If you caught the 2011 comedy The Big Year, you were no doubt taken by the gorgeous log cabin where Stu Preissler (Steve Martin) lived. And now it is for sale! You can read all about it over at Dirt.
Stu’s House from “The Big Year”
The “Home Sweet Home Alone” House
Curious where the new Disney+ movie Home Sweet Home Alone was filmed? Look no further than my latest article for Dirt!
Waffle Town from “Let It Snow”
Ready for another Tinsel Town post? Then head over to Dirt to read my latest article about Johnny Be Good, the Ontario eatery that stands in for Waffle Town in Netflix’s Let It Snow.
The “Single All the Way” House
Looking for a house to add to your Christmas list? The charming home from Single All the Way is currently for sale! You can read all about it over at Dirt!
The Lin House from “Love Hard”
We may still be two weeks away from Thanksgiving, but it’s not too early to be blogging about holiday movie locations, right? Head over to Dirt to check out my latest post about the Lin house from Netflix’s new Christmas movie Love Hard.
The “Schitt’s Creek” Motel
The Schitt’s Creek Motel is for sale! Head over to Dirt to read all about it!
Libby and Nick’s House From “Double Jeopardy”
The Double Jeopardy house – one of my favorite movie houses ever – has just come on the market! You can read all about it here.
The Michael J. Fox Theatre
A few months back, while fellow stalker Owen and I were doing research on Michael J. Fox’s childhood home which I blogged about yesterday, I came across some information about a place called “the Michael J. Fox Theatre” which is located on the campus of Burnaby South Secondary School and, let me tell you, I just about passed out from excitement. I absolutely could NOT WAIT to tell Owen about the location, as he just so happens to be MJF’s biggest fan. Apparently, in November of 1995 Burnaby South renamed their 613-seat professional theatre, which originally opened in 1993, in recognition of the Canadian-born actor and his many achievements in the entertainment industry and contributions to the community that he once called home. Owen was extremely excited to hear about the theatre and I immediately added it to my list of Must-Stalk locations in Vancouver. So, Owen, this one’s for you! 🙂
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As I mentioned above, the Michael J. Fox Theatre is located on the campus of Burnaby South Secondary School, which is not actually the high school that Michael J. Fox attended as a teen. The actor was actually enrolled at the similarly-named Burnaby Central Secondary School, which is located about three miles north of Burnaby South. I’m not entirely sure why city officials did not dedicate a theatre in his honor at his actual alma mater, but I believe the reasoning behind the decision had to do with the fact that Burnaby South is a very technologically advanced institution that offers several communications and broadcasting courses to its 1,700-member student body. The school also televises its morning announcements via a daily news program each morning and offers a broadcasting class in which theatrically-inclined students can create and film short movies and television series which are then broadcast over the school’s airwaves during each lunch hour. Add to that the fact that the British Columbia School for the Deaf was moved to the Burnaby South campus in 1995 and that the theatre which now bears MJF’s name was designed with the hearing-impaired, and other special needs students, in mind, and it’s obvious why they chose the campus as the location of the Michael J. Fox Theatre.
And, let me tell you, I just about died when we pulled up to the Burnaby South campus and spotted the above sign. So darn cool! 🙂
Because the theatre is located on a high school campus and because we were stalking the place on a Saturday, I didn’t have high hopes that we would actually be able to see the inside of it. So, imagine my surprise when we pulled up and found the front doors standing wide open, thanks to a dance recital that was taking place inside. YAY!
The Michael J. Fox Theatre is truly beautiful inside, but my favorite part had to be the huge tile wall mosaic made up of brightly-colored musicians and dancers which greets patrons as they enter (pictured above).
And while the theatre’s logo, which consists of MJF’s initials written in his own handwriting – which I think is just about the coolest thing ever! – appears in numerous spots throughout the theatre, sadly there are no photographs of the actor displayed anywhere on the premises. Nor could I find any information about him or about the history of the theatre. I had expected there to be, at the very least, some sort of plaque honoring the theatre’s namesake along with a photograph of him at the theatre’s dedication ceremony, but all we could find was the above display which lists the names of those who have donated to the property at one time or another. Such a bummer!
Due to the dance recital which was taking place while we were there, the interior of the actual auditorium was far too dark for us to be able to snap any photographs. 🙁 Which is such a bummer as I had so wanted to see the Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan honorary chair! You can see what the auditorium looks like on the official Michael J. Fox Theatre website here, which is where I got the two photographs pictured above.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The Michael J. Fox Theatre is located on the campus of Burnaby South Secondary School at 7373 Macpherson Avenue in Burnaby, British Columbia. You can visit the office Michael J. Fox Theatre website here.
Michael J. Fox’s Childhood Home
My good friend – and fellow stalker – Owen is an absolutely huge and longtime fan of actor Michael J. Fox. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that MJF is Owen’s Jennifer Aniston. So, when I found out that the Canadian-born actor grew up in Burnaby, British Columbia, the very same Vancouver suburb where my man Michael Buble also spent his formative years, I just about died and decided I had to try to track down his childhood home before my trip up to the Pacific Northwest. I immediately emailed Owen and asked him to skim through Michael J. Fox’s autobiography, Lucky Man: A Memoir, which I knew he had a copy of, to see if the actor gave any clues as to where his former abode was located. And, sure enough, he did! I should mention here that celebrity autobiographies and biographies are FABULOUS stalking tools as they almost always dole out the addresses of otherwise unknown stalking locations, but I digress. Anyway, Owen got right down to scanning through the book, which was first published in 2002, and quickly sent me back an email. As it turns out, while MJF didn’t actually disclose the exact location of his childhood abode, he did write a detailed enough description of it that Owen was able to track it down. YAY! Thank you, Owen!
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In his autobiography, Michael J. Fox mentions that during the 1970’s he lived on the second floor of a three-story walk-up building named the Middlegate Apartments, which were located across the street from a “sprawling strip mall with an enormous parking lot perfect for endless hours of street hockey”. And while Googling the terms “Middlegate Apartments” got him nowhere, thanks to this Google Maps posting Owen was able to track down the location of the now-defunct strip mall with the large parking lot where MJF used to play. That strip mall was known as the Middlegate Shopping Centre and it was demolished in 2004 in order to make room for a new, more upscale complex named Highgate Mall. Once Owen had tracked down the former Middlegate Center’s address, it was simply a matter of using aerial maps to see if there was a three-story apartment building located across the street from it. And, sure enough, there was!
As a matter of fact, there were two! And while Owen and I were unable to discern which one of the the two very similar-looking, U-shaped buildings MJF used to call home, after visiting the place in person last month, I can say with 99.9% certainty that it was the one denoted with the blue arrow in the above aerial view.
Michael first moved into the Middlegate Apartments in 1971, at the tender age of ten, following his father’s retirement from the Canadian Army Signal Corps. According to the book, MJF spent quite a bit of time in the building’s “large, if indifferently maintained, outdoor swimming pool”, which, as you can see in the above photograph, has since been filled in with cement. It is because of that now-filled-in pool that I believe Michael lived in the eastern-most of the two buildings. While looking at the location using aerial maps, I had assumed that the two neighboring buildings were part of the same apartment complex, but after seeing the place in person, I now believe that they are actually two separate properties. And since the western-most building does not have a pool, nor does it look like it ever did, I am fairly certain that Michael J. Fox lived in the building located on the east. According to the book, Michael lived at the Middlegate Apartments until 1979 – the year he migrated south to Los Angeles in order to pursue a career in acting. And thank goodness he did, too, because just three short years later he was cast as one of the most iconic characters in television history – Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties.
Sadly, I can’t really recommend stalking MJF’s former building, as it is a fairly depressing place, although I don’t believe it was that way forty years ago when Michael lived there. Today, the building is extremely run-down and has a very bleak air about it. As you can see in the above photograph, even the word “middle” is misspelled on the awing above the front door. I don’t even know what to make of that!!! (At least I think it’s misspelled, being that I’ve never heard of the word “midle”.) And while my original plan was to knock on the manager’s door to see if he or she might know the exact unit where MJF used to live, the place gave off such an unfriendly vibe (I could even hear some tenants yelling at each other through one of the apartment windows) that I decided to abort my mission. Such a bummer, too, as I had so wanted to track down and snap a picture of MJF’s former front door for Owen. 🙁 Note to any celebrities who are currently penning an autobiography – please take a page out of Carol Burnett’s book (pardon the pun) and publish the exact location of your childhood home – including any apartment numbers, if need be! Hmph! Do I honestly have to think of everything? 😉
Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂
Stalk It: The Middle Gate Apartments, where Michael J. Fox grew up, are located at 6961 Collier Street in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Juno’s House from “Juno”
While I realize that most of my fellow stalkers are currently clamoring for me to put my Pacific Northwest blogging on hold in order to write about locales in the Southern California area, there are two more locations from the Academy Award-winning movie Juno that I wanted to blog about before doing so. So, please bear with me for now, as I promise to get back to my L.A. roots first thing next week. 🙂 In the meantime, the second Juno location that I stalked while in Vancouver three weeks ago was the supposed Minnesota-area house where the flick’s eponymous lead character, the lovable, but quirky Juno MacGuff (aka Ellen Page), lived with her equally lovable, but quirky parents, Mac (aka J.K. Simmons) and Brenda (aka Allison Janney). I, of course, found this location yet again thanks to fellow stalker Owen who had, in turn, tracked it down thanks to this ever-informative Flikr page. Thank you, Owen! On a side note, I am quickly discovering the endless values of using Flikr as a stalking tool. The site is an enormous treasure trove of location information that one can easily sift through using key word searches and I highly recommend it to anyone who is currently trying to track down an elusive locale. But, as usual, I digress.
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According to this fabulous February 2008 Vancouver Sun article about Juno filming locations in the area, two different homes actually stood in for the MacGuff residence in the movie – one property was used for all interior filming, while a different one entirely was used for all of the exterior scenes. The article states that while scouting residences for his lead character in January of 2007, just one short month before filming began, director Ivan Reitman, along with Canadian location scout Neil Robertson, sought out an average-looking, middle-America-type home that had some “old-school” elements to it, like La-Z-Boy recliners and wood paneling. Reitman found his perfect home (pictured above) in the Dunbar area of West Vancouver. Unfortunately, though, upon closer inspection, the property’s interior proved to be too small for the filming, so, the scenes involving Juno’s kitchen, family room, and basement had to be shot at a different residence, which was also located in the Dunbar area, although I am not sure of exactly where. The shooting of the interior scenes took a week to complete, during which time the owner, Yvonne Kolstee – along with her cat – had to relocate to a hotel. And although one of Kolstee’s lamps did make an appearance in the flick, for the most part her property was completely revamped for the filming. According to the article, set-designers made her “multi-million dollar home in Dunbar look like a trailer”. Which begs the question, why not just build a set to film on? Ah, I’ll never understand the decision-making process behind choosing filming locations. Anyway, the article also states that Kolstee used the money she made off of the filming to take not one, but two vacations to Mexico, along with trips to India and Singapore, as well. Oh, when are location scouts going to come knocking on my door??? 😉
I am very happy to report that the home which was used for the exterior of Juno’s residence looks pretty much EXACTLY the same in person as it did onscreen in the movie.
The only notable difference is the fact that the tree from which Juno tried to hang herself using a few feet of Red Rope licorice in the beginning of the flick is not there in real life. In actuality, that tree was a fake that was brought in solely for the filming. The MacGuff residence is absolutely adorable in person and it’s not very hard to see why producers chose to use it.
Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Juno’s house from the hit movie Juno is located at 4053 32 Avenue West in the Dunbar suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark and Vanessa’s house, which we, unfortunately, didn’t have time to stalk, is located at 13926 23 Avenue in the city of Surrey, which is located about 30 miles southeast of Vancouver.