never actually mentions the front exterior at all.  D’oh!  As I soon came to find out, Oliver’s parents’ house was a mash-up of both properties, which are located right around the corner from each other.  The Otsego Street house was utilized in all scenes featuring the front of the Martin home . . .

. . . including the final scene, which was my favorite of the movie.  While there, I couldn’t help but re-enact the hissy fit Oliver’s sister, Ellen (Taryn Manning), has over the fact that Oliver is holding up her wedding.  (Lucifer fans – that’s Aimee Garcia, aka forensics expert Ella Lopez, in the pink dress below!  She plays Ellen’s best friend in the movie.)

All interior filming took place just around the corner at the Magnolia Boulevard house.

As you can see in the screen capture as compared to my photograph below, the roofline and window framing of 17050 Magnolia match that of the Martin home.

The shape of the Martin’s pool and its location in regard to the house, as well as the residence’s rear roofline . . .

. . . all also match what is visible of the Magnolia Boulevard dwelling in aerial views.

As mentioned in the Los Angeles Times article, the property’s carport was transformed into Oliver’s bedroom for the movie.

Luckily, the Magnolia Boulevard home’s front gates were open when I stalked the place back in 2008, so I got to snap a couple of photos of said carport.

Why producers chose to use two properties in the film is unclear to me, but I am guessing it has something to do with the hedges surrounding the Magnolia Boulevard residence, which I now believe were there at the time of the A Lot Like Love shoot.  The movie’s final scene, in which Emily runs from Oliver’s house to her car parked across the street, required a location that was open to the road.  I think the production team likely fell in love with the Magnolia pad’s interior, but found the exterior too closed-off for the end sequence, so they searched for a secondary property to utilize.  I was hoping the DVD commentary with director Nigel Cole and producers Armyan Bernstein and Kevin Messick would provide some clarification on the subject, but, other than the fact that filming of the wedding segment took place in the Valley, nothing was said about the Martin residence.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The house used for exterior shots of Oliver’s parents’ residence in A Lot Like Love can be found at 17201 Otsego Street in Encino.  The pad Emily parks in front of at the end of the movie is directly across the street at 17204 Otsego.  The home utilized for interior and backyard sequences is located around the corner at 17050 Magnolia Boulevard.