Your definitive source to filming locations and all things Hollywood!
The December 2017 issue of Los Angeles magazine hit newsstands last week, featuring an article by yours truly. The blurb, which can be found on page 93, is a detailed itinerary for a tour of twenty L.A.-area film locales. If you can’t get your hands on a copy, don’t worry – the article can also be found online here. Enjoy!
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – I hate incorrect filming location information! Case in point – while researching Mannequin locales prior to my recent trip to Philadelphia, I came across a mention online that the movie’s restaurant scene was shot at the now defunct Dewey’s Famous on Locust and 15th. A cursory Google search told me a few things – that the eatery closed at some point in the mid-80s, later became a bank and then an outpost of the Cosi chain – and that it was most definitely not the spot featured in Mannequin. The establishment where Jonathan Switcher (Andrew McCarthy) dined with his ex-girlfriend, Roxie (Carole Davis), in the 1987 flick was extremely elegant and fancy, while Dewey’s was a very casual lunch counter. They could not be one and the same. So I set out to find where filming actually had taken place.
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Though the restaurant was referred to as “Chez Jacques” in Mannequin, during a re-watch I spotted neon signage on the eatery’s overhang, as well as a sign posted by the front door, showing a different name. I couldn’t quite make out what the wording said exactly, but I could see that it started with DiL. So I started playing around with different letter combinations in a Google search, also adding “Philadelphia” and “restaurant,” and it was not long before I figured out that the logo displayed on the canopy was that of DiLullo Centro, a since closed upscale Italian spot formerly located at 1407 Locust Street in Philly’s City Center area. Street View showed that the place now housed a Greek eatery named Estia Restaurant, but that the exterior still looked exactly the same as it had in Mannequin. I held out hope that the interior was still recognizable, as well, and the Grim Cheaper and I headed right on over there for lunch our first day in the City of Brotherly Love.
DiLullo Centro was originally founded by Joseph V. DiLullo in 1985. It was the third eatery established by the Philadelphia native, whose foray into the restaurant industry was rather unusual. While working at a barbershop in Fox Chase at 15, Joseph noticed that the pizza parlor across the street had been put up for sale. The price was $5,000, much more than the young man had to his name, but fate interceded. His mother was in a nursing home at the time and during his visits, Joe made friends with an elderly fellow patient. One serendipitous day, Joe talked about the parlor in front of the man, who offered to loan him the money to buy it. Joseph agreed and at the tender age of 16, dropped out of school and became a restaurateur. On the day Joseph’s Pizza opened, the elderly man showed up, along with his chauffeur-driven limo, to offer some words of encouragement. After telling his young squire, “Don’t worry. You’re going to make a lot of money,” he drove off. Though Joe often tried to contact his benefactor, he never heard from him again.
The man’s prophecy came true, though. Joe did make a lot of money. In less than a year, he had turned a large enough profit to purchase a neighboring space, where he moved Joseph’s Pizza. In 1979, he opened the upscale Ristorante DiLullo next door to the pizzeria and six years later, DiLullo Centro in City Center. Sadly, Joe passed away unexpectedly in 1994 at the age of 45, but his widow, Claire, still manages Ristorante DiLullo (now called Moonstruck Restaurant) and Joseph’s Pizza today.
Claire continued to run DiLullo Centro, for a time, as well. Designed by Alesker & Dundon Architects, the opulent 200-seat site featured etched glass partitions, slate flooring, mirrored paneling, and foliage galore. The photographs below, which I got from the Alesker & Dundon website (where more images of the restaurant can be found), show what the space looked like when it first opened.
In 1999, Claire changed the name of the eatery to “Toto,” in honor of her new husband, Toto Schiavone. When Toto closed in 2005, Estia Restaurant opened in its place.
Our meal at Estia was nothing short of fabulous. I ordered the Cheese Saganaki, aka pan-fried kefalograviera cheese with lemon, which is one of my favorite meals. As expected, it was amazing. I mean, how can you go wrong with fried cheese? The restaurant also serves a special type of hummus made without tahini that was out of this world. The GC and I are still trying to figure out how to replicate it.
In Mannequin, Roxie asks Jonathan to meet her at Chez Jacques in the hopes that she can lure him away from his new window dressing job at Prince and Company in order to come to her department store, Illustra. Jonathan does not have a good reputation at Chez Jacques, though. As he explains to Roxie, he formerly worked at the restaurant and once almost burned the place down. (Spoiler alert: Jonathan, or “Ze Flambé Terrorist,” as the maître d’ refers to him, of course, starts another fire dining this visit.)
Though the décor has changed considerably, the restaurant is still very recognizable from its onscreen stint almost thirty years ago. In the screen capture below, you can just make out the elevator behind Jonathan, which I, unfortunately, shot from a different angle. As you can see, though, the rounded walls that flank it, recessed lighting above it, and the positioning of the column in front of it all match what was shown in the movie.
In the scene, Jonathan and Roxie dined in front of the windows in DiLullo Centro’s main dining room, in the section directly next to the mezzanine level.
The stairs leading up to the mezzanine are visible in the scene. Though none of my images show those stairs, you can see the mezzanine itself in my photograph below.
The building that houses Estia also has an interesting history. Designed by Horace Trumbauer in 1922, the 22-story Gothic-style structure was commissioned by Louis Cahan of the Equitable Trust Company of New York and, as such, is known as the Equitable Trust Building. The property’s ground floor was originally the site of a 1,580-seat theatre named the Fox-Locust Theatre, which opened its doors on March 20th, 1927. According to the Cinema Treasures website, such stars as Al Pacino, James Earl Jones, Ethel Barrymore, Paul Newman, Richard Dreyfuss, Milton Berle, Carol Channing, Henry Fonda, and Anne Bancroft all graced its stage at one time or another. When the theatre closed in 1980, portions of the auditorium were razed in order to make room for a parking lot. The interior that remained intact was remodeled and became DiLullo Centro. You can see some photos of what the theatre looked like when it was still in operation here.
On a side note – I would like to wish my mom a very happy birthday today. I am so thankful I get to call you my mama! Not only do we a share a love of Pretty Little Liars (as evidenced below) she is the one who originally got me hooked on filming locations, for which I will be forever grateful. Love you!
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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Estia Restaurant, aka the former DiLullo Centro, aka Chez Jacques from Mannequin, is located at 1405-1407 Locust Street in Philadelphia’s City Center. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.
Located directly across the street from North Hollywood Park – aka the spot where the iconic Boombox scene from Say Anything . . . was filmed, which I blogged about yesterday – is the 7-Eleven that appeared in the 1989 flick. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I found out about this locale once again thanks to Mike’s fiancé, Ame, who grew up in the North Hollywood area and had heard about the filming when it took place 24 years ago (yikes, has it really been that long?!?!). So, after stopping by the park – where we, of course, re-enacted the Boombox scene – Mike and I headed right across the street to stalk the 7-Eleven.
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At the beginning of Say Anything . . . , Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) takes Diane Court (Ione Skye) to a supposed Seattle, Washington-area 7-Eleven convenience store to grab a Big Gulp and some coffee on their way home from a high school graduation party in the wee hours of the morning.
Amazingly enough, despite a fairly minor roof alteration, the store looks very much the same today as it did when Say Anything . . . was filmed almost two-and-a-half decades ago.
While we were there, Mike pointed out that even the brick border separating the parking lot from the sidewalk that Lloyd and Diane walked over in the flick is still there to this day – albeit a little worse for the wear. Love it, love it, love it!
In the movie, while leaving the 7-Eleven, Lloyd spots some broken glass on the ground and, almost instinctively, brushes it out of Diane’s way so that she does not walk through it. Now that’s chivalry at its finest!
So I, of course, just had to pretend to step on broken glass while we were there. 
North Hollywood Park – pretty much the exact spot where Lloyd stood during the Boombox scene, in fact – is visible in the background behind Lloyd and Diane as they walk off-screen after leaving the 7-Eleven.
Say Anything . . . is not the 7-Eleven’s only claim to fame. According to the Rob Dyrdek Foundation website, on May 18th, 2010 the convenience store was converted into an urban skate shop for the day in conjunction with the grand opening of the charity’s third Safe Spot Skate Spot – a state-of-the-art skating plaza located inside of North Hollywood Park.
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER and you can take a look at my my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and his fiancé, Ame, for finding this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Say Anything . . . 7-Eleven is located at 11340 Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. North Hollywood Park, where the iconic Say Anything . . . Boombox scene was filmed, is located directly across the street at 11455 Magnolia Boulevard.
A few months back, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, informed me that his fiancé, Ame (who grew up in North Hollywood), had just told him that the iconic Boombox scene from the 1989 classic Say Anything . . . was filmed at, of all places, a park – North Hollywood Park in North Hollywood to be exact. I was absolutely shocked to hear this information because, not only had I always assumed that the flick was filmed in its entirety in Seattle, Washington, but the scene was made to look as if it took place in a residential area, directly outside of the house where Diane Court (Ione Skye) lived, and not at a public park. As we both came to find out, though, thanks to the Washington State Film Locations website, while the vast majority of the movie’s establishing shots were lensed in the Pacific Northwest, all actual filming took place right here in Southern California! Well, believe you me, once Mike and I learned that bit of information, we set about tracking down some other locales from the flick and had quite a bit of success. And we also ran right out to stalk North Hollywood Park.
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In the brief, but iconic Say Anything . . . scene, shortly after Diane breaks up with him, a heartsick Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) stands outside of Diane’s bedroom window (or so producers would have us believe) at night, holding a large Boombox that is playing Peter Gabriel’s hit 1986 song “In Your Eyes”. The memorable scene has been duplicated and parodied countless times since, on everything from Saturday Night Live and South Park to The Colbert Report and fave movie Easy A.
In an interesting twist, Peter Gabriel came thisclose to turning down director Cameron Crowe’s request for “In Your Eyes” to be featured in the movie. In a November 2009 Entertainment Weekly article, Crowe explains that he was on the phone with Gabriel a few days after sending him a Say Anything . . . screener, but Gabriel refused to sign off on the song’s use. Of the call, he says, “I just remember being in the kitchen and just going, ‘Oh man.’ I said I understood and I appreciated it and was he sure and he said yes, he was sure, and I was saying goodbye to him and I remember the phone was like on its way to the cradle, I think we’d already even said goodbye. And I just, like, was seized with this thing and I pulled the phone back up and I go, ‘Why? I got to ask you why. Why can’t we have the song? Why was it wrong?’ And he said, ‘Well when he takes the overdose it just didn’t feel like the right kind of use of the song.’ And I’m like, ‘When he takes the overdose?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you’re making the John Belushi story [Wired], right?’ I said, ‘No, no, no. It’s a movie about the guy in high school with the trench coat.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, the high school movie. We haven’t watched that yet.’ Hallelujah! ‘Please watch the high school movie and let me know if it works in the high school movie.’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah yeah yeah, okay, great.’ And then we got the word back that he said yes.” And the rest is (very often re-enacted) history.
Before heading out to the park, Mike had told me to wear a trench coat and that he would be bringing along a Boombox from work so that I could recreate the iconic scene. As fate would have it, though, the Boombox went missing a few days before our stalk, but Mike was thankfully able to work his magic by digitally adding the stereo into the below picture. Love it!
I would venture a guess that North Hollywood Park was also the park featured in the Say Anything . . . montage scene, but I, unfortunately, have not been able to verify that hunch.
And thanks to the Hollywood Lost and Found blog, I learned that Pee-wee Herman (Paul Ruebens) rode his beloved red bike through North Hollywood Park – in almost the exact same spot that appeared in Say Anything . . . – at the very beginning of 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
Sadly, I can’t say that I would really recommend stalking North Hollywood Park. While the tree-lined, 99-acre space, which was originally founded in 1927, is quite beautiful and boasts countless amenities, including a library, three baseball diamonds, a public pool, tennis courts, a playground, a skate park, and a recreation center, the place seemed to be a haven for the homeless and a den of criminal activity. The police were actually called and wound up arresting someone in the brief ten minutes that we were there.
And let me tell you, when you’re standing around in shorts, wedges and a trench coat and holding a non-existent Boombox above your head, the “locals” tend to get just a wee-bit rowdy. LOL
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER and you can take a look at my latest post – about low-carb chicken noodle soup – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and his fiancé, Ame, for finding this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: North Hollywood Park, where the iconic Say Anything . . . Boombox scene was filmed, is located at 11455 Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. In the scene, Lloyd Dobler was standing on the southwest corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Tujunga Avenue, in the area denoted with a pink arrow above.
Well over six months ago, my good friend Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, asked if I would like to do some stalking with him of Harwood Court, the Pomona College dormitory which stood in for the fictional Eastland School, attended by Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), Dorothy ‘Tootie’ Ramsey (Kim Fields), Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), and Joanne ‘Jo” Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon), in the 1980’s television series The Facts of Life. My answer, of course, was a resounding “YES!” Because both of our schedules have been a bit hectic as of late, though, we were not able to make it out there until this past Sunday afternoon. Needless to say, we were both pretty excited about the whole adventure when it finally came to pass and, a few days before we headed to Claremont, Mikey sent me an email which stated, “Wow, this is just like going scuba diving with Jacques Cousteau, or playing football with Tim Tebow, or getting a pants-dropping lesson from Marky Mark! Well, maybe not that last one!” Um, my stalking skills being compared to the scuba skills of Jacques Cousteau?!?! LOVE IT!
This location was actually found by Robert, of the Movie Locations and More website, way back in the Summer of 2010. Earlier that year, Robert had read online that the exterior of Eastland School was a building on the Pomona College campus in Claremont, but because Google Street View of that area is not particularly clear, he was unable to track down the exact structure used via the internet. So when he came to Los Angeles for a stalking visit a few months later, he drove around the 140-acre campus, screen shot in hand, and, amazingly enough, was able to track down the building fairly quickly. Thank you, Robert! In reality, Eastland School is the Harwood Court residential hall – a 68,000-square-foot unisex dormitory that was built in 1921 and currently houses 170 students. The structure, which was originally an all-female dorm, was completely renovated by the Wheeler & Wheeler architectural firm in 1990. Thankfully though, it still looks much the same as it did onscreen in The Facts of Life.
A few years ago, Mikey had actually purchased one of Molly Ringwald’s costumes from the first season of The Facts of Life, as well as a promotional lunch box from the series that he had signed by none other than Mrs. Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) herself, and he brought both items with him on our stalk to add to the fun. On our way there, he mentioned that he thought I might be able to fit into the track jacket portion of Molly’s former costume and, shockingly, he was right! I cannot tell you how nervous I was to be wearing such an amazing piece of television history, while drinking a Starbucks, no less, so I only kept it on long enough to snap a couple of pics.
Molly is pictured wearing one of the track jackets above. So incredibly cool!!
While we were there, a resident happened to walk out of Harwood Court and we stopped her to ask if she would take a photograph of Mikey and me. She obliged and afterwards I inquired if she was aware that her dorm was, in fact, The Facts of Life school. Shockingly, she had not actually been aware, and, even more shockingly, she did not seem to be too impressed by the news. Ah well, I guess not everyone is a stalker. 
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Harwood Court showed up as the fictional Peekskill, New York-area Eastland School during the opening credits of The Facts of Life’s entire nine-season run.
You can watch the series’ opening credits by clicking above. On an interesting side-note – the show’s insanely-catchy theme song was co-composed by Alan Thicke, aka Jason Seaver, the patriarch of the Seaver family on Growing Pains, and real-life father of R&B singer Robin Thicke.
While doing research before heading out to Pomona College with Mikey on Sunday, I discovered that Harwood Court had also appeared in several other productions. In 1985’s Real Genius, it was featured as the dormitory where Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret), and Jordan (Michelle Meyrink) lived.
And while some of the real-life interior of the building was actually used in the movie . . .
. . . I am fairly certain that the hallway and dorm rooms were sets.
In 1987’s Teen Wolf Too, Harwood Court stood in for the Hamilton College dormitory where Todd Howard (Jason Bateman) lived with his roommate, Stiles (Stuart Franklin).
The back side of the building appeared in the movie’s beyond-words-awful “Do You Love Me” dance sequence.
I believe that the interior scenes were all filmed on a set, though.
In the Season 1 episode of the reality series Top Chef Masters titled “Masters Get Schooled”, the Elimination Challenge, in which professional chefs Michael Schlow, Hubert Keller, Tim Love, and Christopher Lee were required to cook a gourmet meal in a dorm room, was held at Harwood Court.
You can read Mikey’s fab write-up of our The Facts of Life stalk on the Mike the Fanboy website here and you can watch a video Mikey put together of our adventure by clicking above.
Big THANK YOU to Robert, from the Movie Locations and More website, for finding this location and to Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, for inviting me to stalk it with him.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Harwood Court residence hall, aka Eastland School from The Facts of Life, is located on the campus of Pomona College at 170 East Bonita Avenue in Claremont.
A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, mentioned that he had recently stalked the residence belonging to the Nefler family – Phyllis (aka Shelley Long), Freddy (aka Craig T. Nelson), and their daughter, Hannah (aka Jenny Lewis) – in the 1989 comedy Troop Beverly Hills. Well, let me tell you, after hearing that I literally just about had a heart attack! TROOP BEVERLY HILLS? TROOP BEVERLY HILLS! How in the heck had I forgotten about that movie?? I absolutely loved it as a teenager and remember renting it countless times from the video store around the corner from my house. Due to some sort of brain lapse, though, I had not thought about or seen the flick in years. So when Mikey mentioned it, I immediately ran to my local Blockbuster to rent it. Shockingly though, the sales clerk informed me that the store did not carry the title! And neither did any of the other Blockbusters within a ten mile radius of my apartment! (Perhaps this is why the chain has been floundering in recent years! I mean, hello! How does a video store not carry a major 80s classic like Troop Beverly Hills????) I was further shocked to discover that my local Borders Books did not have the movie, either. (Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, Borders in 2011 – a coincidence? I think not! 
) Thankfully, Troop Beverly Hills was available for purchase on iTunes (oddly enough, they do not offer the flick for rent), so I immediately purchased it and, because iTunes does not allow one to burn a purchased movie onto a DVD, was forced to watch the entire hour and forty minutes on my tiny computer screen. But I have to say that it was completely and totally worth it! What a fabulous, FABULOUS flick! And, immediately after watching it, I, of course, dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the Nefler mansion.
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The 6 bedroom, 6 bath, 7,694-square-foot, Spanish-style abode, which was originally built in 1916, was featured numerous times throughout Troop Beverly Hills.
And, amazingly enough, the residence still looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when the movie was filmed over twenty-two years ago! SO INCREDIBLY COOL!
The only difference is that there is now a large, three-car garage located on the northern side of the property.
For some reason, while watching the movie, the inside of the Nefler house just did not look real to me. So, while I could not find any interior photographs of the home online, I am fairly certain that all of the interior scenes were filmed on a set inside of a studio soundstage somewhere in Hollywood and not at the actual residence.
I believe the backyard that was shown in the movie was also a set, as it does not match up to the home’s real-life backyard.
As you can see in the above aerial view, the mansion’s real-life pool is not the same shape as the one that appeared in the movie and its position in relation to the house also does not match up with what was shown onscreen. And while it is possible that the backyard was completely remodeled in the two-plus decades since filming took place, I do not find that scenario to be very likely.
According to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory website, the house has also had several celebrity inhabitants over the years, including movie star Betty Compson, producer Samuel Goldwyn, silent film star Charles Ray, and actor Charles Smith.
Big THANK YOU to Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, for telling me about this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Troop Beverly Hills house is located at 901 North Camden Drive in Beverly Hills.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from fellow stalker Owen who was writing to ask if I owned a copy of the 1983 movie War Games on DVD. And while I did not own the movie, nor had I ever actually even seen it, my fiancé, thankfully, did. Owen was inquiring about the DVD because he was currently in the process of trying to track down the house where teenaged computer prodigy David Lightman (aka Matthew Broderick) lived in the flick. Owen had recently discovered – thanks to the stalking tome The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations – that the Lightman residence was located somewhere in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. Even though the movie was supposedly set in Seattle, the vast majority of it was actually shot right here in Southern California. YAY! So, that very night I popped in my fiancé’s DVD and settled in to watch War Games for the very first time. And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it! How I missed the movie when it first came out in 1983 – and all of the years since – is absolutely beyond me, especially since I am SUCH a child of the ‘80s. Being that I was only six years old at the time the movie premiered, though, I guess I was a bit too young to appreciate it. But I digress.
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Owen had asked me to watch War Games in the hopes that the address number of the Lightman house would be visible at some point during the movie. And, thankfully, as you can see in the above screen capture, it was! I spotted the number “333” towards the beginning of the flick in the scene in which Jennifer (aka Ally Sheedy) is shown running up to knock on David’s front door. So, Owen immediately got to searching all of the 300 blocks in the Hancock Park area and fairly quickly came upon the house. Ironically enough, there is a notation on Wikipedia’s Larchmont Village page which states that the War Games house is located on the corner of “Lucerne and Second Street”, but that information, like so much of Wikipedia’s filming location information, is actually incorrect. The Lightman home can actually be found at 333 South Arden Boulevard, a few blocks south of where Lucerne meets Second Street.
As soon as Owen emailed me the address of the War Games house, I grabbed my camera and headed over to Hancock Park to snap some pics. And I was absolutely shocked at what I found. As it turns out, even though over 27 years have passed since the movie was filmed, the War Games house still looks pretty much exactly the same as it did onscreen! Love it, love it, love it! The owners of the property deserve some very big kudos for resisting the urge to change anything. Although the home, which was built in 1920, appears to fairly average-sized from the street, it actually boasts a whopping 7 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and 3,728 square feet of living space.
Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The War Games house is located at 333 South Arden Boulevard in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.
Right around the corner from The King of Queens house, which I blogged about on Friday, are the two main houses used in the 1988 Tom Hanks movie Big. And when I say “right around the corner”, I literally mean RIGHT around the corner. The King of Queens house and the Big houses are located a scant 88 yards away from each other! Too cool! So, of course, since Owen, my fiancé, and I were already in the area stalking the Heffernan house a few weeks ago, we just had to walk around the corner to make a stalking stop at the Bighomes, too. 🙂 Owen had found the addresses of the houses belonging to Josh (aka Tom Hanks) and his best friend Billy (aka Jared Rushton) in the 80’s flick thanks to IMDB’s Big filming locations page. And even though IMDB’s location information isn’t always one hundred percent accurate, thankfully, in this case, it was right on the money!
I am VERY happy to report that the two Big houses still look EXACTLY the same today as they did back in 1988 when the movie was filmed! I was absolutely amazed at the fact that, besides the leaves on the trees out front being a little bit fuller and a little more green due to the time of year, the two homes look absolutely identical today to how they were portrayed onscreen twenty-one years ago. YAY! Other movie house owners should take lessons from these people!! 🙂
The home pictured above belonged to Josh and his family in the movie and was where he lived before he became “Big” and subsequently moved to Manhattan. Several areas of the house were featured in the flick, including the front exterior;
the garage, where a new door has been installed, but which otherwise looks very much the same as it did in the movie;
and the front door, which I was extremely excited to see still looks EXACTLY the same as it did in Big! The only difference is that a white screen door which covers the front door was added in the time since filming took place.
Best friend Billy’s house is located directly next door to Josh’s and I am happy to report that its front door also looks EXACTLY the same as it did in the movie. I was so tempted to go up and knock. 🙂
In Big, Billy and Josh have a pulley system that runs between their two bedroom windows, which face each other. The pulley shows up in the scene in which Billy and Josh’s mom talk about Josh’s dissappearance late at night. In the scene, Josh’s mom uses the pulley to show Billy a set of baseball cards that she had purchased for Josh’s birthday. She tells Billy he can keep the cards, but he sends them back to her telling her that Josh will be home soon. UPDATE – Fellow stalker Owen just informed me that Billy and Josh’s pulley is actually only shown in the extended edition DVD of the movie and not in the regular version.
Of course, in real life, that pulley is not there. 🙁 Would have been SO cool if it was, though! If I owned those houses, I would so install one for my fellow stalkers to appreciate. 🙂 Otherwise, though, the boys’ windows still look very much the same.
And, of course, I just had to pose for a pic on the street corner where Susan dropped Josh off at the end of the movie. 🙂 That street corner also looks very much the same as it did in Big – all that was missing in real life were the piles of fallen autumn leaves which covered the sidewalks in the movie.
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I can’t tell you how exciting it was to finally see the Big houses in person twenty-one years after first watching the movie which made them famous! I honestly can’t recommend stalking them enough! 🙂
On a side note – In real life, the houses from Bigare located in the borough of Cliffside Park, New Jersey and in the filming of the scene in which the police are called out after Josh first disappears, the words “Cliffside Park” can be seen on the police car that Billy walks by. So LOVE that they used the real town’s name!
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Josh’s house from the movie Big is located at 437 Greenmount Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Billy’s house is located right next door at 435 Greenmount Avenue. At the end of the movie, Susan drops Josh off at the Southwest corner of Greenmount and Highridge Avenues. The King of Queens house is located directly around the corner at 519 Longview Avenue. Unfortunately there is no easy way to get to these locations from Manhattan. A taxi ride is your quickest, easiest bet, but be prepared as it will cost you $45 each way! Riding the bus is a much cheaper option, but the travel time is upwards of an hour.
Got a call from fellow stalker Chas last week, who told me that he had finally received his Girls Just Want To Have Fun Netflix rental in the mail. Chas was calling me up to ask if I wanted any other locations from the movie found – besides SJP’s ubiquitous apartment building, of course. I believe my exact answer to his question was “Um, yeah, ALL OF THEM!” LOL So, this past week Chas set about locating every single GJWTHF filming location. And I am happy to report that he came through – big time! One location that I was absolutely DYING to stalk was the small house belonging to siblings Jeff and Maggie Malene (aka Lee Montgomery and Shannen Doherty) in the movie. I did not have high hopes for this location, though, as I was convinced that it had been torn down in the twenty-four years since GJWTHF had been filmed. Thankfully, Chas proved that theory wrong, though, when he located the house just outside of South Pasadena on Friday. YAY!
So, I, of course, immediately ran right out to stalk it! 🙂 And I am EXTREMELY happy to report that aside from the paint color and a new porch railing, the GJWTHF house looks EXACTLY the same today as it did in 1985 when the movie was filmed! 🙂 I was absolutely STUNNED that all these years later the house would still be so recognizable. So cool! I do have to say, though, that Jeff Malene’s house is actually a lot bigger in person than I imagined it would be. For some reason, onscreen it appeared to be much smaller than it actually is. Standing there on Friday, looking at this small, relatively nondescript home, I couldn’t help but think to myself ‘How in the HECK did Chas find this location amidst the millions of other homes in L.A.?’ It’s incredible – just incredible!
Amazingly enough, even Jeff’s neighbor’s house still looks very much the same today as how it appeared in the movie. As you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, although the two downstairs windows have changed a bit, the upstairs window still looks exactly the same.
Jeff’s house shows up several times throughout Girls Just Want To Have Fun, most notably the front yard area where Jeff practices doing flips to impress SJP.
The garage area where Jonathan Silverman and Lee Montgomery play basketball in the beginning of the movie also looks exactly the same, but unfortunately, thanks to a fence standing in my way, I couldn’t get a good picture of it. 🙁
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I highly recommend stalking the GJWTHF house to all fans of the ’80s flick! I can’t tell you how cool it was to be seeing that house in person all these years later!
As always, a big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location!! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Jeff Malene’s house from Girls Just Want To Have Fun is located at 6511 Pollard Street in Los Angeles, just off of Avenue 64.