The “Encino Man” House

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Lately, I have been on a retro-movie watching kick.  I think it has something to do with ”The ‘80s” issue of Los Angeles magazine that hit newsstands this past July.  Reading through it got me in the mood to revisit decades past.  So I was thrilled when my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, took me by the residence that served as the Morgan family home in Encino Man (spoiler alert – it’s not actually in Encino!).  I had not seen the 1992 comedy in ages and remembered very little about it.  To be honest, I could not even recall what the house looked like at the time that Mike took me to stalk it.  So I decided a re-watch was in order STAT and the Grim Cheaper and I sat down to view it earlier this week.  The flick brought back some great memories.  Man, I love me some Pauly Shore!  “Meat group!”

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Mike found this location (sans help from a crew member, I might add) many years ago thanks to both this 1992 Los Angeles Daily News article, which stated that the Morgan home was located in West Hills, and an address number of 7511 that was visible on the curb of a neighboring residence in the scene in which newly-thawed caveman Link (Brendan Fraser) got into a fight with the mailman.  He began searching all of the 7500 blocks in the West Hills area and, while it took him quite a bit of elbow grease, he eventually spotted the place at 7532 Sedgewick Court.

Amazingly, the Morgan house looks almost exactly the same today as it did onscreen 22 years ago when Encino Man first premiered!

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Encino Man House (3 of 12)

The mailbox that appeared in the movie, which was modeled to look like the residence, is, sadly, not there in real life.  I am guessing that it was a prop brought in for the shoot and not the home’s actual mailbox.

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I so love that the front walkway, where Dave Morgan (Sean Astin) waited for Stoney Brown (Pauly Shore) and Link to return from Mega Mountain, is still in its 1992 state.

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As you can see below, the house located next door to the Morgan’s looks completely different today than it did during filming.  In 1992, the property was traditional in style and painted grey.  It has since been transformed into a Spanish-style home, with a white exterior and red tile roof.

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Encino Man House (1 of 12)

In real life, the Morgan house boasts five bedrooms, five baths, 4,359 square feet and a 0.34-acre plot of land.  It last sold in May 2009 for $970,000.

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The property’s backyard – where Stoney and Dave discovered Link while digging a pool – was used extensively in the filming.

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An aerial view of the backyard in its current state is pictured below.  You can also check out a real estate photograph of the backyard here.

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As you can see, while the home does have a pool, it does not match the layout of the one that Dave and Stoney were digging in the movie.  The real life pool sits horizontal to the home, while the pool in the movie was situated perpendicularly.  The Morgan dwelling was originally built in 1988, only a couple of years before Encino Man was shot, so I am guessing that at the time of the filming the backyard was largely undeveloped, which is probably one of the reasons it was chosen for the movie.  Once production wrapped, the hole was filled back in and then a pool with different positioning was later added.

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The shed where Dave and Stoney left Link to thaw out after first discovering him was, I believe, not native to the residence, but a prop brought in for the shoot.

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And while I would have guessed that the real life interior of the home was used in the filming, the Los Angeles Daily News article that Mike found states that Encino Man’s interior sets were built inside of a warehouse in Sylmar.

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For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.  And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Encino Man house is located at 7532 Sedgewick Court in West Hills.

Granville Towers – Portia de Rossi’s Former Home

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I just recently finished reading Portia de Rossi’s new memoir Unbearable Lightness and I have to say that it was easily one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life!  I literally could NOT put it down.  The memoir is a harrowing account of the actress’ long-time eating disorder which consumed her life during the years she portrayed Nelle Porter on the hit television series Ally McBeal.  Besides being a fabulous read, the book’s topic really hit home with me as I was once told by an acting teacher that I was “stocky” and needed to lose weight if I wanted to make it in this business.  I was a size two at the time.  Needless to say the notion of “there is no such thing as too thin” is alive and well in Hollywood.  Thankfully I had a strong foundation to fall back on at home and was able to blow off my acting teacher’s words – and eventually her class.  Winking smile  But it is easy to see why someone like Portia, who was already deeply insecure over the fact that she was gay and whose family lived a world away in Australia, would falter in that sort of environment.  Her story is both heartbreaking and fascinating and I honestly cannot recommend reading it enough.  Anyway, in the book, Portia talks about living in a penthouse unit at the legendary Granville Towers in West Hollywood, so as soon as I finished reading the tome, I immediately ran right out to stalk the place.

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The Granville Towers, which was originally an apartment building named The Voltaire, was built in 1930 in the French Revival style by architect Leland Bryant, who also designed one of my favorite hotels in Southern California – the Sunset Tower Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.  The 7-story, 40-unit property was a celebrity magnet from the very beginning and such stars as Ann Sothern, Jack Lord, Arthur Treacher, Janet Gaynor, and Rock Hudson called the place home.  My girl Marilyn Monroe even stayed there for a brief while after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio in 1954.  In the 1980s, the property was transformed into a luxury hotel at which point it was renamed The Granville.  A few years later it was transformed yet again, this time into an upscale condominium building, and Hollywood luminaries once again began calling the place home.  Just a few of the celebrities who have lived there in more recent years include Nicole Scherzinger, Ashley Greene (her boyfriend Joe Jonas is a frequent visitor), Mickey Rourke, Brendan Fraser, David Bowie, Amy Locane, and Michael Michele.

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Portia de Rossi lived in the building’s north tower penthouse from the late 1990s through mid-2002.  Of first seeing the penthouse apartment, she said, “I felt as though I had been transported to an artist’s loft in a city like Philadelphia, which was much more exciting to me than where I actually was.  Where I was, was predictable.  But the apartment made me think there was more to life than being an actress on a David Kelly show.”  She signed the papers on the spot and immediately set about transforming the upstairs attic loft into a workout room.  Of her makeshift gym, she says, “The treadmill was really the only thing up there and was perfectly centered in the attic, between the wall of windows that showcased the industrial city that was the roof of the Sunset 5 and the east windows through which I could see all the way downtown.  The wall opposite the smokestacks acted as a bulletin board where I had taped pieces of paper.  Mostly the pieces were exaggerated to-do lists.  I say ‘exaggerated’ because they said things that were more like goals that I wanted to achieve than things that needed to be done.  The largest piece of paper with the boldest writing stated ‘I WILL BE 105 POUNDS BY CHRISTMAS’.”  She also fastened a list of cards to the wall just to the left of her to-do list.  Each card featured a number, beginning at 111 and  running backwards.  Portia was 111 pounds at the time and each time she lost a pound, she would remove a card.  Of her weight wall, she says, “It helped keep me focused and it helped me to remember that once I’d achieved the new lower weight and the card stating my previous weight was gone, that I could never weigh that much again; that the old weight was gone.  It was no longer who I was.  It was getting more difficult to lose weight as I got thinner, so I needed all the incentive and motivation I could muster.  Putting my weight on the wall was a clever thing to do as it always needed to be in the forefront of my mind, otherwise I might’ve forgotten and walked on the treadmill instead of run, sat instead of paced.  I once saw a loft where a famous writer lived, and all over the wall was his research for the novel he was writing.  He described the book to me as his life’s work, his magnum opus.  I felt like controlling my weight was my magnum opus, the most important product of my brain and was worthy of devoting a wall to its success.”  See what I mean?  Absolutely riveting – and harrowing – stuff!

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The Granville is a truly beautiful building and features a 24-hour doorman, valet parking, a lobby with a piano, an indoor pool and spa, and a large garden patio area complete with statuaries and fountains.  You can view some great interior photographs of the building here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Granville Towers is located at 1424 North Crescent Heights Boulevard, just south of Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood.

The Blast from the Past Strip Mall

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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. 

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  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.

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!  🙂

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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.  🙂

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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!  🙂  

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

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

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. . . 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!  🙂

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