Diane Keaton filming locations

The May 2013 issue of Los Angeles magazine featured a short column about a new documentary called The Source Family which detailed the life of a World War II vet turned spiritual guru named Jim Baker (not to be confused with televangelist Jim Bakker), who became most famous for founding both The Source Family cult and a Sunset Strip vegetarian restaurant named simply The Source. The half-page article piqued my interest because, while I had long been aware of The Source (now Cabo Cantina) thanks to its appearance in the 1977 movie Annie Hall, I had never before heard about the inauspicious background of its founder. Upon reading the column, I, of course, immediately added the site to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there while in L.A. a few weeks back. The two of us also watched The Source Family this past weekend, or I should say we tried to. While interesting, the documentary was just a tad too odd for my taste and we turned it off halfway through.

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The Cincinnati-born Baker migrated to Southern California shortly after World War II, during which he earned a Silver Star, to try his hand at acting. While in La La Land, he became inspired by a health-obsessed group named the Nature Boys and a kundalini yoga guru named Yogi Bhajan. In 1957, Jim opened his first organic health food eatery, the Aware Inn. A second Aware Inn and additional establishments named the Old World Restaurant and The Discovery Inn quickly followed. And while all of the endeavors were extremely successful, Jim started to develop a heavy drug problem and his investors wound up absolving him of his duties. Hoping to turn his life around, Baker founded The Source on April 1st, 1969. For his new venture, he chose a 1946-era building at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and North Sweetzer Avenue that had previously housed a hamburger stand.

The Source, which was way ahead of its time, became an immediate hit, attracting such celebrities as Goldie Hawn, John Lennon, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Joni Mitchell, and Julie Christie.

About three years after The Source opened its doors, Jim adopted the name of “Father Yod” and began leading a small spiritual commune that he named The Source Family. The group would eventually boast about 140 members, 13 of whom became Yod’s spiritual wives. Most of the Family lived together in Hillhurst, a Los Feliz-area mansion that had once belonged to Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler. The Source, which some articles state brought in about $10,000 per day, provided the group’s income. Money was also generated thanks to the Family’s art gallery, Source Arts, and their popular psychedelic band, YaHoWa13.

In 1974, Father Yod began to fear that the apocalypse was upon him, so he sold The Source and, along with the Family, fled to Hawaii. The guru passed away shortly thereafter, on August 25th, 1975, in a hang gliding accident. The restaurant continued to operate as The Source for a couple of years, whereupon it was purchased by new owners who transformed it into an eatery called The Cajun Bistro. It was during that time that the front patio was enclosed.

Otherwise though, the restaurant still looks very much the same as it did during The Source days.

Today, the site houses Cabo Cantina. The photographs below show what was once The Source’s patio area, but is now the interior of the Mexican eatery. The brick walls seen in the background of the pictures are the former exterior walls of The Source. I absolutely LOVE that they are still visible!

Cabo Cantina is also fairly popular with the Hollywood set. Such stars as Brittany Snow, Ryan Rottman, Jessica Simpson, Cacee Cobb, and Donald Faison have all been spotted there in recent years.

In Annie Hall, The Source was where Alvy (Woody Allen) proposed to his longtime on-again/off-again girlfriend Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) over a plate of alfalfa sprouts and mashed yeast. Yum!

In the scene, the former Golden Crest Retirement Home is visible behind Alvy. That site is now the iconic Standard Hotel.

When Annie turns down Alvy’s proposal, he gets so upset that he winds up hitting three cars while trying to exit The Source’s parking lot and is later arrested.

The restaurant was also featured in the 1970 flick Alex in Wonderland.

The Source also appeared at the beginning of the 1975 flick Just the Two of Us.

The eatery also popped up in the Season 1 episode of the reality series Saddle Ranch (yeah, I’d never heard of it, either) titled “Rachel’s Hair Trigger”. In the episode, the gang goes to Cabo Cantina to grab some after-work cocktails and Rachel winds up drinking too much and causing a huge bar brawl. And while the restaurant was also apparently featured in an episode of Bad Girls Club, I am unsure of which episode.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Cabo Cantina, from “Annie Hall”, is located at 8301 West Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

When the Grim Cheaper and I first showed up to stalk Fig & Olive restaurant, from the 2012 “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V Super Bowl commercial which I blogged about last week, I became absolutely enchanted with Melrose Place, the tiny tree-lined street on which the eatery is located. Even though I had been a fan of the series Melrose Place back in the 90s, before tracking down Fig & Olive earlier this year I had no idea that the charming and idyllic little street, which runs a scant three blocks and is made up of mostly high-end boutiques, even existed. In a recent About.com Los Angeles article, author Shana Ting Lipton calls Melrose Place a “hidden gem” and she could not be more right! Because its name so closely resembles that of the neighboring, and far more well-known, Melrose Avenue, I believe Melrose Place often gets lost in the shuffle, which explains why this stalker had never before heard of it. Needless to say, I absolutely fell in love with the picturesque little thoroughfare on the spot, as did the GC.

While we were there, I happened to notice that the sidewalks on Melrose Place were extremely wide with brick ornamentation and my mind immediately flashed upon the shop where wedding coordinator Franck Eggelhoffer (Martin Short) and his assistant, Howard Weinstein (BD Wong), worked in fave movie Father of the Bride – a location that I had long been trying to track down. For some odd reason, I had remembered that the sidewalk in front of Franck’s shop was also quite wide and lined with brick (I know, I know – my mind retains the oddest of information), so I snapped a quick pic of the Melrose Place sidewalk so that I could compare the two when I returned home. Well, lo and behold, when I popped in my DVD later that night, I was able to confirm that the sidewalks were one and the same. Yay!

From that point, all I had to do was pinpoint the exact storefront where Franck worked and, being that Melrose Place is only three blocks long, the venture was an easy one. Then, last Thursday, after I had figured out the correct spot, I dragged Mike, from MovieShotsLA, right on back out there to do some stalking of it.

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Franck’s shop shows up only once in Father of the Bride, in the scene in which George Banks (Steve Martin) begrudgingly accompanies his wife, Nina (Diane Keaton), and daughter, Annie (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), to meet the hard-to-understand wedding coordinator for the first time. One of my very favorite lines in the movie is actually uttered during that scene – when George laments over the high price of the wedding cake, he says, “My first car didn’t cost $1,200!”, to which Franck responds, “Well, welcome to the ‘90s, Mr. Banks!” Love it!

In the scene, George, Nina and Annie are shown walking east on Melrose Place in front of the building numbered 8420.

And I, of course, just had to imitate them by posing for an action walking shot while I was there. Smile

I believe that the green “Antiques” awning that was visible in the background behind the trio was once attached to the building pictured above, which is located at 8422/8424 Melrose Place. Fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, came across an article about the vacant property which mentions that it did, in fact, once house an antique store. And, as fate would have it, back in 2007 the very same building was also the site of a Hanes Comfortique Event hosted by none other than Owen’s main squeeze, Jennifer Love Hewitt. Talk about synchronicity!

The building that stood in for Franck’s shop, which was also an antique store at the time of the filming, is now home to the Zero + Maria Cornejo boutique. According to the About.com Los Angeles article that I mentioned earlier, Melrose Place actually used to be known as “the antiquing street” thanks to the myriad of antique shops that were located there once upon a time.

And while the full exterior of the property was not shown in Father of the Bride, the door that Annie, George and Nina walked through still looks exactly the same today as it did back in 1991 when the movie was filmed! Love it!

The real life interior of the store was also featured in Father of the Bride. As you can see in these pictures, while that interior has since been remodeled, it is still set up in the same basic three-room configuration that it was during the filming.

Even the ribbed pillars that were visible in the background of the scene are still there, as you can see in the main photograph featured in this RackedLA post.

In the scene, George, Nina, Annie, and Franck sat on a couch in front of the store’s eastern-most window.

That window is pictured above.

It is thanks to that portion of the scene that I was able to pinpoint exactly where Franck’s shop was situated. While looking for clues, I had noticed a few distinct architectural elements on the building located across the street, which was visible through Franck’s window. From there I used Google Street View to search for those elements and, thankfully, it was not long before I found them. As you can see in the screen shot and Street View image above, the arched window (denoted with a pink arrow), horizontal lip (denoted with a yellow arrow) and rectangular-shaped cutout (denoted with a blue arrow) of the building located at 8417 Melrose Place all match up to what appeared onscreen.

Sadly, as you can see above, those elements are now covered over with large awnings and are no longer visible. Thank God for Street View!

I had also spotted a center island and a “Keep Right” sign through the window in the scene and, looking at aerial views, saw that that same island was located just east of the Zero + Maria Cornejo boutique. And while the island still exists to this day, the “Keep Right” sign has since been removed.

The Zero + Maria Cornejo employee that we spoke with while there could NOT have been nicer and was not only floored to learn that he worked in such a cinematically significant location, but also allowed Mike and me to snap some pics through the same window that Annie, Nina, George, and Franck sat in front of.

On a Father of the Bride side note – I just learned that the character of Franck Eggelhoffer was inspired by real life wedding planner Kevin Lee, who appeared on this past season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as the wedding coordinator hired by Lisa Vanderpump. You can watch a video clip of the “real Franck” by clicking above. And yes, Martin Short had the guy down to a T!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Zero + Maria Cornejo, aka Franck’s wedding planning shop from Father of the Bride, is located at 8408 Melrose Place in West Hollywood. Fig & Olive restaurant, from the 2012 “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V Super Bowl commercial, is located just down the street at 8490 Melrose Place in West Hollywood. You can visit Fig & Olive’s official website here.

Tag: Diane Keaton filming locations

Cabo Cantina from “Annie Hall”

Franck’s Wedding Coordinator Shop from “Father of the Bride”