Brittany Murphy – IAMNOTASTALKER

January 16, 2019January 14, 2019

Kabuki Japanese Restaurant from “Clueless”

OK so I’m totally buggin’! I just found out that Paramount Pictures is in talks to reboot Clueless! This may be way harsh, but all I have to say regarding the news is ‘Whatever!’ The 1995 classic is absolute perfection AS IS and should NOT be touched! Hearing about the project did remind me of several locales from the flick that I stalked long ago, but have yet to blog about, namely Kabuki Japanese Restaurant in Burbank, aka the former Crocodile Cafe, where Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) lunched with her Beverly Hills besties Dionne (Stacey Dash) and Tai (Brittany Murphy). I had been on the lookout for the eatery for ages – pretty much since starting my blog back in 2007. It was not until 8 years later, on June 4th, 2015, that a reader named Jasmine finally solved the mystery when, in response to another reader asking about the restaurant in the comments section of my post on the Horowitz house from the movie, said, “It used to be Crocodile Cafe in Burbank on San Fernando and Orange Grove. But now it’s a Kabuki. I have no idea how I figured this out but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly where it was. The booth they sat at is right behind the hostess/cashier. I sound so stalkerish right now it’s ridiculous.” Jasmine’s comment was quite stalkerish, but in the best way possible! One look at images of the place online told me she was right. I could not have been more thrilled and ran out to stalk Kabuki just a few days later with my friend Kate who was in town visiting from Kentucky. Very shortly after that, author Jen Chaney released her fabulous book As If!: The Oral History of Clueless as told by Amy Heckerling and the Cast and Crew which confirmed Crocodile Cafe’s appearance in the film on page 126.

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The former Crocodile Cafe actually pops up twice in Clueless – first very briefly in the opening “So, OK, you’re probably going ‘Is this, like, a Noxzema commercial or what?’” montage.

It then later appears in the scene in which Cher and Dionne take Tai out for a “calorie fest” to cheer her up after she finds out that snob-and-a-half Elton (Jeremy Sisto) isn’t into her.

Upon walking into the restaurant, I was thrilled to see that despite the changeover from Crocodile Cafe to Kabuki, it was entirely recognizable from its big screen cameo. Unfortunately, someone happened to be sitting in the exact booth utilized during filming, so I couldn’t snap any photos of it, but as you can see in the image below as compared to the screen capture, the booths remain very much the same today as they appeared in Clueless. The cushioning has been swapped out and glass partitions have since been added, but other than that, they are untouched.

The front door and hostess area also largely look the same.

Crocodile Cafe’s bar, which was visible in both Clueless scenes, was apparently gutted when Kabuki took over.

The area where it used to be located is pictured below. Thankfully, the frosted glass blocks formerly situated behind the bar are still intact, as are the wood columns that frame them.

It is not hard to see why the restaurant was chosen for the movie. With its bright pink and green color scheme and 90s-modern vibe, the place fit in perfectly with the splashy, over-the-top visual aesthetic that made up Cher’s world. Interestingly, Crocodile Cafe was not producers’ first choice, though. Per As If!, “Originally the Clueless crew was hoping to shoot the restaurant sequences at California Pizza Kitchen. But once the CPK people saw the final script, and saw how much breadstick-penis talk goes on between Cher, Dionne and Tai, they said no. Says producer Adam Schroeder: ‘I think the whole idea of talking about boy parts in CPK, that made them uncomfortable.” The default location turned out to be ideal, though.

Of Crocodile Cafe’s unique décor, Los Angeles Times writer Max Jacobson had this to say in a 1997 article, “It’s a breezy place with an open kitchen tiled in a pattern that looks like a multicolored snake. The dining room–all brick walls, high ceiling and a gallery’s worth of modern art–is narrow and noisy.” I believe the open kitchen Jacobson mentions (or at least a portion of it), which was not shown in Clueless, serves as the restaurant’s sushi counter today.

The Burbank Crocodile Cafe outpost opened its doors in July 1994, so it was new when Clueless filmed on the premises. (Though I am unsure of the exact day the scenes were lensed, the movie was shot from November 21st, 1994 through February 7th, 1995.) The eatery was the fifth in the CC chain, which was founded in Pasadena in 1987 by restauranteur Gregg Smith as a sort of casual version of his upscale and highly popular bistro Parkway Grill. I was unable to dig up the year the eatery closed, but, per a newspaper ad I came across, the shuttering took place between May 2002 and July 2005, at which time Kabuki Japanese Restaurant was already in operation. Oh, how I wish I could have seen the Croc when it was still open in all of its bright green and pink glory!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Jasmine for finding this location!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Kabuki Japanese Restaurant, aka the former Crocodile Cafe from Clueless, is located at 201 North San Fernando Boulevard in Burbank. You can visit the eatery’s official website here. The Downtown Christmas Shopping District from “The Voice of Christmas” episode of The Brady Bunch is located a little over a block away at 100 South San Fernando.

August 5, 2014August 4, 2014

The “Clueless” Mall

As evidenced by yesterday’s post, I have been on a major Clueless filming locations kick as of late. One spot about which much conflicting information has been reported online is the mall (or malls) that appeared in the 1995 flick. Some sites stipulate Westside Pavilion in Rancho Park was used, some surmise the Beverly Center in Beverly Grove made a cameo and still others claim that filming took place at Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks. So I set out to end the confusion once and for all.

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Not surprisingly, Clueless featured several mall scenes. In the first, which took place towards the beginning of the movie, Cher (Alicia Silverstone) headed to the mall with BFF Dionne (Stacey Dash) to “find sanctuary” after receiving a less-than-stellar report card. The establishing shot shown in that particular scene was of the Westside Pavilion located at 10800 West Pico Boulevard in Rancho Park. The locale was only used for that single exterior image, though.

Inside the mall, the girls are shown at Contempo Casuals lamenting the crusty demeanor of their debate teacher, Mr. Hall (Wallace Shawn).

That same Contempo Casuals was also featured in the scene in which Dionne called Cher to inform her that they were going to have to make an appearance at the “Val party.” Most websites state that the C.C. used in Clueless was the one formerly located on the sixth floor of the Beverly Center. Some recent research leads me to believe that information is incorrect, though. But more on that in a bit.

Later in the movie, Cher and Christian (Justin Walker) witness some “Barneys” trying to throw Tai (Brittany Murphy) off a railing while out shopping for a leather jacket.

I originally thought the interior of Westside Pavilion had been used in that scene, but, as you can see below, it does not match the mall shown in Clueless.

So I headed out to Westfield Fashion Square recently and was thrilled to discover that it was the right spot! The escalator that Cher and Christian rode in the scene is located in the eastern portion of the mall (on the Macy’s side of the center), directly outside of Williams-Sonoma and Zara.

While the tile flooring has been altered and the stores have since transitioned, the area still looks much the same as it did in Clueless, which had me grinning (ridiculously so) from ear to ear.

Tai’s “near-death experience” took place just across from the escalator, outside of what is now Foot Locker.

I was totally buggin’ when I realized that the benches visible in the movie were no longer there (or perhaps never were). I so wanted to stand in front of one and say, “Car-pe Di-em!”

Once I realized that Tai’s near-death experience had been filmed at Fashion Square, I got to thinking that the Contempo Casuals scenes were most likely shot there, as well. It did not make sense to me that producers would go to the trouble of shooting the C.C. scenes elsewhere, especially considering that they were both extremely brief. So I did some research and learned that there was indeed a Contempo Casuals located at Fashion Square in the mid-nineties, as you can see here and here. I scanned through the C.C. scenes again and just about fell off my chair when I spotted the number 22 posted on the store’s window. And while I could find no such numbers in any pictures of the Beverly Center via a Google image search, I did spot a number in the same style and color on the front of Victoria’s Secret in one of the photographs I had taken at Fashion Square a few years prior (pictured below). Then I came across this listing and just about died of excitement upon discovering that the company currently located in storefront 22 of the Westfield Fashion Square is none other than Wet Seal, the very same brand that took over Contempo Casuals in 1995! You can see a photo of the storefront in its current state here. Based on all of that, I am 99.9% certain that the only mall interior that appeared in Clueless was Westfield Fashion Square.

Clueless is hardly the first production to make use of Westfield Fashion Square. As I blogged back in 2012, the mall was where Michael Scott (Steve Carrel) took Dunder Mifflin’s fairer sex in the Season 3 episode of The Office titled “Women’s Appreciation.”

In the Season 5 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Christmas Comes This Time Each Year,” Westfield Fashion Square was both where Andrea Zuckerman-Vasquez (Gabrielle Carteris) and Jesse Vasquez (Mark Damon-Espinoza) tried to get their baby to pose for a photo with Santa . . .

. . . and where Donna Martin (Tori Spelling) shopped with LuAnn Pruit (Caroline McWilliams).

In the Season 4 episode of Malcolm in the Middle titled “If Boys Were Girls,” the Nolastname family headed to Westfield Fashion Square to do some shopping.

Jane Kaczmarek returned there (to the mall’s southeastern parking lot) a couple of years later to film one of my favorite television scenes ever – the demolition derby scene from Season 6’s “Hal’s Christmas Gift.”

You can watch that scene by clicking below.

In the Season 1 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Move On,” Fashion Square was where Gaby took a low-budget modeling job.

And it was at Fashion Square that Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz) fell into a fountain in the Season 3 episode of Glee titled “Props.”

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.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Westside Pavilion, located at 10800 West Pico Boulevard in West L.A., was used for exterior shots of the mall in Clueless. Interior mall scenes were shot at Westfield Fashion Square at 14006 Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks. The escalator that Cher and Christian rode in the movie is located on the eastern side of Fashion Square, in front of Williams-Sonoma and Zara, and Tai was almost pushed off the railing located in front of Foot Locker.

August 4, 2014July 10, 2015

The “Clueless” Guide to Occidental College

While it is well-known among location aficionados that Occidental College masked as Bronson Alcott High School in Clueless, an in-depth guide to the exact areas of the campus that appeared in the flick has never been published. So, with some help from Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, and a reader named Rebecca who grew up in Eagle Rock and knows Oxy like the back of her hand, I set out to do just that.

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A map of the Occidental College campus is pictured below. I will be using the same numbering key provided on the map to identify the areas and buildings featured in Clueless. So without further ado, I present to you the Clueless guide to Occidental College (in order of appearance)!

1. Bronson Alcott High School Exterior – The south side of Occidental’s Johnson Student Center and Freeman College Union (#15) masqueraded as the front of Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and the gang’s Beverly Hills-area high school.

The building, which was designed by Myron Hunt, is shown repeatedly throughout Clueless and should also be recognizable to Beverly Hills, 90210 fans as the exterior of the Condor’s Nest at CU.

2. Walkway – The esplanade that Cher and her friends are often seen strolling along (and where the movie’s infamous “As if!” moment took place) is Oxy’s Central Quadrangle (#126).

The Quadrangle, which is situated directly south of the Johnson Student Center, served as the hangout of Bronson Alcott’s various cliques, including the TV station group, the Persian Mafia and the Crew.

The eastern portion of the Quad, in front of Occidental’s Johnson Hall/Alumni Auditorium (#2), is where Cher offered her father’s “sucky Italian roast” to Mr. Hall (Wallace Shawn) . . .

. . . and where he later shared it with Miss Geist (Twink Caplan).

3. Athletic Field – It is on Oxy’s Patterson Field (#101) that Cher convinces her P.E. teacher, Ms. Stoeger (Julie Brown – yes, that Julie Brown), to raise her grade from a C to an B.

The field has changed a bit since filming took place, but it still very recognizable.

4. Mr. Hall’s Pathway – The walkway leading to the south side of Occidental’s Booth Music and Speech Center (#14), which looks quite a bit different today, is where Cher observed Mr. Hall and came to the conclusion that he was in need of a “good, healthy boink fest.”

5. The Teachers’ Lounge – According to an Oxy employee that Owen contacted, the faculty lounge where Cher tried to decide which teacher to set Mr. Hall up with (and coveted a Snickers bar) was one of the Johnson Student Center and Freeman College Union (#15) dining rooms. Unfortunately, the interior of the student center was largely gutted and remodeled in 1998 and then again in 2013 and the vast majority of it looks completely different today. I am not sure if the dining room that appeared in Clueless was renovated or if it currently remains in its onscreen state. Here’s hoping!

6. The Main Office – This location was the saddest discovery of all. According to Rebecca, Bronson Alcott’s main office was the former Student Activities Office at the Johnson Student Center and Freeman College Union (#15), which prior to the 1998 remodel was known as the Freeman Student Union. The space was gutted during the initial renovation and no longer exists. You can see photographs of what the interior of the structure currently looks like here.

7. Cafeteria Exterior – The eastern side of the Johnson Student Center and Freeman College Union (#15) served as the outside of the Bronson Alcott cafeteria.

That portion of the building looks a bit different today than it did in Clueless due to the fact that stairs and a wheelchair ramp have since been added to the exterior, I am guessing to comply with ADA regulations.

The cafeteria doors look the same for the most part . . .

. . . aside from said staircase and ramp addition.

Had to do it!

8. Parking Lot – Mr. Hall and Miss Geist shared their first kiss in the Admission and Visitor Parking (#43), in between the Admissions Office – Collins House (#19) and Newcomb Hall (#18). Miss Geist is parked in front of Newcomb Hall in the scene.

And Cher and Dionne are standing in the middle of the parking lot, with the Admission Office – Collins House visible behind them.

Again, had to do it!

9. Tennis Courts – Oxy’s McKinnon Family Tennis Center (#107) is where Dionne (Stacey Dash) refuses to participate in a P.E. lesson because her tennis instructor “would prefer if I didn’t expose myself to any training that might derail his teachings.”

The courts are also where Cher and Dionne first meet Tai (Brittany Murphy) and decide to befriend her despite the fact that their “stock” might “plummet.”

10. Cafeteria Interior – The exact location of the interior of the Bronson Alcott cafeteria, where Tai and Travis Birkenstock (Breckin Meyer) first locked eyes, is a spot that I am unsure of. Thanks to the carved columns, paned windows and brown doors visible in the background of the scene, I can say with certainty that it is (or was) somewhere on the Occidental campus. My guess is that it was once located inside of the Johnson Student Center and Freeman College Union (#15), but was dismantled during the 1998 remodel.

11. The Grassy Knoll – The spot where Travis and his fellow Loadies (who “no respectable girl actually dates”) hang out is along the western side of the Samuelson Campus Pavilion/Tiger Cooler (#16).

12. The Fountain Photo Shoot – Cher’s impromptu photo shoot with the gang took place in the courtyard of the Booth Music and Speech Center (#14).

Again, had to do it!

13. Josh’s Girlfriend’s Dorm – Occidental was not solely used to stand in for Bronson Alcott High School in Clueless – a campus building also masqueraded as the dorm where Josh’s (Paul Rudd) girlfriend, Heather (Susan Mohun), lived. The structure featured in that scene was Oxy’s Weingart Center for the Liberal Arts (#17).

In reality, the building is not a dorm, but instead houses an art gallery, art studio and classrooms.

14. Girls’ Locker Room – The locker room where Tai laments the fact that her feelings are not reciprocated by Elton (Jeremy Sisto) can be found inside of the Rush Gymnasium (#8). You can see a real life photograph of the locker room that was used in the movie here.

15. Art Museum – Oxy’s Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center (#1) masked as the art museum featured in the montage scene in which Cher decides that she wants to make over her soul. (The outfit Cher wore in that scene is one of my favorites from the entire movie.)

In real life, the building, which sits at the center of the Occidental campus, houses administrative offices.

It was the structure’s glass lobby that stood in for the museum in Clueless. In reality, there are no sculptures on display in that area.

16. Cher’s Pismo Beach Disaster Relief Booth – Cher and Dionne encouraged fellow students to sign up for the Pismo Beach Disaster Relief Team on the lawn located at the southeast corner of the Johnson Student Center and Freeman College Union (#15).

17. Pismo Beach Food Collection Drive – Last, but not least is another location I am unsure of. Toward the end of Clueless, Travis donated some unusual kitchenware to the Pismo Beach Food Collection Drive which took place in some sort of conference/meeting room. Thanks to its paned windows and the foliage and architecture visible in the background, I am certain that the room is (or, again, was) located on the Occidental campus. Unfortunately, I have been unable to pinpoint exactly where, though. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

And that’s all, folks! I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed putting it together!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, and Rebecca for helping me with this post. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Occidental College, aka Bronson Alcott High School from Clueless, is located at 1600 Campus Road in Eagle Rock. You can visit the school’s official website here.

April 19, 2012March 19, 2014

The Novel Café from “Little Black Book”

This past Saturday, after stalking the New Girl apartment building, which I blogged about on Monday, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to grab a bite to eat at one of the many Arts District (my new favorite neighborhood!) restaurants nearby. We ended up settling on The Novel Café, just down the street from the New Girl building, and after ordering our food, I asked the cashier if anything had ever been filmed on the premises. Well, let me tell you, I just about keeled over when she informed me that Little Black Book, one of my favorite movies EVER, had filmed at the eatery way back in 2003. As the lights started to go off in my head, I realized that I was actually standing in a location that I had been trying to track down for years – the supposed New Jersey-area coffee shop where Stacy (Brittany Murphy) met Joyce (Julianne Nicholson) for the first time in the flick. I cannot tell you the countless hours I wasted looking for that darn café online, all to no avail, and here the GC and I had just unknowingly wandered right into it. I so love it when that happens!

At the time of the filming, The Novel Café was actually a Groundwork Coffee shop, but, thankfully, virtually none of the interior or exterior was altered when the place changed hands.

As you can see above, The Novel Café is an adorable little coffee shop. Thanks to its exposed brick walls, industrial-style ambiance and New Yorky-vibe, I, of course, absolutely fell in love with the place on the spot. Oh, how I am missing Manhattan right now! But I digress. I am very happy to report that, besides being a cool hangout, The Novel Café also serves up some great food. I ordered a mushroom cheeseburger, which was phenomenal, and I am not even that big a fan of hamburgers. The GC opted for the tuna sandwich, which he also loved. Because of its almost hidden, out-of-the-way location, I would have guessed that the eatery would be a big-time celebrity hotspot, but the only celeb connection that I could find online was the fact that actress Emmy Rossum and boyfriend Tyler Jacob Moore were spotted there last June.

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In Little Black Book, Stacy sets up a meeting, under false pretenses, with her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend Joyce at the former Groundwork Coffee. Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the cafe were used in the filming.

Ironically enough, musician Gavin Rossdale played the very small role of the barista who gave Stacy a hard time in that scene. In the credits, his character is listed as “Random”. LOL

Thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations, I learned that the coffee shop was also featured in the Season 1 episode of The Nine Lives of Chloe King titled “All Apologies”. The exterior appeared in the scene in which Chloe King (Skyler Samuels) randomly runs into her crush, Brian Rezza (Grey Damon).

The interior was later used in the scene in which Chloe is late meeting her friends Amy (Grace Phipps) and Paul (Ki Hong Lee) for dinner.

Also thanks to OnLocationVacations, I learned that The Novel Café was featured (very briefly) in the Season 5 episode of Criminal Minds titled “The Internet is Forever”, in the scene in which a serial killer spies on his next victim at a coffee shop.

The area just to the right of The Novel Café’s entrance was used as the coffee shop where Alistair (Robert Miano) met with Lavinia (Meadow Williams) in the ultra-odd 2011 flick Mysteria.

The Novel Café also appeared in 2003’s The Shape of Things, but unfortunately I could not find any copies of that movie online, so I was only able to make a few screen captures from its preview on YouTube.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Novel Café, the former Groundwork Coffee from Little Black Book, is located at 811 Traction Avenue in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the café’s official website here.

April 5, 2010April 6, 2010

The “Just Married” Mansion

Since we are currently knee-deep in the middle of wedding planning, a few weeks ago my fiancé and I decided to sit down and finally watch the 2003 movie Just Married for the very first time. And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it! While watching it, though, I became obsessed with finding the gargantuan, red brick, Tudor-style mansion where Sarah (aka Brittany Murphy) and her family lived in the flick, which as luck would have it, wasn’t too hard to track down. Thanks to IMDB’s Just Married filming locations page, I discovered that the mansion was located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue right here in Pasadena. So, I immediately dragged my fiancé right over there the following morning. We had a sad surprise awaiting us when we arrived at the front gates, though – the mansion was no longer there. It had completely burned to the ground in a massive fire back in October of 2005. SO SAD.

All that currently remains of the once massive mansion are its front gate, guard house, and red brick retaining wall. I can’t tell you how depressing this was to discover, being that the now-fallen house was something of a historic landmark in Pasadena. The residence which once stood on the property was originally built in 1929 for British thoroughbred horse breeder Jack Pease Atkin for $500,000. The home was designed by famed celebrity architect Paul Revere Williams, who is best known for being the very first African American member of the American Institute of Architects and for designing the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Jet-Age Theme Building, aka Encounter Restaurant, at LAX. He also built Jennie Garth and Peter Facinelli’s house, but I digress. The three-story mansion boasted 21 rooms, three stories, a 1,200 square foot gate house, over 12,000 square feet of living space, and sat on a lot measuring 3.3 acres. The house’s love affair with the movies began early on, in the 1930s, when Atkins decided to rent his property out to film crews in order to raise money to fund soup kitchens for the downtrodden in Depression-era L.A. And the filming never stopped. In 2004, the home was purchased by Michael Armand Hammer, the grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer, who also founded the famed Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture in Westwood. Hammer immediately set about completely restoring the entire property. Sadly, though, a massive fire broke out at approximately 9:20 p.m. on the night of October 5, 2005, one month before he was set to move in. Over 80 firefighters were called in from neighboring cities to fight the blaze and it took them over three hours to even contain it. Flames were still burning the following morning and ended up causing over $20 million worth of damage and completely gutting the property. According to some neighbors that I spoke with while stalking the place, rumor has it that the fire was started due to a dispute between contractors. What a complete and total shame! No charges were ever filed in the case and the 3.3 acre vacant lot is currently for sale for a whopping $10 million. You can see some great aerial views of the mansion before and after it was burned on Zillow.

Hollywood rumors about the mansion have been circling around Pasadena pretty much since the time the house was built, the two most prevalent of which being that it was owned at one time by former Beatle Paul McCartney and that it was used as Bruce Wayne’s manor in the 1960s television series Batman. Both of those rumors are completely false. And while I am not sure how the Paul McCartney story came to be, the Batman rumor is easy enough to figure out. The real Wayne Manor is located just a few houses up the road at 380 S. San Rafael Avenue and looks extremely similar in appearance to the Just Married mansion. Batman and Paul McCartney aside, though, the Atkin’s house has a Hollywood resume any actor would envy.

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In Just Married, the mansion, which was supposedly located in Beverly Hills, belonged to Sarah’s extremely wealthy father, who co-owned both the Dodgers and the Lakers in the flick. For whatever reason, though, the exterior of the house was never shown in its entirety, but the front gate area did appear quite a bit.

As did the front door/front porch . . .

. . . and the intercom outside of the main gate, which was used as a running joke throughout the movie. And, even though it wasn’t the same exact intercom which appeared in Just Married, I just had to pose for a pic with it. 😉

Thankfully, the area where Sam (aka Ashton Kutcher) played flag football with Sarah’s family is still intact and is visible through the front gate.

The mansion also stood in for the Carlton Hotel in several episodes of TV’s Dynasty.

The residence was also featured in the 1985 movie Clue, but as you can see in the above screen capture, some movie magic was definitely employed in the production.

According to some reports that I read online, while the real life driveway, retaining wall, front porch and bottom half of the mansion’s exterior were used in Clue . . .

. . . producers had a matte painting added to the top portion of the house to make it appear larger and more sinister than it actually was.

In the 1991 movie Mobsters, the mansion belonged to Arnold Rothstein (aka F. Murray Abraham), but only the interior of it was ever shown.

In 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, it belonged to Jerry Duran (aka Martin Landau) who gave part time real estate agent Sergeant Joe Gavilan (aka Harrison Ford) 72 hours to sell it.

I am fairly certain that the real inside of the home was used in the movie, as well.

According to several books, the mansion also stood in for the home of Rocky Balboa in Rocky V, but as you can see in the above screen captures, while the two properties resemble each other, they are not in fact the same. There are also reports which state that the mansion was featured in the 1979 Peter Sellers’ movie Being There, but I just re-watched that film last night and did not see it anywhere. I am guessing that it was either not in fact used in the movie or that it was used solely for interior shots.

The mansion also supposedly appeared in The Bells of St. Mary’s, Sweet Bird of Youth, Three Men and a Little Lady, True Confessions, an episode of Murder, She Wrote, and in both the movie Topper and the subsequent television series of the same name, but because I don’t own any of those productions I have not been able to verify that information.

UPDATE – Fellow blogger Petrea from the Pasadena Daily Photo website just sent me this amazing photograph that a friend of hers named Dave Thompson took of the Just Married mansion shortly after it was destroyed in the 2005 fire. Thanks, Petrea!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Just Married mansion was formerly located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena. Sadly, the area is currently just a vacant lot.

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.