Alicia Silverstone – Page 2

June 18, 2010June 17, 2010

Nick’s (Almost) Apartment from “The Crush”

Just a mile and a half away from the Forrester mansion, which appeared in the 1993 thriller The Crush and which I blogged about yesterday, is the supposed Seattle-area apartment house where Nick Eliot (aka Cary Elwes) tried to rent a unit after discovering that his current landlords’ 14-year old daughter Adrian (aka Alicia Silverstone) had developed a highly-inappropriate and psychotically-obsessive crush on him. I found this location, yet again, thanks to master stalker Owen, who had managed to track down one of the movie’s crew members who happened to remember the general vicinity where the apartment house was located. From there, Owen once again employed Google Street View to pinpoint the property’s exact location. And even though the building only showed up in two very brief scenes in The Crush, because of my Alicia Silverstone connection, I just had to stalk the place.

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I am very happy to report that Nick’s apartment house looks much the same in person as it did onscreen in The Crush, except for one pretty glaring difference – the building is now located in a different place.

Yes, you read that right – according to this Flikr website, Nick’s apartment house was formerly located just a bit north of where it is now, adjacent to a vacant lot, and was numbered 2132 (as you can see in the above screen capture). When the neighboring Reeve house, a historic property, was moved for preservation purposes in 1999, the Crush apartment also had to be moved a few hundred feet to the south to accommodate it. The Crush building’s address number was subsequently changed to 2156 and, because it had to be built into the side of a hill, appears to be a bit lower to the ground now than it was previously. Isn’t that incredible? I mean, I’ve heard of filming locations being torn down entirely, but I’ve never heard of one being moved from one plot of land to another! I’m so, so glad that the property was preserved, though, for all of us stalkers to continue to appreciate. You can see some great interior photographs of the building’s super-cute little front unit on a former real estate listing from 2008 here. I absolutely LOVE the built-in bookshelves next to the fireplace!! So darn cute! I am a little upset, though, that the real estate agent failed to make mention of the property’s cinematic history on the listing. Hmph!

On an interesting side note – While doing research on The Crush for yesterday’s blog post, I came across some information on IMDB which stated that the flick’s screenwriter/director Alan Shapiro based his screenplay on actual events from his life that took place while he was living in a guesthouse on the property of a wealthy Beverly Hills family back in 1982. And while I don’t know how much of the movie was actually based on fact and how much was embellished for dramatic effect, apparently Shapiro touted his production as being inspired by “real-life events”. Quite a bit of the story must have been factual, though, because after the movie premiered in April of 1993, Shapiro was sued by his former landlords over the fact that he had named his lead character “Darian” – the actual name of his former landlords’ daughter. The lawsuit was eventually settled and producers agreed to dub the name “Adrian” in for “Darian” in all future airings and DVD/VHS copies of the flick.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The apartment Nick unsuccessfully tries to rent towards the end of The Crush is located at 2156 Cypress Street in Vancouver, British Columbia.

June 17, 2010November 6, 2016

“The Crush” Mansion

Another Vancouver location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest two weeks ago was the supposed Seattle-area mansion where Adrian Forrester (aka Alicia Silverstone) lived with her parents in the 1993 movie The Crush. And while I can’t say that I was a huge fan of the thriller/drama, because Alicia Silverstone grew up in the same relatively small city that I did – a suburb of San Francisco named San Mateo – The Crush has always held a special place in my heart. Especially because it was one of Alicia’s very first acting roles.

Before landing her leading role in The Crush at the age of 15, Alicia’s only other major onscreen appearance had been a bit part in the Season 5 episode of The Wonder Years titled “Road Test” (pictured above). She was still attending San Mateo High School when her Wonder Years episode aired, but by the time she was cast in The Crush she had left school permanently to pursue acting and the entire city of San Mateo was abuzz with the news of the local girl who made good. I can still remember when the movie was released and the furor it caused in my hometown. Not only did Alicia fly her two best friends out to L.A. for the big Hollywood premiere (as detailed in a huge article in our local paper that I still have a copy of somewhere), but pretty much her entire class headed over to our local movie theatre, Fashion Island Cinemas, on the day the movie opened to watch. The theatre was completely sold out and there was a big party afterwards. From what I remember, Alicia was in attendance, as well. I went to a different high school, so I was not invited to the viewing, but one of my good friends, who knew Alicia fairly well, got to attend and I can distinctly remember calling him up later that night and pretty much hanging on his every word as he described the evening to me. Oh, how I would have LOVED to have been there! But I digress.

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So, when fellow stalker Owen mentioned that he had managed to track down several of the locations featured in The Crush, I just HAD to stalk all of them – in honor of my hometown. 🙂 And the locale that I was most excited about stalking, of course, was the ginormous mansion where the Forrester family lived in the flick. Owen found the residence thanks to one of the movie’s location assistants, who happened to remember the name of the street where it was located. From there Owen used Google Street View to determine its exact location. YAY! Thank you, Owen! In real life, the Crush mansion, which is known as “The Disher House”, was constructed in 1912 by British architect Paul Phipps. The home, which is absolutely beautiful in person, was originally built for a financier named J.B. Johnson, but is named after the Disher family, who lived there from 1916 through 1972. You can read more about the mansion in the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s Guidebook for their 2003 Open Vancouver Heritage House Tour here. And you can take a peek at some close-up photographs of the home here.

I am very happy to report that the Disher house looks much the same in person as it did onscreen in The Crush, but unfortunately there is quite a bit foliage in the front yard that limits the view of the property from the street. Both the interior and the exterior of the residence were used in the flick.

Sadly, the apartment that Nick Eliot (aka Cary Elwes) rented does not exist in real life. Producers had it built on top of the home’s real life garage exclusively for the filming and it was subsequently removed after the filming had wrapped.

The Forrester’s neighbor’s pool, which shows up a couple of times in The Crush, is located in the backyard of the home that is directly east of the Crush mansion. Apparently, the pool was the site of a deleted scene during which Adrian and Nick take a midnight dip. That scene is later referred by Adrian when she is being examined by an officer at the police station after falsely accusing Nick of rape.

UPDATE – The Crush mansion is for sale! You can check out some interior photographs of it here.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Adrian Forrester’s house from The Crush is located at 1526 Angus Drive in Vancouver, British Columbia.

March 24, 2010March 23, 2010

Dionne’s House From “Clueless”

One location that I have been searching for for what seems like forever is the huge castle-like abode where Cher’s (aka Alicia Silverstone’s) best friend Dionne (aka Stacey Dash) lived in one of my all time favorite comedies, 1995’s Clueless. Since I had been trying to track down the home for years and had come up virtually empty handed, I recently decided to call upon fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, and Owen – or, as Mike likes to call us collectively, “The Team” 😉 – for help. Well, I almost fell off my chair when Owen emailed me back less than ten minutes later with an address. Here I had been trying to track down this location for years and Owen managed to find it in a span of ten minutes???? Am I losing my mojo or something? As luck would have it, thanks to a simple Google search, Owen stumbled upon a website called “The Daily Truffle” which recently featured an entire post about Clueless locations in honor of the tragically short life of actress Brittany Murphy who played newcomer Tai in the flick. One of the addresses mentioned on the site? You guessed it, Dionne’s home! YAY! As it turns out, the author of “The Daily Truffle” lives just a few blocks away from the residence, which is how she knew of its location. Thank you, Daily Truffle!

Dionne’s house shows up in one very short scene at the very beginning of Clueless. And I am not kidding when I say the scene was short – it lasted a mere 18 seconds! But even though its appearance onscreen was brief, Dionne’s home was one of the most memorable locations of the entire movie and I was ABSOLUTELY DYING to stalk the place.

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Unlike Cher’s house, which is located in Encino of all places (egads!), Dionne’s house is located exactly where the movie purports it to be – right in the heart of Beverly Hills. Sadly though, as you can see in the above photographs, the residence looks much different today than it did in 1995 when Clueless was filmed. 🙁 As luck would have it, an extremely nice contractor happened to be working at the house when my dad and I showed up to stalk the place earlier today and he explained that the property was sold in late 2008 and that the new owners not only completely gutted the interior, but also added an exterior gate and massive amounts of foliage to the perimeter which completely block the home from view. SO SAD. The contractor also told me that part of Clueless was filmed inside of the residence. But, because no scenes from the movie actually took place in Dionne’s home, I am guessing that the property might been used to stand in for Cher’s house in some way. That is just pure speculation on my part, though, so don’t quote me on that. 😉

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Thankfully, because the home’s newly installed gate was standing wide open while we were there, I was able to snap a few close-up pictures of the front door area which was featured prominently in Clueless – well, as prominently as it could have been in an 18 second scene. 😉

If you look at Dionne’s house via Google Street View, it appears pretty much exactly the same as it did onscreen in Clueless. Oh, how I wish I had stalked the place two years ago before the remodel began! Ugh! In real life, Dionne’s house, which was built in 1930, boasts 7 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, and a whopping 9,850 square feet!

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Big THANK YOU to both Owen and The Daily Truffle for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Dionne’s house from Clueless is located at 705 North Sierra Drive in Beverly Hills.

July 13, 2009July 13, 2009

The Blast from the Past Strip Mall

Since I was in the area this past week stalking a wedding venue, I decided to pay a little visit to the strip mall featured in fave romantic comedy Blast from the Past. In the flick, which opens up in the year 1962, a nuclear-war-fearing Christopher Walken builds a massive fallout shelter for his wife and unborn son directly underneath his suburban home. When a small plane fortuitously crashes onto his property, Walken fears a bomb has been dropped on America and immediately locks his family in the homemade shelter where they remain for the next 35 years. While the family is living underground, a strip mall comprised of a dive bar, an adult bookstore, and a 50s diner, is built on the spot where their home used to stand. That strip mall is what I set out to stalk last week.

And I am happy to report that it looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did in Blast from the Past. According to fave website Seeing Stars, which is how I originally found this location, all three storefronts used in the movie were vacant at the time of filming. And, after recently re-watching BFTP, I am fairly certain that filming not only took place outside of the empty shops, but inside of them, as well. Pictured above is the storefront used as the dilapidated 50s diner originally named “Mom’s” in the movie. It is this shop that is located directly above the fallout shelter and into which the shelter’s elevator rises through the floor, causing the loopy storeowner to believe an angel has come to save him. In reality, “Mom’s” diner is actually a tattoo parlor.

Directly next door to “Mom’s”, is the storefront that was used as the dive bar “Shangri Lodge” in the movie. Today it is a beauty parlor named “Unlimited Touch Salon” – I don’t even want to know what goes on in there!!! LOL LOL LOL

Next door to the salon is the storefront that was featured as the adult bookstore in the movie. Just before Brendan Fraser makes his first visit above ground, Christopher Walken warns him to stay away from the adult bookstore as there is “invisible, poisonous gas” inside of it. LOL LOL LOL In reality, that shop is now an antique clock store.

The tiki bar that Alicia Silverstone and Brendan Fraser kiss in front of at the end of the movie is in actuality a large bakery and pastry shop.

I find it kind of ironic that, in what is definitely a case of life imitating art, two of the empty storefronts eventually became seedy shops – a tattoo parlor and a salon with a highly suggestive name – much like was the case in the movie. And while I, of course, had fun stalking the strip mall, I can’t say I’d really recommend it to others. It’s kind of in a seedy area and unfortunately there isn’t all that much to see. For fans of the movie, like me, I’d instead recommend stalking Alicia Silverstone’s adorable little house from the film. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Blast from the Past strip mall is located at 7218-7222 Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Canoga Park. Mom’s diner, under which Brendan Fraser’s bomb shelter was located, can be found at 7222 Topanga Canyon Blvd. The Shangri Lodge Bar is really the Unlimited Touch Salon which is located at 7220 Topanga Canyon. And the “poison gas” adult bookstore is really Denny’s Clocks, which can be found at 7218 Topanga Canyon. Pastries by Edie, the bakery where Alicia Silverstone and Brendan Fraser kiss in the movie, is located next to the strip mall, at 7226 Topanga Canyon Blvd.

July 8, 2009July 8, 2009

The Blast from the Past House

UPDATE: Just a quick note to let all of you stalkers out there know that tonight at 11 p.m. PST I will be interviewed by radio host Peter Anthony Holder for his talk show Holder Tonight on Montreal’s number one English talk station, CJAD, and on their sister station CFRB, which is the number one talk station in Toronto! 🙂 Those of you who want to listen in to a live stream can do so at www.CJAD.com or www.CFRB.com. The live stream link for both stations is located on the upper left hand side of their homepage. Then tomorrow morning Kelly Green, from Tensessee’s The Farm 100.9, will be interviewing me at 7:20 a.m., but unfortunately it doesn’t look like that station has streaming audio. 🙁 http://www.thefarmradio.com/greenteam.htm Hopefully they will put the interview in the archive section of their website, though, and I’ll be able to post a link. Now on to the post! 🙂

A few weeks ago, I dragged Mike, from MovieShotsLA, out to a location I have been meaning to stalk for quite a while now – Alicia Silverstone’s cute little craftsman house from the 1999 movie Blast from the Past. I had actually been wanting to stalk the adorable house ever since I first saw the movie over ten years ago, but had no idea where it was located. So, when I found out that Mike knew the address and had actually stalked the home several times previously, I begged him to take me there. 🙂

I am very happy to report that the house looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen in Blast from the Past – right down to the little red car parked out front! I’m not kidding – that red car really was parked out there while we were stalking the place!!!! LOL LOL LOL I was shocked to discover, though, that the Blast from the Past house was located in Los Angeles, because, thanks to its Craftsman style architecture, it actually looks more like a Pasadena area home. Even stranger still is the fact that in the beginning of the movie, when Brendan Fraser leaves his family’s bomb shelter, his mom tells him to seek out “a girl from Pasadena”, because she’s “always found girls from Pasadena to be a little bit nicer”. 🙂 So, basically, the Blast from the Past location scouts went, not to Pasadena, but to Los Angeles to find a Pasadena style home to stand in for a Pasadena girl’s residence. That’s Hollywood for you! 🙂

The house, most notably the front door and front porch area, show up numerous times throughout the movie.

And it is on the street in front of the home that Brendan Fraser runs away from the County Family Services people . . .

. . . and crashes his rented meat truck into the County Family Service woman’s car. LOL LOL LOL

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I was shocked to discover, while doing research for this post, that the same home was also used in the 1974 movie Chinatown as the house where the mysterious Katherine (Belinda Palmer) hides out. It is amazing to me how similar the home still looks thirty-five years later!! According to IMDB, the same house was also featured in the 2000 made-for-TV movie If These Walls Could Talk 2, but I haven’t been able to verify that. I can say for certain, though, that it was not the main house used in the movie.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Blast from the Past house is located at 1972 Canyon Drive, just off of Franklin Avenue, in Los Angeles.

October 10, 2008September 29, 2017

The Witch’s House from “Clueless”

One of my favorite sites to stalk in all of Beverly Hills is known simply as “The Witch’s House” and it just so happens to fit in perfectly with this month’s Halloween theme. Although not really a filming location, the house is a Beverly Hills landmark of sorts. Known formally as “The Spadena House”, after the Spadena family who lived there in the 1930s, the house did show up very briefly in fave movie Clueless, during the scene when Alicia Silverstone is “totally buggin'” about Ty’s crush on Josh (pictured in above screen capture).

The home was originally built on a silent film studio lot in Culver City known as Irvin C. Willat Productions and was used as an office/dressing room. It was designed by the very first art direction Oscar Winner, Henry C. Oliver, in 1921. Willat Productions was sold in 1926 and the house was purchased and later moved to its current location in the heart of Beverly Hills, where it was turned into a private home for the Spadena family. No one can say for sure how the house came to be called “The Witch’s House”, but mention the words to any Beverly Hills native and they will know exactly what you are talking about. Personally, I believe the house got its nickname due to its resemblance to the witch’s home in the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel”.

In 1998, a real estate agent named Michael Libow was hired to sell the house. Apparently he became frustrated that all prospective buyers planned to demolish the property, so he took matters into his own hands and purchased the home himself for $1.3 million. He is currently restoring the property to its original state, along with the help of art director Nelson Coates. For the past few years the two have painstakingly rennovated the home, even re-creating the original moat which once surrounded the property. The Witch’s House is still currently under rennovation, so unfortunately a large chain link construction fence blocks some of the view from the street. But hopefully in a few years the rennovations will be complete and the house will be even more spectacular for us stalkers to view.

Because it is so truly unique, I am actually very surprised that the house hasn’t appeared in more Hollywood productions. Besides Clueless, the Witch’s House was also featured in the 1965 movie The Loved One, as the home of Sir John Gielgud’s character, and in the 1957 horror film The Undead. Supposedly, during its time on the Willat lot, the home also appeared in a quite a few 1920s silent films, as well.

The Witch’s House is simply a must see for all Beverly Hills tourists, especially during the Halloween season, and it is a beautiful example of Storybook style architecture.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Witch’s House is located at 516 N. Waldren Drive, at the corner of Walden Drive and Carmelita Avenue, in Beverly Hills.

October 3, 2008March 10, 2010

Cher’s House from “Clueless”

For a few years now I have been looking for Cher’s house from one of my fave movies of all time, Clueless. In trying to locate the house, though, I had read several articles and interviews about the filming of Clueless, which all stated that the neighborhood scenes were actually filmed in Scottsdale, Arizona, not in California, so I had pretty much called off my hunt. I had also always believed that Cher’s house was merely a set, not a real home. Something about the house just looked fake to me, so I had a feeling the house was just a facade that was built at a movie studio strictly for the filming of Clueless.

But all of that changed last week, when I got a challenge from a guy named John who informed me that Cher’s house was actually also used as Gaby’s boyfriend Victor Lang’s house in a Season 3 episode of Desperate Housewives entitled “Dress Big” (pictured above). After hearing that, I knew that the house could not be located in Scottsdale. And, being that the Desperate Housewives episode aired twelve years after Clueless was filmed, I also knew the house had to be real, not just a set. So I enlisted Mike, over at MovieShotsLA, to help me locate the house and, sure enough, after just a few days we found it!!

After reading a few articles on the filming of Clueless and searching through online images of colonial style mansions in the LA area, I decided to check my fave locations website, Malibu Locations, to see if Cher’s home was listed with them. Sure enough, after about ten seconds of searching, I found it! Mailbu Locations listed the home as being in Encino, so I got Mike on the phone and the two of us got to searching aerial views of Encino. About ten minutes later I located the house, right on Louise Avenue in the heart of Encino. OMG – If Cher only knew that her home was actually located in the “Valley”! LOL So, of course, yesterday I ran right out to do some Clueless stalking! 🙂

I am sad to say that not much of the home is visible from the street, which I pretty knew before I stalked it, as I remembered from the movie that the house had an extremely long driveway. But Zillow has some good aerial views of the home and you can definitely recognize it as Cher’s mansion. This is one location I wouldn’t really recommend stalking as there just isn’t really anything to see. 🙁

But I was absolutely floored to discover from looking at the Malibu Locations photos of the house that the interior of the home was also used extensively for the filming of Clueless!! If you look at the interior photos of the home, all Clueless fans will recognize the entryway staircase which was shown several times in the movie, most memorably as the location where Cher and Josh first kiss.

Also used in the movie were the Encino house’s real life kitchen, wood-paneled office, dining room, fireplace (where Ty tries to burn her “Rollin’ With The Homies” tape), master bedroom (where Cher and Christian was Spartacus and Some Like It Hot), and backyard and pool area (where Mr. Hall and Miss Geist get married). I must admit I was absolutely floored to see the pics of the interior of the house. 🙂

Mike also just discovered that the interiors of the Clueless home were also used as Toni Marchette’s house on 90210. For the exterior, however, a different home was used.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Clueless house is located at 5148 Louise Avenue in Encino – yes, that’s the “Valley”! 🙂 While there is not much of the house to see from the street, you can cyber-stalk it on Zillow here.

April 6, 2008February 13, 2009

As If!

Last weekend, while doing some stalking in the Valley, I about had a heart attack when we drove by a small liquor store in North Hollywood because I immediately recognized it as the liquor store where Alicia Silverstone gets robbed in one of my fave movies of all time – Clueless. I made my boyfriend swerve through several lanes of traffic to pull into the liquor store parking lot where I promtly ran inside to ask the cashier if Clueless was filmed there. He told me that indeed it was!

In the movie, Cher’s friend Elton ditches her in the parking lot of the liquor store and she is immediately robbed at gunpoint for her purse and cell phone. After she is forced to lay down in her Alaia dress, the thief takes off and Cher uses a payphone to call her stepbrother Josh to come rescue her. Sadly, the payphone Cher uses was torn down long ago. 🙁 But the exterior of the liquor store looks almost exactly as it did during the filming of Clueless and the large neon clown sign is still standing at the entrance to the parking lot.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Circus Liquors is located at 5600 Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood. Similar to how it was portrayed in Clueless, the liquor store is not in the greatest of neighborhoods, so exercise caution. It is perfectly safe to visit the store in the daytime, but I wouldn’t recommend stalking it at night.