The “Crossroads” Gas Station

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One  location that I was absolutely dying to stalk while visiting Palmdale last week was the supposed Texas-area gas station where Lucy Wagner (aka Miss Britney Spears) stole the keys to Ben’s (aka Anson Mount’s) Buick Skylark convertible in the 2002 movie Crossroads.  I had known from watching the flick’s DVD commentary with director Tamra Davis and writer Shonda Rhimes that the gas station scene was filmed somewhere in the Palmdale/Lancaster area, but unfortunately its exact location was not specified.  So, the night before my dad and I were set to head out that way, I got to work looking at aerial views of what I thought was every single gas station located within the Palmdale/Lancaster city limits.  Unfortunately though, I came up completely empty-handed.  So, imagine my surprise the following morning when I spotted what I was fairly certain was the Crossroads station while driving to the famed Four Aces movie set.  I just about had a heart attack, slammed on my brakes, did a U-turn in the middle of the street, and headed right on back to the station to get a closer look.

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And, as it turns out, my instincts were right!  The Super Store 6, as it is called in real life, was in fact the gas station from Crossroads!  So, I immediately headed right on inside to speak with the owner who truly could NOT have been nicer.  She told me that Britney had been very friendly and down-to-earth during the filming and that it had been a fairly low-key shoot.  The owner also informed me that her station had appeared in both ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’” music video and the final scene from the original Terminator movie.  Unfortunately though, the gas station has been completely remodeled since that time and looks quite a bit different today than it did in the early 1980’s when those productions were filmed. 

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Thankfully though, Crossroads was filmed after the remodel took place, so it still looks very much the same in person as it did onscreen.  In what turned out to be one of my very favorite scenes from the movie, Lucy, Ben, and their friends Mimi (aka Taryn Manning) and Kit (aka Zoe Saldana), stop by the station to fill up their car with gas while making their way from Louisiana to California.  After grabbing a snack in the station’s mini-mart, Lucy, Mimi, and Kit discover that Ben has fallen asleep in the backseat of his car and, even though they have been warned that they are not allowed to touch the car under any circumstances, they decide to steal his keys and drive to their next destination themselves. 

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Mimi nominates Lucy to steal the car keys from Ben’s pocket because, as she says, “Well, Kit and I voted and you lost!” (LOVE IT!)  So, Lucy snatches the keys and the girls drive off into the sunset.

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But not before snapping the above photograph of themselves which I think is just about the cutest thing ever.  I love, love, love that famous cross-eyed, tongue-out Britney face . . .  

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. . . which she later duplicated in her Super Bowl commercial for Pepsi Cola, but I digress.

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In Crossroads, Ben’s Buick is parked at the station’s southeastern-most pump, in the spot where I am standing in the above photograph.  Because there was a large truck parked right near the pump,  though, my dad had to take the picture from the opposite direction from which the camera was facing in the movie.

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In the very final scene of The Terminator, Sarah Connor (aka Linda Hamilton) stops by the Super Store 6 to fill her tank with gas and winds up having her photograph taken by a young boy.  I am fairly certain that the station was never actually colored pink and green in real life, but that producers had it painted solely for the filming of the movie and then painted it back to its original color when the production was wrapped.  Because the gas station is supposed to be located somewhere in the Mexican desert in the flick, producers also added quite a bit of set dressing, including Spanish signs, piñatas, and souvenirs, making the place look quite a bit different than it actually appeared at the time.

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ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’” music video takes place almost in its entirety at the Crossroads/Terminator gas station.
 
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In the video, the woman in red parks her car in the exact same spot that Sarah Connor parked her Jeep in The Terminator, but the camera is facing in the opposite direction in the video than it was in the movie so the view is a bit different.
 
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But, as you can see in the above screen captures, the square-shaped bars that cover the mini-mart’s windows . . .
 
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. . . and the roofline and roof shape from the “Gimme All Your Lovin’” video exactly match that which appeared in The Terminator.
 
“Gimme All Your Lovin’” Music Video at Palmdale Gas Station

You can watch the “Gimme All Your Lovin’” music video by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Crossroads Terminator Gas Station

Stalk It: The Super Store 6, aka the gas station from Crossroads, the final scene in the first Terminator movie, and ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’” music video, is located at  37202 90th Street East, at the corner of 90th Street East and Avenue S, in Palmdale.  Some maps also list the gas station as being located in the town of Littlerock.  In Crossroads, Ben’s car was parked at the pump located in the northeast corner of the station, in the area denoted with a pink “X” in the above aerial view.  At the end of The Terminator, Sarah Connor was parked in front of the station’s western-most pump, in the area denoted with a blue “X” in the above aerial view.  ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’” music video was filmed in the exact same spot that was used in The Terminator.

The “FlashForward” FBI Headquarters Building

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I was thoroughly disappointed to learn about the cancellation of the ABC television series FlashForward earlier this week, as the show was one of my favorites of the 2009 Fall Season.  What makes the cancellation most heartbreaking, though, for me at least, is the fact that because the season finale was filmed long before the series was canceled, producers did not get a chance to wrap-up the show’s central mystery.  I am afraid that unless a different network purchases FlashForward (which does happen on occasion), its fans will not be offered any sort of ending, resolution, or closure.  Not only will it remain a mystery as to what exactly caused the two minute and seventeen second worldwide blackout, but we will also never know how the lives of the main characters turn out.  UGH!  So annoying!  Anyway, a few weeks back, long before I left for Minnesota, I dragged my fiancé out to Downtown L.A. to stalk the John Ferraro building, which is used as the FBI Headquarters building each week on FlashForward.  Oddly enough, even though the building looked familiar to me when I first watched the pilot episode of the series, I couldn’t figure out exactly where I had seen it before.  Thankfully, though, fellow stalker Owen clued me into the fact that Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, was putting together a FlashForward locations page.  So, I emailed him to ask where the headquarters building was located and he wrote back immediately.  Yay!  Thank you, Gary! 

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The John Ferraro building, which was originally known as the Department of Water and Power’s General Office building, took four years to construct at a cost of $30 million and was first dedicated on June 24th, 1965.  The 17-story building, which was built entirely out of glass, steel, and concrete, was designed by architect Albert C. Martin of AC Martin Partners, an architectural firm who, according to a 1979 Los Angeles Times article, designed “more than 50 percent of all the major buildings erected in downtown Los Angeles since World War II”.  Martin, who was apparently light years ahead of his time, incorporated many “green” elements into the construction of the building, including a system which used the property’s fountains to cool the interior and its lighting to heat it.  Amazingly enough, that system is still in use today!  On November 16, 2000, the City of Los Angeles renamed the Department of Water and Power building in honor of former L.A. Councilman John Ferraro, who at the time had dedicated over 50 years of his life to public service.

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I can quite honestly say that the John Ferraro building is one of the most beautiful structures in all of L.A. – and one of my favorites!  With its 360 degree views of the Downtown Los Angeles skyline and ginormous fountain which surrounds its perimeter, the building is nothing short of majestic.  If you haven’t had the chance to stalk the place yet, I HIGHLY recommend doing so.  As was made apparent by the group of people enjoying a leisurely walk around the building, the photographers taking time-lapse pictures of the fountains, and the many couples just sitting and enjoying the unparalleled views, this is one building that can be appreciated by stalkers and non-stalkers alike.  It’s simply breathtaking!  And a place I never would have even known about had it not been for FlashForward!

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In addition to being used each week in establishing shots of the FBI Headquarters on FlashForward . . .

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. . . some filming has also taken place on location at the John Ferraro Building, including the fight scene between Detective Janis Hawk (aka Christine Woods) and Marcie Turoff (aka Amy Rosoff) in the episode titled “Queen Sacrifice” (pictured above) and the suicide scene of Agent Al Gough (aka Lee Thompson Young) in the episode titled “The Gift”.

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The parking structure of the John Ferraro Building was also used in the big chase scene between Sarah Connor (aka Linda Hamilton), Kyle Reese (aka Michael Biehn) and The Terminator (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the first Terminator movie.  There are also some reports floating around that the John Ferraro Building stood in for both New York’s 14th Precinct on the 1980’s television series Cagney & Lacey and a Tacoma police station in the 1989 movie Three Fugitives, but that information is actually incorrect. 

On a side note – For those who have yet to visit the Google website today, you really need to do so NOW!  In honor of the 30th anniversary of PacMan,Google has implanted a fully-functional mini-version of the 80’s classic arcade game on their homepage.  It is just about the coolest thing ever and I’ve already spent WAY too much time today playing it.  Love it, love it, love it!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The John Ferraro Building, aka FBI Headquarters from FlashForward, is located at 111 North Hope Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

Tad Hamilton’s House

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Another day, another Tad Hamilton  location!  Last week while searching for the Sex and the City  honeymoon house I ran across aerial views of a Malibu home that looked very familiar to me (pictured above).  It didn’t take long before I realized the house was used as Tad Hamilton’s ultra-modern white mansion in fave movie Win A Date With Tad Hamilton.  So, of course, I dragged my boyfriend right out to stalk it!  🙂

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When I first saw Win A Date back in 2004, I assumed Tad’s house was just a set.  I knew the pool area was most likely authentic, but the interiors seemed far too stylized to be real.  But it turns out that Tad’s house is actually a real home located right on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.   

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In Win A Date, both the interior and the exterior of the real home were used quite extensively.  The pool area shows up most prominently in a scene that was deleted from the actual movie, but that is featured in the DVD’s deleted scenes section.  In the scene, Paris Hilton parachutes from an airplane into Tad Hamilton’s pool in an attempt to meet the movie star (pictured above). 

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Also featured in Win A Date  is Tad’s entryway;

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the front of the home;

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the living room area;

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and the wet bar. 

I can’t even imagine living in a place like Tad’s.  It’s just so modern and so . . . what’s the word I’m looking for?  Oh, yeah, “blue”.   In real life and in the movie the home has an odd blue tint to it, as you can see in all of the screen captures pictured above.  It does look like a great place to have a party, though.  🙂  And it’s not hard to see why producers chose it as the home of the gorgeous, but somewhat shallow and morally empty movie star Tad Hamilton. You can compare the above screen captures to these real life interior photos of the house.

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This same home was also featured in the 1991 movie  Terminator 2: Judgment Day  where it was used as the residence of computer scientist Miles Dyson and his family.  It is this home that Linda Hamilton shoots up in an attempt to kill Miles towards the end of the movie.  As you can see in the above screen captures, the interior of the home has been extensively remodeled since then and looks nothing like it did when Terminator 2  was filmed there over 18 years ago. 

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In fact, at first glance the Win A Date  house and the Terminator 2  house seem like different homes altogether.   But they’re not.  Although it is slightly hard to see, the above screen captures show that the stairs leading down to the living room area, the doorway leading to the kitchen, and the stairway and landing that lead to the second level are in the exact same position.  The house has been given a major facelift, but structurally it’s the same as it was all those years ago in Terminator 2.

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I can’t really say that I recommend stalking Tad Hamilton’s house.  The above photographs show what you can see of the home from the Pacific Coast Highway – which is minimal.  Aside from a white cabana-like structure, exterior pool lights, and a cement sign with the address number on it, virtually nothing is visible from the street.  So Tad Hamilton  and Terminator 2  fans will just have to be satisfied with cyber-stalking the home instead.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Tad Hamilton’s house is located at 30065 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.