The “Little Miss Sunshine” Motel

Little Miss Sunshine Motel (1 of 10)

Another Little Miss Sunshine locale that I desperately wanted to stalk was the supposed Arizona motel where the Hoover family – Olive (Abigail Breslin), Richard (Greg Kinnear), Sheryl (Toni Collette), Dwayne (Paul Dano), Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin), and Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) – stayed mid-way through their road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach in the 2006 flick.  Thankfully, smbstressfest had visited the site during the filming of his fabulous YouTube video, which chronicles most of the locations that appeared in LMS, so I posted a comment on his page asking for the address.  I was not sure if he would get back to me, though, so I also sent screen captures of the motel to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, in case he recognized it.  And, amazingly enough, he did!  At the very same time that I received an email notification alerting me that smbstressfest had replied to my comment with an address, I was also sent an email from Mike letting me know that the Little Miss Sunshine motel was actually the Budget Inn of North Hills located at 9151 Sepulveda Boulevard.  As it turns out, Mike drives by the place almost daily on his way to work.  So I ran right out to stalk it while the Grim Cheaper and I were in L.A. two weekends ago.

[ad]

As you can see below, the Budget Inn of North Hills has, unfortunately, been remodeled slightly since filming took place in the summer of 2005.  The motel was still in its Little Miss Sunshine state back in May 2007 when smbstressfest stalked it (as you can see in his video), but it seems that I, sadly, missed the boat on this one.  Boo!  At least the basic structure of the property remains unchanged.

ScreenShot8422

Little Miss Sunshine Motel (3 of 10)

Despite the alterations being fairly minor, I had an extremely hard time getting my bearings while I was stalking the motel and could not get a grasp on what part of the property appeared in Little Miss Sunshine.  I am directionally-challenged anyway (my mom likes to say that I could not find my way out of a paper bag), and because of the way the Budget Inn of North Hills is set up with four practically identical corners, I just could not figure which area had been used in the filming.  So, unfortunately, my photographs of this particular locale are not the greatest.

ScreenShot8429

Little Miss Sunshine Motel (4 of 10)

Add to that the fact that the motel is kind of an odd place and, even though I had talked to the management prior to taking photographs, I did not feel entirely comfortable being there and therefore did not do much exploring.

Little Miss Sunshine Motel (8 of 10)

Little Miss Sunshine Motel (7 of 10)

Had I stuck around, I would have loved to have ventured upstairs to take photographs of Room 208, where Olive and Grandpa Edwin spent the night in Little Miss Sunshine.  (Dwayne and Frank and Sheryl and Richard stayed in the two rooms located just east of 208.)

ScreenShot8430

ScreenShot8431

And while I am 99.9% certain that the real life interior of three of the Budget Inn’s rooms were used during the filming, unfortunately, due to the remodel, the rooms (which you can see photographs of here) no longer look anything like they did onscreen.  Again, boo!

ScreenShot8426

ScreenShot8427

ScreenShot8428

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramAnd you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and smbstressfest for finding this location!  Smile

Little Miss Sunshine Motel (6 of 10)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Budget Inn of North Hills, aka the Little Miss Sunshine motel, is located at 9151 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills.  You can visit the Booking.com page for the hotel hereThe Hometown Inn from the 2002 Britney Spears’ movie Crossroads is located just down the street at 9401 Sepulveda Boulevard.

The “Little Miss Sunshine” Restaurant

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (8 of 27)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, while doing research on the former Abiquiu eatery (now Wokcano) from Get Shorty (which I blogged about here), I came across a Chowhound message board on which a commenter named Kevin stated that Pann’s restaurant in Ladera Heights was the spot where the Hoover clan –  Olive (Abigail Breslin), Richard (Greg Kinnear), Dwayne (Paul Dano), Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin), Sheryl (Toni Collette), and Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) – stopped for a mid-road-trip breakfast in fave movie Little Miss Sunshine.   Because the breakfast scene was one of my favorites in the entire flick, I was extremely excited to learn this information.  Unfortunately though, as is so often the case with locales that are posted online, this one turned out to be wrong.

[ad]

While Pann’s menus were visible in the scene, as you can see below, one look at online images of the interior of the restaurant and I knew that it was not the right place.  Convincing me further was the fact that Pann’s is not located directly below a freeway overpass, as the Little Miss Sunshine café was shown to be (which you can also see below).

ScreenShot003

So I got to cyberstalking and fairly quickly came across an absolutely amazing YouTube video (that you can watch by clicking below) in which a fellow stalker named smbstressfest chronicled pretty much every single locale that appeared in the movie.  And while he did not state the addresses of any of the places, in response to a commenter named starbucksmunkey (love it!), he did give the Google Earth coordinates of the restaurant.  Woot woot!  And even though smbstressfest had mentioned that the eatery was no longer in operation, I was still chomping at the bit to stalk it and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there this past weekend while the two of us were in L.A.

The Little Miss Sunshine production notes state that the flick was lensed over a thirty-day period during the “hot” summer of 2005, at which time, according to the mmm-yoso!!! website, the space housed an eatery named Rutt’s Hawaiian Café.  Rutt’s was shuttered by the time smbstressfest stalked it in 2007 (the chain still boasts an outpost in Culver City, though) and at some point thereafter a Mexican steakhouse named Don Carlos was opened on the site, but it, too, has since been closed.  According the property’s LoopNet listing, the 5,130-square-foot building also once housed a Denny’s.

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (5 of 27)

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (2 of 27)

Which makes sense because the property does look very much like a Denny’s location – to me, at least.

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (10 of 27)

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (11 of 27)

And while a sign in the window states that Maly’s Pizza Buffet is “coming soon”, I do not know how accurate that is.

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (16 of 27)

In Little Miss Sunshine, the Hoover family stops at the café towards the beginning of their road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach.  It is there that Olive orders waffles “alamodie” and is lambasted by her father for choosing to eat something so high in fat.

ScreenShot008

ScreenShot007

The interior of Rutt’s was used quite extensively in the filming.  Oh, what I wouldn’t have given to have been able to go inside that restaurant!

ScreenShot004

ScreenShot014

Thankfully, I was able to snap a few photographs of the interior through the front window, although they are not of the section of the restaurant that appeared in the movie.  In Little Miss Sunshine, Olive and her family dined in the southeast portion of the building, but the only area in which the blinds were not drawn was the northern part, unfortunately.  Boo!

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (13 of 27)

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (14 of 27)

The exterior of Rutt’s was also shown in the scene.

ScreenShot013

ScreenShot011

You can watch the Little Miss Sunshine restaurant scene by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramAnd you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to smbstressfest for finding this location!  Smile

Little Miss Sunshine Restaurant (3 of 27)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The supposed Pann’s restaurant from Little Miss Sunshine is actually the former Rutt’s Hawaiian Café located at 17371 East Valley Boulevard in La Puente.  Unfortunately, the eatery is currently closed.

The “Little Miss Sunshine” Gas Station

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (14 of 15)

A few months back, while doing research on Wokcano from Get Shorty (which I blogged about here), I came across a Chowhound message board titled “Restaurants Seen in the Movies.”  One of the eateries mentioned on the page was Pann’s restaurant at 6710 La Tijera Boulevard in Ladera Heights, which a commenter named Kevin said was used in 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine – a film that I absolutely LOVED.  (That information actually turned out to be incorrect – Pann’s did not appear in Little Miss Sunshine, but that’s a different story for a different post.)  Prior to visiting the message board, I had no idea whatsoever that LMS had done any filming in the L.A. area (outside of a very brief driving scene near Vasquez Rocks).  So that night I popped in our Little Miss Sunshine DVD to re-watch it and hopefully track down some of its locales.  And track some down, I did, the first of which was the supposed HartCo gas station that the Hoover family – Richard (Greg Kinnear), Sheryl (Toni Collette), Dwayne (Paul Dano), Olive (Abigail Breslin), Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin), and Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) – stopped at during their road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach.

[ad]

This location was actually quite an easy find.  While watching the movie, I spotted the back of an address number through the gas station’s front window that I was fairly certain read “24518”.

ScreenShot8412

Thanks to the station’s red, blue and gray color scheme (which you can see below), I was fairly certain that it was a Chevron.  So I did a Google search for “Chevron”, “Los Angeles” and “24518” and, sure enough, the first result returned was for a station located at 24518 Lyons Avenue in Newhall, which turned out to be the right place.  Yay!  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk it this past weekend while we were in L.A.

ScreenShot8408

ScreenShot8415

The gas station pit stop is a bad (but absolutely hilarious) experience for the Hoover family in Little Miss Sunshine.  While there, Frank, who has just recently been released from the hospital after trying to kill himself, runs into his ex-boyfriend, Josh (Justin Shilton), and Josh’s new uber-successful boyfriend, Larry Sugarman (Gordon Thomson); Richard learns via a phone call that his new business venture has fallen through; and Olive, who has been practicing a dance routine on the side of the property, gets accidentally left behind when her distracted family later drives away.

ScreenShot8418

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (12 of 15)

Because the clutch on the Hoover’s Volkswagen bus is broken, when they return to the station to retrieve Olive a few minutes later, they are unable to stop and Olive has to run alongside the car and hop inside while it is still moving!  I swear, the scene never fails to make me laugh (like hysterically laugh!), even though I have seen it about 25 times!

ScreenShot8419

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (1 of 1)

While this location is technically “just a gas station”, I could NOT have been more excited to stalk it.  I was literally jumping up and down when we arrived.  Looking back, though, I really think the GC and I should have rented a yellow VW bus for the occasion.  Winking smile

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (9 of 15)

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (6 of 15)

Adding to my excitement was the fact that the station looks pretty much EXACTLY the same in person as it did onscreen in Little Miss Sunshine!

ScreenShot8409

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (5 of 15)

ScreenShot8417

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (11 of 15)

The payphone that Richard used in the scene was just a prop, though, that was brought in for the filming and is not actually there in real life.

ScreenShot8416

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (1 of 15)

Which is odd because the property does have two working payphones that could have been utilized in the scene.

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (3 of 15)

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (4 of 15)

The interior of the Chevron station also appeared in the movie and the manager who was on duty when we stalked the place was nice enough to let me snap a picture of it.  As you can see, it was altered significantly for the filming, with the cigarette and chewing tobacco racks taken out to make room for the pornographic magazine display that played a significant role in the scene.

ScreenShot8410

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (15 of 15)

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramAnd you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Little Miss Sunshine Gas Station (7 of 15)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The HartCo gas station from Little Miss Sunshine is actually the Chevron station located at 24518 Lyons Avenue in Newhall.