filming in Piru – IAMNOTASTALKER

Before the Grim Cheaper and I embarked on our Heritage Valley stalking trip three weekends ago, I did some cyber-stalking of the area and came across this page on fellow stalker Gary’s Seeing Stars website which detailed the Piru United Methodist Church’s appearance in the Season 1 episode of True Blood titled “Sparks Fly Out”. Now I have never seen even one episode of the vampire series, but while I was looking through the screen captures Gary had posted on his site, I realized that the very same church had also been featured in the Season 7 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Farewell Letter”. So, because I do love me some Desperate Housewives, I immediately added the place to my Piru Stalking List and dragged the GC right on over there while we were in the area.

The Piru United Methodist Church, which was designed in the Carpenter-Gothic-style, was originally built in 1888 by David Caleb Cook, the man who founded the town of Piru. When Cook first moved to the Santa Clara Valley in 1887, after migrating from Illinois due to health reasons, he purchased a 12,000-acre plot of land, which was then known as Rancho Temescal, and began to set up a community there. In 1888, he built a railroad depot, a school, a fruit packing house, and the United Methodist Church. Cook’s father had been a Methodist minister and Cook himself had made his fortune publishing religious books, so his faith was extremely important to him. And while it does seem that the parish is still in operation today, it was sadly closed when we showed up to stalk it, so we were not able to venture inside.

I did sure love the sign out front, though. Winking smile

And, amazingly enough, as you can see in the historic photograph pictured above, despite having a different steeple, the structure still looks almost exactly the same today as it did when it was first built over 123 years ago!

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Thanks to the church’s small-town, U.S.A.-feel, it is used quite regularly for filming. In the Season 7 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Farewell Letter”, it stood in for the supposed-Las-Colinas, Texas-area parochial school where Gabrielle Solis (aka Eva Longoria) confronted her former teacher, Sister Marta (aka Jill Larson), for not believing her when she told her she was being abused as a child. While there, Gabrielle also gave a few high school students this sage piece of advice, “Now girls, if it were up to me, I’d say avoid math and science. They cause serious frown lines.” When her husband, Carlos (aka Ricardo Chavira), suggests that she is just kidding, Gabrielle says, “No! Young girls today need to know the dangers of long division.” LOL

In the Season 1 episode of True Blood titled “Sparks Fly Out”, the United Methodist Church stood in for the supposed-Bon-Temps, Louisiana-area church where Bill Compton (aka Stephen Moyer) spoke to a group of Civil War enthusiasts, including Sookie Stackhouse (aka Anna Paquin) and Sam Merlotte (aka Sam Trammell), about his life as a vampire.

The church also popped up in the 2000 comedy Space Cowboys as the supposed-Oklahoma-City-area parish where Tank Sullivan (aka James Garner) was a minister.

In the Season 2 episode of Justified titled “The Spoil”, the church was the site of the town hall meeting during which the citizens of Harlan, Kentucky, including U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (aka Timothy Olyphant), discussed the pros and cons of allowing Black Pike Coal Company to mine in their area.

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, for finding this location!

Stalk It: The Piru United Methodist Church, from the “Farewell Letter”episode of Desperate Housewives, is located at 3875 Center Street in Piru.

Another location that the Grim Cheaper and I visited this past weekend while doing some stalking in the Heritage Valley was the Union Pacific Railroad Piru Creek Bridge which stood in for the supposed Iowa-area bridge that Ali (aka Christina Aguilera) walked across during the opening scene of Burlesque. I once again found this locale thanks to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, who added the bridge to his Burlesque filming locations page just a couple of weeks ago. In an odd twist, though, when we showed up to stalk the structure we discovered that there were, in fact, two very similar-looking bridges located directly next to each other and I was unsure of which one exactly had appeared in the flick. The GC ended up taking photographs of both of them, though, and I am so incredibly grateful that he did because, as it turns out, they have each appeared on the silver screen in various productions!

The two Piru Creek bridges that we stalked are pictured above via an aerial view. Because I, unfortunately, could not find much information about either of the structures online, for the purposes of clarity I will refer to the bridge denoted with the pink arrow above as the Burlesque Bridge and the bridge denoted with the blue arrow above as the Enough bridge (it had a very brief onscreen appearance in the 2002 flick Enough which starred Jennifer Lopez, but more on that later).

The Burlesque bridge was first built in 1902 and measures 320 feet in length. The steel, through-truss structure is a Ventura County historical landmark and formerly serviced the Union Pacific Railroad.

In the opening scene of Burlesque, Ali is shown very briefly walking across the bridge while on her way to the local bus depot to purchase a train ticket to Los Angeles. You can see some photographs of Christina Aguilera filming the scene on the Zimbio website here.

Sadly, the Burlesque bridge is largely inaccessible to the public, which was highly disappointing as I was hoping to walk across it just like Ali had done in the movie.

And while it has been reported that the Burlesque bridge was the site of the train crash in the 1994 rom-com I Love Trouble, as you can see in the above screen capture, that information is incorrect. The train crash scene was actually filmed on the Sespe Creek Bridge, which you can see a photograph of here, in the neighboring town of Fillmore.

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Just south of the Burlesque bridge, on the opposite side of Center Street, is the bridge which appeared in Enough. As you can see in the above photographs, despite a difference in color and despite being wide enough for cars to drive on, it is strikingly similar in appearance to the Burlesque bridge.

And while I could find no historical information whatsoever about the structure online, I am happy to report that it is much more accessible than the Burlesque bridge. While one cannot actually walk across it, it is easily viewable from Center Street.

In the 2002 thriller Enough, the high-speed car chase between Slim Hiller (aka Jennifer Lopez) and Robbie (aka Noah Wylie) ends at the bridge when Robbie crashes his SUV into a steel beam that has fallen across the span.

At the end of the scene, Slim is shown driving off of the bridge and west onto Center Street.

Thanks to fave stalking book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, I learned that the Enough bridge was also featured as the plane crash site in 1992’s Hero. Considering how deathly afraid I am of flying, I CANNOT believe that I actually had to scan through the plane crash scene to make the above screen captures. Shudder!

The Enough bridge was also featured during the opening scene of the 1974 movie The California Kid.

Thanks to the Confederate General Lee Fan Club website, I learned that the Enough bridge was also featured in two episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard. It first appeared in the Season 1 episode of the show titled “Luke’s Love Story” during the Hazzard County Obstacle Derby scene.

It later appeared at the very end of the Season 1 episode titled “Route 7-11” as the spot located just over the Hazzard county line where Luke Duke (aka Tom Wopat) and Cooter (aka Ben Jones) dropped off their friend Dewey Stovall (aka Paul Brinegar).

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, for finding this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Piru Creek Bridges, which are depicted in the above aerial view, are both located on Center Street in Piru, above Piru Creek, about 1,000 feet east of the Downtown area. The Burlesque bridge is located on the northern side of Center Street, while the Enough bridge is located on the southern side. And while the Enough bridge is easily visible from Center Street, you can catch the best glimpses of the Burlesque bridge from Piru Canyon Road about 1000 feet east of Orchard Street.

Tag: filming in Piru

The Piru United Methodist Church

The Piru Creek Bridge from “Burlesque”