Studio Tours – IAMNOTASTALKER

February 24, 2011February 24, 2011

Paramount Studios – The Fifth Time Around

This past Tuesday, my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry and her daughter Jen and I embarked on a tour of Paramount Studios in Hollywood. While it was Kerry and Jen’s very first time visiting the historic lot, it was actually my fifth – I had previously been on three paid tours and one wedding venue tour. Yes, yes, I know – I just can’t seem to get enough of the place! Sadly though, this tour was easily my least favorite of the bunch and if it had been my first visit to the lot, I doubt I would have ever returned. Our tour guide was painfully, painfully slow and quite boring to listen to and she, sadly, made the tour boring, which is quite a feat being that the lot is so extremely fascinating and has such a vast filming history. Worst of all, while she spent the majority of our tour showing us the exterior of various soundstages and telling us what had been filmed inside of them over the years, we only got to spend about ten minutes in the New York backlot area (my favorite part of the lot) and were only shown the perimeter of it. But we still managed to have fun and, even though I feel like I know the lot like the back of my hand now and could probably host my own tours of the place Winking smile , I still learned a few new things that I thought I’d share with my fellow stalkers.

When arriving on the lot for a Paramount Studios tour, groups are always first led to the Studio Store to purchase their tickets.

I was EXTREMELY excited about stalking the Store, which also doubles as a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, because I had recognized it pop up as the Lima Bean Café in a few recent episodes of Glee! (I love that producers dubbed their faux café Lima Bean, by the way, being that the show is set in Lima, Ohio! LOL LOL LOL)

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The Studio Store first appeared in the Season 2 episode of Glee titled “The Sue Sylvester Shuffle”, in the scene in which Blaine Anderson (aka Darren Criss – who I just found out graduated from the very same high school I did!!!!), Kurt Hummel (aka Chris Colfer), Rachel Berry (aka Lea Michele), and Mercedes Jones (aka Amber Riley) discuss the recent problems with the McKinley High football team.

The store also appeared multiple times in the Season 2 Valentine’s Day-themed episode of Glee titled “Silly Love Songs”, as the regular hangout of Kurt and Blaine.

And it was featured twice in this week’s episode of the show which was titled “Blame It on the Alcohol”. It was first used as the spot where Blaine and Kurt discuss the fact that Blaine might actually have a crush on Rachel.

And it next appeared in the scene in which Rachel kisses Blaine to see if the two have any chemistry.

After purchasing our tickets, our tour guide spent over 25 minutes (not kidding!) hosting a getting-to-know-you session, which seemed just slightly excessive being that the entire tour is only scheduled to last two hours. Sad smile Because that ate up such a significant portion of our time, the rest of the tour was quite harried and rushed and we did not get to see a whole lot. We were first driven by the site of the studio’s former film vaults, which, as you can see in the above photographs, have sadly just recently been demolished.

You can see what the vaults used to look like in the above photographs.

My dad was quite obsessed with the vaults when we took our wedding venue tour of Paramount back in July of 2009 and he managed to snap the above picture of the inside of one. Even though the vaults had not been used in years, due to the fact that because they lacked air conditioning films were apt to melt while inside, it is incredibly sad to me that they are no longer standing.

We were then taken to the Lucy Park area, where we were shown a cement block that Woody Harrelson and Ted Danson had christened with their hand and footprints – a la the famous hand and footprint forecourt outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood – in 1989 while they were filming Cheers. And while Ted Danson just signed his name on the block, Woody’s inscription reads, “Woody Harrelson was here (naked)”. Apparently Ted had dared Woody to run around the lot naked one day and while he was doing so, the two happened upon a block of wet cement and decided to make their mark on it. LOL

Lucy Park is also the site of the famous tree where Grey Brady (aka Barry Williams) smoked his first cigarette in the Season 2 episode of fave show The Brady Bunch titled “Where There’s Smoke”. So I, of course, just had to get my pic taken in front of the tree. Winking smile

Our tour guide informed us that the very same tree and surrounding area were also used in the Season 2 episode of The Brady Bunch titled “A Fistful of Reasons”, in the scene in which Buddy Hinton (aka Russell Schulman) teases Cindy Brady (aka Susan Olsen) about her lisp.

The tree was also where Peter Brady (aka Christopher Knight) beat up Buddy later in that same episode, knocking out his tooth and causing him to then lisp. Ah, if only things worked out in the real world as they did in Brady world!

Lucy Park also appeared in the Season 1 episode of Community titled “The Science of Illusion”, in which Shirley Bennett (aka Yvette Nicole Brown) and Annie Edison (aka Alison Brie) chase Jeff Winger (aka Joel McHale) after catching him with frog-sized mariachi band costumes (yeah, I don’t really get it either Winking smile ).

Lucy Park was also used regularly as Jefferson High School on the television series Happy Days, although that area looks quite a bit different today than it did back in the 1970’s when the series was filmed.

You can see Greg’s tree from The Brady Bunch in the screen captures pictured above, though.

Next, we headed over to the exteriors of Stage 27 and 30, where the hit series Community is filmed. The interior and exterior of both soundstages are used in the filming of the show. As you can see above, the exterior of Stage 30 is used as the Greendale Community College Library (the sign of which is missing the letter “Y” – love it!);

while the exterior of Stage 27 stands in for the campus’ Borchert Hall.

We were then taken inside of the two soundstages to tour a few of the sets used in Community and, even though I have never seen an episode of the show, the sets were extremely cool to see. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any photographs while inside, but we were shown the Greendale Community College Library;

the Dean’s Office;

and the cafeteria/game room – which was quite possibly one of the biggest sets that I have ever seen in my entire life!

By this time we were already an hour and forty minutes into the tour and only had twenty minutes left. So we spent a brief ten minutes driving around the New York Street backlot area. While there, we were shown the practical set pictured above, which has appeared in several productions, including Spiderman 3 which I blogged about in one of my previous Paramount Studios posts.

On this tour I found out that the same spot was also the café where Indiana Jones (aka Harrison Ford) and Mutt Williams (aka Shia LaBeouf) met for the first time in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I also finally got to stalk the stoop where Naomi Clark (aka AnnaLynne McCord) and Liam Court (aka Matt Lanter –sigh!) sat during their Junior Prom in the Season 1 episode of 90210 titled “Zero Tolerance”.

The last time I embarked on the tour, I snapped a photo while sitting on what I thought was Liam and Naomi’s stoop, but as it turns out I was sitting a few stoops too far to the right. So, this time I made sure to get a pic in the right spot, which I could NOT have been more excited about! Smile For those who would also like to take a picture where Liam and Naomi sat, their stoop is located on the Lower East Side portion of New York Street and is the stoop located closest to Washington Square.

After that, we drove by Stage 15 where NCIS: Los Angeles is filmed and I was able to get some great shots of the façade used as the exterior of the NCIS headquarters.

The last stop on our tour was the Paramount Theatre, the inside of which, our guide informed us, was used as Jeff’s former law office in the Season 2 episode of Community titled “Accounting for Lawyers.

And while we did not get to view the inside of the theatre on this particular tour, I snapped the above photographs on one of my previous tours.

The interior of the theatre was also used as an opera house in the Season 7 episode of Frasier titled “Out With Dad”, although it was heavily decorated in that episode and is largely unrecognizable.

The exterior of the theatre was also used as Brooks Memorial Hospital, where Pierce Hawthorne (aka Chevy Chase) was admitted, in the Season 2 episode of Community titled “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking”.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Paramount Studios is located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Tours are given daily, Monday through Friday, at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 2 p.m. and cost $40 per person. Reservations can be made by calling (323)956-1777. Parking for the tour costs $7 per car and the tour lot is located on Bronson Avenue, directly across the street from the studio’s main entrance. I recommend booking your tour at least a week in advance, as they tend to sell out quickly. You can find out more information about the Paramount Studios Tour here.

November 4, 2010March 30, 2011

Stu’s House from “The Hangover”

One location that I have been on the lookout for for over a year now is the adorable bungalow where Stu Price (aka Ed Helms) and his girlfriend Melissa (aka Rachael Harris) lived in fave movie The Hangover. I absolutely fell in love with Stu’s home the moment I saw it in the flick and, thanks to its Craftsman-style architecture, became convinced that it was most likely located in the Pasadena area. Thankfully, I had spotted an address number of 1325 on the front of the house while watching the movie, so as soon as I got home from the theatre I immediately began searching all of the 1300 blocks in Pasadena for the property. When that failed, I moved my hunt first to South Pasadena and then to Altadena, but came up completely empty-handed on both ends. I was still absolutely convinced, though, that the property had to somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley. And oh, how wrong I was! Enter Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who decided to help me in my Hangover quest by searching for the home outside of the Pasadena city limits. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before he found it, in a place I never would have even thought to look – West Hollywood. So, a couple of weeks ago, after our tour of Paramount Studios, I took fellow stalkers Lavonna, Beth, Debbie, and Connie, who were all in town visiting from Ohio, right on over to WeHo to do some Hangover stalking.

The house was used in the very brief, but extremely funny scene in which Phil Wenneck (aka Bradley Cooper), Alan Garner (aka Zach Galifianakis), and Doug Billings (aka Justin Bartha) pick up Stu before heading to Las Vegas, where Doug’s bachelor party is being held. And I am very happy to report that the incredibly picturesque home looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen.

As you can see in the above screen captures and interior images of the property (which I snagged off of a real estate listing that I found online yesterday), the actual interior of the home was also used in the filming of The Hangover. The areas used include the kitchen;

one of the bathrooms;

the dining room;

and the living room – the fireplace of which you can just barely see in the above screen capture.

The window where Stu and Melissa sat in the scene is located just to the left of the abode’s front door. Unfortunately, though, the real estate website did not include an interior photograph of that exact spot. Nor did the listing make any reference to the home’s cinematic history, which is a total abomination in my eyes! I mean, come on, did the real estate agent honestly not realize that mentioning the property’s appearance in one of the biggest movies of 2009 would add value to the home? Sigh! Why do I have to think of everything? 😉

The 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1,746-square foot dwelling, which was originally built in 1919, was sold this past August for a cool $1.2 million. Interestingly enough, while searching property records for the house yesterday, I came across information that former Beverly Hills, 90210-actress Lindsay Price and her then-husband, producer Shawn Pillar, owned the home from October 2003 through March 2006. So incredibly cool!

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On a Hangover side note – Before meeting up with me a couple of weeks ago, fellow stalkers Lavonna, Debbie, Connie, and Beth went on a tour of Warner Brothers Studios, where The Hangover 2 is currently being filmed, and while there they spotted both Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis. The actors were being shuttled around on a golf cart at the time and while Zach tried to shield his face from view, Bradley Cooper was nice enough to turn around and wave to the girls. So cute! 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and to fellow stalkers Lavonna and Beth for loaning me the above photographs of Zach and Bradley to publish in this post! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Stu Price’s house from The Hangover is located at 1325 North Ogden Drive in Hollywood. You can check out the home’s real estate listing here.

November 20, 2008February 13, 2009

Stalking the WB – Again!

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.

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!

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! 🙂

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! 🙂

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.

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

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

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

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. 🙂

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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. 🙂

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.

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 .

November 19, 2008February 13, 2009

The Sony Pictures Studio Tour

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.

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. 🙂

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!

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).

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

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

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

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

and Julian’s toys from Big Daddy.

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 🙂

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.

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.

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

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.

March 27, 2008February 13, 2009

Warner Brothers Ranch, Here I Come!

I am literally pinching myself right now because tonight I got to go on a private tour of the Warner Brothers Ranch Lot in Burbank. The Ranch is normally closed to the public, but my friend works on the lot and agreed to take me on my very own private stalking tour. I was in heaven! Even though I have been on the lot once before for an acting class, at the time I had no idea what exterior sets were located on the lot and I didn’t really take advantage of being there. The only thing I stalked on that day was the Friends fountain. Today, we parked right in front of the fountain and it was actually turned on!! I was literally ready to jump in and start dancing, but my friend got a little worried that he might get fired over something like that. 🙂

Advisory 🙂 – cameras are taboo at the Ranch and we had to take pictures on the down low while we were walking around, so the pictures aren’t the greatest.

Before the tour, my friend told me that would try to find his map of the Ranch which listed all of the productions filmed on the lot and which exterior sets they used for filming. I told him that Lindsay needed no map, and that most likely I could show him a thing or two that wasn’t on that map! 🙂 Our first stop was the Life Goes On house – which I was SO excited to see. I grew up watching Life Goes On and wanted nothing more than to be Tyler Benchfield’s girlfriend! LOL I absolutely could not WAIT to see the Thatcher family house.

I was shocked that the house looked almost exactly as it did back in the Life Goes On days. Sometimes the Ranch changes the facades of the set homes, making them almost unrecognizable. But that was not the case with this house – I recognized it immediately. This house was also featured as Gladys and Abner Kravitz’ home on Bewitched.

The next house I was DYING to see was Clark W. Griswold’s home from one of my all time favorite movies National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Even though the facade of this house has changed considerably since filming, I could still picture Clark in the front yard yelling expletives at his plastic Santa Claus and eight tiny reindeer when his Christmas lights refused to turn on. What I wouldn’t give to have been able to see this house all lit up with Clark’s Christmas lights during the filming of Christmas Vacation!! 🙁

Next door to the Griswold’s house is Danny Glover’s house from the Leathal Weapon movies – and no, it was not blown up during the filming of Leathal Weapon 4. A replica house was built and blown up for the filming of the movie, and Roger Murtaugh’s house is still standing strong on the Ranch. This house was also used in American Beauty and as Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ house in Christmas Vacation. “Why is the carpet all wet, Todd?” “I don’t know, Margo!” The exterior of this house has also changed considerably since being used in both Lethal Weapon and Christmas Vacation.

The Bewitched house is also located on the Ranch. I was surprised that virtually none of its exterior has been changed since the Bewitched days. It looks exactly as it did back when Samantha and Darren lived there. It was surreal how much it looked like the Santa Monica home that the studio set was modeled after.

Lastly we hit up the Pushing Daisies house. This house was also used in the movies Small Soldiers and Pleasantville. The facade of this home was vastly changed for each production it has “starred” in. For a more in-depth view of the lot, check out Adam R. Jones’ website, entitled “1164”.

Stalk It: The Warner Brothers Ranch Lot is located at 411 N. Hollywood Way in Burbank. While it does not offer tours at this time, you can take the “VIP Studio Tour” at Warner Brothers Studio, which is just down the road at 3400 W. Riverside Drive. I’ve heard the VIP tours are excellent and tickets can be purchased for $45 per person.