Warner Brothers tour – IAMNOTASTALKER

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 .

September 18, 2008February 13, 2009

Stalking the WB!

This past Monday, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I took a little stalking field strip to both Warner Brothers Studios and the Paramount Lot. I’ll get to the Paramount tour tomorrow, but today it’s all about the WB. What can I say – the Warner Brothers tour was awesome! It is nothing at all like the Universal Studios back lot tour. The WB tour is far more intimate and personal. A maximum of twelve people is allowed in each tour group, which makes for a far more flexible, personalized tour. The WB tour also lacks the cheesiness that is pretty much ever-present over at Universal. Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast on my Universal birthday tour, but if I had to choose between the two, I’d much prefer stalking the WB. Anyway, Mike and I arrived bright and early at about 8:30AM and I must admit I was as giddy as a schoolgirl! 🙂 Before the tour began, we got to do some shopping in the WB gift shop. The gift shop sells some great souvenirs like t-shirts, key chains, mugs, and even lip gloss, from hit shows like Entourage, Gossip Girl, Gilmore Girls and, my personal fave, Friends.

There is also a lot of movie memorabilia to stalk inside the gift shop, such as Daniel Radcliffe’s costume from the original Harry Potter movie and Will Smith’s outfit from I Am Legend (pictured above).

There is even a Starbucks located right inside the gift shop, so I was in heaven!! Movie memorabilia AND a Starbucks?? What more could a girl ask for? 🙂

After getting our shopping on at the gift shop, we were instructed to move into a small movie theatre where we were shown a short movie about the many productions that have been filmed on the lot. The movie definitely got me pumped up and excited for the tour and I was literally on the edge of my seat ready for the tour to begin. After the 15 minute movie, our tour group boarded a small tram and headed for the famous WB back-lot.

The first movie site stalked on our tour was the location of one of the most well-known screen kisses in cinema history – the famous upsidedown kiss between Spiderman and Mary Jane that took place on a fire escape in the pouring rain. That fire escape is located on the WB’s back-lot in an area that is now called “Spiderman Alley”. 🙂 Apparently the scene was not very fun, or romantic, to film, as Tobey Maguire had to hang upside down for over eight hours, giving him a massive headache, not to mention all the water running up his nose from the fake rain. That kiss was later emulated by Seth and Summer in one of my favorite O.C. scenes ever!

Our next stop on the tour was the exterior set of ER ‘s Cooke County General Hospital. This set was very cool to see as I was a big fan of ER during its first few seasons.

While 95% of the sets for ERare located inside a soundstage, the exterior set includes the hospital’s ambulance entrance, a small portion of the waiting room,

The Jumbo Mart where the doctors eat,

the “L” tracks from the Chicago railway system,

and even George Clooney’s former basketball hoop left over from the days he starred on ER.

Next up our tour guide took us to a small stretch of grass that often doubles for Central Park in Warner Brothers movies and television shows. The patch of lawn is so small, I have no idea how it can possibly double for a park, but it does. The small park was featured on Friends as the place where Phoebe “runs weird” and also as the location of Rory’s “study tree” on the Gilmore Girls.

Next up was Lorelai’s house from Gilmore Girls which looks pretty much exactly as it did during the filming of the show.

In actuality, the entire town of Sleepy Hollow from Gilmore Girls is located on the WB lot, and it, too, looks pretty much exactly as it did during filming. This set is usually called Anytown, USA and has been used in countless productions, most prominently as Hazzard County in the Dukes of Hazzard television series.

Pictured above is Luke’s restaurant from Gilmore Girls,

and the Hazzard County Courthouse from Dukes of Hazzard.

I think I was most excited of all to see the house from one of my fave 80s sitcoms – Growing Pains (pictured above). I used to seriously love me some Kirk Cameron. 🙂 The house looks a bit different now, but it is still pretty recognizable as the Seaver Family home. As we drove up upon the house, our tour guide asked if anyone could still remember the words to the show’s theme song and I am proud to say, I still could. 🙂 You can watch the Growing Pains intro here. Cue theme song – “Show me that smile again, don’t waste another minute on your crying . . .” 🙂

The side of the Seaver house was also used as Lane’s house on Gilmore Girls. Apparently many houses on the WB lot have double, or even triple, fronts so that they can be used for multiple houses at a time.

We also got to see crew members setting up a scene for Ghost Whisperer on the WB’s Paris Street. Ghost Whisperer used to be filmed at Universal Studios, but due to the recent fire, production has since moved to Warner Brothers. Paris Street was also used in the filming of Casablanca, as the location of Rick and Ilsa’s Parisian tryst.

The building pictured above was featured as the location of Rick and Isla’s teary Paris goodbye. Ahhh, we’ll always have Paris! 🙂

Also included in the tour was a walk through of the set of Two and a Half Men– which was VERY cool as I watch that show all the time; an up-close and personal view of many cars used in major motion pictures – ie. the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard movie, the Batmobile, and Keanu’s car from the Matrix; a tour of the Warner Brothers Museum which displays numerous costumes and other movie memorabilia from such films as Harry Potter, Fools Gold, The Matrix, and The Dark Knight;and a walk through of the third biggest soundstage in the US which has been used in productions such as Ocean’s 13 and The Perfect Storm. We were not allowed to take any photographs while inside the soundstages or the museum which was a total bummer! 🙁

My favorite part of the tour, hands down, had to be when we got to see the original Central Perk set from Friends. SO COOL! After the final season of Friends, the entire Central Perk set was moved to an empty soundstage preserved for us fans to visit. 🙂 The set pieces are a little tweaked and aren’t set up exactly as they were during filming, but it still looks pretty much as it did on TV. SO COOL!

Mike and I had an absolute blast on the WB tour and I HIGHLY recommend stalking it!!!! No two tours are ever the same, and I am seriously considering doing it again soon. 🙂

BIG THANK YOU to Mike for taking all of the above pictures – would you believe my camera died at the very beginning of the WB tour cause this stalker forgot to charge it the night before. I am such a blond sometimes!!! LOL

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 will cost you $45 per person – and I assure you, it is $45 well spent! You can learn more about the tour here.