Moondance Diner

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This morning my mom sent me a link to an awesome new  locations website called “Where It’s At – Pop Culture Is All Around You”.  And I, of course, became TOTALLY and COMPLETELY engrossed in it for a good hour and a half.   I was so engrossed in it, in fact, that I was late in meeting my dad for our usual morning Starbucks run!  Anyway, while perusing the site I happened upon this link about an oft used New York filming location named Moondance Diner.  And I almost fell out of my chair when I read that the historic restaurant had been moved clear across the country in late 2008!  Apparently, the diner was driven over 2,300 miles -on a flatbed truck, no less – all the way from the island of Manhattan to a tiny town in Wyoming named La Barge (population 493!).  At first, I thought the website was mistaken, as I had visited Moondance Diner on my 2007 trip to the Big Apple.  How in the heck could an entire restaurant be moved halfway across the country in as little as a year and a half???? 

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Apparently, the historic diner closed its Manhattan doors in July of 2007 after a real estate development company purchased the land beneath it.  The company planned to demolish the historic restaurant to make room for a high rise condominium complex, but thankfully preservationists stepped in to stop the demolition.  Moondance ended up being donated to the American Diner Museum and was subsequently purchased by Vince and Cheryl Pierce for the bargain price of only $7,500!  The Pierce’s made the incredible decision to relocate the famed diner to their hometown of La Barge, Wyoming.   And I have to say ‘Way to go, Vince and Cheryl!!!’  I am so thankful that the diner, which opened in 1929 and was originally named the Holland Tunnel Diner, is still alive and well for all of us stalkers to visit! 

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The diner has been featured in numerous productions over the years, most notably as the restaurant where Mary Jane worked in the first Spiderman  movie. 

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On Friends, Monica also worked at Moondance after being fired from her chef job during Season 3.  No Friends  filming actually took place at the diner, though.  While the restaurant’s exterior was used for some set-up shots, the interior was a set that was built on a Warner Brothers soundstage in Burbank.   The interior of Monica’s diner looks nothing like Moondance’s real life interior, though.  Nor did the real life waitresses have to wear silly outfits like Monica’s.  LOL 

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Moondance was also featured in the music video for the a-ha song “You Are The One” and in the 1985 movie After Hours.  According to the Where It’s At website, the diner was also used in an episode of my fave Sex and the City, but I am not sure which one.   So, I am putting it out there to you, dear readers – does anyone remember which episode of SATC  was filmed at Moondance Diner?

Moondance has also had its brush with celebrity.  Frank Sinatra used to be a frequent patron, as were many of the New York Yankees.  And “Rent” playwright Jonathan Larson even worked at Moondance for a time.  I can’t tell you how happy I am that this historic diner was saved from the wrecking ball!!   If I ever find myself in La Barge, Wyoming, I fully plan on stalking it!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Moondance Diner was originally located at 80 6th Avenue in New York.  It’s current location is at the corner of Main Street and 6th Avenue in La Barge, Wyoming.  You can visit Moondance’s website here.

Stalking the WB – Again!

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After spending our morning at Sony Pictures Studio, Mike from MovieShotsLA, his fiance Jen, and I headed over to Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank to take their VIP tour once again. I had heard that no two tours are ever alike at the WB and Mike and I wanted to see if that was really true. And you know what? It was! This experience was COMPLETELY different from the first time we took the tour back in September of this year. It was like seeing an entirely different studio.

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Our tour started off the same way as last time, with a movie spotlighting the many productions that have been filmed on the WB lot. Then we were whisked away to our golf cart to begin our backlot tour. This time Mike and I both asked to be taken to specific places that we didn’t get to see on our last Warner Brothers excursion. Mike was dying to stalk the New York City Street area, which was closed off during our last tour due to some filming that was taking place there. My location request was to see the stoop Carrie sat on during her visit to the WB in the SATC episode entitled “Escape From New York”. It is on this fake stoop that Carrie, after many failed attempts at smoking in L.A., lights up a cigarette only to have a security guard walk up and tell her to put it out. “But this is New York!” she says, to which he replies “No, Ma’am, it’s a set!” LOL LOVE IT!

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Our tour guide, Matthew, pointed out Carrie’s stoop on the New York City Street right as we began our tour – it is located about ten feet away from the fire escape where the upside-down kiss from the first Spiderman movie took place. For some reason the stoop didn’t look familiar to me, and “I couldn’t help but wonder” if our tour guide had made up the location to appease me and, in truth, didn’t really know where Carrie’s stoop was located. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong! As soon as I got home, Mike emailed me a screen cap of the scene with Carrie smoking on the stoop and quite obviously our tour guide had been correct. 🙂 Turns out they really do know their stuff! The fact that he knew the exact location of a scene that lasted only about 30 seconds in one brief episode of SATC that was filmed over eight years ago absolutely amazed me. I think the WB tour guides may even be better than me at this stalking stuff! 🙂

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Not only did Matthew know where Carrie’s stoop was located, but he also pointed out that the administration building where our tour began is the very same location where Carrie attended the studio meeting with Matthew McConaughey in the same SATC episode. AND the gate where she entered the studio for that meeting is the very same gate we were taken through at the beginning of our tour. 🙂 Let me tell you, Matthew really knows his stuff! 🙂

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Next our guide took us up and down New York Street, which was amazing to see! Countless movies have been filmed there, my personal favorite being the 1982 movie Annie. So I was super excited when we were shown the orphanagewhere Little Orphan Annie lived before being rescued by Daddy Warbucks (pictured above). The orphanage looks a bit different now, as it has been dressed and remodeled for different productions through the years.

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Other locations on New York Street include Ross’ apartment building from Friends,

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the salon from You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,

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the restaurant where Jack Nicholson has a heart attack in Something’s Gotta Give,

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and Jack Nicholson’s therapists office in As Good As It Gets.

New York Street was extremely cool – literally every single building there had been used in a famous television or movie production. So much so, in fact, that I can’t even remember all of them!! Next time I need to take along a notebook to write everything down. 🙂

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After New York Street we headed over to a small office building which had just been used in the filming of Without a Trace earlier that morning where it stood in for a motel. The episode was supposed to take place in Autumn, so the prop department had brought in fall leaves to place all over the ground.

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Then we were driven by one of the studio’s commissaries, which our tour guide told us had stood in for a college campus restaurant where Rory Gilmore and her father eat lunch in an episode of Gilmore Girls.

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Next we were driven by another set of offices which just recently were used as the high school in the Sarah Conner Chronicles.

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After that our tour headed to the WB lagoon/swamp area which has been used in countless, countless productions including Million Dollar Baby (where a shack next to the swamp stood in for a roadside cafe), ER (the scene where George Clooney saves a boy from drowning during a rainstorm was filmed inside the lagoon) and Fantasy Island (the lagoon ws the location where the boats bringing weekly visitors were docked).

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Next to the lagoon is a fairly new set named Warner Village, which was built after the WB’s Wild West Town was torn down. Warner Village is a small street of middle America style homes very similar to the Wisteria Lane set over at Universal Studios. Homes on this street have been used in everything from The George Lopez Show to Cold Case to this year’s An American Carol. Inside the Warner Village homes are production offices for television series and movies which are produced on the lot.

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After visiting Warner Village, we headed over to the ER hopsital set. Even though we had seen this set on our last WB tour, it still held a new experience for us. This time the entire hospital exterior was decorated for Christmas and covered in snow, which was really exciting to see. In actuality, the snow is made from the shavings of plastic water bottles, but even up close it looked extremely real.

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During this tour, we were allowed to venture inside the Emergency Room facade of ER to snap some pics. The vending machines pictured above are fake, by the way. In reality, they are high quality photographs of real vending machines pasted onto carboard stands. They were so realistic, though, that I actually had to go up and touch them before I would believe that they weren’t real. 🙂

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After the ER set, we were driven by a small park-like area where some Ghost Whisperer filming was taking place. AND we even got to see Jennifer Love Hewitt for about half a milli-second as she hopped into a waiting van. JLove was super cute – at least she seemed so in the very brief moment we saw her.

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Next we headed to a prop warehouse where everything from furniture to artwork used in various Warner Brothers productions is stored. The most famous prop piece located there? One of the Sam’s pianos from Casablanca, which is actually on loan from an art collector who stumbled upon the piece at an auction a few years back. The art collector liked the look of piano, bid on it, and apparently got it for quite a steal as the previous owner didn’t realize its cinematic significance. It wasn’t until the new buyer got home that he noticed a piece of paper with a Warner Brothers stamp and a serial number tacked to the inside of the piano. When he contacted Warner Brothers to ask about it, the serial number led them to discover the movie in which the piano had been used. And, lo and behold, it was one of the most famous films in history. 🙂

Mike, Jen and I had a blast on our second Warner Brothers Tour and it is definitely true what they say – it’s never the same tour twice. I HIGHLY recommend taking this tour – even if you have already been on it previously. : ) I can’t wait to go back myself for yet another WB adventure! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Warner Brothers Studios is located at 3400 Riverside Drive in Burbank. Tours run every 30 minutes Monday through Friday from 8:20am to 4:00pm. Advance reservations are recommended. Tickets cost $45 per person. You can learn more about the tour here .

The Sony Pictures Studio Tour

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Last month Mike, from MovieShotsLA, his fiance Jen, and I decided to go on another studio stalking adventure. This time we opted for the Sony Pictures Studio Tour in Culver City. The studio lot that is now owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment (parent company to both Columbia and TriStar Pictures) was originally built in 1915 by producer Thomas Ince for his company Triangle Pictures. During that time, Culver City was quite a powerhouse in the motion picture industry. The city even touted itself with the slogan: “Culver City – Where Hollywood Movies Are Made”. In 1918, Ince sold his studio to Samuel Goldwyn of Goldwyn Pictures Corporation. Six years later the lot became the legendary MGM Studios when Goldwyn joined forces with Louis B. Mayer and Metro Pictures forming the conglomerate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The rest, as they say, is history.

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During its heydey MGM liked to say it had “more stars than there are in the heavens”. And it was pretty much true. Such mega-stars as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Crawford all called MGM home at one time or another. Hundreds of hit movies were created within the historic studio walls, including Singin’ in the Rain, The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me In St. Louis, Ben Hur, David Coppefield and Grand Hotel. When billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, former owner of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, purchased the legendary studio in 1969, he sold off more than 150 acres of MGM’s property. In one fell swoop, the studio downsized from 183 acres to 30. 🙁 Almost all of what was sold off was the studio back lot area, including the street Gene Kelly danced on in Singin’ in the Rain. How sad!! After several subsequent ownerships, in 1991 the former MGM Studios was purchased by Sony Pictures. The good news in all of this is that Sonyspent $100 million rennovating the legendary lot and also opened the place to the public for daily tours. It is that tour that Mike, Jen and I embarked upon last month. 🙂

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The tour starts off in the lobby of the Sony Pictures Plaza building (pictured above). As we pulled up to the building, Mike pointed out that the exterior was used in the filming of the 1987 movie Adventures in Babysitting in the scene where young Sara climbs the exterior of a Chicago skyscraper while her parents unknowingly attend a cocktail party inside. Love that movie!

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After checking in with out tour guide in the lobby of the Plaza building, we were given Sony Studio Tour VIP lanyards to wear around our neck which we actually got to keep! 🙂 I was way excited about that! 🙂 Then while waiting for the tour to begin, we were encouraged to walk around the Plaza lobby, which is a movie memorabilia museum of sorts. I absolutely LOVE looking at movie props and costumes, so I was extra excited about this part of the tour. One of the exhibits included Julia Robert’s wedding dress from Steel Magnolias and one of Cameran Diaz’s costumes from the first Charlie’s Angels movie (both are pictured above).

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Other items on display in the museum include, the gameboard from Jumanji,

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Annie’s letter to Sam and Jonah’s teddy bear and backpack from Sleepless in Seattle,

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artifacts from The DaVinci Code, including the book Tom Hanks character authored,

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Will Smith’s sunglasses and the notecards which contained his speech from Hancock,

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and Julian’s toys from Big Daddy.

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After milling around the museum for a few minutes, our tour was ready to begin with a short walk across the street to the entrance of the historic studio once known as MGM. Our first stop was probably my favorite part of the tour – the lightpost which Jennifer Garner posed with for the 13 Going On 30 promotional movie posters. The lightpost and background were all digitally changed after the photo was taken, but I could not have been more excited to pose there nonetheless! In fact, Mike, Jen and I almost got separated from the rest of our tour group because we spent so much time trying to get a photo of me in the exact same pose as Jennifer Garner. LOL 🙂

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Our next stop was the Irving Thalberg Building, an administration building which was built in 1936 and named for the legendary MGM producer after his untimely death at the young age of 36. Besides now housing all of the Columbia Pictures Best Picture Oscar statuettes, the building was also recently used as the site of Peter Parker’s high school graduation in the first Spiderman movie.

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Next we headed over to Main Street, where the studio commissary, cafe, and gift shop are located. Our tour guide told us that Main Street is often used as a filming location for productions being shot on the lot, but he didn’t know in particular which movies or television shows had filmed there.

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While there, he also demonstrated how most of the doors on Main Street don’t really lead to anything but a stucco wall. LOL

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Next we headed over to the only exterior/backlot type street located on the Sony lot – an East Coast looking Street, which can stand in for New York, Washington D.C., and even Boston. Both sides of that street are pictured above. The exteriors in the top photograph above were used as Jack Nicholson’s apartment building in the movie Something’s Gotta Give. During the filming of the movie, producers were trying to film a long shot of Jack walking away from his apartment building. Because there are no sidewalks located on this backlot street, Nicholson appeared very short when walking next to the cars parked along the side of the road. To fix the problem, producers simply removed the tires on all of the parked cars and voila, Jack appeared to be a normal height. LOL 🙂

After walking down the studio’s sole backlot street, we were taken through the main part of the studio, which includes many soundstages (27 is where they filmed The Wizard of Oz), the scene shop where humongous backdrops are painstakingly painted by numerous artists all working at the same time, the “scoring studio” (a favorite of Barbra Streisand’s) where scores from movies are recorded, and an interior set inside a soundstage that was used in the filming of the new Beyonce movie Obsessed. Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures of any of these things. 🙁

All in all, the tour lasted about two hours. While the Sony Pictures Studio Tour was fun, and I was super excited that we got to keep our VIP necktags, I would say that I much prefered the Paramount Pictures Studio Tour and the Warner Brothers Tour. My favorite part of studio tours is seeing backlots where countless exteriors are filmed and unfortunately there just wasn’t enough of those to see on the Sony tour. 🙁 So while I did enjoy myself, if you are a tourist who only has time for one tour, I suggest one of the other studios.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Sony Pictures Studios is located at 10202 W. Washington Boulevard in Culver City. You can visit their website and purchase tickets here. The tour cost is $28 per person and only those 12 years of age and older are permitted.