The Goldbergs – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 6, 2017October 6, 2017

The Haunted House from “The Goldbergs”

There’s literally nothing better than being scared at Halloween! In my mind, at least. Terrifying movies? Yes! Spooky decorations? Yes! Haunted houses? Yaaaas! Especially haunted houses! Too bad Adam F. Goldberg (Sean Giambrone) doesn’t share my sentiment. In the Season 3 episode of The Goldbergs titled “Couples Costume,” the teen only begrudgingly visits a haunted house on All Hallows’ Eve in the hopes of impressing his girlfriend, Dana Caldwell (Natalie Alyn Lind), after his sister and brother, Erica (Hayley Orrantia) and Barry (Troy Gentile), tell him he is too old for trick-or-treating. Figuring the pad utilized in the show would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood theme, I, of course, became obsessed with tracking it down immediately upon seeing it. Fortunately, it was a snap to find.

[ad]

While watching “Couples Costume,” I noticed that an address number of 2822 was visible just to the right of the haunted house’s front door. I had a hunch the dwelling was likely located in the same Cheviot Hills neighborhood as the property that portrays that Goldberg family’s home on the series (you can read about that site here), so I started scouring Google Street View for residences in the area numbered 2822. Sure enough, I found the place just a few blocks away at 2822 Forrester Drive.

In the episode, things don’t go well for poor Adam while at the haunted house, which is said to be taking place at a local fraternity on the Villanova University campus in Pennsylvania. Upon entering the tricked-out residence, he gets seriously spooked and uses Dana as a human shield, causing her to drop the promise ring he gave her. Adam then ditches Dana and runs for his life. Later in the evening, he winds up having to return to the haunted house with his sister, brother and mother, Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey), and face his fears in order to retrieve the ring.

The Tudor-style home that portrayed the haunted house in the episode looks much the same in person as it did onscreen, minus a few spooky decorations and the Greek Omega Theta Rho lettering over the front door.

In real life, the stately 2-story residence, which was built in 1926, boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,241 square feet, and a 0.20-acre lot.

I believe the actual inside of the home was also utilized in “Couples Costume,” but, unfortunately, I could not find any interior photos to verify that hunch.

Interestingly, the property is a virtual twin to the Baxter home from the television series Last Man Standing. I blogged about that pad, which is located at 611 Lorraine Boulevard in Windsor Square, earlier this year. You can read that post here.

In an odd twist, a different residence was used as the Omega Theta Rho fraternity house in the Season 1 episode of The Goldbergs titled “For Your Own Good.” Even more odd, that home is located at 2826 Forrester, right next door to the property that portrayed the haunted house!

You can see that home on the right-hand side of my images below.

Odder still – 2826 Forrester was even utilized in “Couples Costume!” It is outside of the dwelling that Beverly tries to take candy from local trick-or-treaters in order to find the “deadly razor candy bar” she made to teach Adam a lesson about safety that she thinks was accidentally given out. I have no idea why producers pulled the ol’ switcheroo like that, especially since, being that it appeared in the episode, 2826 Forrester was obviously available for filming. My only guess is that Tudor-style properties lend themselves to haunted houses better than more traditional homes, so location managers must have looked for one to appear in the episode and wound up finding a suitable candidate right next door to the original fraternity house.

The residence across the street at 2815 Forrrester was also utilized in “Couples Costume” as the spot where Adam and Dana went trick-or-treating after eventually making up.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The haunted house from the “Couples Costume” episode of The Goldbergs is located at 2822 Forrester Drive in Cheviot Hills. The residence that portrayed the Omega Theta Rho fraternity house in the “For Your Own Good” episode can be found next door at 2826 Forrester. The property that is used as the Goldberg family’s residence on the series is just a few blocks away at 3071 Earlmar Drive. And Dana’s home from the show is around the corner at 2885 Club Drive.

September 25, 2017November 2, 2017

Dana’s House from “The Goldbergs”

Brenda and Dylan. Winnie and Kevin. Rachel and Joey. Adam and Dana. All TV couples who didn’t wind up together, but who, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, really should have. Though, since The Goldbergs is still on the air, I guess there’s still hope for the latter two. I mean, any romance that starts out with an ‘80s movie re-creation has to end well, right? It would just be sacrilege otherwise! For those who don’t watch the popular ABC series, when tween Adam Goldberg (Sam Giambrone) falls in love for the first time – with Dana Caldwell (Natalie Alyn Lind), the 13-year-old girl down the street who “smells like Fruity Pebbles” – he professes his feelings by standing in her front yard, boom box held above his head, serenading her with Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” a la Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) in Say Anything . . . The moment, of course, pulled at this 80s-loving-stalker’s heart strings. So when my friend/fellow stalker Michael (you know him from his many guest posts) recently informed me of the location of Dana’s house, I ran right out to see it in person.

[ad]

The Goldbergs’ Say Anything . . . homage occurs in Season 1’s “The Ring.” In the episode, Adam realizes he is in love with Dana and seeks advice from his lady-killer grandpa, Pops Solomon (George Segal), who urges him, “You gotta go for it! Make a big gesture, something that’ll show her exactly how you feel.” Things don’t go quite as planned, though, for poor Adam.

Upon hitting play on his boom box, he accidentally wakes up Dana’s brother and father before suffering the ultimate humiliation of getting caught in the sprinklers. Despite the fact that, as Adam later laments to Pops, “I serenaded her brother, I dropped my boom box, and I soaked my Lloyd Dobler coat,” the grand gesture is not lost on Dana and, in the end, Adam gets the girl.

While watching the scene, Michael noticed that a small park-like area was visible across the street from Dana’s house. Figuring the dwelling was most likely located in the same vicinity as the Cheviot Hills residence that portrays the Goldberg family home on the series, he started poking around the neighborhood via aerial views looking for a tiny landscaped space situated across from residences and it wasn’t long before he found the right spot. As it turns out, Dana’s pad is just around the corner from Adam’s!

As Michael also noticed (I totally missed it!), set dressers covered over a portion of the home’s garage with foliage for the shoot, as well as most of the driveway with fake grass.

In actuality, the property’s driveway takes up almost the entire northern end of the front yard, as you can see below.

In real life, Dana’s house boasts 3 bedrooms, 4 baths, and 2,934 square feet.

The picturesque pad, which was originally built in 1948 and features a 0.28-acre lot, is massive in person – much larger than it appeared onscreen.

The Caldwell residence popped up a few times on The Goldbergs, including in the Season 1 episode titled “You’re Under Foot” . . .

. . . and in Season 2’s “Cowboy Country.”

Inexplicably, a different home was used as Dana’s in the Season 2 finale titled “Goldbergs Feel Hard.” Though little other than the front door of the property was shown, it is definitely a different locale, as you can see below.

Dana’s residence has actually been featured in several productions over the years.

Thanks to my friend Chas, of the It’s Filmed There website, I learned that in the Season 2 episode of Joan of Arcadia titled “Game Theory,” which aired in 2005, the pad belonged to a different Dana – Dana Tuchman (Kevin Rahm), Joan Girardi’s (Amber Tamblyn) teacher.

In the Season 1 episode of Bones titled “The Woman in the Car,” which aired in 2006, the property portrayed the supposed Washington, D.C.-area home of Carl Decker (Zeljko Ivanek).

Thanks to filminglocs, I discovered that the Caldwell residence was also featured in the Season 7 episode of House titled “Carrot or Stick,” which aired in 2011, in the scene in which Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) tries to figure out who took a suggestive photo of him.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to my friend Michael (you can read his many guest posts here) for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Dana’s house from The Goldbergs is located at 2885 Club Drive in Cheviot Hills. The property that portrays the Goldberg family’s residence on the series can be found just around the corner at 3071 Earlmar Drive.

February 24, 2017February 24, 2017

My Day on the Set of “The Goldbergs”

I debated titling this post “How The Goldbergs altered my Thanksgiving.” The Grim Cheaper and I were introduced to the ABC series, which is like an ‘80s-set The Wonder Years, last fall and quickly became hooked. We plowed through all of the episodes in just a few weeks and found each to be poignant, nostalgic and moving. One in particular affected us more than others, though. While watching Season 2’s “A Goldberg Thanksgiving,” in which matriarch Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) attempts to impart her holiday meal traditions onto teen daughter Erica (Hayley Orrantia), the GC turned to me and said, “OH MY GOD! Your mother never did that with you, did she? That’s why I am responsible for Thanksgiving dinner every year!” He was right. For whatever reason (most likely because we often traveled during my childhood Thanksgivings), my mother never taught me how to cook a turkey with all of the fixings. The GC’s mom did, though. Much like Beverly, she woke the GC and his brother up early each Thanksgiving morning and had them help with the preparations, teaching them her family traditions in the process. Well, that was it for the GC – he drew a line in the sand and announced that he was abstaining from cooking 2016’s meal, leaving the job to me and my mom. The two of us obliged, very successfully blanching, braising and broiling away (that’s the beginnings of my mom’s homemade cranberry sauce above), and later replicated the feast with me in the driver’s seat on Christmas. So that is how The Goldbergs altered my Thanksgiving. Needless to say, it is a special memory for me. So when I happened to stumble upon the show being filmed at Westside Pavilion two weeks later, it was all I could do not to faint from excitement.

[ad]

As I mentioned in this post, the GC and I headed into L.A. to do some Christmas shopping/Christmas stalking at Westside Pavilion after I discovered that Christmas with the Kranks had been lensed on the premises. When we pulled into the parking garage, I spotted one of those yellow signs I love so much, with the word “Gold” written across it. In what can only be described as a blonde moment, I wondered aloud what could be filming. I just about fell over a few minutes later as I stepped off the escalators onto the mall’s second floor and spotted Hayley Orrantia herself sitting in a chair while on a break from shooting none other than The Goldbergs! I was not sure how friendly she and the rest of the cast and crew would be, but nothing was going to stop me from asking for a pic. As it turns out, she and everyone else involved in the production could not have been nicer. Hayley immediately stood up and introduced herself when I approached. She seemed genuinely thrilled we were fans and was so friendly and chatty that I even got to tell her my Thanksgiving story. And the day just got better from there. I wanted to wait until after the episode aired to blog about the experience, though. Thankfully, it finally did last week.

In the episode, titled “The Spencer’s Gift,” Erica and her brother Barry (Troy Gentile) get jobs at a Spencer Gifts store at the supposed Willow Grove Park Mall in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, where the series is set. One of Westside Pavilion’s vacant storefronts masked as Spencer’s in the shoot.

Both the interior and exterior of the space were heavily dressed for the show. Because Hayley was shooting a scene inside of the faux Spencer’s while we were there, I was a bit nervous about snapping any pictures of it. Looking back, I really wish I had, though, because as the GC and I soon came to find out, the crew could not have been cooler about set photos. Ah, well. Live and learn, right?

After watching a bit of the filming, the GC and I ventured to other parts of the Pavilion to begin our Christmas shopping. As we were walking around, we happened to pass by an arcade and I turned to him, shocked, and said, “Wow! I can’t remember the last time I saw an arcade in a mall! Not since, like, the ‘80s!” Yeah, I know. Facepalm!

It took us at least a few minutes to realize that the arcade was actually a storefront dressed for The Goldbergs shoot! D’oh!

As you can see, though, it looked pretty darn realistic.

In “The Spencer’s Gift,” Erica and Barry’s younger brother, Adam F. Goldberg (Sean Giambrone), learns from their example and also gets a job, at the mall’s Challenges Arcade.

Both the interior and exterior of the arcade space were utilized in the episode.

As the GC and I made our way through Westside Pavilion, we began discovering more and more storefronts dressed as fake shops.

We had literally wandered right into an ‘80s-inspired set – and the experience was magical!

The faux stores were so realistic that half the time we were unsure which were real and which were fake. Trying to differentiate the actual shops from the set shops became a game for the two of us and it could not have been more fun!

At one point we ran into a friendly crew member who clued us in as to which stores were authentic, which were real but dressed for the shoot, and which were altogether fictional. The shop below, for example, which we were convinced was an imposter, was actually real.

Though it was given some tubular set dressing for the filming.

The crew member also told us to feel free to take photos of the fake stores and even started pointing out the prop mall signage and faux directories posted around the center.

The entire experience was like heaven for me – hands-down my favorite shopping venture of all time – and very reminiscent of the fabulous day my dad and I spent on the set of CSI: Miami back in 2009.

The cherry on top of our day was when we ran into Troy Gentile as we were leaving the mall. Troy is easily one of the nicest celebrities I have ever met and wound up chatting with us for so long that a crew member had to finally come retrieve him as they were waiting on him to film a scene. (Be sure to zoom in on Troy’s nametag in the photo below. I completely missed it in person, but as my friend Michael pointed out, it reads “B. Tasty.” Love it!)

Westside Pavilion’s food court and actual Hot Dog on a Stick stand also appeared in “The Spencer’s Gift,” though we did not witness the scene that was shot there being filmed.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Westside Pavilion, from “The Spencer’s Gift” episode of The Goldbergs, is located at 10800 West Pico Boulevard in Rancho Park. Filming took place in the third level food court and on the second level in various vacant storefronts. Spencer’s was set up in an empty unit located in between Lady Foot Locker and Fanzz. Tans Forever from Christmas with the Kranks was set up nearby in the space that now houses Kid’s Club.

February 19, 2016February 19, 2016

“The Goldbergs” House

A couple of years ago, my good friend Lavonna got obsessed with the ABC series The Goldbergs and asked me to do some research on its locales. She was most interested in learning the location of the Goldberg family’s Anywhere, U.S.A.-style home and I found the address – 3071 Earlmar Drive in Cheviot Hills – rather quickly thanks to Robert of Movie Locations and More, who has a page dedicated to the show on his site. Oddly though, when I went to view the residence on Google Street View, I noticed that it looked rather different in reality than it did in the screen captures Robert had posted. Needless to say, I became intrigued and wound up uncovering some rather interesting behind-the-scenes information as to why. So although the pad has been covered on a few other websites, I figured it was most-definitely still worthy of a blog post.

[ad]

For those not in the know, The Goldbergs is a thirty minute television comedy based upon the real life childhood of producer Adam F. Goldberg. Much of the storyline comes directly from videos that a young Adam took of his family while growing up in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania during the 1980s. Though set on the East Coast, all filming takes place in Southern California. On the series, the Goldbergs – parents Murray (Jeff Garlin) and Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and their children, Adam (Sean Giambrone), Barry (Troy Gentile) and Erica (Hayley Orrantia) – live in a traditional two-story clapboard home. As you can see in the Street View image, which was taken in May 2011, as compared to the screen capture below, at the time the Goldberg residence looked much different in person than it did when the series began production in 2013. Namely, it lacked dormer windows.

Seeing the Street View imagery confused me to no end. I was not sure sure if the windows were an actual alteration made to the residence or something that production brought in for shooting purposes. Being that dormer windows are not an architectural element that can be added to a property without doing some major renovations, my guess was the latter. So I decided to do some digging and learned that the residence is only one story in real life, which meant that the dormers were not actual windows, but some sort of decoration – and therefore likely just an alteration done for the series.

I didn’t give the whole thing much thought after that. Then late last year, Lavonna got back onto a Goldbergs kick and asked me to start watching, as well. The Grim Cheaper and I viewed a few episodes shortly thereafter (it’s a great show, by the way) and as soon as I spotted those dormer windows, I got to thinking about their origins once again. So I logged into Google Street View and was surprised to see that the dormers were present in recent images of the house. My interest piqued more than ever, I did an internet search for “dormer windows” and “3071 Earlmar Drive” and was shocked to discover a series of exchanges on WikiLeaks that had been released during the Sony Hack of November 2014 and pertained to my query. Thanks to the 170,000 pieces of correspondence exposed by the so-called Guardians of Peace, not only did we learn that producer Scott Rudin thinks Angelina Jolie is a “minimally talented spoiled brat,” but also the story behind those darn dormer windows.

It breaks down like this – when the Earlmar Drive house was chosen for the series, it was proposed that four dormer windows be temporarily added to the roof of the structure. The installation caused a lot of back-and-forth between the production team and the homeowners due to the fact that when filming of The Goldbergs eventually concluded, the roof would have to be repaired to the tune of about $18,000. The owners apparently wound up liking the look of the windows, though – or just felt it would be easier to keep them intact – and it was later requested that they be left up permanently. This caused some more back-and-forth discussion between the production team because the roof analysis done prior to the windows being installed was based on them only being in place temporarily. As you all well know, this stalker loves herself some behind-the-scenes information, so I was practically salivating upon reading through the emails. (It is interesting to note that the homeowners did not want their name, address or photographs to be used in any aired footage. Little did they know that documents containing their name and address would be leaked to the masses via the Guardians of Peace shortly thereafter.)

Per a 2007 real estate listing, in real life, The Goldbergs house boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2,419 square feet of living space, a remodeled kitchen with granite countertops, a vaulted and beamed living room ceiling, and a 0.20-acre plot of land.

According to Redfin, the dwelling, which was originally built in 1952, last sold in October 2007 for just under $1.5 million.

You can check out some interior photographs of the home here. Only the exterior of the property is used on the series, though. The inside of the Goldbergs’ house is actually just a set built on a soundstage at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. Interestingly, that set was modeled after the dwelling that was featured as the Goldberg residence in the show’s pilot episode.

As is often the case with television shows, The Goldbergs pilot was filmed at a different home than the one used in all subsequent episodes. Thanks to the Seeing Stars website, I learned that the pilot residence (which is pictured below) is located at 4545 Del Moreno Drive in Woodland Hills.

While I could not find any photographs of the interior of the home that was utilized in the pilot, it is obvious from the way the episode was shot that filming did make use of the residence’s actual interior.

For the most part, the set is a pretty close re-creation of the actual home, though set designers did make some changes, which you can see in the collages that appear above and below.

Adam F. Goldberg’s real life childhood home, which is located at 405 Newbold Road in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, is actually much more extravagant than the residence chosen for the show. The 8-bedroom, 6-bath, 6,708-square-foot Tudor-style estate, which was originally built in 1925 and sits on 0.85 acres, is absolutely massive in size and, per Zillow, features a Mahogany library, a kitchen with “multiple Sub-Zero fridges” (because one is just never enough!), a Jacuzzi room (yep, a Jacuzzi “room” – you can see a photograph of it here), a whopping 3 fireplaces, a master bedroom with his-and-her changing rooms, a billiards parlor/game room, an in-ground swimming pool and a tennis court (though when it was put on the market in 2011, the land containing the pool and tennis court were being listed separately).

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to Robert, from the Movie Locations and More website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Goldberg family home from The Goldbergs is located at 3071 Earlmar Drive in Cheviot Hills.