West Hollywood filming locations – Page 2

April 10, 2012April 9, 2012

Pinches Tacos from “The Hills”

As always seems to happen when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I get together, while out doing some stalking in West Hollywood this past Thursday afternoon, the two of us stumbled upon a filming location without even meaning to do so. After stopping by the Sunset Strip’s new Pink Taco to grab some lunch and finding it inexplicably closed, we headed across the street to a different pink-hued Mexican eatery named Pinches Tacos. Upon ordering our food, we made our way to the restaurant’s patio area and, as I am apt to do when dining at a new place, I started doing some iPhone research to see if, on the off chance, Pinches had ever been used as a filming location. Well, let me tell you, I just about fell off my chair when I came across some behind-the-scenes footage of my girl Kristin Cavallari shooting an unspecified Season 5 episode of fave show The Hills in the very spot where I was then sitting! How I had missed that tidbit when the episode originally aired is beyond me, but needless to say I was absolutely floored over the information and promptly grabbed my camera and ran inside to snap some pics and speak with the manager.

The Sunset Strip Pinches Tacos was first founded in 2007 by brothers Miguel, Jorge and Javier Anaya – nephews of Jose Prado, the former longtime chef of The Ivy turned restaurateur who established The Original Cha Cha Cha in Silverlake, Cocina Primavera in Beverly Hills, Prado Restaurant in Larchmont Village, and Cha Cha Chicken in Santa Monica and Northridge. Everything that the fast-fix hot spot serves – from the salsa to the tortillas – is homemade daily using hundred-year-old secret family recipes from the Anaya brothers’ hometowns of Guadalajara and Jalisco. Thanks to its extremely reasonable prices, fresh fare, and late-night hours (Pinches is open until 3 a.m. each Thursday through Saturday), the eatery became insanely popular virtually overnight and three more outposts have since been launched. Besides West Hollywood, the chain currently boasts restaurants in Culver City and Santa Monica, all of which are family-owned and operated. And Alabama native Ty Taylor loved the place so much that he convinced the Anaya brothers to partner with him in founding an annex in Taylor’s hometown of Homewood. That restaurant opened in January of 2011 and is doing so well that the group is already looking to establish another outpost in Birmingham.

And for those wondering where the name “Pinches” came from, while a note on the eatery’s door states that the term is Spanish slang for “kitchen boy”, Google translate dug up a far more interesting (and far more NSFW) meaning, which you can take a look at here. All I can say is LOL.

While the interior of Pinches Tacos is quite adorable, the patio area, which overlooks the Sunset Strip, is where most people choose to eat, including Mike and me. I cannot tell you how cool it was to sit there, just feet from the bustling Strip, and watch all of the cars zipping by, not to mention the countless Hollywood tour buses – one of which you can see in the background of the above picture. Love it!

Because I am extremely picky about my meat, I opted to order Pinches vegetarian tacos and not only were they bursting with flavor – not something one expects from vegetables – and FABULOUS, but, at $2.95 a piece, were less expensive than a Starbucks latte! I am so going to have to bring the Grim Cheaper back there for lunch. Winking smile

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Oddly enough, the behind-the-scenes footage of The Hills that Mike and I watched while at Pinches did not look at all familiar to me, so when I got home I popped in my DVDs of the series and scanned through each and every Season 5 episode. As it turns out, the Mexican eatery appeared in the episode titled “It’s On Bitch” as the spot where Brody Jenner, Jayde Nicole, Stephanie Pratt, Lo Bosworth, Stacie the Bartender (I so love that she was never referred to by her full name), Justin “Bobby” Brescia, and my girl Kristin Cavallari celebrated Frankie Delgado’s birthday. “It’s On Bitch” was actually the very first episode of The Hills that KCav appeared in, so I am extremely embarrassed that I failed to recognize it. I must be losing my mojo or something! Winking smile Besides being a filming location, Pinches Tacos is also something of a celebrity hotspot. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there include Kat Von D, Jesse James, Leonardo DiCaprio, Emma Roberts, Megan Fox, Brian Austin Green, Australian celebrity chef Curtis Stone, Gabriel Aubry, Balthazar Getty, Isabel Lucas, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Pinches Tacos, from the “It’s On Bitch” episode of The Hills, is located at 8200 West Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the restaurant chain’s official website here.

April 3, 2012April 2, 2012

Fig & Olive Restaurant from the 2012 “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V Super Bowl Commercial

Ever since I first saw the ingenious “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V commercial that premiered during the 2012 Super Bowl on February 6th, I have been absolutely itching to track down the restaurant that appeared in it. Especially since, a few weeks beforehand, I had stalked and blogged about L’Orangerie, the eatery that stood in for Chez Quis in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the 1986 movie upon which the two-minute-and-twenty-five-second television spot was based.

Thankfully, this location was a fairly easy find. While watching the ad, I had spotted the name “Chez Neuz” painted on the awning of the restaurant – “neuf” being French for “nine”, which is, of course, the number of times Ferris Bueller was absent from school in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. (“Nine times?” “Nine times!” “I don’t remember him being absent nine times!” LOL) And while the establishment’s tongue-in-cheek moniker was obviously a fake, I figured that the other words – “kitchen” and the partially hidden “–ing bar”, which I guessed to be “tasting bar” – that were also visible on the awning were most likely real. And I was right!

Inputting the words “restaurant”, “Los Angeles”, “kitchen”, and “tasting bar” into Google led me to a website for a fairly new eatery in West Hollywood named Fig & Olive. One quick scan of the photographs pictured there proved that it was a match to what had appeared in “Matthew’s Day Off”. Yay! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place this past weekend. Fig & Olive, which was originally founded on the East Coast and has several outposts in Manhattan, first opened its West Hollywood location in March 2011 in an 8,000-square-foot, two-story venue on the corner of Melrose Place and La Cienega Boulevard. The bright and airy establishment features a 50-foot tasting bar, two patios, a lounge area and a Mediterranean-inspired menu that is brought to life each night by Executive Chef Pascal Lorange, a man who was once the personal chef to both singer Julio Iglesias and former President Bill Clinton.

Thanks to its trendy location, fab menu and chic interior, Fig & Olive became an overnight sensation and has served the likes of Amanda Seyfried, Robert Downey, Jr., Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux, Jason Bateman, Elizabeth Banks, Hilary Duff, Rebecca Gayheart, Julianne Hough, Ryan Seacrest, Jimmy Kimmel, John Stamos, Bob Saget, Ryan Gosling, Lea Michele, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Reese Witherspoon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Connolly, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Ryan Phillipe, Kellie Martin, Mila Kunis, Molly Sims, Zac Efron, Drew Barrymore and even President Obama. Oh, and me and the GC Winking smile , who both absolutely fell in love with the place. Before we arrived there, I had been convinced that Fig & Olive would be extremely snooty, but I am very happy to report that that was not at all the case. The entire staff was BEYOND nice, especially our bartender who loved the fact that we were only dining there because of the “Matthew’s Day Off” commercial. Smile

Because the establishment is on the pricy side, the GC and I opted to only grab drinks and a cheese plate appetizer, all of which were uh-ma-zing! I cannot wait to go back to there for a full meal sometime (ear muffs, GC!).

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Fig & Olive was featured three times in the “Matthew’s Day Off” commercial, which was directed by The Hangover’s Todd Phillips. The tasting bar area first popped up in the scene in which Walter Linder, Matthew’s agent, is shown eating lunch in front of a TV that just so happens to be airing the parade in which Matthew is singing.

Fig & Olive’s tasting bar is pictured above and, as you can see, the television set and the wall it was affixed to are not actually there in real life.

The exterior of Fig & Olive then appeared as Chez Neuf, the restaurant where Matthew dropped off his Honda CR-V with a valet, who then, of course, made off with it.

And the restaurant lastly popped at the very end of the commercial, in the scene in which Matthew reenacted his famous “You’re still here?” bit from Ferris Bueller.

Our bartender informed us that an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was also shot at Fig & Olive, but I scanned through both Season 1 and Season 2 of the series earlier today and did not spot it anywhere, so I am guessing that the scene wound up on the cutting room floor.

“Matthew’s Day Off” Super Bowl Commercial Filmed at Fig & Olive in West Hollywood

You can watch the 2012 “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V Super Bowl commercial by clicking above. Apparently, the team at RPA, the advertising agency that created the ad, hid over two dozen references to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in the spot – some obvious, some more subtle.

Here are a few that I spotted (and I swear I could sit here all day doing this!) – 1. In the commercial, Matthew’s agent is named “Walter Linder”.

That same name was listed in the Chez Quis reservation book directly above “Abe Froman” in the movie’s iconic restaurant scene.

2. The woman that Matthew spoke with using his CR-V’s built-in Bluetooth in the commercial was named “Grace” – a nod to Ed Rooney’s dimwitted secretary Grace, who was played to perfection by Edie McClurg in the film.

3. In the scene in which Walter Linder spots Matthew driving, a man is pictured behind Walter playing a clarinet.

Ferris also played a clarinet in the 1986 film.

The trench coat that the clarinet player is wearing in the commercial is also a reference to the outfit Ferris wore when he picked up his girlfriend, Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara).

4. In the commercial, the CR-V license plate reads “SOCHOIC”, which is a nod to Ferris’ line, “I must admit, I love driving it. It is so choice.” about the pilfered Ferrari. If you are not into searching for the ad’s many Ferris Bueller’s Day Off references, or “Easter eggs” as they are called, yourself, Entertainment Weekly scored a complete list of them from RPA, which you can check out here.

On a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off side-note – while making screen captures for today’s post, I happened to notice the number 652-9770 (as well as several other variations of it) on the phone Ferris used to call the police while at Chez Quis. On a hunch, I typed that number into Google, adding an area code of 310, and, sure enough, (310)652-9770 was the actual former number of the now-shuttered L’Orangerie restaurant where that scene was filmed. Oh, if only I had spotted those digits sooner, I not only would have bypassed countless hours of searching, but I also might have been able to stalk the place while it was still in business. Ah well! Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Fig & Olive restaurant, from the 2012 “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V Super Bowl commercial, is located at 8490 Melrose Place in West Hollywood. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

November 9, 2011October 16, 2011

Charlie’ Apartment Building from “Gossip Girl”

Well, it certainly looks as if it is shaping up to be Gossip Girl week here at IAMNOTASTALKER.com because here I am yet again with yet another location from the fabulous teen drama series – this time the apartment building where con-artist Charlie Rhodes (aka Kaylee DeFer) lived with her chef boyfriend, Max (aka Brian J. Smith), in the Season 5 episode titled “Beauty and the Feast”. This location was once again found by fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website who has somehow managed to track down all of the Los-Angeles-area locales featured in the two episodes of the series that were filmed on the West Coast this past August. Thank you, Geoff! So, I, of course, dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to West Hollywood to stalk the place, shortly before grabbing cocktails at Eveleigh Restaurant a few weeks back.

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The exterior of Charlie’s apartment building is featured three times in the “Beauty and the Feast” episode of Gossip Girl. It first pops up in the scene in which Charlie and Max discuss the difficulties of trying to make it as an actor in Los Angeles.

It next shows up in the scene in which Serena van der Woodsen (aka Blake Lively) waits outside for Charlie in order to confront her about her bounced rental deposit check.

And finally it appears in the scene in which Serena arrives via limo to pick Charlie up to take her to their grandmother’s house in Montecito.

No filming took place inside of any of the actual apartment units, though. The interior of Charlie and Max’s dwelling was, I am fairly certain, just a set that was most likely built on a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in New York where the series is filmed, as was the case with Diana Payne’s bedroom which I talked about in yesterday’s post. You can check out some photographs of what the interior of the real-life apartments actually look like here and here. As you can see, they do not match up at all to what appeared onscreen and do not have nearly the same amount of charm that Charlie and Max’s apartment had.

I really had to laugh when Serena tried to convince Charlie to move out of the apartment building by saying, “But you can’t live here!” LOL While the outside of the place is a bit bland, I actually thought the interior of Charlie’s pad was kind of cute and not nearly the dump that Serena made it out to be. And I absolutely fell in love with her little kitchen alcove, which is pictured above. As my friend Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog, would say, “It’s adorbs!” But then again, I did not grow up on the Upper East Side, so what do I know? Winking smile

In real life, the exterior of Charlie’s apartment building looks pretty much exactly the same as it did on Gossip Girl. I am totally kicking myself, though, as I SO wished I had leaned against the entryway to pose for a picture as Serena had done in the episode! I do not know WHY I did not think of it at the time. UGH! Ah well, I will just have to drag the GC back there sometime to re-stalk the place.

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Charlie’s apartment building, from the “Beauty and the Feast” episode of Gossip Girl, is located at 1009-1015 North Croft Avenue in West Hollywood.

November 7, 2011October 16, 2011

Eveleigh Restaurant from “Gossip Girl”

Fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, emailed me a few weeks back to let me know that he had tracked down the open-air-patio-ed restaurant where Serena van der Woodsen (aka Blake Lively) and Charlie Rhodes (aka Kaylee DeFer) ate lunch in the Season 4 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Beauty and the Feast”. And while that lunch was supposed to have taken place in Los Angeles and some scenes from that episode were actually filmed in the SoCal area, I had been absolutely convinced that Serena and Charlie’s restaurant was located in New York. Not only did the place just look like a Manhattan-style eatery to me, but in the previous episode, which was titled “Yes, Then Zero”, Colonie, a restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, had been made to appear as if it was located in L.A. So when I received Geoff’s email alerting me to the fact that Eveleigh Restaurant in West Hollywood had been used in the “Beauty and the Feast” episode, I practically jumped for joy and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it. Because I was in the thick of my Haunted Hollywood postings at the time, though, I had not been able to blog about the place until today. So here goes!

I can honestly say that Eveleigh, which opened on November 1st, 2010 in a space that used to house a Kenneth Cole shoe store, is easily one of the coolest places I have ever been! From the outside, the restaurant does not look like anything out of the ordinary. In fact, with its large hedges, unmarked doorway, and sidewalk street sign that screams “Sunset Blvd”, the eatery could not seem any more “Hollywood”. But when you step inside, it is a different story entirely.

From Eveleigh’s airy front patio . . .

. . . to its cozy fireplace, complete with armchairs . . .

. . . to its central bar and wood-beamed ceilings . . .

. . . to its couch-like and antique school-chair seating . . .

. . . to its exposed wood tables and chalkboard menus . . .

. . . to its sweeping views . . .

. . . to its large, tented back patio – all I can say is, we are certainly not in Los Angeles anymore, Toto! As you can see in the twenty-some-odd pictures I took while there, Eveleigh, named for a suburb in Australia, is entirely unique. It is a little bit country, a whole lotta New York, with a dash of California thrown in for good measure. And I absolutely fell in love with the place on site. The GC and I ended up only having cocktails while there, though, as the menu was a bit too extravagant for my low-brow tastes. The offerings are definitely geared toward “foodies” and not this stalker, who much prefers hot dogs, mac & cheese, and chicken strips to the upscale culinary feasts served at Eveleigh, which include duck rillettes, jidori chicken liver pate, roasted natural bone marrow salad, and crisp sonoma pork belly. We will definitely be stalking the place again, though, and if I am feeling more epicurean-ly brave, I will surely branch out and sample some of the fare.

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In the “Beauty and the Feast” episode of Gossip Girl, Serena and Charlie, a fraud who is posing as Serena’s cousin, meet up at Eveleigh and discuss life in California and possibly living together.

In the scene, the two sit on the restaurant’s tented patio, near the back bar.

After their meal, they walk past Eveleigh’s main bar, through the front patio area, and out onto Sunset Boulevard.

And our super-nice bartender informed us that the cover shoot for the Fall 2011 issue of Viva Magazine, which featured Paula Abdul, also took place at Eveleigh.

Besides being a filming location, Eveleigh is also something of a celebrity hot-spot. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there over the past year include Ashley Greene, Paula Patton, Nicky Hilton, Nicole Richie, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Dakota Fanning, Kimora Lee Simmons, Lisa Edelstein, Marcia Cross, Rebecca Romijn, Jerry O’Connell, Robin Tunney, Ashley Simpson, Ali Fedotowsky, Sasha Alexander, Jordana Brewster, Pete Wentz, Samantha Ronson, Amy Smart, Rachel Leigh Cook, Dianna Agron, Jamie King, Jessica Capshaw, Busy Phillips, Elisha Cuthbert, Mindy Kaling, Nia Vardalos, Idris Elba, Pierce Brosnan, and Armie Hammer. And the restaurant also has one more celebrity connection. While researching this post, I discovered that back when the place was a Kenneth Cole shoe store, the front patio area was the site of the Kenneth Cole Walk of Fame – a take-off of the iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre forecourt in Hollywood. At the KC Walk of Fame, such stars as Elizabeth Taylor (and her dog Sugar), Richard Gere, Matthew Modine, Patricia Arquette, Elizabeth Glaser, Rosie O’Donnell, Julianne Phillips, and Leeza Gibbons all placed their bare feet into blocks of cement outside of the store, with Kenneth Cole promising to donate a portion of sales on the day of each participating star’s birthday to AIDS research. Sadly, when the store closed, the footprints were removed and I can find no information whatsoever about where they are now located. I cannot tell you how said I am that I never got to see them!

On a side-note, I would like to wish my mom a VERY happy 60th birthday today! I love you, Mom! Smile

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Eveleigh Restaurant, from the “Beauty and the Feast” episode of Gossip Girl, is located at 8752 West Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

October 24, 2011September 29, 2017

Villa Primavera – The “In a Lonely Place” Apartment Building

While doing research on the Double Indemnity house, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, I came across some information about Villa Primavera – a courtyard-style apartment building that was featured in the 1950 film noir classic In a Lonely Place. I immediately became intrigued with the West-Hollywood-area building due to an anecdote that was listed on the movie’s IMDB trivia page. Apparently, In a Lonely Place director Nicholas Ray had lived at Villa Primavera upon first moving to Southern California in the 1940s and was so enamored with the place that he decided to build a replica of the entire complex, courtyard and all, on a soundstage at Columbia Studios (now Sunset-Gower Studios) in Hollywood to be used as Humphrey Bogart’s bachelor pad in the flick. At some point during the shoot, Nicholas walked in on his wife, Gloria Grahame, who also starred in the movie, in bed with his 13-year-old son from a previous marriage. Nicholas immediately moved out of the home he shared with Gloria and into the Villa Primavera apartment set, where he ended up living – in what was essentially an exact replica of his former apartment – until filming wrapped. Because the building was so inextricably linked with both In a Lonely Place and the behind-the-scenes turmoil that marked the shoot, I was absolutely dying to see the place in person and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to do just that a few days later.

Villa Primavera was constructed by legendary husband and wife architecture team Arthur and Nina Zwebell in 1923 and was the couple’s very first Spanish-Revival-style building. The charming complex features red-tile roofs, white adobe walls, and a central courtyard with a large tiled fountain, an outdoor fireplace, lush foliage, and wandering brick pathways. The individual apartment units boast corner fireplaces, exposed wood ceilings, and tile floors. The Zwebells loved the design so much that they eventually moved into the Hacienda-like property for a time and legend has it that James Dean and Katharine Hepburn also once called the place home. Sadly though, as you can see above, the ten-unit complex is gated and not much of it can be viewed from the street.

I did manage to catch a brief glimpse of the interior courtyard and central fountain through the front gate, though, and they both looked absolutely beautiful.

Amazingly enough, when the GC and I first arrived at Villa Primavera, this little guy ran up to greet us.

And I just about died when I realized that he was a polydactyl cat, aka a “Hemingway cat”, aka a cat with more than five toes on one or more of its paws! I had watched a television special on the unusual felines a little over ten years ago and have been absolutely obsessed with them ever since. I cannot tell you how incredibly fitting it was that we ran into a so-called “Hemingway cat” while visiting an apartment building with such a storied Old Hollywood history! Love it!

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In In a Lonely Place, Villa Primavera stood in for the supposed-Beverly-Hills-area “Beverly Patio” apartments where frustrated Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele (aka Humphrey Bogart) and his beautiful new neighbor, Laurel Gray (aka Gloria Grahame), lived.

The location was such an integral part of the murder mystery – which was fabulous by the way – that it led Roger Ebert to write in an August 13th, 2009 review, “The courtyard of the Hollywood building occupied by Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place is one of the most evocative spaces I’ve seen in a movie. Small apartments are lined up around a Spanish-style courtyard with a fountain. Each flat is occupied by a single person. If you look across from your window, you can see into the life of your neighbor.” It is thanks to that interior view of neighboring units that Laurel is able to provide an alibi for Dixon after he is accused of murdering a young woman whom he had been seen with the night before. And while the courtyard area that is pictured above;

and the interior of both Dixon and Laurel’s individual apartments were recreations built at Columbia Studios, some actual filming did take place on location at Villa Primavera.

In the beginning of In a Lonely Place, Dixon returns home from the Beverly Hills police station after being questioned about the murdered woman and walks across the lawn of the real life apartment building. As you can see, a fake sign reading “Beverly Patio Apartments” was installed for that scene.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Villa Primavera, the In a Lonely Place apartment building, is located at 1300-1308 North Harper Avenue in West Hollywood.

August 5, 2011August 4, 2011

Le Petit Bistro from “90210”

A couple of Saturday nights ago, the Grim Cheaper and I found ourselves in West Hollywood, tired and hungry after a long day of stalking. We happened to come across an absolutely adorable little French restaurant named Le Petit Bistro and decided to pop in for a bite to eat. Now, usually I do not like to frequent eateries that are not mentioned on my (very long and ever-growing) “To Stalk” list, but because the place was so darn cute I made an out-of-character exception. So imagine my surprise when later that week I happened to be perusing through my friend and fellow stalker Geoff’s 90210Locations website and saw that Le Petit Bistro was listed as a filming location from fave show 90210! I literally just about fell off my chair and immediately started mentally kicking myself for not taking more pictures of the place.

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In the Season 3 episode of 90210 titled “How Much Is That Liam In The Window”, college student/budding writer Charlie Selby (aka Evan Ross, who I just found out is Diana Ross’ son!) takes Annie Wilson (aka Shenae Grimes) out for a date at Le Petit Bistro, his favorite French restaurant. After the waiter approaches their table and says something in French, Annie asks Charlie, “Are you sure you didn’t secretly drug me and take me to Paris?” (The menus pictured above are the eatery’s actual menus, by the way! How incredibly cool is that?)

Annie’s assessment of the Zagat-rated restaurant, which first opened in 1993, could NOT have been more spot-on! Thanks to its dark red walls, French-accented waiters, wood-paneled bar, and covered patio (made complete with twinkle lights), the Grim Cheaper and I absolutely did feel like we had been magically transported to Paris! And I am very happy to report that besides the incredible ambiance, Le Petit Bistro also serves up some out-of-this-world food! For whatever reason, I opted for a bit of a strange order that night – a parmesan cheese salad that was one of the evening’s specials, the Blue Crab Cakes appetizer, and a side of marinated wild mushrooms. Even though it might sound odd ordered all together like that, it was an absolutely incredible meal, especially the mushrooms! My mouth still waters just thinking about those mushrooms weeks later! The GC ordered one of the restaurant’s fish specials which was adorned with homemade mushroom risotto and it was also scrumptious! And best of all (in the GC’s eyes at least), the prices were extremely reasonable. We both absolutely fell in love with the place and cannot wait to go back!

Besides being a filming location, Le Petit Bistro is also something of a celebrity hot spot. Just a few of the famous faces who have dined there over the years include Dr. Dre, Neve Campbell, Julio Iglesias, Alfred Molina, Sean Connery, Salma Hayek, Robert Forster, Denise Grayson, Suzanne Somers, director Jared Hess, and Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement.

Ironically enough, the very brief exterior establishing shot of Annie and Charlie’s date restaurant on 90210 was not of Le Petit Bistro, but of a different L.A.-area French eatery – Figaro Bistrot, which is located at 1802 North Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz. While making screen captures for today’s post, I immediately recognized Figaro as I have walked past the cute little French restaurant numerous times in the past and have always wanted to stalk it due to its appearance in a Louis Vuitton ad featuring Madonna (which you can see photographs of here). And I should clarify here that while I have never been a particularly big fan of Madonna, I am a HUGE fan of Louis Vuitton. I also spotted Archie Panjabi, who plays investigator Kalinda Sharma on The Good Wife, dining on Figaro’s sidewalk patio a couple of months back.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Le Petit Bistro, from the “How Much Is That Liam In The Window” episode of 90210, is located at 631 North La Cienega Boulevard, just north of Restaurant Row, in West Hollywood. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

May 11, 2011May 11, 2011

Laverne & Shirley’s Apartment Building

Back in August of last year, fellow stalker Don emailed me to inquire if I knew the location of the supposed Burbank-area apartment building where best friends Laverne DeFazio (aka Penny Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (aka Cindy Williams) lived during the final three seasons of the hit 1970’s television series Laverne & Shirley. Sadly, because I had never really watched the show, I had no idea where the apartment building might be located. As fate would have it, though, I was scheduled to take a tour of Paramount Studios the day after receiving Don’s email and, because Paramount had produced the show, I thought one of the studio tour guides might know of the apartment’s location. Well, let me tell you, I spoke to anyone and everyone I could that day, but not a one of ‘em knew anything about the apartment building. Not only that, but they all told me they had never before been asked about that particular location! How that is possible, I’ll never know. Anyway, I gave Don the sad news after I got home from my tour and figured that would most likely be the end of the quest. So imagine my surprise when I awoke last Tuesday morning to find an email in my inbox from Don with the news that he had found the building! Yay! So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place this past Saturday morning.

In the first episode of the series’ Sixth Season, which was titled “Not Quite New York”, Laverne & Shirley, seeking a fresh start after losing their bottle-capping jobs at Shotz Brewery, leave their hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and head to Southern California. At the very beginning of the episode, the girls are shown moving into a typical 1970’s-style apartment building that was supposedly located at 113 1/2 Laurel Vista Drive in Burbank.

The apartment building was then shown regularly each week in both establishing shots and during the opening credits of each show.

I am EXTREMELY happy to report that the building still looks very much the same today as it did three full decades ago when the series was originally filmed. So incredibly cool! There are two trees which now block the view of the home from the street, but, other than that, remarkably little has changed over the years. Love it, love it, love it!

Even the apartment building next door still looks very much the same as it did on the series! Smile

Laverne & Shirley–Burbank Apartment Building Clip

You can watch the opening credits of the Sixth Season of Laverne & Shirley, in which the apartment complex is featured, by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Don for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The “Burbank” apartment building from the last three seasons of Laverne & Shirley is located at 419/421 North Sierra Bonita Avenue in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. Google Maps and the GPS in my car both recognize this location as being in West Hollywood, though, so keep that in mind when printing out a map of the building or inputting its address into a navigation system.

November 24, 2010November 23, 2010

Macha Theatre from “The Office”

A few weeks ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, sent me a link to this article from local website Franklin Avenue which stated that in the Season 7 episode of The Office titled “Andy’s Play”, the Macha Theatre in West Hollywood stood in for the Scranton, Pennsylvania “Loose Screw Playhouse” where Andy Bernard (aka Ed Helms) performed in a local production of the Tony award-winning musical Sweeney Todd. As it turns out, the author of the Franklin Avenue website, whose name is also coincidentally Mike, had actually lived across the street from the Macha Theatre for six years, so he recognized the place immediately when it popped up onscreen. And I have to say here that the “Andy’s Play” episode of The Office was easily one of my very favorite episodes of the entire series. I’m sure me liking it so much had to do with the fact that I have acted in quite a few plays over the course of my acting career and can definitely relate to the subject matter. Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) acting out an entire episode of Law & Order as his audition piece for the play and Andy’s phone ringing in the middle of the show while he was onstage were both such absolutely SPOT ON representations of the idiocracy that can, and does often, ensue during the course of a production, I cannot even tell you! And I literally just about died laughing when, during a quiet moment in the performance, Michael knocked over a bottle of wine and sent it rolling down the sloped theatre floor all the way to the front of the stage. Absolutely love it! So, once I read the Franklin Avenue article, I immediately added the Macha Theatre to my “To Stalk” list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right out to West Hollywood the very next weekend.

Before stalking the theater, I had mistakenly assumed that both the interior and the exterior of the property had been used in the “Andy’s Play” episode, but when we arrived there we discovered that that was not actually the case. Odalys Nanin, the theatre’s super nice owner, happened to be on-site while we were stalking the place and she was kind enough to chat with us and give us a tour of the premises. Amazingly enough, though, up until just a few days prior to our visit, she had absolutely NO idea whatsoever that the exterior of her theatre had been used on The Office. Apparently, another stalker had come by to take pictures of the place and when Odalys inquired as to why, he told her – much to her surprise – that it had been featured on the hit show. As it turns out, no actual filming had been done on the premises, but producers had in fact used an old stock photo of the theatre, one that had actually been taken back when the place was known as the Globe Playhouse, in the episode. As you can see in the above picture and screen capture, the theatre looks much different today than it did when the stock photo was taken. The exterior wood beams have since been removed from the property’s façade, as have the windows, and a large marquee has also since been added to the premises.

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Thankfully though, as you can see in the above photograph which I got off of the Macha Theatre website, the barn-style front doors, the “1107” address number, and the comedy and tragedy masks that appeared in the “Andy’s Play” episode of The Office have all been left intact.

After I got home, I did some digging and discovered that the interior theatre scenes of the “Andy’s Play” episode had been filmed at the Assistance League Playhouse in Hollywood, just a few blocks east of Helen Bernstein High School, where Glee is filmed! So, you know what that means – in the very near future I will be making a stalking pilgrimage out to Hollywood to stalk the place!

Michael Scott’s “Law & Order” Audition Piece

You can watch Michael’s absolutely HILAROUS Law & Order audition piece by clicking above. For those who have not yet seen the “Andy’s Play” episode, Michael was using the piece to audition for a role in the musical Sweeney Todd, not for a role on Law & Order.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from Franklin Avenue, for finding this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Macha Theatre from the “Andy’s Play” episode of The Office is located at 1107 North Kings Road in West Hollywood. You can visit the theatre’s official website here. The interior theatre scenes from the episode were filmed at the Assistance League Playhouse, which is located at 1367 North St. Andrews Place in Hollywood. You can visit that theatre’s website 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.

September 24, 2010September 23, 2010

Kristin Cavallari’s House from Season 6 of “The Hills”

Literally just around the corner from Philippe Chow, the restaurant that I blogged about on Tuesday where Brenda and Donna ate veal brains on Beverly Hills, 90210, is the home where Kristin Cavallari lived during Season 6 of fave show The Hills. I am embarrassed to say that I spent an exorbitant amount of time looking for this particular location and had absolutely no luck whatsoever in finding it. Thankfully though, fellow stalker Britney embarked on her own hunt to track it down and quickly stumbled upon this Shelterpop article which stated that Kristin’s home was formerly owned by “celebrity” hairstylist Eric Bilardi (apparently Eric has tressed everyone from Daryl Hannah to Jane Seymour). Britney then searched for information on Eric online, wound up finding some public records which listed his former address, and voila, it was the right place! Yay! So, after my father and I finished lunch at Philippe’s last Friday afternoon, we headed right on over to stalk Kristin’s former pad.

Unfortunately though, because the property is surrounded by extremely tall hedges and a very high fence, not a whole lot of it can be seen from the street.

Nor can much be seen from aerial views.

But that’s why God created real estate listings! Kristin’s Spanish-style home, which was originally built in the 1920s, was available for rent earlier this year at a rate of $5,750 per month. The property, which last sold in 2007 for $1.3 million, boasts two bedrooms, two bathrooms, 1,400-square feet of living space, a garden, hardwood flooring throughout, a covered patio, several fountains, and an outdoor fire pit.

The house first showed up in the second episode of The Hills’ sixth season, which was titled “Rumor Has It”, in which Kristin throws a little housewarming shindig for herself. I am fairly certain, though, that, like most of The Hills residences, Kristin never actually lived on the premises, but that it was used for filming purposes only. And from how it appears in the real estate photos, producers seem to have used all of the real life homeowner’s actual furnishings during filming –

– right down to the cups in the kitchen cupboards . . .

. . . and the cushions on the living room couch. You can check out more photos of the house on the Shelterpop website here.

Ironically enough, the finale scene, in which Kristin walks out of her house and says a tearful good-bye to both Los Angeles and Brody Jenner, was not actually filmed in front of the property, as it was made to appear. And unfortunately I have not yet been able to discern exactly where that scene was shot. Ideas, anyone?

Big THANK YOU to Britney for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Kristin Cavallari’s house from Season 6 of The Hills is located at 819 North La Jolla Avenue in West Hollywood. Philippe Chow, the restaurant where Brenda and Donna ate veal brains on Beverly Hills, 90210, is located just a half a mile south at 8284 Melrose Avenue, also in West Hollywood.