After tracking down the hilltop abode Willy Beachum (aka cutie Ryan Gosling) called home in fave movie Fracture, which I blogged about last Tuesday, I became just a wee bit obsessed with finding the large brick mansion where Judge Gardner (aka Bob Gunton) lived in the flick.  Even though the dwelling showed up only briefly in the movie, because it was pretty much the only location I had yet to track down, I was absolutely itching to find it.  The fabulously extensive Fracture production notes stated that some filming had taken place “at a private residence in Hancock Park” and I assumed that the private residence that was referred to had to be Judge Crawford’s.  So I started searching aerial views of the area and after about 45 minutes stumbled upon the right property.  YAY!  And while out and about running some errands in Santa Monica yesterday, I took a little detour through Hancock Park so that I could stalk the place.

In Fracture, Willy’s love interest, Nikki Gardner (aka Rosamund Pike), invites him to her parent’s home on Thanksgiving to eat dinner with her family.

Later on in the flick, Willie returns to the house to ask Nikki’s father, who is a judge, to sign a court order prohibiting Ted Crawford (aka Anthony Hopkins) from pulling the plug on his comatose wife, Jennifer Crawford (aka Embeth Davidtz).

In real life, the Georgian-Revival-style mansion, which was originally built in 1914, boasts 6 bedrooms, 5 baths, 6,175 square feet of living space, and almost half an acre of land.  The house was designed by Meyer & Holler, the noted Los-Angeles-based architecture firm that was responsible for the Alex Theatre in Glendale, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Culver Studios in Culver City, and the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.  Thanks to the fabulous The Houses of Hancock Park and JCB blogs, I discovered that the property is currently owned by famed Los Angeles interior designer Suzanne Rheinstein and her husband, Fred.  The Rheinsteins purchased the dwelling over thirty years ago and immediately began an extensive redesign of the interior, a lengthy process that was reported on by several home magazines.  The residence is nothing short of GORGEOUS in person and is, ironically enough, exactly the type of spot that my mom and I refer to as a “Thanksgiving House” – an idyllic and picturesque dwelling that makes one think of coming home for the holidays.  I mean, the place could not look any more like it came out of a Folgers Coffee Christmas commercial if it tried! 

The interior of the abode, which is BEAUTIFUL, was featured prominently in Suzanne’s 2010 book At Home: A Style for Today with Things from the Past.  (The pictures featured above remain the sole and private property of Suzanne Rheinstein and photographer Pieter Estersohn.)

As you can see above, the photographs featured in Suzanne’s book match up to what appeared onscreen, which means that the real life interior of the home, along with some of the furniture, was also used in the filming.

On a side-note that falls into the obscenely-cool category – yesterday I dropped by my very favorite store, Lula Mae in Old Town Pasadena, and just about died when Marci, the adorable owner who has come to be my good friend, informed me that she had just named me the shop’s very first “Customer of the Month”.  Um, LOVE IT!  For those who have never been there, LA Weekly recently awarded Lula “Best One-Stop Gift Shopping 2011” and in their write-up said, “You know that friend of yours who always upstages the $10 bottle of wine you pull out of your purse when she shows up at parties with the most adorable, clever little trinket wrapped perfectly in a colorful vintage bag?  Well that smug b*tch probably has been shopping at Lula Mae for years now.”  LOL Couldn’t have said it better myself!  The store is so insanely cute, colorful, and fun that I find myself dropping in at least five times a week.  It has become an addiction!  Lula Mae is the first place I head whenever I am depressed, have writer’s block, or just need a good giggle!  So to be named their Customer of the Month was just about the best honor I could have received!  Thank you, Marci, Julia, Alison, and Lula Mae!  <3

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Judge Crawford’s house from Fracture is located at 435 South Windsor Boulevard in the Windsor Square section of Hancock Park.  Lula Mae is located at 100 North Fair Oaks Avenue in Old Town Pasadena.

Back in early November, a fellow stalker named Eileen posted a comment on my site challenging me to find the residence where Willy Beachum (aka cutie Ryan Gosling) lived in the 2007 thriller Fracture, which is one of my all-time favorite movies.  In an extremely ironic twist of fate, at the exact moment that my site sent me an email alerting me to Eileen’s comment, I was sitting in front of the TV watching Fracture and thinking that I should try to track down the hilltop abode!  Talk about synchronicity!  So I set right out to find the place that very night.  I am leery to admit, though, that I actually “cheated” a wee bit in locating it.

Based on the views of Downtown Los Angeles shown from Willy’s home in the flick, I figured that the property was most likely located in the Echo Park area and spent more than a few fruitless hours searching for it there.  Because this stalker is nothing if not impatient, though, after coming up completely empty-handed I decided to rent the film on Blu-ray as I had noticed a blurry street sign visible in the background of one of the scenes and hoped that I might be able to make out the name printed on it via high-definition.  Now, don’t get me wrong – I love a good hunt as much as the next stalker, but sometimes I just want to just find the place already and call it a day!  This was one of those times.  

And thankfully my hunch panned out.  As you can see in the screen capture pictured above, “Minnesota St” is clearly visible on the street sign shown in the Blu-ray version of the movie.  Yay!  Once I learned the street name, finding the exact location of the house was a snap and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place later that same week.

The exterior of Willy Beachum’s home shows up quite a few times in Fracture.

It is most notably featured in the scene in which District Attorney Joe Lobruto (aka David Strathairn) speaks with Willy, his former deputy district attorney, about returning to the D.A.’s office.  Oddly enough, while all of the other Fracture filming locations are talked about extensively in the flick’s production notes, nothing is said about Willy’s residence.  I figured there would, at the very least, be a mention of the dwelling’s spectacular views, but, for whatever reason, filmmakers remained silent on the subject.  The production notes did state, “[Fracture director Gregory] Hoblit likes to make movies that look as though they are set in Anywhere, USA so that audiences can more easily identify with the characters.  He credits production designer Paul Eads and location managers Richard Davis and Mike Fantasia with helping to make that happen.”  I found that sentiment to be a bit ironic, though, as, in this stalker’s never-to-be-humble opinion, Willy’s house in the movie could not have been more “L.A.”  With its stunning views, hilltop location, and detached garage, the place just screamed “Los Angeles” to me.  But what do I know? 

Because very few sets were built for the filming of Fracture, I would venture to guess that the actual interior of the property was also used in the flick, but, sadly, I could not find any interior photographs of the place to verify that hunch.

According to the Redfin website, the 3-bedroom, 1-bath, 1,248-square-foot home, which was originally built in 1904, sold this past February for $307,000.  And I am happy to report that it looks very much the same in person as it did in Fracture.

As do the views, which are nothing short of spectacular!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Willy Beachum’s house from Fracture is located at 3101 Minnesota Street in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles.

Back in August, I received an email from a fellow stalker named Brandon who wanted to let me know that he had tracked down the ultra-modern abode where Jacob Palmer (aka Ryan Gosling) lived in Crazy, Stupid, Love.  At the time I had yet to see the movie, but added the address to my To-Stalk list anyway and am so glad that I did because, as I have mentioned more than a few times before in recent posts, I have since become just a wee bit obsessed with the flick . . . and its cutie leading man.  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to the Hollywood Hills to stalk the place this past Saturday afternoon.

Due to a slight snafu with my GPS, though, I was unable to get to the actual house and could only snap a few pictures of it from afar.  While I always research locations to make sure that they are accessible to the public before leaving to stalk them and while Jacob’s house was visible on Google Street View, for some reason, my navigational system just could not seem to get me there.

It was not until I returned home that evening that I was able to figure out why.  As you can see in the above aerial view, Skyline Drive, where Jacob’s house is located, dead-ends at a certain point and then picks up again a short distance later.  My GPS, thinking Skyline Drive was a through-street, directed me to the wrong end of it, where the abode was nowhere to be found.

So the next morning, paper map in hand, I dragged the GC back on out to the Hollywood Hills to re-stalk the property.  As you can see above, it was POURING rain at the time, which I was none too happy about.  You see, there is nothing in this world that this stalker hates more than rain, except for maybe Kyle Richards.  But once I remembered that it was also raining in the scene in Crazy, Stupid, Love. that took place at Jacob’s house, me being there during a downpour seemed quite apropos.  The GC could not stop laughing at me posing for the above picture, though, as he said that I looked as if I was dressed for “the tundra”.  Hmph!  I happen to like my rain coat, thankyouverymuch!

In real life, Jacob’s house is known as the Skyline Residence and it was built in 2007 by Hagy Belzberg, of Belzberg Architects, to be used as his private residence.  According to this fabulous Architectural Record blog post, several previous owners had tried to build a home on the narrow plot of land on which the Skyline Residence now stands, but had not had any luck in securing permits.  Belzberg said, “I decided that instead of trying to fight the topography I would work with it and create a very narrow building that sits lightly on the land with minimal to no grading.”  The architect’s design called for a 20- by 120-foot structure made out of concrete, glass, marble, and wood.

As you can see above, the finished product is nothing short of magnificent!  As Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog, would say, it is “amazeballs”!  Love it, love it, love it!  The property is pretty much my dream abode.

From the view pictured above, which I got off of the home’s former real estate website, the dwelling is extremely reminiscent of the Stahl House, or Case Study House #22, which I blogged about way back in March of 2009.  The Skyline Residence, which according to fave website CurbedLA was sold to new owners for a cool $5.995 million on December 21, 2009, boasts 4 bedrooms, 5 baths, a 1-bedroom, 1-bath detached guest house, a 65-foot long infinity pool, a spa, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, a large, open kitchen and dining area, outdoor terraces, sweeping views, and a whopping 5,200 square feet of living space!

My favorite aspect of the house, though, has to be the outdoor movie deck, which sits atop the garage and in which films are projected onto a wall of the detached guest house.  How amazing is that????  A girl I was friends with in high school had an actual full-sized movie theatre located inside of her home and at the time I thought it was just about the coolest thing ever, but I can honestly say that this pretty much blows that right out of the water!  I mean have you ever seen anything more incredible???  You can check out some more fabulous interior and exterior photographs of the Skyline Residence on The Contemporist website here.

Jacob’s house only shows up briefly in Crazy, Stupid, Love. in one of the best scenes of the movie in which Jacob brings Hannah (aka Emma Stone) home and tries to seduce her by showing her his “big move”.  Of the property, the Crazy, Stupid, Love. production notes state, “Jacob’s home also reflected his current lifestyle.  To serve as his stunning, if stark, bachelor pad, the filmmakers chose the renowned Skyline Residence designed by internationally recognized architect Hagy Belzberg.  Located off the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills, the glass-enclosed, ultra-modern home is considered a prime example of world-class contemporary architecture.  As no one was residing in the home at the time, it was easy for [production designer William] Arnold and his team to make the few necessary adjustments.  ‘We just removed what we didn’t need, and put in a few of our own signature furnishings, leaving it somewhat austere,’ he says.  ‘Jacob’s house is a comment on the character’s own emptiness, really.  He rattles around in there; it’s very impersonal, yet very tasteful.’”

The main area of the property used in the film was the living room and it appears as if the home’s hanging Fireorb fireplace was removed for the shoot, which was a good call as I personally think the space looks much better without it.

The kitchen area also made a very brief appearance during the montage scene towards the end of the movie.

A photograph of that kitchen is pictured above.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brandon for finding this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Skyline Residence, aka Jacob’s house from Crazy, Stupid, Love., is located at 8520 Skyline Drive in the Hollywood Hills.  A great view of the property can be seen from Crest View Drive, just south of where it meets Skyline Drive.  As I mentioned previously, Skyline Drive dead-ends at a certain point and then picks up again a short distance later.  Because of that, my GPS took me to the wrong location when I inputted the address “8520 Skyline Drive”.  If you have the same problem, I would suggest inputting the intersection of Skyline Drive and Greenvalley Road into your navigational system and then following Skyline Drive west until it dead-ends.  Jacob’s residence is the last house on the east side of the street.

Back in August, on the recommendation of my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to see Crazy, Stupid, Love. and I can honestly say that it was one of the best movies I have seen all year.  In fact, I might even go so far as to say that it was one of the best movies I have seen ever!  And while I have long thought that Ryan Gosling is one of the most gifted actors of our generation, he entered a whole new level in Crazy, Stupid, Love. and blew all of his past performances right out of the water!  The guy is simply phenomenal!  And can you say “heartthrob”?!  I also absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE me some Emma Stone and she, too, was nothing short of fabulous.  If you have yet to see the movie, I cannot more highly recommend doing so!  Like now!  Stop reading this post, in fact, and go right out and rent it!  Seriously!  Anyway, because I loved the flick so much, I could absolutely NOT wait for it to come out on DVD  – which it finally did last week – so that I could start tracking down some of its locations.  And one of the first that I found, thanks to a very helpful crew member, was the residence where the Weaver family lived.  So I ran right out to stalk it – Grim Cheaper in tow, of course – just a few days later.

In Crazy, Stupid, Love., recently-separated Emily Weaver (aka Julianne Moore) and her two children, Robbie (aka Jonah Bobo) and Molly (aka Joey King), live in the two-story Anywhere, U.S.A.-style house pictured above.

The backyard was the area of the property that actually appeared most often in the flick, most notably during Cal Weaver’s (aka Steve Carell’s) late-night gardening sessions.  According to the Crazy, Stupid, Love. production notes, of the residence, production designer William Arnold said, “We were really lucky to find that house, which had this beautiful back sun porch. The owners graciously let us tear down their old glass doors and put in windows and doors that opened the house up to the backyard, lending itself to Cal’s late-night ‘visits’ to his garden. He could see almost all the way through the house, but was, tellingly, on the outside looking in.”

The backyard also appeared in my very favorite scene from the movie, in which Cal’s surprise for Emily goes a bit haywire.  I will not say anymore than that, as I do not want to spoil the scene for those who have yet to see the movie – and if that is the case, then you really should not be reading this post!  You should be out renting Crazy, Stupid, Love. like I told you to before! 

The real life interior of the house was also used in the flick.  Amazingly, according to the production notes, almost all of Crazy, Stupid, Love. was filmed on location at actual sites.  Only two sets were constructed for use in the movie – Cal’s post-separation apartment and Plus, the bar where Jacob Palmer (aka Ryan Gosling) taught Cal the finer points of seducing women – which I found shocking!

In real life, the 3-bedroom, 3-bath, 2,270-square-foot home, which was originally built in 1949 and sits on over half an acre of land, looks much the same in person as it did onscreen, except for the cement front walkway, which appears to have been swapped out for a stone one during the filming.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Weaver residence from Crazy, Stupid, Love. is located at 2002 Minoru Drive in Altadena.

Another Fracture filming location that I recently stalked – without actually realizing it – was the Standard Hotel’s Rooftop Bar in Downtown L.A.  I say “without actually realizing it” because at the time I stalked the place I had no idea it was a filming location.   I ended up there while on the way to the Los Angeles airport where I was dropping off my good friends from Switzerland who were flying home after a two week visit.  I thought it would be nice to stop for a cocktail at an L.A. hot spot before their flight took off and so I got to Googling, whereupon I found a myriad of websites all touting the amazing views that could be found at the Standard’s rooftop watering hole.  So, we made a pit stop there before heading to LAX and, as fate would have it, the place turned out to be the PERFECT spot for my friends to bid their farewells to Los Angeles. 

Downtown L.A.’s Standard Hotel opened up in May of 2002 and was the brainchild of famed hotelier Andre Balazs, the same man who gave us New York’s Mercer Hotel, the original Standard Hotel in West Hollywood, and the updated version of Hollywood’s legendary Chateau Marmont.  The twelve story building now known as the Standard was originally built in 1952 and housed the Southern California headquarters of Superior Oil.  The structure, which was designed by architect Claude Beelman, had stood vacant for over a decade when Balazs purchased it in 2000.  He left most of the original architectural details intact, including the two-story lobby area’s stainless steel time zone clock which displays the times of 15 different countries and stands at over ten feet tall, the oil mining frieze located above the entrance doors, a pair of escalators (left over from when Union Bank of California occupied the building), the black and white marble flooring, and the original S-shaped door handles.  To that he added shag carpeting, an absolutely enormous digital wall hanging, a sunken lounge area, an outdoor fire pit, a 125 foot long couch designed by Vladimir Kagan, and a foosball table station situated next to the valet desk.  It’s retro-modern decor at its finest!  The Standard’s piece de resistance, though, is its 1,220 square foot Rooftop Bar, which features astro-turf, a heated swimming pool, outdoor sofas, a dance floor, numerous topiaries, vibrating waterbeds, movies which are projected onto the walls of neighboring buildings, red plastic “pod” gazebos, Verner Panton-designed furniture, a fab menu and a full bar. 

Oh, and did I mention the view?  Yes, the bar also features an absolutely breath-taking, awe-inspiring view of Downtown Los Angeles. 

So breath-taking and awe-inspiring, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to do anything but stare out at the skyline while there.  The above photograph was taken of my friend Stephanie while at the bar and it perfectly encapsulates how one feels while visiting the place.     Of the hotel, Travel + Leisure Magazine said it is “Los Angeles like you have never seen it before.”  My sentiments exactly!

The Standard Rooftop Bar is such a unique spot that it became an almost immediate celebrity magnet.  Stars such as Owen Wilson, Charlize Theron, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Mark Wahlberg, Lara Flynn Boyle, Moby, Nicolas Cage, and Sophia Coppola have all been spotted hanging out there.  And I honestly can’t recommend stalking the place enough!  Whether you’re a native Angelino or a first-time visitor to Southern California, I can’t think of a better place from which to enjoy the City of Angels.

Due to its unique architecture and unparalleled views of the city, the Standard has become a frequent filming location.  In Fracture, the Standard’s Rooftop Bar is featured very briefly as the spot where Willy Beachum (aka Ryan Gosling) meets up with Nikki Gardner (aka Rosamund Pike) after losing his court case against Ted Crawford (aka Anthony Hopkins).

The bar was also featured in the Season 3 episode of Entourage entitled “Strange Days” as the spot where Eric Murphy (aka Kevin Connolly) meets up with Sloane’s best friend Tori (aka Malin Akerman).

In Collateral, Jamie Foxx “borrows” a stranger’s cell phone while out in front of the Standard’s main entrance.  And last, but not least, the hotel was also where Robert Downey Jr. stayed in the 2005 movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which I unfortunately don’t own a copy of.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Standard Hotel is located at 550 South Flower Street in Downtown Los Angeles.  You can visit their website here.

A few weeks ago, while doing some cyberstalking, I came across a fabulous filming locations database named Unreel Locations and I just about died when I saw a listing for what the site referred to as “The Fracture House”.  I immediately recognized the property as the ultra modern abode where Ted Crawford (aka Anthony Hopkins) lived in the 2007 flick – a location which I had long been wanting to stalk.  Unfortunately though, Unreel Locations didn’t specify where the residence was located, so I had to call in the usual suspects – aka Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and fellow stalker Owen – to help me track it down.  And as expected, it wasn’t long before Owen was emailing me back with an address!  YAY!  Owen actually began his search for the home in an unlikely place – on the IMDB Fracture filming locations page – a site which doesn’t always serve up the most accurate of information.  But there was a notation on the page stating that Fracture had been filmed in Encino, so Owen decided it was as good a starting point as any.  From there he began Googling “Encino” and “Fracture filming location” and fairly quickly stumbled upon this real estate listing which advertised a vacant piece of property located “next to the famous Sherman House featured in the movie Fracture”.  From there it was just a matter of searching the area next to the vacant lot.  And voila, the Fracture house was found!  Thank you, Owen!   

For those who have yet to see Fracture (and I highly recommend that you do – it’s a FABULOUS flick), Ted Crawford’s house is simply breathtaking in it and, in my humble opinion at least, is the real star of the film.  Both the inside . . .

. . .  and the outside of the Sherman Estate were featured extensively in the movie and several weeks were actually spent shooting on location at the home.  Of the property, Fracture director Gregory Hoblit says, “It must be 80% glass, supported by struts, but you can see from one of the house all the way to the other, all the way through it, side to side, end to end, anywhere you go.  It would be a little unnerving to live in a house like that, but fortunately it’s pretty well-hidden.”   And while Hoblit enjoyed filming at the home and all of the unique camera angles the open, almost transparent-seeming property allowed him, cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau had a different opinion.  “It was very film-unfriendly,” he says, “but it was worth every bit of effort and heartbreak and stepping on top of each other.  It was a classic, Schindler-influenced building, where the interiors and exteriors flowed from one to the other, but it was not easy.”  Openness and glass walls on a movie set are usually big no-nos, as crew members need places to hide themselves and their large camera equipment behind, so I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been to film at the Sherman Estate.  In this case, though, I think it was worth the extra effort as the house is absolutely unforgettable.  You can read a great article on the filming of Fracture here.

In reality, the 3 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 5,472 square foot Sherman Estate, which sits on 4 acres of land, was built in 2001 by architect Peter Tolkien and the Scanlon Construction Company for Jerome and Zina Sherman.  The “Zen-serenity” aura of the award-winning home was inspired by some Bali and Thailand area hotels where the couple had spent many a vacation.  The house, which was built almost entirely out of wood, concrete, and glass and in which every room opens up to the outdoors, was constructed as a one-story dwelling because as Jerome said in the September 2004 issue of Better Homes and Gardens, “The older I get the more forgetful I am.  I didn’t was to be constantly going up and down stairs to find my glasses.”   The property also includes a 1,500 foot guest house, a tennis court, a pool and hot tub, and a veritable forest of orange, oak, sycamore, and Deodar trees.  I honestly can’t say enough about this house.  It is truly a work of art! 

Sadly, though, not very much of it can be seen from the street.    It was still very cool to stalk the house nonetheless, but oh, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place in person!  You can see some great photographs of the interior of the property here and here. 

The Sherman Estate also popped up very briefly as one of the homes that Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni robbed in the 2005 movie Fun With Dick and Jane.

A big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Fracture house, aka the Sherman Estate, is located at 4411 Noeline Avenue in Encino.  You can see interior pictures of it here.