Martha Plimpton – IAMNOTASTALKER

July 19, 2010July 16, 2010

The Moonlight Mile Bar from “Beautiful Girls”

While going through my trusty stalking notebook this morning, I realized that I still have quite the backlog of Minnesota filming locations that I have yet to blog about. Not to mention the slew of Seattle locales that I haven’t even yet begun to post! I’m going to mix them all in with L.A. area locations over the next few weeks so that my fellow stalkers don’t get bored reading about the same city over and over again. But for today I thought I’d write about Minneapolis’ Nomad World Pub, the watering hole which stood in for the supposed Knight’s Ridge-area “Moonlight Mile” bar where Paul Kirkwood (aka Michael Rapaport) took Andera Womack (aka Uma Thurman) on a date in fave move Beautiful Girls. At the time, the bar was known as the 5 Corners Saloon, but ownership changed hands back in December of 2004 and so did the name. I found this location, once again, thanks to fellow stalker Owen and his highly-coveted Beautiful Girls master locations list! So, I, of course, just had to drag my parents out to stalk the place while we were in Minnesota this past May.

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In Beautiful Girls, Paul cooks up a ruse to bring “the lovely Andera” out on on a date at the Moonlight Mile bar for the sole purpose of making his ex-girlfriend Jan (aka Martha Plimpton), who hangs out there regularly, jealous. And I am very happy to report that even though ownership of the establishment has changed and over fourteen years have passed since Beautiful Girls was filmed, the interior of the Nomad still looks much the same as it did in the movie. YAY!

And, as it was portrayed in the flick, Nomad World Pub is actually a live-music venue.

Sadly though, the set of booths where Paul and Andera sat in Beautiful Girls, which used to run along the pub’s north side, have long since been removed. 🙁 I was seriously disappointed once I realized that as I had so wanted to sit in the exact spot where Michael Rapaport and Uma Thurman sat in the scene. UGH! Have I mentioned before how much I dislike change?? 😉

Even though little has been altered since Nomad World Pub took over ownership of the property, the former 5 Corners Saloon is apparently well-missed. There is even a Facebook page named “Remember the 5 Corners Saloon” that has been set up in honor of the historic former bar. So darn cool! You can see photographs of how the place used to look here.

For whatever reason, a different location entirely – a place known as Rich’s Health Shop in Stillwater, Minnesota – stood in for the Moonlight Mile’s exterior in Beautiful Girls. Sadly though, that building was torn down several years ago to make room for a new loft development, so I did not get to stalk it. And as you can see in the above photograph and screen capture, it beared little resemblance to the 5 Corners Saloon’s actual exterior.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Nomad World Pub, aka the Moonlight Mile bar from Beautiful Girls, is located at 501 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit the pub’s official website here. Rich’s Health Shop, which was used as the exterior of the Moonlight Mile bar and has since been torn down, was located at 304 Main Street North in Stillwater, Minnesota.

May 26, 2010May 26, 2010

Jan’s Duplex from “Beautiful Girls”

One of the locations that I was most excited about stalking while in Minnesota three weeks ago (and I can hardly even believe that it’s already been three weeks!) was the duplex where Jan (aka Martha Plimpton) lived in fave movie Beautiful Girls. The residence is actually located in Hopkins, a city about thirteen miles west of Minneapolis and a bit out of the way from the other Beautiful Girls locations. I found this spot, once again, thanks to Owen and his Beautiful Girls master locations list and, as far as I can tell, it is the only locale from the movie that can be found in the Hopkins area. It always strikes me as odd when one location from a particular film is not in close proximity to any of the other locations used and I often wonder about the decision-making process that led producers to choose an out-of-the-way locale. The one that most boggles my mind is the main house from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is located in Long Beach, California – a good 1,700 miles away from every single other FB location, all of which can be found in Chicago, Illinois. Were the filmmakers honestly unable to find a house in the entire state of Illinois at which to film? While that doesn’t sound very likely to me, it must have been the case, otherwise why would they journey all the way to California just to film at that one, solitary location? The whole thing doesn’t make sense, either way, but I digress. Even though Jan’s duplex was a bit out of the way, because it holds a very special place in my heart, I just had to stalk it anyway.

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Jan’s duplex shows up repeatedly throughout Beautiful Girls, in the scenes in which her incredibly jealous former boyfriend, Paul Kirkwood (aka Michael Rapaport), who works as a snow plow driver, is shown finishing off his shift each morning by burying her driveway with snow, making it so that she can’t open her garage door. Let me tell you, it is absolutely hilarious to watch the joy with which Paul does this each and every day.

And then, towards the end of the movie, something shifts in Paul and he realizes that his relationship with Jan is truly over. In one of the final scenes, he is shown early one morning, tears streaming down his face, removing all of the snow from Jan’s driveway, while she looks on from the second-story window. Even though I have seen Beautiful Girls over thirty times, watching that scene never fails to bring tears to my eyes. It’s an incredibly touching moment in the movie and was the reason I wanted to stalk Jan’s house so badly. In fact, just being there in person, standing in the duplex’s driveway and looking up at that second-story window, made me teary-eyed. God, I love that movie!

And even though there have certainly been some changes to the property since filming took place there back in 1996, Jan’s duplex is, for the most part, very recognizable. I was completely floored over the fact that, even though the paint color is now different, the decorative wood “V’s” on the front of the house were still in place.

As were the mailbox and address plaque which appeared in the movie. So darn cool! I honestly can’t recommend stalking this location enough! Being there in person brought back many fond memories of the movie for me and the residence was easily one of my favorite stalking stops in all of Minnesota.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Jan’s duplex from Beautiful Girls is located at 113-115 6th Avenue North in Hopkins, Minnesota. Jan lived in Unit 113.

May 20, 2010May 19, 2010

Bryant-Lake Bowl from “Beautiful Girls”

To appease my good friend and fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who has been on my case ALL WEEK about my constant Minnesota blogging, beginning tomorrow I will be returning to my old stomping grounds, so to speak, by writing about locales in the Los Angeles area. Unfortunately for Mike, though, there are still quite a few North Star State locations in my backlog that I’ve yet to post about. So, I guess I’ll just have to intermix them with my L.A. locales from this point forward – otherwise Mike might very well stop reading my blog! 🙂 For today, though, I thought I’d do a post about Bryant- Lake Bowl, the combination restaurant/bar/bowling alley/live stage theatre that appeared in fave movie Beautiful Girls. I found this location, of course, thanks to fellow stalker Owen and his Beautiful Girls master locations list. Thank you, Owen!

From what I have been able to gather online, Bryant-Lake Bowl, which was originally just a bowling alley, has been a Minneapolis staple for ages upon ages, although I am unsure of the exact date that it first opened. As fate would have it, though, in 1993, a woman named Kim Bartmann stopped in to bowl a few games and immediately decided she just had to buy the place. She sought out the owner and begged him to sell to her, which he eventually did, and Kim quickly set about not only transforming they alley’s former arcade room into an 85-seat live theatre venue, but also added a restaurant to the mix. Sadly, though, this was yet another restaurant that I did not get a chance to eat at while in Minnesota because, as I’ve said before, there were just far too many locations and not enough time to properly stalk them all. 🙁 Which is quite a shame, too, as apparently the place serves up some killer grub! Bryant-Lake Bowl’s menu includes such savory items as asparagus risotto, pad thai, and cooked-to-order, organic, grass-fed, free-range bison hash! Not your typical bowling alley fare, you say? Well, that’s exactly the point! Kim wanted to give her patrons a gourmet restaurant experience in the unlikeliest of places. The idea quickly caught on and Bryant-Lake Bowl is now THE place to be on Friday and Saturday nights.

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Bryant-Lake Bowl is also something of a celebrity hotspot, as well. According to one of the super nice servers I spoke with, Matt Dillon is a huge Bryant-Lake Bowl fan and dines there regularly whenever he is in town. In fact, I am fairly certain that the only reason the restaurant was chosen as a location for Beautiful Girls was because of Matt Dillon’s connection to the place. According to online reviews, actor Josh Hartnett, who grew up in nearby St. Paul, is also a frequent patron of the bowling alley.

In Beautiful Girls, Bryant-Lake Bowl stood in for the restaurant where Paul Kirkwood’s (aka Michael Rapaport’s) former girlfriend Jan (aka Martha Plimpton) worked as a waitress. In the very beginning of the movie, Paul shows up to the bowling alley in a moment of spontaneity to propose to Jan with a “champagne-colored” engagement ring, even though he knows that she has long since been dating someone else – a man whom Paul has dubbed “Victor, the Meat-Cutter”. Victor is a running joke throughout the movie due to the fact that Paul cannot comprehend how his ex-girlfriend Jan, a vegetarian, can act with such hypocrisy by dating a person who cuts meat for a living. LOL

Filming took place both inside Bryant-Lake Bowl and on the sidewalk directly in front of the restaurant’s main entrance.

The Season 4 episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives entitled “Totally Unexpected” was also filmed at Bryant-Lake Bowl, during which host Guy Fieri sampled the restaurant’s Smoked Trout and Beet Salad with Green Goddess Dressing. You can watch the episode by clicking above.

According to the waitress I spoke to, the bowling alley was also featured in the 1999 movie Grumpier Old Men, but I rented the flick last night and did not see the place anywhere. I’m guessing that either the scene that was filmed there wound up on the cutting room floor or that the waitress mistakenly mixed up movie titles when telling me about which productions had been filmed on the premises.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Bryant-Lake Bowl is located at 810 West Lake Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit the official Bryant-Lake Bowl website here.