Christmas movie locations – Page 2

December 31, 2013December 30, 2013

O’Hara’s Pub from “Bad Santa”

I realize that Christmas has passed, but I have one more holiday locale to write about before bidding adieu to the Yuletide season. Two Fridays ago, after reading my post on Footsies bar from Bad Santa, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, miraculously managed to track down the exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from the 2003 comedy. Being that I had been trying to find that darn bar for what seemed like eons, I could NOT have been more excited to learn the news. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it while the two of us were in Los Angeles this past weekend. (And yes, I do realize that my outfit in the above photograph is slightly ridiculous, being that the weather was a sunny 75 degrees at the time. I had been dying for a pair of red Hunter rain boots for ages, though, and finally received them from the GC this Christmas. I don’t care that I live in the desert where it never rains, I am in love with the boots and am determined to wear them as often as possible – rain or shine. So Smile with tongue out !)

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During his search for the Bad Santa bar, Owen managed to contact a couple of the flick’s crew members, one of whom told him, “The exterior front was a built and dressed empty storefront in Venice.” With that information in hand, Owen did a Google image search for “Venice California store,” as he said, “hoping that by some minor miracle I’d recognize a building.” Thankfully, fate took hold. He went on to say, “Well, a minor miracle occurred. In the fifth row of images, I saw this picture. It was brick and had that white brick trim, so I opened the page and learned it was an antique store on Abbot Kinney. I figured perhaps the building you were after, because it shared similar elements, would be nearby. I went to Google Maps, put in ‘Abbot Kinney Blvd., Los Angeles’ and — GET THIS! — I grabbed the little yellow/orange ‘street view’ man and the very first place I dropped him on Abbot Kinney was literally right in front of the bar. And the camera was even facing the right way. Talk about luck! It must be a Christmas miracle.” Not only was it a Christmas miracle, but it was one of the best gifts I received this year! Thank you, Owen!

As the crew member had mentioned, the storefront was dressed heavily for the shoot, with an “O’Hara’s Pub” neon sign added to the exterior and a fake green façade constructed over the space’s windows and doors. Even with the changes, though, the place is still very recognizable.

I accidentally took my photos from a slightly wrong angle, so the street light in front of the bar exterior appears to be a bit farther east than it did in Bad Santa. If you take a look at Google Street View, though, you can see a correctly-angled view of the space.

Today, the O’Hara’s Pub storefront houses a clothing boutique named Heist. As the crew member told Owen, the space was vacant at the time that Bad Santa was filmed in 2003.

As I mentioned in my Footsies bar post, I am also dying to locate the interior of O’Hara’s Pub. I may have found it, too, but I need to do some more research to be sure, so stay tuned!

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 fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Heist boutique, aka the exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from Bad Santa, is located at 1100 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice.

December 23, 2013December 22, 2013

Downey Studios from “Christmas with the Kranks”

Back in early 2011, while doing some research on filming locations from Christmas with the Kranks, I just about fell off my chair when I discovered – thanks to Google Street View – that the backlot residential street at Downey Studios, which served as the main neighborhood in the 2004 comedy, was visible from the road. And while I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter, for whatever reason, when the holidays rolled around that year and the following year, I somehow forgot to blog about the place. Sadly, the entire studio was leveled in late 2012, so while this post is now somewhat obsolete, I figured the site was still blog-worthy. There’s no time like the present, right?

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Before it became home to Downey Studios, the 160-acre site located on the corner of North Lakewood Boulevard and Imperial Highway was home to an aircraft manufacturing facility that produced Apollo modules and space shuttle fleets for NASA for almost 40 years. When Boeing shut the plant down in 1999, the property was purchased by the city of Downey. An 80-acre portion of it was subsequently turned into Downey Studios, one of the largest production facilities in the United States, complete with two soundstages, the biggest indoor water tank in North America, a lake the size of a football field and over 360,000 square feet of production space.

In late 2003, Christmas and the Kranks director Joe Roth and production designer Garreth Stover started scouting neighborhoods for their upcoming Chicago-set holiday-themed movie. They didn’t have much luck, though, so they did what any Hollywood executives with deep pockets would do – they built their own, in an empty portion of Downey Studios. The Coming Soon website states, “Stover actually scouted 15 neighborhoods in the Chicago area and decided on Winnetka. The problem was that shooting for 10-12 weeks in the spring, they’d have to kick families out of their homes for the Easter/Passover holiday season. They would have to defoliate all the trees to make them look like winter. The sight lines wouldn’t match. In the plot, certain neighbors would have to witness certain events, and the actual layout of the Winnetka street made that impossible. But most importantly, they could never control the snow they would have to for the film’s snowstorm climax. So, Stover built a model and pitched director Joe Roth the idea of building Hemlock Street in Los Angeles.” $5 million and 12 weeks later, Downey Studios’ residential street was born. You can read a fabulous Variety article about the construction here.

The street consisted of 16 houses, four of which were practical (meaning that the interiors could also be used for filming), and 11 facades.

When Christmas with the Kranks wrapped, the street was left intact for future productions to utilize, with Joe Roth receiving a portion of the rental revenue. Sadly though, due to runaway production and numerous health complaints, Downey Studios began to lose money and was eventually closed and then razed in 2012. A 77-acre shopping center named Tierra Luna Marketplace is currently being constructed on the vacant land.

You can see an aerial view of Downey Studios’ residential street via Google Maps below. When it was still standing, Congressman Steve Horn Way and Bellflower Boulevard provided a fabulous view of the place. It is absolutely heartbreaking to me that it is no longer there.

The street was (obviously) used extensively in Christmas with the Kranks.

Especially the two-story clapboard and stone residence where the Krank family – Luther (Tim Allen), Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Blair (Julie Gonzalo) – lived.

The Krank house was one of the street’s practical sets in which interior filming took place.

The very same residence was used four years later as Angie Anderson’s (Amber Heard) home in Pineapple Express (bottom screen shot below). A porch was added to the exterior of the dwelling for the filming, but as you can see below, the bay window, stone work and windows that flank the front door match the Krank abode (top screen capture below).

The Krank’s kitchen (top) also matches Angie’s kitchen in Pineapple Express (bottom);

as does the Krank’s study (top) and Angie’s dining room (bottom);

and the Krank’s entryway (top) and Angie’s entryway (bottom).

In 2005, one of the Downey Studios residential street homes was used as the Lawrence, Kansas-area childhood home of Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) in the pilot episode of Supernatural.

The street also popped up at the very end of the Jonas Brothers music video for their 2009 song “Paranoid.”

You can watch that video by clicking below.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The now defunct Downey Studios, from Christmas with the Kranks, was formerly located at 12214 Lakewood Boulevard in Downey.

December 20, 2013December 20, 2013

Footsies Bar from “Bad Santa”

One location that has been a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember is the gorgeous wood-paneled bar featured in the opening scene of Bad Santa. Despite having contacted several crew members and spending copious amounts of time searching for it online, I just cannot seem to find the place – and, let me tell you, it is driving me absolutely crazy! A locale from the 2003 black comedy that I was able to track down last January, though, thanks to location manager Steve Beimler, was Footsies – a different watering hole that appeared in the movie. While Beimler originally informed me that Footsies was the bar from Bad Santa’s opening scene, when I went to stalk it – with Mike, from MovieShotsLA – I knew right away that it was not the right spot. Regardless, I was excited to have a Christmas locale for my stalking backlog and figured it was most definitely blog-worthy.

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Footsies popped up towards the beginning of Bad Santa as the supposed Milwaukee-area tavern where Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and Marcus (Tony Cox) celebrated their successful robbery of a local mall. It was also where Willie told Marcus that he was hanging up his Santa hat and moving to Miami Beach. Only the interior of the bar was used in the filming.

In real life, the establishment looks very much the same as it did onscreen, despite a slight remodel.

According to Mike, who grew up in L.A., Footsies has been around forever. Oddly enough, though, I could find no information whatsoever – nothing, nada, zip! – about its history online.

I did learn that the bar appeared in two episodes of Southland, though. The exterior was used in the Season 1 episode titled “Derailed” as the watering hole that Officer Dewey Dudek (C. Thomas Howell) stumbled out of before heading to work early in the morning.

And in the Season 5 episode titled “Bleed Out,” Footsies was where Officer Ben Sherman (cutie Ben McKenzie – sigh!) and Detective Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) investigated a disturbance.

For any of my fellow stalkers who might have information or are interested in helping with the hunt, the exterior of the thorn-in-my-side Bad Santa bar is pictured below. According to a crew member that I spoke with, it is located somewhere in Santa Monica and was dressed for the filming. (I am guessing that the entire green front panel may have been faked.) The locale is a one-story brick building that sits perpendicular to a traffic light.

The interior of the thorn-in-my-side bar might also be located in Santa Monica (although no crew members can say either way with any certainty). It is such a beautiful, historic-looking site, I am shocked that no one I have spoken with has any recollection of its whereabouts.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Footsies bar, from Bad Santa, is located at 2640 North Figueroa Street in Los Angeles’ Cypress Park neighborhood.

December 19, 2013December 18, 2013

The “Four Christmases” Bar

Last December, while doing research on the Venice residence that was used as the interior of the house belonging to Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Brad (Vince Vaughn) in Four Christmases (which I blogged about here), I came across this Venice Paper article that stated that the 2008 comedy had also done some filming at a neighboring property located at 1319 Abbot Kinney Boulevard. When I Googled the address, I learned that it was the location of a spiritual gift shop/bookstore named Mystic Journey (which has since moved). Being that Four Christmases did not have a scene that took place at any sort of a store, I could not for the life of me figure out what the space had been used for in the flick. It was not until I came across these interior photographs of the building’s second floor that I figured out a fake bar had been built there for the shoot. I later confirmed my theory with the movie’s incredibly nice production designer, Shepherd Frankel, and then ran right out to stalk the place in early February.

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The 6,057-square-foot, three-story ultra-modern building was originally constructed in 2007 and was set up to accommodate two different retail/office spaces. The ground floor consists of a 2,000-square-foot storefront that has been vacant ever since Mystic Journey moved out this past April. (According to the Yo Venice website, It will soon be home to an IRO clothing store outpost.) You can see photographs of that bottom level here.

The top two floors are comprised of a 4,057-square-foot open live-work space with a full kitchen, hardwood flooring, two patios, and plenty of windows.

As you can see in the interior photographs below (which I got from the building’s former real estate listing), the place is absolutely incredible! Throw in a huge walk-in closet and it’s pretty much my ideal living space.

At the time of the filming of Four Christmases in December 2007, the building’s first floor and roof were being temporarily utilized for a Smart Car promotional event called the “Smart House.” Shepherd and his team took over the property’s second and third levels, which were vacant, and transformed them into a supposed San Francisco-area bar/art gallery.

The bar was only featured once in Four Christmases – in the opening scene, in which Kate and Brad pretended to be strangers named “Kent” and “Daphne.”

As you can see below, the place was dressed heavily for the filming and is virtually unrecognizable from the real estate listing photographs.

The third floor railing, thankfully, remains the same, though, and is what eventually tipped me off as to what the building had been used for in the movie.

The bathroom where Brad and Kate, ahem, rendezvoused in the scene was a set that Shepherd constructed inside of the building.

Although the exterior of the bar/gallery is never visible in Four Christmases, Kate and Brad are shown leaving the establishment and hopping onto a cable car. That portion of the scene was actually filmed in San Francisco (one of the few scenes that was), just outside of Café Grecco, which is located at 423 Columbus Avenue.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The fake Four Christmases bar/art gallery was created on the second and third floors of the building located at 1319 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. The spot where Kate and Brad caught a cable car outside of the bar can be found about 400 miles away at 423 Columbus Avenue in the North Beach area of San Francisco.

December 18, 2013December 17, 2013

The “Four Christmases” Church

Due to the fact that Christmas movies filmed in the L.A. area are few and far between, I typically only compile about five holiday-themed locales to blog about each year. (If I could swing an entire month of Christmas posts, believe me, I would.) This year was no different and because there are only five blogging days left until Christmas, you know what that means – my Yuletide posts start today! Yay! So here goes. Last January, while on the hunt for locations from Four Christmases, I managed to track down New Life Community Church, the Hawthorne parish that masqueraded as the United Church of Faith and Worship, Piedmont Branch, in the 2008 comedy. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over to stalk it a couple of weeks ago, after first stopping by Marilyn Monroe’s childhood home (which I blogged about here).

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While most of the interior spaces that appeared in Four Christmases were studio-built sets, I knew from the movie’s production notes that an actual religious institution in Hawthorne was used for the filming of the church scene. Because only the inside of it was shown, though, I had a tough time tracking it down. That is, until I came across production designer Shepherd Frankel’s FABULOUS website last year, on which were posted exterior photographs of the ultra-modern-looking parish where filming took place. From there I just did a Google search for modern places of worship in Hawthorne and was fairly quickly led to images of New Life Community Church.

New Life Community Church pops up towards the middle of Four Christmases (in the second Christmas vignette), in the scene in which Marilyn (Mary Steenburgen) takes her daughter Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Kate’s boyfriend, Brad (Vince Vaughn), to a bit of an unconventional mass to meet her new boyfriend, Pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam). While there – and despite Kate’s massive stage fright – Kate and Brad get roped into portraying Mary and Joseph in a reenactment of the Nativity of Jesus. According to the production notes, the church’s hi-tech style was not the original design concept. Director Seth Gordon states, “Pastor Phil was originally meant to play guitar and deliver a brief sermon, but Dwight brought such stature and swagger to it, with his arms raised and a booming voice that played to the furthest pews.” From there, the design scheme of the church was changed to include a large stage, huge video screen backdrops, colored lights, smoke, and blasting music. Frankel says, “The church was an environment that morphed considerably from its earliest conception. Pastor Phil’s sermon was originally written as something with a dilapidated smoke machine on a bare stage, but once Dwight got involved, it turned into a real rock n’ roll event with projection screens and lighting cues and neon illuminating the nativity. We did keep the smoke, though, and made it a key visual element to the set.”

Sadly, New Life Community Church was not open when we showed up to stalk it, so I was not able to get any interior photographs of the place. But you can see some on the church’s official Facebook page here.

Despite the fact that the church’s architecture is unusual to say the least, I could not find any information whatsoever about its construction or history online. The only thing I was able to discern – thanks to the Historic Aerials website – was that the structure was built sometime after 2005.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: New Life Community Church, from Four Christmases, is located at 5009 West 119th Street in Hawthorne. You can visit the church’s official website here.

December 21, 2012December 20, 2012

The “Christmas Vacation” Pool

Another Christmas-themed locale that I had long wanted to track down and stalk was Clark W. Griswold’s (Chevy Chase’s) dream pool from the 1989 classic Christmas Vacation. (Is it odd, by the way, that I can still remember exactly where I was and who I was with the first time I saw the flick back in middle school? But I digress.) Being that the pool had only popped up once in the movie and that a very small portion of it was ever shown, I had no clue whatsoever where it might be located or how to even begin searching for it. Then, back in February, while Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were visiting Warner Bros. Ranch, where the majority of Christmas Vacation was lensed, our lovely tour guide took us by the lot’s pool and I got an inkling that it might have been the one used in the movie. Our guide was unsure if that was the case, though, and when I re-watched the flick to make comparisons later that day, I noticed some differences in the two pools which led me to believe that they were not one and the same.

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Then, in October, I returned to the Ranch for another tour, this time with fellow stalkers Kim and Lavonna, and our guide informed us that Old Navy had just shot a series of Christmas Vacation-themed commercials (one of which you can watch by clicking below) on the premises and that, during the filming, Chevy Chase had mentioned that the lot’s pool had been used as Clark’s dream pool in the original movie. YAY! As someone who is always seeking further verification, though, I popped in my dad’s Christmas Vacation DVD while visiting my parents during Thanksgiving to see if any mention of the pool’s location was made in the commentary and, sure enough, director Jeremiah S. Chechik stated that the pool scene was filmed at Warner Bros. Ranch, just across from the house used as the Griswold residence in the film.

Clark’s dream pool, which, according to the fabulous Columbia Ranch website, was originally built in 1948, is located in the Park section of Warner Bros. Ranch, right next to the fountain used in the Friends opening credits and the Alan House from Pushing Daisies and Small Soldiers.

Mike took the photographs below during our February visit and, as you can see, a backdrop was installed around the southern portion of the pool at the time for a production that did not want it to be visible.

For the filming of Christmas Vacation, a significant amount of foliage was added to the premises to make it appear more like a residential backyard. And, as you can see below, while the lip of the pool was plain cement at the time of the shoot, it is now brick, and the metal ladder that was once affixed to the side of the structure has also since been removed.

But, thankfully, the legs of the diving board still look EXACTLY the same today as they did in 1989 when Christmas Vacation was filmed! LOVE IT!

You can check out a close-up photograph of those legs below.

And I, of course, just had to pose on the diving board like Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) while I was there. If only I had brought my skivvies that day! Winking smile

The Warner Bros. Ranch pool also appeared very briefly in the Season 1 episode of The Monkees titled “The Chaperone” during their “You Just May Be the One” performance.

The pool also popped up several times in various The Partridge Family episodes, including the Season 1 episode titled “Danny and the Mob” . . .

. . . and the Season 2 episode titled “Home Is Where the Heart Was”.

And while the pool was used in the Season 1 episode of Bewitched titled “And Something Makes Three”, it was never actually shown. In the episode, Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery) conjures up a pool in her backyard on a hot summer day, absolutely perplexing nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz (Alice Pearce), who can only see small glimpses of Samantha, jumping up and down on a diving board and splashing water, over their shared fence.

The Warner Bros. Ranch pool was also used significantly in the 2012 high school comedy Project X.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Christmas Vacation pool is located on the Warner Bros. Ranch lot at 411 North Hollywood Way in Burbank. Unfortunately, the Ranch is gated and not accessible to the public.

December 24, 2010December 23, 2010

The “It’s A Wonderful Life” Train Station

If there is anything I have learned over the past ten-plus years that I have lived in Southern California, it is that stalking tips often come from the most unlikely of places. Take for instance this past weekend. The Grim Cheaper’s father has long been a collector of model trains, so last Sunday afternoon the GC headed over to the Whistle Stop train store in Pasadena to do some Christmas shopping for his dad. While there he stumbled upon some vintage locomotive photographs taken by photographer Stan Kistler. Amazingly enough, one of those photographs happened to be a May 1946 image of the former Santa Fe Lamanda Park Train Station in Pasadena which at the time was dressed to appear as the Bedford Falls Train Station for the filming of It’s A Wonderful Life! And while the GC did not actually purchase the photograph for me (he didn’t earn that nickname for nothin’!), when he got home he immediately told me about it and, let me tell you, I almost fell out of my chair! I could not believe that one of the most famous Christmas movies of all time had been filmed right in my own backyard and that I had not previously known about it! Because the GC had failed to write down – or remember – exactly which station had been used in the filming (men!), I immediately ran right over to the Whistle Stop to find out. I also purchased the photograph (which is pictured above), not for myself, but for fellow stalker David in Seattle, as It’s A Wonderful Life is one of his all time favorite movies.

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Written on the back of the photograph was the information that I was seeking. The It’s A Wonderful Life train station was actually the now-defunct Santa Fe Lamanda Park Station located at the intersection of East Walnut Street and North San Gabriel Boulevard in Pasadena. Sadly, the station was torn down in 1953.

And even though the station is no longer in existence, I just had to stalk its former site. The above photograph is what the intersection of North San Gabriel Boulevard and East Walnut Street looks like circa 2010. As you can see, there is no sign of the former station anywhere, which I had expected. What I had not expected, though, was the fact that there was also no sign of the former railroad tracks. Before arriving at the intersection, I had been convinced I would be able to find some small remnant of the tracks somewhere in the vicinity.

What I did spot while I was there, though, was an elevated section of the road that looked to be just about the same size as a set of train tracks. That area is marked with the pink lines in the above photograph.

Another view of that elevated portion of land is pictured above. I am guessing that the former railroad tracks are located just beneath that area of land and that instead of actually removing the tracks when the Santa Fe Railroad Line was dismantled in the 1950s, workers simply just poured cement over them leaving what you see above.

So, if my hunch is correct and that bit of land is in fact the former home to a set of train tracks, then I am fairly certain the patch of grass pictured above is where the Lamanda Park Train Station used to be located. But again, that is just a guess.

The station was featured towards the beginning of It’s A Wonderful Life in the scene in which George Bailey (aka James Stewart) and Uncle Billy (aka Thomas Mitchell) wait to pick up Harry Bailey (aka Todd Karns), who has just returned home after graduating from college, at the Bedford Falls train station.

Pictured above is a close-up view of the vintage photograph I purchased for David. The “Bedford Falls” prop signs are denoted with the pink arrows and one of the production’s lighting rigs is denoted with a blue arrow. So incredibly cool! You can see a photograph of what the Lamanda Park station looked like back in 1936 on the Palomar Skies blog here and here.

A very MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of my fellow stalkers! I hope you all have a fabulous holiday with your loved ones. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former Lamanda Park station, aka the Bedford Falls train station from It’s A Wonderful Life, was located at the intersection of East Walnut Street and North San Gabriel Boulevard in Pasadena. My best guess as to the station’s exact location is denoted with the pink arrows in the above aerial view.