The “Teen Wolf” Party House

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As I mentioned in the post I wrote back in January about the residence where Pamela Wells (aka Lorie Griffin) lived in Teen Wolf, fellow stalkers Chas, from the ItsFilmedThere website, and Owen recently embarked upon a mission to track down all of the locations used in the 1985 comedy.  One of the locales that they both wanted to find was the house where the high school party was thrown in the beginning of the flick, just before Scott Howard (aka Michael J. Fox) finds out that he is a werewolf.  Because no address number and no street signs were visible in the background of the scene, though, we really had nothing to go on for this one and Owen was fairly certain that, as the movie had been filmed well over two and a half decades ago, the chances of finding the place were slim to none.  Well, as fate would have it, a few months before Owen and Chas began their Teen Wolf hunt, I had been doing some stalking in a residential area of Eagle Rock and had gotten to talking with a homeowner who filled me in on some of the filming that had taken place in his neighborhood.  One of the places he pointed out to me was a house that he said had been used in Teen Wolf.  Because he had never seen the movie, though, he was unsure of what scene the house had appeared in or if it had, in fact, even made it into the final cut of the flick, so I did not think much of it at the time.  But when Owen sent me a screen capture of the party house and asked if I had any idea where it might be located, I recognized it immediately and sent him back the address.  There’s an old saying that goes, “Work begets work.”  Well, in this particular instance, I’d have to say that stalking begets stalking.  Winking smile 

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The Eagle Rock house only appeared in one brief scene in Teen Wolf in which Scott and his friends, Rupert “Stiles” Stilinski (aka Jerry Levine) and Lewis (aka Matt Adler), attend a high school house party.  It is while in one of the home’s closets that Scott and Lisa “Boof” Marconi (aka Susan Ursitti) kiss for the very first time.

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I am very happy to report that the property looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did back in 1985 when the movie was filmed.

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And, as you can see in these photographs, the real life interior of the property was also used in the filming.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that house and take a picture in the closet where Scott and Boof kissed! 

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From what I can tell from this photograph and this photograph, though, that closet may have been a fake that was built in the room located directly off of the kitchen.  As you can see in the above screen capture, the closet door was located next to an arched built-in bookshelf that is visible in the photographs that I linked to. 

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And as you can see in the above screen capture, the built-in bookshelf is located directly next to the kitchen, which is also visible in the photographs that I linked to.  So, from the way that it appears, I believe that producers created a faux closet on what is, in actuality, the home’s backyard patio.  Ah, the magic of Hollywood! 

You can check out Chas’ extensive Teen Wolf filming locations page by clicking here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Teen Wolf party house is located at 5223 Shearin Avenue in Eagle Rock.

All Star Lanes from “Glee”

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Another Eagle Rock-area location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I stalked a few weeks back after our venture to the nearby Eagle Rock Plaza Mall was All Star Lanes – the bowling alley where Finn Hudson (aka Cory Monteith) took Rachel Berry (aka Lea Michele) on a date in the Season 1 episode of Glee titled “The Rhodes Not Taken”.  I found this location thanks to an eagle-eyed (pun intended) anonymous fellow stalker who lives in the area.  My source recognized the bowling alley when it showed up in the episode back in September of last year and emailed me immediately afterwards to let me know.  So, thank you, anonymous source!  I don’t know who you are, but I will be forever grateful for the stalking tip!  Smile 

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The 22-lane bowling alley, which features state-of-the-art equipment and automatic scoring, was completely empty when Mike and I showed up to stalk it, which made for a prime picture-taking opportunity.  The owner finally made an appearance about ten minutes after we showed up and was nice enough to chat with us for a bit about the various filming that has taken place there in recent years.  Sadly, he didn’t have much to tell me about “The Rhodes Not Taken” episode of Glee, though, because he had never actually watched the show before it filmed on the premises and, therefore, did not pay much attention during the shoot. 

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He did tell us that part of the episode was lensed in the alley’s retro-style cocktail lounge and, even though it was closed at the time, allowed us to take a quick peek inside.  Besides bowling, All Star Lanes also features pools tables, a video arcade, a Chinese food restaurant, and, as was shown on Glee, nightly karaoke!  Love it!  In 2009, All Star Lanes was voted First Place in the “Best Bowling” category of MyFOX Los Angeles’ “Best of the LA HOTLIST” contestLA Weekly newspaper also recently dubbed the alley the “Best Glow-in-the-Dark Bowling 2010” thanks to its late-night glow-in-the-dark bowling sessions, which feature glowing pins and balls!  How incredibly cool is that?

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In “The Rhodes Not Taken” episode of Glee, Finn takes Rachel on a pretend date to All Star Lanes in the hopes that he can somehow talk her into re-joining the McKinley High Glee Club. 

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Will Schuester (aka Matthew Morrison) and April Rhodes (aka Kristin Chenoweth) also visit the bowling alley that same night and it is there that Will tells April that one of his biggest regrets in life is never having sung with her.

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April then leads Will over to the alley’s cocktail lounge where the two hop up on stage and sing a rousing karaoke rendition of the 1987 Heart song “Alone”.

You can watch their “Alone” duet by clicking above.

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The owner of All Star Lanes also informed us that the outside of the alley and its parking lot area were recently dressed to look like the Mid-Atlantic Trailways Bus Station for the Season 8 episode of NCIS titled “Broken Arrow” for the scene in which Ziva David (aka Cote de Pablo) and Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo (aka Michael Weatherly) track down Anthony DiNozzo Sr. (aka Robert Wagner).

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Apparently, the All Star Lanes parking lot is quite the popular filming location because fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, also let me know that it was featured during the opening credits of the 1992 Quentin Tarantino movie Reservoir Dogs.  In the scene, in which the bowling alley is not actually visible, Quentin and the gang walk through the parking lot toward Eagle Rock Boulevard after their famous conversation about tipping which took place at the nearby Pat & Lorraine’s Coffee Shop.  The Eagle Rock Plaza strip mall, which is located directly across the street from the alley, is the building that pictured in the above screen captures.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: All Star Lanes from “The Rhodes Not Taken” episode of Glee is located at 4459 Eagle Rock Boulevard in Eagle Rock.  Rachel and Finn bowled in Lane Nine and Will and April bowled in Lane Fifteen in the episode.  In Reservoir Dogs, Quentin and the gang walk east through the alley’s parking lot towards Eagle Rock Boulevard.  You can visit All Star Lanes’ official website here.

The “Black Sheep” House

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Another location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I stalked last Monday afternoon was the supposed Buckley, Washington-area home where Mike Donnelly (aka Chris Farley) lived in the 1996 comedy Black Sheep.  Fellow stalker Owen tracked down this location – along with pretty much every other locale which appeared in the movie – quite a few months back and the place has been on my To-Stalk list ever since.  But because I rarely make it out to the Eagle Rock area, I had yet to visit the place – nor had I ever watched Black Sheep before.  So, after Mike and I stalked the house last Monday afternoon, I finally sat down to watch the movie.  And I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised.  Even though I am a sucker for screwball comedies, for whatever reason I had not really expected to like the flick at all.  I ended up laughing all the way through it, though, especially during the scene in which Mike gets pulled over for driving seven miles per hour on the freeway.  LOL!    

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Owen found Mike Donnelly’s home thanks to one of the Black Sheep crew members who remembered that the residence was located somewhere in Eagle Rock.  Even with that bit of information, though, I’m amazed that Owen was able to track the place down, because producers had installed a fake address number of 612 for the filming.   UGH!  I so hate it when they do that!

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It takes a lot more than a simple change of address to fool us stalkers, though!  As you can see in the above screen capture, a home with a 4-digit address number was clearly visible in the background of one of the scenes filmed at the Donnelly residence.   Once Owen saw that four digit number, he knew that the Donnelly address had to be a fake.  He then immediately set about using Google Street View to search all of the blocks in Eagle Rock with four-digit addresses.  And sure enough, it wasn’t long before he found the right house.  Yay!

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In reality, the Donnelly residence, which features 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 1,782 square feet of living space, is a lot cuter and far better maintained in person than it appeared in the film.

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The house only actually appears twice in Black Sheep.  It first shows up in the scene in which Steve Dodds (aka David Spade) first goes to meet Mike Donnelly.  Later on in the movie, the house is featured briefly in the scene in which the two men discover that Governor Tracy (aka Christine Ebersole) has fixed the election.

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I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the property was also used in that particular scene.

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After watching Black Sheep earlier this week, I became obsessed with stalking the Governor’s Mansion which appeared throughout the flick.  Sadly though, fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, informed me that, while Owen had also found this property, it was torn down quite some time ago and another home built in its place, which is absolutely mind-boggling to me!  How (or WHY!) someone would tear down such a large and stately piece of property just to build a new one is absolutely beyond me.  Chas and I were discussing it yesterday, though, and he came up with a possible explanation.  He thinks there quite possibly could have been a fire at the property, which would have forced the owners to demolish whatever was left standing and start anew.  I searched for property records on the home, though, to see if I could dig up any further information, but came up completely empty-handed.  UGH!  The only thing I can say for sure is that the Governor’s Mansion from Black Sheep is no longer standing.

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There is some good news, though!  For whatever reason, the mansion is still visible via certain angles on Bing Maps.  As you can see above, when the Bing aerial view is angled south, the image shows a vacant lot.

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BUT when you angle the map east, the Governor’s Mansion magically appears. 

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AND if you then switch back to the south view once again, the front of the home will sometimes show up.  So darn cool! 

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for finding these locations!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Mike Donnelly’s house from Black Sheep is located at 5158 Highland View Avenue in Eagle Rock.  The Governor’s Mansion from the movie was formerly located at 874 West Potrero Road in Westlake Village, but has since been torn down and replaced with a new residence.

The House Where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Lived While Writing “Good Will Hunting”

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A few months back, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, was doing some research on the town of Eagle Rock when he came across a Wikipedia page which mentioned that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had lived in the Los Angeles neighborhood – in a home on Hill Drive – while writing the screenplay for their 1997 Oscar-winning movie Good Will Hunting.  I found it a bit hard to believe that Matt and Ben, two twenty-something actors trying to make it in “the biz”, would have been living in a San Gabriel Valley suburb and not in the heart of Hollywood, but as it turns out Ben had previously attended Occidental College, which is located in Eagle Rock, for a brief period of time, so he would have been familiar with the area.  According to IMDB, of his living situation at the time, Ben said, “I lived all over the place.  I lived in Hollywood, then I moved.  [Matt Damon] and I got money from School Ties and we blew it all in a couple of months.  We made $35,000 or $40,000 each and thought we were rich.  And we were shocked later on to find out how much we owed in taxes.  We were appalled: $15,000!  What?  But we rented this house on the beach in Venice and 800 people came and stayed with us and got drunk.  Then we ran out of money and had to get an apartment.  It was like everything was exciting.   So we lived in Glendale and Eagle Rock and we lived in Hollywood, West Hollywood, Venice, by the Hollywood Bowl, all over the place.  We’d get thrown out of some places or we’d have to upgrade or downgrade depending on who had money.”  So, while Mike and I were in Eagle Rock this past Monday, we decided to try to track down the exact house where they twosome had lived while writing their famous screenplay.  As it turns out, it wasn’t too hard to locate.  Using my Blackberry, I fairly quickly came across this Curbed LA Article about an Eagle Rock home for sale in which a reader had commented that it was “rumored to be the house where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck allegedly wrote Good Will Hunting”.  I then Googled the property’s address and found countless other websites which further substantiated that the twosome had once called the place home.  So, we immediately headed right on over to stalk the place.

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Come to find out, Mike and I had actually already stalked this location earlier that same day!  We had come across the Tudor/fairytale-style home while driving to another locale in Eagle Rock a few hours prior and Mike immediately noticed its odd gate and even odder architecture, so he stopped to snap some pics.  When we pulled back up to the property a few hours later after finding Matt and Ben’s former address online, we both just about died! 

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Matt and Ben’s former residence, which is known as both the ‘”Brauch House” and “Ma Castle” in architectural circles, was originally built in 1923 by the architecture team of Egasse & Brauch.  Of the design, Brauch, who built the house as his personal residence, said, “In this particular instance, Norman lines, such as were left by the descendents of the Vikings, following their peregrination of the ante-medieval period, were the main source of inspiration.”  Apparently, when it was first built, the interior of the home featured numerous wall murals depicting the Norse warriors in action.  The Brauch House is actually made up of two separate dwellings – a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 2,187-square foot main house . . .

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. . . and a detached guest cottage which is located directly behind it.  And while I can’t say with absolute certainty that Matt and Ben ever actually lived on the premises, it is my best guess that if they did, the two stars, who were struggling financially at the time, most likely lived in the guest property and not in the main house. 

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Matt had originally written Good Will Hunting as a play while in a creative writing class when he was a student at Harvard University.  After landing a role in the 1992 film Geronimo: An American Legend, Damon dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career full time.  He eventually moved in with his long-time friend Ben, at one point crashing on his couch for an extended period of time.  One fateful night, Matt showed the play to Ben and the two decided to turn it into a movie in which they would star.  They ended up selling the screenplay to Miramax a few years later for a reported $600,000 and the rest, as they say, is history!  You can see some great interior photographs of the Brauch House on the Curbed LA website here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (supposedly) lived at 2327 Hill Drive in Eagle Rock while writing the screenplay for Good Will Hunting.