I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a happy and safe Labor Day! I am taking today off, but will be back on Wednesday with a new location. Until that time, happy stalking! 
Year: 2018
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Happy Labor Day!
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The “Secrets and Lies” Brothel
I found the second season of Secrets and Lies abysmal – which is surprising being that, on paper, it contained several elements that should have made it a sure-fire hit in my book. Murder mystery premise? Check! Shot in L.A.? Check! And it starred both AnnaLynne McCord (from my beloved 90210) and David James Elliott (one of my all-time favorite cuties). Considering I couldn’t have loved the first season more, especially its locations, Season 2 turned out to be a major disappointment. There was one locale I became fairly obsessed with, though – the Cape Cod-style dwelling from which Melanie Warner (McCord) ran a high-class brothel. The house not only figured prominently in the season’s storyline, but was extremely idyllic and picturesque. So I, of course, immediately set about tracking it down, which wound up being a more fruitful venture than watching Secrets and Lies through to the end. (What the heck was that finale, amirite? I was not at all shocked to hear the series was given the ax a few months after its airing. But I digress.)
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On Secrets and Lies, Melanie’s brothel is said to be at 8686 Mint Hill Drive in Charlotte, North Carolina. A fake “8686” address placard was even placed on the exterior of the residence for the shoot.
While watching the episode titled “The Statement,” though, I noticed that “4735” was painted on the curb of a neighboring house barely visible in the background. I had an inkling the brothel was most likely located in Encino, thanks to its seemingly new construction (the city has been a hotbed of new home activity as of late, especially Cape Cod-style properties which pop up on the regular), so I did a search for residences numbered 4735 in the area and was led to a pad at 4735 Yarmouth Avenue. When I dropped Street View’s little yellow man in front of that address and turned him around, there was the Secrets and Lies brothel staring me in the face. In reality, it can be found at 4720 Yarmouth.
My hunch about the pad being newly constructed turned out to be correct. The massive estate was custom-built in 2013 for its then owner. The residence previously situated on the premises (pictured in the Google Street View image from 2012 below) was much more modest in both size and style.
The new house consists of 5 bedrooms, a whopping 7 baths (one is resort-style with a standalone tub), 6,347 square feet of living space, a chef’s kitchen, a walk-in pantry and a butler’s pantry, a double Calacatta marble island (because one is never enough), both cathedral and coffered ceilings, a formal dining room, a breakfast room, multiple fireplaces (including one outside), a master suite with a sitting room and his-and-her walk-in closets (why, oh why, do the Grim Cheaper and I not have those?), a gym, guest/maids’ quarters, and a 0.45-acre lot with a covered patio, a fire pit, a pool (with a slide!), a spa, a BBQ, a sport court, a putting green, and a covered pool pavilion with three – count ‘em! – three TVs. Talk about amenities goals!
The sprawling estate last sold in July 2016 for $3,950,000.
You can check out some interior photos of the place here. And yes, they’re straight up real estate porn!
The brothel popped up numerous times during the second season of Secrets and Lies, beginning with the episode titled “The Detective” in which Melanie’s husband, Patrick Warner (Charlie Barnett), first finds out about his wife’s illicit business venture.
We don’t get a great view of the pad until “The Statement,” though, in the scene in which Patrick’s brother, Eric Warner (Michael Ealy), stops by the property to investigate what has been going on there. As you can see, the residence is currently much more covered over with foliage than it was when filming took place in late 2015.
While the real interior also appeared in “The Statement,” as well as in the episode that followed titled “The Racket,” the shots were far too tight and contained too much movement for me to be able to get any useable screen shots.
Thanks to IMDB, I learned that the same house was utilized as the residence of Roger Murtaugh (Damon Wayans) and his family during Season 2 of the Lethal Weapon television series. (In Season 1, a different home at 3816 Longridge Avenue in Sherman Oaks portrayed the Murtaugh pad.)
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Melanie’s brothel from Secrets and Lies is located at 4720 Yarmouth Avenue in Encino. Ali’s (Elisabeth Shue) house from The Karate Kid can be found right around the corner at 4072 Alonzo Avenue.
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The Ella Strong Denison Library from “Beaches”
Libraries are very much on my brain as of late. It’s all thanks to Matilda and the post I wrote about the Wormwood home last week. While scanning through the 1996 film making screen captures, I became awestruck by the incredible book repository where young Matilda (Sara Magdalin) regularly hung out. Though countless websites claim that Pasadena’s Central Library at 285 East Walnut Street was utilized in the movie, I spent enough time there in my 10+ years of living in Crown City to immediately know that wasn’t true. Further digging led me to discover that the cavernous space where Matilda devoured books was actually the Doheny Memorial Library on the USC campus. (A post on that site will be coming soon.) Looking into the location reminded me of a similarly beautiful athenaeum I stalked back in February 2012 with Mike the Fanboy, but had failed to blog about – The Ella Strong Denison Library, which appeared briefly in Beaches. So I decided it was finally time to amend the situation.
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The Ella Strong Denison Library, named for Ella Strong Denison, the wife of a wealthy Denver physician who donated funds to numerous universities for the purpose of building libraries, opened its doors on the Scripps College campus in 1931.
Designed by architect Gordon Kaufmann (who also created the Royal Laundry Complex, La Quinta Resort & Club, Santa Anita Park, and Greystone Mansion), the building, which houses special collections, features intricately chiseled front doors, hand-carved wood detailing, and a massive stained glass window depicting Gutenberg encircled by literary motifs.
Oh, and card catalogs the stuff dreams are made of.
The grounds surrounding the place are also quite spectacular.
Along with serving as a quiet place to study, the library plays an integral role in the beginning and end of each Scripps undergrad’s college career. As the school’s website notes,“The key moment in the Matriculation Ceremony occurs in the first few days of Orientation, when incoming students process through the intricately carved Ella Strong Denison Library East Door. This door remains locked on all other days of the year save Commencement, when graduating seniors exit through this same door, signifying the beginning of Commencement Exercises, and the end of their educational journey at Scripps.”
In Beaches, the Denison Library is where Hillary Whitney Essex (Barbara Hershey) researches her illness shortly after being diagnosed.
The handsome space looks much the same today as it did onscreen thirty years ago.
As you can see below, the venue translates beautifully to the screen.
As such, I was certain it had appeared in numerous productions. I was unable to dig up any other movies or television shows featuring it, though.
I’m only now coming to realize that the vast majority of Beaches was shot in the Los Angeles area, despite largely being set in New York and San Francisco. I’ve written about a few of the movie’s SoCal locales previously including Hillary’s beach house at the Crystal Cove Historic District, Hillary’s supposed Atherton-area mansion (you can read a second post on that spot here), and Jewel’s Catch One, which portrayed both an SF nightclub and an NYC lounge. While scanning through Beaches in preparation for last April’s post about the latter (which is best known for its appearance as The Blue Banana in Pretty Woman), I discovered that the flick also did some filming at the now defunct Ambassador Hotel. The famed lodging portrayed Marlboro Blenheim, the ritzy Atlantic City resort where young Hillary (Marcie Leeds) took CC Bloom (Mayim Bialik) for a chocolate soda at the beginning of the movie. I recognized the wood-framed doorways, red floral carpeting and lobby fountain immediately upon viewing the scene. (The Ambassador was also utilized significantly in Pretty Woman as the interior of The Regent Beverly Wilshire, as I wrote about in this post.)
The Los Angeles Equestrian Center made an appearance in Beaches, as well, as young Hillary’s Bay Area riding club. (For those keeping track, that’s three locales the film shares with Pretty Woman, which I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise being that both were directed by Garry Marshall.)
I am also fairly certain that Southwestern Bag Company at 635 Mateo Street in downtown Los Angeles, aka the police station from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, portrayed the New York ACLU office where Hillary worked in the movie, but not enough of the space was shown for me to be absolutely certain.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Ella Strong Denison Library, from Beaches, is located in Scripps College’s Kauffman Wing at 1090 North Columbia Avenue in Claremont. Harwood Court residence hall, aka Eastland School from The Facts of Life, can be found just a few blocks away on the Pomona College campus at 170 East Bonita Avenue.
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“The Princess Diaries” Firehouse
My friend Nat is a definite hostess with the mostest. When I last visited her in San Francisco in October 2016, she not only had champagne chilling in the fridge, but an itinerary of area stalking locales she thought might interest me compiled and mapped out on her phone. The spot on the list I was most excited about seeing was former Engine Company No. 43, where Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) lived with her mom, Helen (Caroline Goodall), and cat, Fat Louis, in 2001’s The Princess Diaries. This stalker loves herself any adaptive reuse and in person, the firehouse-turned-home did not disappoint. Somehow I forgot to blog about the place after returning home from my trip, though, and was not reminded of it until last Thursday when Mandy Moore, who played meanie cheerleader Lana Thomas in the film, posted a #tbt image of The Princess Diaries July 2001 premiere on Instagram. Seeing the photo brought me right back to the day I stalked the firehouse and I figured there was no time like the present to finally blog about it.
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The Mission Revival-style Engine Company No. 43 was originally built in 1911, back when firemen were still fighting blazes via horse-drawn carriages.
Following its decommission, the 4,800-square-foot wood frame structure was sold to a private buyer at a surplus auction in 1976 and subsequently transformed into a residence.
Today, the unique homestead boasts 8 rooms, 2 stories, a 340-square-foot outbuilding that initially housed Company No. 43’s kitchen, a double 0.11-acre lot, parking for 4+ cars, and original detailing throughout including a fireman’s pole.
The residence last hit the market in late 2014 with an asking price of $2.6 million (at the time it was being utilized as a 2-unit rental property) and was sold the following March for $1.85 million. That’s quite a bargain to call The Princess Diaries firehouse home, if you ask me!
Engine Company No. 43 pops up numerous times throughout the film.
In person, the place still looks much the same as it did onscreen 17 years ago.
Only the front exterior of the structure is featured in the movie.
The home’s massive side staircase also makes a couple of appearances.
Because those scenes were shot from the backyard, I was, obviously, unable to snap any photos matching the angle shown in the flick. But I was thrilled to see that the staircase is visible from the street.
The interior of Mia and Helen’s pad was nothing more than an elaborate set built inside of a soundstage a good 350 miles away at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. You can check out some fabulous photos of it on art director Caty Maxey’s website.
Engine Company No. 43’s actual interior (which you can see here) is a far cry from its onscreen counterpart. While Mia and Helen’s home is colorful and lovingly cluttered, the firehouse’s real life inside is sophisticated and minimalist. I honestly can’t decide which I like better.
Interestingly, while The Princess Diaries was set in San Francisco, not much of the movie was shot there. Along with Engine Company No. 43, the Anthony R. Grove High School exterior (which Nat took me to stalk many moons ago) can also be found in the City by the Bay at 2601 Lyon Street in Cow Hollow. The school’s courtyard scenes were lensed a bit closer to home, though, at Alverno Heights Academy in Sierra Madre, which I blogged about here.
Big THANK YOU to my friend Nat for telling me about and taking me to this location!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Engine Company No. 43, aka The Princess Diaries firehouse, is located at 724 Brazil Avenue in San Francisco’s Excelsior District.
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Cameron’s Seafood from “Say Anything . . . “
The restaurant business is an insanely fickle one. So when I set out to find the eatery where Diane Court (Ione Skye) lunched with her mom, Mrs. Court (Lois Chiles), and her mom’s boyfriend, Ray (Stephen Shortridge), in the 1989 flick Say Anything . . . a few years back, I never dreamed it would be a place still in operation that I could actually stalk. It wasn’t until partnering with Greg Mariotti, from The Uncool website, to write our joint article about the movie’s Los Angeles locations in 2017 that I learned the scene had been filmed at Cameron’s Seafood (no relation to director Cameron Crowe
) at 1978 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. When I inputted the restaurant’s name into Google, I was shocked to not only discover that the joint was still open, but that it was a place I was very familiar with. Though I had never dined there, I drove by it regularly during the 10+ years I lived in Crown City and was always struck by its resemblance to The Fish Market outposts, a favorite restaurant chain of my parents. (You can check out what a couple of those places look like here and here.) So to the top of my To-Stalk List Cameron’s went and the Grim Cheaper and I headed right on over there for lunch a few days later.[ad]
Cameron’s Seafood opened its doors in 1984.
Originally founded by John Cameron (hence the name), it was taken over just two year later by Peter Gallanis, who still owns it to this day.
Cameron’s quickly became a neighborhood staple – the go-to spot in Pasadena for fresh seafood. Per a 2003 The Conduit article, the popular eatery averages a whopping 400 patrons on weekdays and 900 on weekends.
The sprawling 9,800-square-foot space features an exhibition-style kitchen . . .
. . . a large main dining room . . .
. . . a front bar . . .
. . . a rear bar . . .
. . . an on-site fish market . . .
. . . and nautical décor throughout.
The GC and I both loved our lunch at Cameron’s and are now kicking ourselves for not frequenting the place regularly when we lived in the area. The crab cakes I ordered were divine, the ambiance warm and inviting, and the bartender who served us could not have been more friendly. The cherry on top of our meal, though, was when I asked said bartender if she was aware of any filming done at the restaurant, and she replied, “A movie was shot here once, but that was a really long time ago – in the ‘80s.” Shocked, I inquired if she was talking about Say Anything . . . and was floored when she responded in the affirmative. In my experience, it is a rare occasion for employees to know any filming information, even if the filming is iconic (case in point – the concierge at the Plaza Hotel New York who had no idea Home Alone 2 had been lensed on the premises), so for her to be aware of a relatively short scene shot at Cameron’s almost thirty years prior was downright phenomenal!
In Say Anything . . . , Cameron’s Seafood is the site of a rather terse luncheon during which Diane pleads with her mother to tell the IRS nice things about her father, who is being investigated on embezzlement charges.
In the scene, Diane, her mother, and Ray sit at the rear of Cameron’s main dining room, just beyond the counter that overlooks the exhibition kitchen. Though I didn’t get a close-up photo of that area of the restaurant, it is visible in the far back of my picture below.
With its nautical-themed décor, it is not very hard to see how Cameron’s came to be used Say Anything . . . , which was set in Seattle. Amazingly, the place still looks much the same today as it did onscreen 29 years ago.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Cameron’s Seafood, from Say Anything . . . , is located at 1978 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.
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The Wormwood Home from “Matilda”
Every time I open up Instagram lately I’m inundated with videos of the so-called “Matilda Challenge.” For those whose feeds haven’t been flooded by the clips, in the challenge fans of the 1996 film re-create this scene in which Matilda Wormwood (Mara Wilson) perfects her magic powers. Though I’ve never seen the movie (or read the 1988 Roald Dahl novel on which it was based), I did stalk the home where Matilda lived with her parents, Harry (Danny DeVito) and Zinnia (Rhea Perlman), and her brother, Michael (Brian Levinson), in it a few years back. The challenge served as a reminder that I somehow never blogged about the place and, being that there’s no time like the present, here goes!
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I first learned about the Wormwoods’ zany ranch-style residence via this image posted by fellow stalker Tony Hoffarth on his fabulous Flickr filming locations page. I immediately became fixated on the unique property, especially its cantilevered front steps, rock detailing, and double-peaked roof. Though I knew from Tony’s photo comparison that the actual home barely resembles its onscreen self, I ran right out to stalk it nonetheless.
In person, the dwelling is much more ordinary and non-descript than it appeared in Matilda, with a muted color palate and an abundance of foliage. Missing are the Wormwoods’ tanbark and rock front yard and odd decorative paneling, as well as many of the other elements that made it so eccentric onscreen.
The most glaring difference between the real house and its movie counterpart, though, is the front porch area. As you can see in my photos, while the Wormwood home has a flush front with a central window, the actual pad boasts a recessed entrance.
Several palm trees are planted in the space and the roof above it has an opening through which said palm trees grow.
There are also two dormer windows which sit behind the roof cutout, as well as a wrought iron gate enclosing it all. None of these elements are present in the film.
The property looks so different from the Wormwood pad that when I first sat down to make screen captures for this post, I thought Tony may have pinpointed the wrong locale. The dormer windows (which have to be fake being that the house is one-story) especially threw me for a loop – though, truth be told, it wasn’t the first time faux dormers figured into a filming locations hunt. Thanks to street signs visible in the background of a few scenes, though, as well as landmarks such as neighboring homes that were easily identifiable, I was able to verify his information. 15811 Youngwood Drive in Whittier did indeed portray the Wormwood residence. I am unsure if the many differences we are seeing today are the result of renovations done by the homeowners in the 22+ years since Matilda was lensed or if the dwelling was altered significantly by the production team for the shoot and then restored to its original state after filming wrapped, but I am guessing the latter.
In real life, the 1965 pad features 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2,366 square feet of living space, and a 0.46-acre plot of land.
The property does boast one fantastical, Matilda-esque element – an ornate leaf-covered wrought iron mailbox. I am unsure if it is original to the home or a left-over set piece, though.
The first time I scanned through the movie, I did not see the mailbox pop up at all, so I assumed it was an element authentic to the house. But during a second viewing I noticed the piece – painted red – in the very background of the scene in which Matilda confronts some FBI agents searching her parents’ garage. If the mailbox was just a set piece added for the shoot, I’d think it would have been made more visible and prominent throughout the flick, which leads me to believe it is actually genuine to the home.
Either way, the mailbox is one of the most fabulous I’ve ever encountered.
I am 99.9% certain that only the home’s exterior was utilized in the filming and that the interior of the Wormwood pad was a studio-built set.
And what a magical set it was! Production designer Bill Brzerski truly created a masterpiece with the Wormwoods’ congested, over-the-top, gaudy décor. Amazingly, Matilda was Brzerski’s inaugural feature film job! Talk about hitting it out of the park your first time up! You can read an interesting article about how he got started in the business here.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Tony Hoffarth for finding this location.
You can check out his Flickr page here.For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Wormwood home from Matilda is located at 15811 Youngwood Drive in Whittier.
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Hope and Michael’s House from “thirtysomething”
I think Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick are two of the greatest television producers ever to walk the face of the earth. Oddly though, while I am obsessed with both My So-Called Life and Relativity (as evidenced here and here), I was never a fan of thirtysomething, one of their earliest forays into the small screen. The 1987 series’ failure to resonate was likely due to its focus on parenting – the subject matter was just a little too adult being that I was ten when the show debuted. I did stalk the large Craftsman home belonging to Hope Murdoch Steadman (Mel Harris) and her husband, Michael (Ken Olin), on it upon first moving to Southern California almost twenty years ago, though. I never got around to blogging about the place, but while recently listening to My So-Called Podcast (a My So-Called Life re-cap show hosted by the creators of fave podcast True Crime Obsessed), I started thinking about the property and figured not only was it high time I dedicate a post to it, but to also give the series it starred on another chance.
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Open up any Pinterest board of famous houses and the Steadman residence will inevitably be pictured. The pad is also documented in pretty much every single Hollywood tour book ever written, is talked about regularly in the comments sections of filming location blogs (especially over at Hooked on Houses), and will definitely go down in the annals of history as one of the best-loved TV homes. Oddly though, the exterior of the dwelling was rarely featured on thirtysomething. I scanned through dozens upon dozens of episodes to make screen captures for this post and only came across a few instances of it being shown. I guess Herskovitz and Zwick weren’t big fans of establishing shots in their early days.
Said to be at 1700 Bryn Mawr Avenue in Philadelphia on the series, the home can actually be found at 1710 Bushnell Avenue in South Pasadena.
As chronicled in a 1997 People magazine article titled “That’s My House!”, homeowners Dennis and Donna Potts were first approached about the use of their residence on the series via a location scout who knocked on their door in the summer of 1987. The couple wound up being paid $1,500 for each day of filming that occurred on the premises during the show’s four-year run. I would consider that a heck of lot of money today, but back in the late ‘80s? Dang! According to People, production designer Brandy Alexander keyed in on the property because of its age, saying “We wanted an older house so we could have the characters do renovations.”
The home was utilized solely for exterior sequences on thirtysomething. The interior of the Steadman residence was nothing more than a set (a roofless one, at that) built inside of a soundstage at CBS Studio Center (then called CBS/MTM Studios) in Studio City. Per a 1996 New York Times article, the set was based upon the real life interior of two different Pasadena-area Craftsmen – one of which, I came to discover, is definitely the Bushnell house. As you can see in this image of the property’s built-in buffet, it matches what was shown onscreen perfectly.
The dining room is also a pretty direct match, as you can see in this photo as compared to the screen capture below. You can check out some additional images of the actual inside of the Bushnell house here.
Interestingly, audiences considered the set a bit too upper-crust for the middle-class Steadmans, which proved to be an ongoing source of consternation for thirtysomething producers. As author Elisabeth Bumiller states in the New York Times article from 1996, “Even though the creators let the set deteriorate, making the house look dirtier and more lived in, few people bought it.” Herskovitz extrapolates, “No matter what we did, people thought it was a rich, expensive house.” Considering the property’s wood detailing and plethora of built-ins and the fact that Zillow currently pegs its value at $2.23 million, I’m going to have to side with the fans on this one.
In real life, the 1902 pad boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2,760 square feet, a fireplace, stained glass windows, original detailing, a detached garage, a covered patio, 0.17 acres of land, and a garden.
The same property also appeared in the 1990 comedy Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael as the residence of Denton (Jeff Daniels) and Barbara Webb (Joan McMurtrey).
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Hope and Michael Steadman’s house from thirtysomething is located at 1710 Bushnell Avenue in South Pasadena. Elliot (Timothy Busfield) and Nancy Weston’s (Patricia Wettig) pad from the series is one street over at 1700 Fletcher Avenue. Countless other famous homes are located on Bushnell. The Hopper residence from Ghost Dad is at 1621 Bushnell. Joan’s dwelling from the movie is next door at 1615. The Lambda Epsilon Omega fraternity house from Old School is at 1803 Bushnell. The property located at 1727 Bushnell played both Scott Howard’s (Michael J. Fox) house in Teen Wolf and Lorraine Baines’ (Lea Thompson) 1955 home in Back to the Future. George McFly’s (Crispin Glover) 1955 residence from Back to the Future can be found at 1711 Bushnell, while Biff Tannen’s (Thomas F. Wilson) from Back to the Future Part II is at 1809.
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Michelle’s Downhill Derby from “Full House”
There’s nothing like remnants of a film shoot remaining behind years after the fact to set my heart aflutter. Last June, a fellow stalker named Chris kindly emailed me a lengthy and comprehensive list of Full House locations he had tracked down, one of which was the Griffith Park road where the Downhill Derby from Season 7’s “Michelle a la Cart” took place. Though I did not remember the episode, the locale had me particularly intrigued thanks to some vestiges from the shoot Chris noted were still visible. As he wrote in his email, “In the 2007 imagery on Google Street View, you can still see the faded lane markings on the road from the race.” Um, sign me up! So onto my To-Stalk List the site went and I finally headed out there to see it in person a few weeks ago.
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In re-watching “Michelle a la Cart” in preparation for this post, I realized there’s a reason I did not recall it from its original airing in 1994 – the episode just isn’t all that memorable. It centers around three less-than-scintillating storylines. First, D.J. Tanner (Candance Cameron) laments a phone message left by her ex-boyfriend, Steve Hale (Scott Weinger) – she thinks he’s despondent over their recent break-up, but it turns out he just really wants a CD back. Then there’s Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) who attempts to learn ballet from Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin) in the hopes it will improve his hockey-playing skills, which gives us this great visual. Oh, Joey!
In the main narrative, Michelle Tanner (Mary-Kate and Ashely Olsen) decides to build a soapbox car with her aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) so she can compete in the local Downhill Derby and defeat neighborhood meanie Kenny (K. Evan Bonifant), who thinks she can’t win because she’s a girl. Though lackluster as a whole, the episode did give us a great zinger from Michelle. When faced with her nemesis’ jeering, she tells him, “My dad said if I can’t say anything nice then I shouldn’t say anything at all . . . but my dad’s not here and you’re a weenie!” (You can see a clip of the fabulous moment here.)
The episode culminates in the big Downhill Derby competition, which was set up on Vista Del Valle Drive just west of where it intersects with North Vermont Canyon Road in Griffith Park. The race’s starting point was positioned at the very eastern edge of Vista Del Valle Drive, close to where it dead ends.
The finish line was set up about two hundred feet away, where the hilly part of the road bottoms out.
(Spoiler alert – Michelle, of course, wins the derby and, in the process, learns that girls can do anything boys can do.)
In the episode, the racers’ lanes are made up of uninterrupted white lines and dotted yellow lines, as you can see below.
It is those lines that are still visible today – not just on Google Street View imagery from 2007 as Chris had mentioned, but in real life, too.
Though extremely faded, the dotted yellow lines . . .
. . . and the uninterrupted white lines are still somewhat intact, as you can see in my photos above and below.
While I originally assumed that the markings were painted onto the road strictly for the Full House shoot, it is entirely possible they were there prior to the filming – especially since the yellow lines pictured in my images appear to be newer additions. Considering said lines are not typical road boundaries, though (I have never seen anything like them, at least), and it is unclear as to exactly what they designate, I do not believe they are original elements of the street. Either way, I love that markings visible in a shoot that took place 24 years ago remain evident today.
While I was stalking the Downhill Derby site, security guards happened to be setting up street closures on the premises for a concert that was taking place nearby later that night. I can only imagine their befuddlement in seeing me bounce all over the road, enthusiastically snapping photo after photo of faded lines and loudly exclaiming to the Grim Cheaper how thrilled I was to be seeing them in person. Ah, to be on the outside looking in.
Big THANK YOU to Chris for finding this location and telling me about it!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Downhill Derby from the “Michelle a la Cart” episode of Full House took place on Vista Del Valle Drive just west of where it intersects with North Vermont Canyon Road in Griffith Park. (Be advised, some maps refer to Vista Del Valle as “Boy Scout Road,” though Google Maps and my GPS both recognize the street as Vista Del Valle.)
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Oliver’s House from “A Lot Like Love”
A Lot Like Love is a movie I can’t not watch. Even though I’ve seen it at least a dozen times and own the DVD, if I happen to catch it on TV, need to scan through it for a post, or it pops up in my Netflix recommendations, I’m pretty much viewing it in its entirety. And thank goodness, too, because doing so led me to find a new location from the film recently, one that I thought I had already pinpointed – the house belonging to Oliver Martin’s (Ashton Kutcher) parents in the 2005 romcom. First, let me back up a bit.
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Ten years ago (egads!), my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, tracked down what I thought was the Martin residence via a 2006 Los Angeles Times article chronicling homes featured onscreen. In the blurb, author Danny Miller states, “Encino resident Ramona Hennesy creates brochures showing her house’s best features and sends them off to location scouts all over town. Her efforts have paid off. Several commercials have been filmed in her ranch home. Last year, the house had a featured role in the film A Lot Like Love. Both the interior and the backyard were used, and her carport was even transformed into Ashton Kutcher’s bedroom.” A quick scan through public records provided us with the property’s address (17050 Magnolia Boulevard) and I ran right out to stalk the place shortly thereafter. Upon arriving, I was surprised to see the pad fronted by large hedges that obscured it almost entirely from view, as you can see below. What little was visible did not look familiar from the movie, as I mentioned in the post I wrote about the locale a few days later.
Google Maps imagery from 2007 (two years after the movie was released) show the hedges in a much less mature state, so figuring they were a post-A Lot Like Love addition, I did not think much further on the subject.
Flash forward to this past April. While making screen captures of the flick in preparation for this post, I fell into the familiar trap of viewing it through to the end and was shocked to see an address number of “17204” posted by the front door of the house across the street from Oliver’s parents’ place in the closing scene in which Oliver and his longtime on-again/off-again paramour Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) finally get together. That number, though close, did not exactly coincide with the 17050 address of the property I’d blogged about all those years ago. What the whaaat? So I headed over to Google to search for homes numbered 17204 in the Los Angeles area and quickly came across one at 17204 Otsego Street in Encino that matched the residence Emily and Oliver kissed in front of, albeit with quite a bit more foliage.
From there, I flipped Google Street View’s little yellow man around to see the property across the street and, sure enough, Oliver’s parents’ house was staring me right in the face (again, with quite a bit more foliage). Had the article gotten things wrong?
Confused, I pulled up the old Los Angeles Times article and quickly realized that I had read too much between the lines all those years ago (that was back when I was an amateur stalker, after all
). I’d simply assumed the Magnolia Boulevard residence had been used for exteriors and interiors, as well as backyard shots, but the article never actually mentions the front exterior at all. D’oh! As I soon came to find out, Oliver’s parents’ house was a mash-up of both properties, which are located right around the corner from each other. The Otsego Street house was utilized in all scenes featuring the front of the Martin home . . .
. . . including the final scene, which was my favorite of the movie. While there, I couldn’t help but re-enact the hissy fit Oliver’s sister, Ellen (Taryn Manning), has over the fact that Oliver is holding up her wedding. (Lucifer fans – that’s Aimee Garcia, aka forensics expert Ella Lopez, in the pink dress below! She plays Ellen’s best friend in the movie.)
All interior filming took place just around the corner at the Magnolia Boulevard house.
As you can see in the screen capture as compared to my photograph below, the roofline and window framing of 17050 Magnolia match that of the Martin home.
The shape of the Martin’s pool and its location in regard to the house, as well as the residence’s rear roofline . . .
. . . all also match what is visible of the Magnolia Boulevard dwelling in aerial views.
As mentioned in the Los Angeles Times article, the property’s carport was transformed into Oliver’s bedroom for the movie.
Luckily, the Magnolia Boulevard home’s front gates were open when I stalked the place back in 2008, so I got to snap a couple of photos of said carport.
Why producers chose to use two properties in the film is unclear to me, but I am guessing it has something to do with the hedges surrounding the Magnolia Boulevard residence, which I now believe were there at the time of the A Lot Like Love shoot. The movie’s final scene, in which Emily runs from Oliver’s house to her car parked across the street, required a location that was open to the road. I think the production team likely fell in love with the Magnolia pad’s interior, but found the exterior too closed-off for the end sequence, so they searched for a secondary property to utilize. I was hoping the DVD commentary with director Nigel Cole and producers Armyan Bernstein and Kevin Messick would provide some clarification on the subject, but, other than the fact that filming of the wedding segment took place in the Valley, nothing was said about the Martin residence.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The house used for exterior shots of Oliver’s parents’ residence in A Lot Like Love can be found at 17201 Otsego Street in Encino. The pad Emily parks in front of at the end of the movie is directly across the street at 17204 Otsego. The home utilized for interior and backyard sequences is located around the corner at 17050 Magnolia Boulevard.
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My Latest Interview with BH9021Whoa
I recently sat down to chat all things 90210 with LeeAnn from the fabulous BH9021Whoa website. (That’s her header pictured above – yep, she photoshopped her face onto Shannen Doherty’s body. A woman after my own heart, I swear!) Be sure to head over to her site to check out the interview.
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P.S. The “Luke Perry and his wife” imagery from the Real Life Couples of Riverdale video that LeeAnn mentions in the interview is pictured below. You can watch the clip here. It’s seriously the most amazing thing ever!
