The “Crossroads” Motel

One location that I have been trying to track down for what seems like ages now is the supposed Tucson, Arizona-area motel where Ben (aka Anson Mount) played the song “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” for Lucy (aka Britney Spears) in the 2002 movie Crossroads.  In the flick, Ben takes Lucy into a large, very unique-looking, surfboard-shaped glass room and proceeds to play the song for her on a piano that is stationed there.  Well, let me tell you, I became absolutely intrigued with that room ever since first seeing the movie almost a decade ago and immediately added the motel to my “To-Find” list, but for whatever reason could just not seem to locate it.  So imagine my surprise when fellow stalker Owen emailed me a little over two weeks ago to ask if I happened to know where that motel was.  He was trying to track it down because, as he said, “the big room with the large glass windows is pretty cool”.  What can I say – great minds think alike.  When I told Owen that I had no idea where it was located, he got right to work in finding it.  He had learned from watching the Crossroads’ DVD commentary with producer Ann Carli, director Tamra Davis, and writer Shonda Rimes that the motel was located somewhere in “the Valley” and that a production designer named Waldemar had discovered it while driving around scouting locations for the film.  So what did Owen do?  Yep, he went straight to the source and contacted Waldemar directly!  Well, the very next day there was an email from Waldemar waiting in Owen’s inbox – with an address.  Yay!  As it turns out filming had taken place at the Hometown Inn in North Hills.  So I dragged my dad right on out to stalk the place a few days later.  (Now I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here that I, too, listened to that very same DVD commentary while trying to locate the motel and never in a million years did it occur to me to go after Waldemar himself!  Owen is most definitely the master and my hat is completely off to him on this one!)

Oddly enough, the room where Ben played “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” is now a restaurant of some sort and it looks quite a bit different today than it did when filming took place back in 2002.  The whole motel has an odd feel to it, truth be told, and the place seemed to be rather deserted while I was there taking pictures.

I cannot express how cool it was to finally be standing in that room, though, and thinking about the fact that Miss Britney Spears had once been standing – and singing – in that same exact spot.

Quite a bit of the Hometown Inn was featured in Crossroads, including the front entrance;

and the pool area . . .

. . . which appeared in the scene in which Lucy speaks with her friends, Kit (aka Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (aka Taryn Manning), about the fact that her mother does not want a relationship with her.

As you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, the blue lip which surrounds the perimeter of the pool still looks exactly the same today as it did when the movie was filmed!

The Hometown Inn was not used for the filming of the interior of Lucy, Kit, Ben, and Mimi’s motel room, though.  As was the case with the majority of the motel room scenes in Crossroads, interior filming took place at the now-defunct Ambassador Hotel near Downtown Los Angeles.  You can see what an actual Hometown Inn room looks like here.

While we were stalking the Hometown Inn, I desperately wanted to find the payphone where Lucy called her father, Pete (aka Dan Aykroyd), in the movie, but for the life of me I just could NOT seem to figure out where it was.  I knew the phone had to be situated somewhere near the motel’s main entrance because Ben’s car was visible in the background behind Lucy in the scene, but I just could not locate it anywhere.

It wasn’t until after I returned home and watched the above-pictured deleted scene that I realized the payphone was located inside of the motel’s lobby.

That payphone is, sadly, no longer there.  And while I did go inside the lobby while I was stalking the motel, because I did not realize it had been featured in the movie, I, unfortunately, did not get any photographs of it.

You can watch a behind-the-scenes video of the Hometown Inn scene being filmed by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It:  Hometown Inn, aka the Tucson, Arizona motel from Crossroads, is located at 9401 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills.  You can visit the motel’s official website here.