Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from “Bridesmaids”

Bill Cozbi's Auto Body Shop Bridesmaids (1 of 6)

As I mentioned in my post about the apartment building where Lillian (Maya Rudolph) lived in Bridesmaids, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I finally managed to track down all of the L.A.-area locations from the 2011 flick last week.  Or so I thought.  While scanning through the movie on Monday afternoon, making screen captures for my post about Officer Rhodes’ (Chris O’Dowd’s) house, I came across the scene that took place at Bill Cozbi’s (Richard Riehle’s) Auto Body Shop and realized that Mike and I had both somehow completely forgotten about the locale and failed to do any sort of search for it.  I immediately shot him an email asking for some help in tracking the place down and five minutes later I received a text that said, “Oh no!  You were just there!”  As it turns out, the auto body shop that stood in for Bill Cozbi’s in the flick is located in Santa Clarita, right around the corner from Officer Rhodes’ and Judy’s (Jill Clayburgh’s) houses.  UGH!  So – after smacking myself in the forehead for being such a ditz – I drove all the way back out to the SC yesterday to stalk the place.

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Fortunately, finding this location was a snap.  When Mike first received my email, he had to the foresight to do a Google search for Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop.  Because that name was obviously a fake, it did not even occur to me to search for it – I had instead been Googling Bridesmaids and auto body shop.  Thankfully though, Mike’s query led him to a page on the Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery website which identified the shop as a Bridesmaids filming location and also featured the photograph below.  Whoo hoo – I so LOVE it when location owners embrace their property’s filming history!

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  Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop is first mentioned by Officer Rhodes towards the beginning of Bridesmaids, in the scene in which he pulls Annie (Kristen Wiig) over for having broken taillights.  Rhodes tells Annie that she should go see his friend who has a body shop, “Bill Cozbi, with a z – different guy.  And don’t mention the whole Bill Cosby thing to him.  It drives him nuts.  I mean it!”  LOL  Annie ends up going to the shop at the very end of the movie, after finally deciding to start getting her life back on track.  Thankfully, as you can see below, Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen – aside from the name (and, therefore signage) change, of course.

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Bill Cozbi's Auto Body Shop Bridesmaids (6 of 6)

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I so love that a variation of one of the shop’s real life signs was used in the movie, though.

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While I was stalking the shop, I happened to meet the super-nice owner, who is aptly named Ricardo.  He was in absolute SHOCK that I had driven all the way from Pasadena just to see the location.  Ricardo spent quite a few minutes filling me in on the filming of Bridesmaids, showing me photographs from the shoot, and he was even nice enough to take the picture of me that appears at the top of this post.  He also informed me that producers had taken down a chain link fence that had originally surrounded his property during the shoot and that, after filming wrapped, he decided to replace the old fence with a nicer, more permanent metal one, as you can see below.  Personally, I like the look of the place sans fence, but that’s probably because that is how it appeared in Bridesmaids.

Bill Cozbi's Auto Body Shop Bridesmaids (5 of 6)

Mike has most of the remaining Bridesmaids filming locations posted on his site.  You can check out Annie’s Cake Baby shop here, the Brazilian restaurant here, the house where Annie went on a blind date here, and Joni’s Restaurant here.

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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.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Ricardo’s Auto Upholstery, aka Bill Cozbi’s Auto Body Shop from Bridesmaids, is located at 24347 Main Street in Santa Clarita.  You can visit the shop’s official website hereJudy’s home from the movie is located right around the corner at 23418 8th Street.  And Officer Rhodes’ residence is located directly across the street from Judy’s at 23425 8th Street.  Note – the Bridesmaids houses cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive.  To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.

Judy’s House from “Bridesmaids”

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The one location from Bridesmaids that I was most determined to track down – the one that I would not stop bugging poor Mike, from MovieShotsLA, about – was the yellow ranch-style dwelling where Annie’s (Kristen Wigg’s) mom, Judy (Jill Clayburgh, who was ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE in the role, which was, sadly, her last), lived in the 2011 flick.  Thankfully, once Mike managed to find Officer Rhodes’ (Chris O’Dowd’s) house, which I blogged about yesterday, tracking down Judy’s was a snap because, in an odd twist, the two properties are located right across the street from one another.  While I had told Mike when we first began the search that I had a hunch that the residences would most likely be found in the same vicinity, perhaps even the same town, never in a million years did I think that they would be directly across the street from each other!

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Mike had an inkling that they would be, though.  While scanning through Bridesmaids, he noticed that the fake address numbers that producers had given the properties for the filming – 8409 and 8410 – were sequential, which would, in fact, put the two structures across the street from one another.  He figured that the residence’s actual addresses had most likely just been shortened – from 28409 to 8409 and from 28410 to 8410, perhaps – for the shoot.  So, when he ended up finding the locations, we were both absolutely flabbergasted to learn that the real life numbers – 23418 and 23425 – are not actually in any sort of sequence.  Why on earth producers would give two homes that are not supposed to be located anywhere near each other random, but sequential address numbers is absolutely beyond me!

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Judy’s house shows up numerous times throughout Bridesmaids, especially towards the end of the movie when Annie moves in with her mother.

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As you can see below, the abode looked quite a bit different onscreen than it does in real life.  While I figured that the pad had most likely been remodeled in recent months, a super-nice neighbor informed us that the enclosed front porch area that appeared in Bridesmaids was actually a fake that had been built specifically for the filming.  I actually think the front porch makes the house much more appealing, which is most likely why it was added.

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You can see the home’s real life front door behind Judy, inside of the fake enclosed front porch, in the screen capture below.

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The exterior of the home is actually quite deceiving as it looks to be fairly moderate in size.  In reality, though, the property, which was originally built in 1948, boasts two bedrooms, one bath, a scant 882 square feet of living space, and a 0.21-acre plot of land.  It’s teensy!

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And while I originally thought that the residence’s actual interior was used in the filming, that does not seem to be the case.  You can check out some photographs of the home’s real life interior here.  As you can see, it looks nothing at all like Judy’s wood-paneled, 70s-style abode.

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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.

Big THANK YOU to the world famous Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Judy’s house from Bridesmaids is located at 23418 8th Street in Santa ClaritaOfficer Rhodes’ house is located directly across the street at 23425 8th Street.  Note – these properties cannot be reached via Calgrove Boulevard, as that street is blocked just east of Creekside Drive.  To gain access to the sites, you can take either Apple or Valley Street south off of Lyons Avenue to 8th Street.