Burbank – Page 5 – IAMNOTASTALKER

February 18, 2010February 18, 2010

The Chinese Foooood Drive-Through from “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

One location that I have been begging fellow stalker Chas to find for what seems like months now is the “Chinese Foooood” restaurant from the 2000 movie Dude, Where’s My Car? As I’ve mentioned in the past, Dude is one of my very favorite comedies and a few years back my best friend Robin and I pretty much spent every night of an entire two week period doing nothing but watching and re-watching the flick over and over again. We simply could not get enough of it! Our absolute favorite scene, hands down, had to be the scene in which bonehead best friends Jesse Montgomery III (aka Ashton Kutcher) and Chester Greenburg (aka Seann William Scott) visit the drive-though window of a Chinese food restaurant only to find that the woman working there cannot stop saying the words, “And then? And then? And then?” LOL LOVE IT! So, last week, when Chas told me that he was finally going to put his proverbial nose to the grindstone to try to track down the restaurant for me, I just about died of excitement. I had actually spent quite a bit of time looking for this location in the Pasadena area, as I was convinced it was located somewhere along the famous Colorado Boulevard. Turns out, I was searching a few miles too far to the east, though, as Chas later informed me. Thankfully, early on in Chas’ quest, fellow stalker Gary, from fave website Seeing Stars, pointed him in the direction of this website written by an actor named Geoffrey Gould, who had actually worked as an extra in the Dude, Where’s My Car? Chinese food scene! Talk about serendipity! On his website, Geoffrey mentioned that the restaurant was located “at Victory near Hollywood Way” in Burbank. Well, Chas got to googling and found the drive-through almost immediately. YAY! So, this past weekend I dragged my fiancé out to finally, finally do some Chinese Foooood stalking!

In real life, the Chinese Foooood place is not actually a drive-through at all, but a tiny little restaurant named Steve’s Burgers.

And because Steve’s is a burger joint and not a Chinese food restaurant, it looks quite a bit different in person than how it was portrayed in the movie. Missing in real life, of course, is the Asian-inspired decor and Oriental-style flared roof that appeared in Dude, Where’s My Car?, all of which I am fairly certain were just decorations that were added for the filming. Despite the lack of Asian decor and a slight change in paint color, though, the restaurant is still VERY recognizable from the movie. And let me tell you, while it may sound silly, I could NOT have been more excited to be seeing the place in person!

And I was absolutely floored to discover that while Steve’s serves up mostly All-American fare, there were a few Chinese food items featured on the menu, as well! LOVE IT! For the record, Steve’s also serves a bit of Mexican food. It’s a whole smorgasbord of options!

And, as you can see in the above photograph and screen captures, the painted-on window signs that were featured in Dude are still there to this day – over an entire decade later – and still look pretty much exactly the same as they did in the movie! LOVE IT!

Unfortunately, Steve’s was already closed by the time we showed up to stalk the place so we couldn’t sample any of their food. 🙁 But I guess that just means I’ll have to re-stalk the place again sometime soon! 🙂

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The Dude, Where’s My Car? restaurant scenes were filmed both on the west side and in the back of Steve’s Burgers, the latter being where the fake drive-through menu and speaker box were added for the filming. As you can see in the above photographs, that drive-through area doesn’t actually exist. 🙁

Steve’s Burgers first shows up in the very beginning of Dude, Where’s My Car, in the scene in which Jesse and Chester visit a restaurant called “Chinese Foooood” for lunch. While Jesse is ordering, the woman working the drive-through window continually asks him, “And then? And then? And then?” to which he finally says, “AND THEN . . . I’m gonna come in there and I’m gonna put my foot in your a** if you say ‘and then’ again!” The Chinese Foooood lady of course responds with, “And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then?” LOL

Jesse then proceeds to absolutely destroy the drive-through box.

The restaurant later shows up towards the end of the flick in the scene in which Jesse and Chester drop the “Nordic Dudes” off at the Chinese Foooood place after telling them that the drive-through lady knows where the “Continuum Transfunctioner” can be found. I know, I know, the whole thing sounds pretty darn stupid, but trust me, it’s hilarious! You can watch the Chinese Foooood restaurant scene here.

A big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Steve’s Burgers, aka the Chinese Foooood drive-through from Dude, Where’s My Car?, is located at 2320 West Victory Boulevard in Burbank. Steve’s is open Monday through Saturday, but is closed on Sundays.

January 22, 2010January 22, 2010

Stalking the WB – For the Third Time!

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, this past October, my good friends from Switzerland came to visit my family for a few weeks. While they were here, I decided to take them on a Hollywood studio tour. The only problem was I couldn’t decide exactly which Hollywood studio tour to take them on. So, I got Mike, from MovieShotsLA, on the phone and the two of us had a very in-depth discussion about it, carefully weighing all of our options. Not kidding – you should have heard the two of us. 🙂 Anyway, we quickly narrowed down our choices to either the Paramount Studio Tour or the Warner Brothers VIP Studio Tour. And even though I was leaning towards Paramount, Mike convinced me that because the WB Tour covers the overall studio experience, it would be the best choice for those stalkers who had yet to visit a movie studio. Paramount is geared more towards us die-hard stalkers, in my opinion, which is probably why I like it the best. 🙂 So, with our tour location finally decided upon, the four of us headed out bright and early the following morning to stalk the WB. This was actually my third time stalking the lot and it really is true what they say – no two tours are alike. I already want to go back for a fourth time. 🙂 Sadly, though, our tour guide left quite a bit to be desired on this particular venture. We still had a blast while there, don’t get me wrong – it’s pretty hard not to have fun on the WB lot – but, for whatever reason, our guide was a grump pretty much the whole way through. She also seemed to have a pretty high opinion of herself, which didn’t help my opinion of her. 😉

She even got a bit testy with me at one point, after bringing us to the Central Park portion of the lot and asking if anyone knew what television show it had been featured in. I, of course, raised my hand and said “It’s where Phoebe runs weird on Friends!” to which she snapped, “Well, you must have been on the tour before, which is the only reason you’d know that!” I wanted to explain that I had actually known the answer to that question while on my first WB tour, but I was afraid she’d pretty much bite my head off if I did! So, since it was obvious she didn’t appreciate stalkers, I kept my mouth shut for the remainder of the tour. The other disappointing aspect of the day was that Hennesy Street, which is one of the WB’s New York areas, Midwest Street, aka Anytown USA, and the Jungle area were all closed off to tour groups due to filming. 🙁 The Witches of Eastwick was actually the production being filmed on Midwest Street and we were very briefly allowed to venture over to the outskirts of that area to take a peek at what was going on, but unfortunately no photographs were allowed. Anyway, aside from Debbie Downer and the fact that numerous areas of lot were closed off, we had a great time on the tour. 🙂

The tour began the way it always does, with our guide driving us via golf cart through the very same studio gate that Carrie Bradshaw drove through in the Season Three episode of Sex and the City entitled “Escape from New York”. LOVE IT! 🙂

Our first stop was the old ER hospital set which has all but been dismantled. 🙁 So sad! While the hospital entrance and L Train track will be left up to be used by future productions . . .

. . . the area behind the large brown double doors which used to contain the ambulance bay and waiting room set, is now just empty space, as you can sort of see in the above photograph.

The way it used to look is pictured above. You can see more photographs of the old ER set on my two previous WB Tour posts which can be viewed here and here. According to our tour guide, ER’s Jumbo Mart Diner set is going to be left intact to serve as the studio’s tribute to the longest running medical drama ever to air on television.

Our next stop was the Nate’s Bar & Grill set from ER, which is also being left intact to be used by future productions. Nate’s Bar & Grill is what’s called a “practical set” in studio terminology because both its interior and its exterior can be used for filming.

Unlike the facade pictured above which has no interior area.

As you can see in the above photograph, Nate’s Bar & Grill lacks a ceiling, which is actually typical of movie sets. The ceilings of sets are always left open so that lights and other production equipment can be hung above the area being filmed. That’s often how I can tell if something was filmed in a studio or on location somewhere – if a ceiling is shown onscreen, that’s pretty much a dead giveaway that the production was filmed at a real life location. 😉

Located just outside of Nate’s is a very realistic looking subway set, which was extremely cool to see being that we had just returned from our New York trip a few days beforehand. 🙂

Our next stop was the the Embassy Courtyard, an area which was used in the 1999 made-for-TV movie Annie, in the television series Without a Trace, Hotel, and, as you can see in the above screen captures, Chuck .

We also visited New York Street, which is not to be confused with Hennesy Street, the lot’s other Manhattan-like area. New York Street has been used in the movies The Big Sleep, Blade Runner, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and The Last Samurai, for which the entire area was dressed to look like 1870s Japan.

Located on New York Street is the movie theatre facade pictured above, which was featured in the “New York and Queens” episode of The Drew Carey Show in which Drew and the gang challenge Mimi and her friends to a Rocky Horror Picture Show/Priscilla Queen of the Desert dance-off.

That very same area was also featured in the Season One episode of The Mentalist entitled “A Dozen Red Roses”.

We also briefly visited the Warner Village area of the lot, where we saw “New Christine’s” apartment building from the series The New Adventures of Old Christine.

Our next stop was the soundstage used in the filming of the television show Chuck, a series which I have never before seen. But I was extremely excited to see the set nonetheless because it was modeled after the very same apartment building featured in the movie ‘Til There Was You – an apartment building which I have not only stalked, but also blogged about. 🙂 I cannot tell you how cool it was to be seeing that set in person, as it looks very much the same as its real life counterpart. Love it! And while our tour guide did let us know that the Chuck set was based on a real life apartment building, she mistakenly told our group that said building was located in Los Feliz, which is actually incorrect. The building, which is named El Cabrillo, is actually located in Hollywood. I didn’t dare correct her, though, since she had already made it pretty clear that she didn’t care to hear any information I had to share. 😉 We also got to venture inside the characters’ individual apartments, which really are located directly off the building’s courtyard area. Unfortunately no photographs were allowed inside of the Chuck soundstages, but you can see what the set looks like in the above screen captures. When I asked our tour guide why the area was off-limits to cameras she said it was to prevent spoilers, i.e. if a crewmember accidentally left something on set that gave away a future plot point and then a tour group came in and took pictures of the set and then those pictures somehow wound up on the internet ;), fans might figure out the future plot development and stop watching the show. Which I think is pretty silly reasoning, but c’est la vie.

No WB VIP Tour would be complete without a visit to the car museum, where we got to see several vehicles from The Dark Knight, including the Batmobile;

the Bat-Pod motorcycle;

and the Stealth Launch Batmobile; all of which my best friend, Robin, the only guy in the group, loved seeing. 🙂

Also on display was the Ducati 996 motorcycle from The Matrix Reloaded;

the “Shaguar” from Austin Powers in Goldmember;

Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino from the movie of the same name;

the Nerd Herd car from Chuck;

the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard;

several vehicles from AI, including the Hovercopter;

the Ford Angila from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets;

and a 1969 Lincoln Continental from The Matrix, along with a wax figure of “Agent Smith”.

The best part of the tour for me, though, had to be when we got to see the Central Perk set from Friends. Granted, I’ve seen the set twice before on the two other WB Tours I’ve attended, but this time we were actually allowed to venture ONTO the set, walk around, touch things, and even sit on the furniture! YAY! Let me tell you, I just about DIED I was so excited! (Those are my friends Doina and Stephanie sitting on the Friends couch with me in the above photograph.)

And I just HAD to take pictures of absolutely EVERYTHING!

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Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I HIGHLY recommend taking the WB VIP Studio Tour! Even with a craptastic tour guide, it’s still a fabulous adventure to have in L.A.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Warner Brothers Studios is located at 3400 Riverside Drive in Burbank. Tours run every 30 minutes Monday through Friday from 8:20 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Advance reservations are recommended. Tickets cost $45 per person. You can learn more about the tour here .

December 3, 2009December 2, 2009

Priscilla’s Coffee Tea & Gifts

Many years ago, I was enrolled in an acting school in Burbank that was located just down the street from a little coffee shop named Priscilla’s Coffee Tea & Gifts. I logged quite a bit of time at the coffee house, as my classmates and I would often grab a coffee and hang out there before and after class. So, when the place popped up in an episode of Desperate Housewives a few weeks ago, I literally almost fell out of my chair! Since I hadn’t been to Priscilla’s in almost eight years – and because I’m always on the lookout for any excuse to visit a coffee house – I decided I just had to stalk the place. So, yesterday I headed out to Burbank – laptop in hand – to spend the morning blogging and drinking coffee at Priscilla’s. And, let me tell you, the place was absolutely JAM PACKED when I arrived. There literally wasn’t an empty seat in the entire house. I was shocked that the the place would be so crowded on a weekday morning, but that’s a definite testament to how good Priscilla’s coffee is. 🙂 Anyway, after ordering my iced latte, I retreated to a nearby corner and waited around for a table to open up. Well, I wasn’t standing there more than 45 seconds when an extremely kind gentleman walked up and offered to share his table with me!! How incredibly nice is that? I almost couldn’t believe it, as people in L.A. aren’t usually that overtly friendly. But, from what I noticed yesterday, that’s just par for the course at Priscilla’s – people there are just plain nice! 🙂 So, my new friend and I sat there for a while – me blogging away on my laptop, him studying his lines for an upcoming addition, both of us enjoying some extremely good coffee. 🙂

Surprisingly enough, when I used to hang out at Priscilla’s many years back, I wasn’t a coffee drinker. In fact, until yesterday morning, I had never actually tasted any of Priscilla’s coffee and I honestly didn’t have high hopes that the place would compare to my beloved Starbucks. So, you can imagine my surprise when I tasted my latte yesterday morning and discovered it was JUST as good as Starbucks, if not better! It was so tasty, in fact, that as soon as I finished my first cup, I got in line to order another! LOL And it was while I was waiting for my second drink that I asked the barista if it would be alright to snap a few photos of the store. I really wasn’t sure how she would respond, because as I’ve mentioned before, for whatever reason, many restaurants in L.A. don’t allow any sort of interior photography. Well, not only did she tell me it was OK to snap pictures, but she also asked if I wanted her to take a photograph of me in the shop!!!!! I mean could this place be any greater???? The above photo is the one she took, and the other barista on duty even agreed to pose with me for it! LOVE IT! 🙂

Priscilla’s Coffee Tea & Gifts has actually been in business since the early 1970s, at which time it was operated out of a former gas station. In 1993, due to a growing demand, the coffee house moved to a larger location on Riverside Drive in Burbank where it has remained ever since. Besides coffee, Priscilla’s also serves up teas, pastries, sandwiches, salads, and even gelato. It’s also a great place to browse as they have numerous gift items and greeting cards for sale. And the fact that the place has free wi-fi and plays 80s music (including Michael Jackson!!!) is pretty much just icing on the cake! 🙂 Priscilla’s is a SUPER cute little coffee shop and I honestly cannot recommend stalking it enough!!!! In fact, I’m thinking of becoming a regular there! 🙂

Priscilla’s first popped up in the episode of Desperate Housewives entitled “The Coffee Cup”, which aired on November 15th. Quite a few scenes from the episode took place at Priscilla’s, which stood in for “The Coffee Cup Bakery & Cafe” on the show. It first appeared in the scene in which Julie Mayer (aka Andrea Bowen) has a highly awkward encounter with her married boyfriend’s wife, Angie Bolen (aka Drea de Matteo), while waiting in line for coffee.

Later in the episode, Angie confronts her husband Nick (aka Jeffrey Nordling) at Priscilla’s, after she sees him flirting with a Coffee Cup barista named Emily Portsmith.

And, finally, at the very end of that episode, Priscilla’s shows up once again as the spot where Nick makes a phone call to the police to let them know he is thinking of turning himself in for an as-yet unnamed crime . . .

. . . and as the spot where barista Emily is strangled.

And, in the following episode, which was entitled “Would I Think of Suicide?”, Priscilla’s shows up yet again! It is featured in the episode’s opening scene, in which the manager of The Coffee Cup enters the store in the early morning hours only to discover Emily lying dead on the floor.

In a subsequent scene, Julie Mayer and her friends discuss Emily’s death out in front of Pricilla’s.

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Besides being a filming location, Pricilla’s is also something of a celebrity hotspot, thanks to its proximity to the area studios. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there recently include Jay Leno, Ben Affleck and Kevin Connolly. Randomly enough, while I was attending acting school in Burbank, I happened to see a television show on the E! Network (for the life of me I cannot remember what it was called!) that featured paparazzi videos of celebrities performing day to day activities. One of the videos featured an old clip of my girl Jen Aniston during the early days of Friends grabbing a cup of coffee at Priscilla’s. And, let me tell you, when I saw that video I just about had a heart attack over the fact that Jen had visited the very same coffee shop that I was hanging out in at the time!! 🙂 What can I say, the girl’s got good taste! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Pricilla’s Gourmet Coffee and Teas is located at 4150 Riverside Drive in Burbank. You can visit their website here.

February 13, 2009February 17, 2009

“It Never Rains In Southern California . . . “

As the old Albert Hammond song says “It never rains in Southern California, but girl, don’t they warn ya, it pours man, it pours!” And pour it did almost all last week all over the normally sun drenched landscape of Los Angeles. While on my way to stalk Burbank’s Handy Grocery Store in the pouring rain this past weekend, I happened to pass right by Walt Disney Studios on Buena Vista Street and was reminded about a story I once heard that seemed quite fitting of the day’s weather.

According to The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book, journalist Peter J. Boyer stated in a Vanity Fair article that Disney is “a place so reviled that even its architecture inspires nasty rumors, such as the apocryphal story that architect Michael Graves arranged the drainage system in the Disney headquarters building [aka the Team Disney building] in such a way that the huge sculpted Seven Dwarfs atop the edifice would seem to be peeing on Disney executives whenever it rained.” LOL So, since it just happened to be raining at the time, I pulled over to see if Boyer’s story had any merit. 🙂 After seeing the Dwarfs in person in the pouring rain, I have to admit that I think the anecdote is somewhat of an urban legend, but it still makes for a great story and hopefully a great blog post. 🙂

Walt Disney built his Burbank studio in 1940 after the enormous financial success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – the world’s first full length animated feature film. At the time it was built the 41 acre lot was comprised of four full size soundstages (there are now six), a backlot that included a Western town, a town square, a residential street, and a small pueblo (the entire backlot has since been demolished), and recreation areas for employees which included ping pong tables and a volleyball court. Over the years many productions have been filmed on the historic Disney lot, including That Darn Cat, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Absent Minded Professor, The Swamp Fox, The Princess Diaries, Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Boy Meets World, Home Improvement, Lizzie Maguire, Less Than Perfect, and Mary Poppins. Ironically enough, Mary Poppins was filmed solely indoors, using up all four of the Disney Studio soundstages. Even the Cherry Tree Lane set where the Banks Family lived was built inside of a soundstage. Being a huge Mary Poppins fan myself, I was highly disappointed when I found this out as I had always hoped to one day see Cherry Tree Lane in person. 🙁 On an interesting side note, even though he passed away in 1966, Walt Disney still holds the record for most Academy Awards won by a single person. In his lifetime, he won a incredible TWENTY-SIX Oscars!

Unfortunately, Disney does not currently offer tours of its studio. : ( But the good news is that the Team Disney building can be viewed from the street outside the studio gates. If you are a big Disney fan, I highly recommend stalking the exterior of the building as it is very cool to see in person. The Seven Dwarf statues are absolutely HUGE. I was shocked at their size when I saw them in person as pictures simply do not do them justice!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Disney Studios is located at 500 S. Buena Vista Street in Burbank. The Team Disney building, with its Seven Dwarfs facade, can be viewed through the main gate located just around the corner on Alameda Avenue. Unfortunately the studio does not offer tours of its property. 🙁 But for $2,169 (per person!!!!!) you can purchase a 6 day/5 night “Hollywood and the Disneyland Resort” vacation from the Adventures by Disney Vacations company. One of the days consists of a behind the scenes tour of Walt Disney Studios.

February 9, 2009February 17, 2009

I Am Just So That Into It!

On Friday night, literally the second my boyfriend got off work, I dragged him right out to see new movie He’s Just Not That Into You. He said afterwards that if he had known it was a two-hour-and-nine-minute-long-movie, he never would have agreed to see it. LOL Needless to say, he just wasn’t that into the movie. But I, on the other hand, was! I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! LOVE LOVE LOVED IT! I was practically skipping out of the theatre afterwards, with a huge grin on my face, thinking to myself that movies like HJNTIY are the reason I moved to Hollywood. Movies like that make me want to act. 🙂 I’m not aiming to be the next Meryl Streep and I have no desire to be the darling of the independent film circuit – I just want to make people laugh and walk out of that movie theatre with a big ol’ smile on their face. 🙂 That’s the kind of acting I want to do – and HJNTIY is EXACTLY the kind of movie I hope to someday be a part of. So, in case you didn’t get it the first few times – I LOVED THIS MOVIE! 🙂

So, yesterday, after I found one of the movie’s filming locations, I, of course, ran right out to stalk it. 🙂 Although the movie is set in the East Coast city of Baltimore, most of the filming took place – of course – in Los Angeles. Only two weeks of filming actually occured in Baltimore and only four of the HJNTIY actors (Bradley Cooper, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly, and Kevin Connolly) made the trip out to the East Coast. The film’s writers, Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn, decided to set their story in Baltimore because they had never seen it done before. Most romantic comedies are set in either New York or Los Angeles and Marc and Abby were hoping to shake things up a bit. Since Marc had lived in Baltimore for ten years before moving to L.A. to pursue a screenwriting career, he knew the coastal city well and thought it was the perfect choice to set their story.

But since I couldn’t very well run right out to Baltimore to stalk HJNTIY, I decided to try to find some of the movie’s West Coast locations. I really wanted to stalk the coffee shop where Drew Barrymore met Kevin Connolly towards the end of the movie, but I struck out on that one. Instead, after a bit of Googling, I happened to find these paparazzi photos of Scarlett Johansson and Bradley Cooper filming a scene at a grocery store in Burbank. From there it was just a matter of finding the right grocery store. And sure enough, I did! 🙂

In real life the grocery store is called Handy Market and it is a very cute and very tiny little shop. According to one of the Handy Market checkers, back in October of 2007 the store was shut down for a full day and a half for the filming of the two short scenes that took place there. Scenes were filmed both inside the store – at the first check-out stand and in a few of the aisles – and outside on the market’s exterior West facing wall.

It’s not hard to see why producers chose to use Handy Market. According to this article about the filming of HJNTIY , director Ken Kwapis said “One of the things that I love about Baltimore is that the texture of the city can be summed-up in one word: brick. The brick textures of the interiors and the exteriors are, to me, so expressive, so distinctive. Being a resident of Baltimore, you may not realize it, but boy, it’s not easy to find a lot of brick in L.A.” LOL Handy’s all-brick exterior must have made it a shoe-in for being used in the movie.

So, for all of you out there who weren’t like me and didn’t catch HJNTIY on opening night, drop what you’re doing and go see it now! I guarantee you so will be that into it! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Burbank’s Handy Market is located at 2514 W. Magnolia Boulevard in – you guessed it! – Burbank. The Home Depot store located at 16800 Roscoe Boulevard in Van Nuys was also used in He’s Just Not That Into You, although I most likely won’t stalk that location. 🙂 My boyfriend would probably be really excited if I did, though. LOL