Tag: filming locations

The “FlashForward” FBI Headquarters Building

I was thoroughly disappointed to learn about the cancellation of the ABC television series FlashForward earlier this week, as the show was one of my favorites of the 2009 Fall Season. What makes the cancellation most heartbreaking, though, for me at least, is the fact that because the season finale was filmed long before the series was canceled, producers did not get a chance to wrap-up the show’s central mystery. I am afraid that unless a different network purchases FlashForward (which does happen on occasion), its fans will not be offered any sort of ending, resolution, or closure. Not only will it remain a mystery as to what exactly caused the two minute and seventeen second worldwide blackout, but we will also never know how the lives of the main characters turn out. UGH! So annoying! Anyway, a few weeks back, long before I left for Minnesota, I dragged my fiancé out to Downtown L.A. to stalk the John Ferraro building, which is used as the FBI Headquarters building each week on FlashForward. Oddly enough, even though the building looked familiar to me when I first watched the pilot episode of the series, I couldn’t figure out exactly where I had seen it before. Thankfully, though, fellow stalker Owen clued me into the fact that Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, was putting together a FlashForward locations page. So, I emailed him to ask where the headquarters building was located and he wrote back immediately. Yay! Thank you, Gary!

The John Ferraro building, which was originally known as the Department of Water and Power’s General Office building, took four years to construct at a cost of $30 million and was first dedicated on June 24th, 1965. The 17-story building, which was built entirely out of glass, steel, and concrete, was designed by architect Albert C. Martin of AC Martin Partners, an architectural firm who, according to a 1979 Los Angeles Times article, designed “more than 50 percent of all the major buildings erected in downtown Los Angeles since World War II”. Martin, who was apparently light years ahead of his time, incorporated many “green” elements into the construction of the building, including a system which used the property’s fountains to cool the interior and its lighting to heat it. Amazingly enough, that system is still in use today! On November 16, 2000, the City of Los Angeles renamed the Department of Water and Power building in honor of former L.A. Councilman John Ferraro, who at the time had dedicated over 50 years of his life to public service.

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I can quite honestly say that the John Ferraro building is one of the most beautiful structures in all of L.A. – and one of my favorites! With its 360 degree views of the Downtown Los Angeles skyline and ginormous fountain which surrounds its perimeter, the building is nothing short of majestic. If you haven’t had the chance to stalk the place yet, I HIGHLY recommend doing so. As was made apparent by the group of people enjoying a leisurely walk around the building, the photographers taking time-lapse pictures of the fountains, and the many couples just sitting and enjoying the unparalleled views, this is one building that can be appreciated by stalkers and non-stalkers alike. It’s simply breathtaking! And a place I never would have even known about had it not been for FlashForward!

In addition to being used each week in establishing shots of the FBI Headquarters on FlashForward . . .

. . . some filming has also taken place on location at the John Ferraro Building, including the fight scene between Detective Janis Hawk (aka Christine Woods) and Marcie Turoff (aka Amy Rosoff) in the episode titled “Queen Sacrifice” (pictured above) and the suicide scene of Agent Al Gough (aka Lee Thompson Young) in the episode titled “The Gift”.

The parking structure of the John Ferraro Building was also used in the big chase scene between Sarah Connor (aka Linda Hamilton), Kyle Reese (aka Michael Biehn) and The Terminator (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the first Terminator movie. There are also some reports floating around that the John Ferraro Building stood in for both New York’s 14th Precinct on the 1980’s television series Cagney & Lacey and a Tacoma police station in the 1989 movie Three Fugitives, but that information is actually incorrect.

On a side note – For those who have yet to visit the Google website today, you really need to do so NOW! In honor of the 30th anniversary of PacMan,Google has implanted a fully-functional mini-version of the 80’s classic arcade game on their homepage. It is just about the coolest thing ever and I’ve already spent WAY too much time today playing it. Love it, love it, love it!

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from Seeing Stars, for finding this location. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The John Ferraro Building, aka FBI Headquarters from FlashForward, is located at 111 North Hope Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

May 21, 2010
Bryant-Lake Bowl from “Beautiful Girls”

To appease my good friend and fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who has been on my case ALL WEEK about my constant Minnesota blogging, beginning tomorrow I will be returning to my old stomping grounds, so to speak, by writing about locales in the Los Angeles area. Unfortunately for Mike, though, there are still quite a few North Star State locations in my backlog that I’ve yet to post about. So, I guess I’ll just have to intermix them with my L.A. locales from this point forward – otherwise Mike might very well stop reading my blog! 🙂 For today, though, I thought I’d do a post about Bryant- Lake Bowl, the combination restaurant/bar/bowling alley/live stage theatre that appeared in fave movie Beautiful Girls. I found this location, of course, thanks to fellow stalker Owen and his Beautiful Girls master locations list. Thank you, Owen!

From what I have been able to gather online, Bryant-Lake Bowl, which was originally just a bowling alley, has been a Minneapolis staple for ages upon ages, although I am unsure of the exact date that it first opened. As fate would have it, though, in 1993, a woman named Kim Bartmann stopped in to bowl a few games and immediately decided she just had to buy the place. She sought out the owner and begged him to sell to her, which he eventually did, and Kim quickly set about not only transforming they alley’s former arcade room into an 85-seat live theatre venue, but also added a restaurant to the mix. Sadly, though, this was yet another restaurant that I did not get a chance to eat at while in Minnesota because, as I’ve said before, there were just far too many locations and not enough time to properly stalk them all. 🙁 Which is quite a shame, too, as apparently the place serves up some killer grub! Bryant-Lake Bowl’s menu includes such savory items as asparagus risotto, pad thai, and cooked-to-order, organic, grass-fed, free-range bison hash! Not your typical bowling alley fare, you say? Well, that’s exactly the point! Kim wanted to give her patrons a gourmet restaurant experience in the unlikeliest of places. The idea quickly caught on and Bryant-Lake Bowl is now THE place to be on Friday and Saturday nights.

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Bryant-Lake Bowl is also something of a celebrity hotspot, as well. According to one of the super nice servers I spoke with, Matt Dillon is a huge Bryant-Lake Bowl fan and dines there regularly whenever he is in town. In fact, I am fairly certain that the only reason the restaurant was chosen as a location for Beautiful Girls was because of Matt Dillon’s connection to the place. According to online reviews, actor Josh Hartnett, who grew up in nearby St. Paul, is also a frequent patron of the bowling alley.

In Beautiful Girls, Bryant-Lake Bowl stood in for the restaurant where Paul Kirkwood’s (aka Michael Rapaport’s) former girlfriend Jan (aka Martha Plimpton) worked as a waitress. In the very beginning of the movie, Paul shows up to the bowling alley in a moment of spontaneity to propose to Jan with a “champagne-colored” engagement ring, even though he knows that she has long since been dating someone else – a man whom Paul has dubbed “Victor, the Meat-Cutter”. Victor is a running joke throughout the movie due to the fact that Paul cannot comprehend how his ex-girlfriend Jan, a vegetarian, can act with such hypocrisy by dating a person who cuts meat for a living. LOL

Filming took place both inside Bryant-Lake Bowl and on the sidewalk directly in front of the restaurant’s main entrance.

The Season 4 episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives entitled “Totally Unexpected” was also filmed at Bryant-Lake Bowl, during which host Guy Fieri sampled the restaurant’s Smoked Trout and Beet Salad with Green Goddess Dressing. You can watch the episode by clicking above.

According to the waitress I spoke to, the bowling alley was also featured in the 1999 movie Grumpier Old Men, but I rented the flick last night and did not see the place anywhere. I’m guessing that either the scene that was filmed there wound up on the cutting room floor or that the waitress mistakenly mixed up movie titles when telling me about which productions had been filmed on the premises.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Bryant-Lake Bowl is located at 810 West Lake Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit the official Bryant-Lake Bowl website here.

May 20, 2010
Mickey’s Diner from “The Mighty Ducks”

I thought I’d give y’all a break from the myriad of Beautiful Girls locations that I’ve been blogging about as of late by dedicating today’s post to a very famous and historic St. Paul restaurant named Mickey’s Diner. The diner is something of a Twin Cities landmark and pretty much every Native Minnesotan that my parents and I met while in the North Star State two weeks ago – from the concierge at our hotel to the barista at the local coffee shop – told us that we absolutely HAD to grab a bite to eat there. Ironically enough, though, like any good stalker, I already had Mickey’s at the very top of my Must-See-While-In-Minnesota list long before our plane even touched ground at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. I first found out about the diner a few weeks prior to my trip thanks to the the IMDB Mighty Ducks filming locations page and, since I loved the entire Mighty Ducks series – especially its leading man, Joshua Jackson – I was dying to see the place in person. Unfortunately though, because I had over twenty locations on my To-Stalk list, I didn’t have time to actually eat at Mickey’s, which is a real shame as I hear the food there is absolutely to die for!   Not eating at Mickey’s is truly my only Minnesota stalking regret. 🙁 Ah well, there’s always next time!

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Mickey’s Diner was founded by friends David “Mickey” Crimmins and John “Bert” Mattson, who decided to purchase a dining car after attending the National Restaurant Convention in Chicago in 1937. The fifty foot by ten foot car, which was one of the first to be designed in the Art-Deco-style, was originally built in Elizabeth, New Jersey by the Jerry O’Mahoney Company. In 1939, the completed restaurant was transported by a flatbed railcar to its current location at the corner of West 7th and St. Peter Streets in Downtown St. Paul. It has been in continuous operation – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – ever since and, after three generations, is still owned and operated by the Mattson family. On February 23, 1983, Mickey’s was added to the National Register of Historic Places.



Mickey’s Diner is an incredibly cool little spot and the people there truly could NOT have been nicer. They answered all of my silly little questions about the filming that has taken place there over the years and allowed me to take all of the photographs of the interior that I wanted, even though I wasn’t actually dining there. I’m hardly the first stalker to visit the place, though. According to this article written by Chicago Sun-Times staff writer Dave Hoekstra, the restaurant’s current owner, Melissa Mattson, conducted a survey back in 1999 to determine how many of her patrons were actually movie buffs who had come to stalk the diner due to its many cinematic appearances. According to her findings, stalkers account for five percent of her customers. Love it!

In Disney’s The Mighty Ducks, Mickey’s was the spot where Charlie Conway’s (aka Joshua Jackson’s) mom Casey (aka Heidi Kling) worked. The diner also appeared in the movie’s sequels, D2: The Mighty Ducks and D3: The Mighty Ducks. And yes, that is a VERY young Joshua Jackson pictured in the above screen captures! 🙂

In 1996’s Jingle All The Way, Howard Langston (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) pushed his car to Mickey’s Diner after running out of gas on a Minnesota bridge. And while the real exterior of the restaurant was used in the filming . . .

. . . the interior was actually a set that was recreated on a soundstage. As you can see in the above screen captures, the set was built to be much larger than the actual restaurant. In real life, the diner boasts four booths, which are located at the far west end of the dining car, 17 counter stools, and can only accommodate a maximum of 36 patrons.

The 2006 movie A Prairie Home Companion actually opens up at Mickey’s Diner, where private investigator Guy Noir (aka Kevin Kline) is shown feasting on “a grilled cheese sandwich with beans for a chaser” before heading across the street to work at the Fitzgerald Theatre one rainy Saturday night in St. Paul.



The diner is also the site of the movie’s closing scene, in which Guy, along with his friends Rhonda Johnson (aka Lilly Tomlin), Yolanda Johnson (aka Meryl Streep), Lola Johnson (aka Lindsay Lohan), Dusty (aka Woody Harrelson), GK (aka Garrison Keillor), and Lefty (aka John C. Reilly), discuss taking their former radio show on the road for a farewell tour. And apparently, quite a few of the stars of A Prairie Home Companion would stop into Mickey’s quite regularly to grab a bite to eat during their time on location in St. Paul. So cool! Mickey’s Diner has also been featured in the television series Rachel Ray’s Tasty Travels, Unwrapped, Roker on the Road, Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt, and Jesse Ventura’s Minnesota. The diner is also something of a celebrity hotspot and has attracted the likes of Roseanne Barr, Tom Arnold, Liv Tyler, Bill Murray, Andy Garcia, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, John Stewart, the Beach Boys, New Kids on the Block, and Julio Iglesias, who once spontaneously serenaded a Mickey’s waitresses while on bended knee.

On a side note – While making A Prairie Home Companion, the movie’s stars, including Woody Harrelson, Lindsay Lohan, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen, and John C. Reilly, all bunked at the absolutely gorgeous St. Paul Hotel. The St. Paul was built in 1910 by the Minnesota-area architectural firm of Reed and Stern, who are perhaps best known for designing Grand Central Station in New York. The hotel is absolutely beautiful inside and if you are in the area, I HIGHLY recommend stalking it. The next time I visit Minnesota, I am DEFINITELY booking myself a room there! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mickey’s Diner is located at 36 West 7th Street in St. Paul, Minnesota. The restaurant is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can visit the Mickey’s Diner website here. The St. Paul Hotel is located at 350 Market Street, also in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can visit the St. Paul Hotel website here.

May 19, 2010
The Johnson Inn Restaurant from “Beautiful Girls”

The other Beautiful Girls location that I was most excited about stalking (second only to the main houses used in the movie, of course), while in Minnesota two weeks ago, was the Johnson Inn – the local “Knight’s Ridge, Massachusetts” watering hole where Willie Conway (aka Timothy Hutton), Tommy “Birdman” Rowland (aka Matt Dillon), Paul Kirkwood (aka Michael Rapaport) and the rest of the gang hung out in the flick. Interestingly enough, two locations actually stood in for the Johnson Inn in Beautiful Girls – one location was used for the interior scenes, while a second one was used for the exteriors. Fellow stalker Owen tracked down both locales for me thanks to his Beautiful Girls master locations list, but, sadly, while the exterior location is still alive and well, the interior – a Minneapolis-area restaurant named Winfield Potters – closed its doors over a decade ago. 🙁 But because the locations were the site of one of my very favorite scenes from the movie, I just had to stalk both of them.

The above-mentioned favorite scene – and believe me, I know that over the past week I’ve described numerous Beautiful Girls scenes as my “favorite” 🙂 – involves professional piano player Willie Conway leading his buddies in a sing-a-long of the classic Neil Diamond song “Sweet Caroline”. And even though my dad has been a lifelong fan of the singer, before watching Beautiful Girls for the first time back in 1996, I don’t think I had ever heard any Neil Diamond songs in their entirety. But once I saw the Beautiful Girls “Sweet Caroline” scene, that was it for me – I suddenly, and unexpectedly, became a total ND junkie! Even now, fourteen years later, I am still a HUGE fan and my iPod is stocked with pretty much every song the guy ever recorded. All thanks to one very brief scene from a movie that premiered almost one and a half decades ago.

Because the “Sweet Caroline” scene had such a huge impact on me, I was absolutely DYING to stalk the spot where Willie C. and Company had so memorably belted out that “good times never seemed so good”. So, you can imagine my heartbreak when Owen emailed me to let me know that Winfield Potters restaurant, which did indeed used to have a piano in the bar area for patrons to play, was no longer. UGH! Such an incredible bummer! But I still just had to stalk the restaurant’s former location, which has since been turned into an office building for a company called Clientek.



According to a super nice and very informative waiter at a nearby restaurant my parents and I had dined at earlier that day, the Winfield Potters patio used to be quite the popular spot for Minnesota diners during the warm summer months. So, amazingly enough, once Clientek took over the space, they opted to keep the patio intact in order to host barbeques and events for their employees during temperate weather.

While there, I was absolutely FLOORED to discover a plaque honoring the former Winfield Potters location on the wall outside of the patio area. So darn cool! Of course, I think there should also be a notation on the plaque which touts the restaurant’s cinematic history, as well, but I digress.

I, of course, also peeked inside the Clientek offices to see if I could spot any small piece of the restaurant which still remained, but, sadly, there wasn’t anything. I can’t tell you how heartbreaking this particular stalk was for me, as I had so badly wanted to see Willie C.’s piano. Sigh.

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I am happy to report, though, that the Marine General Store, the small grocery store which was used for the exterior shots of the Johnson Inn, looks very much the same today as it did when Beautiful Girls was filmed back in 1996. There are some differences, of course, but for the most part, the location is very recognizable from the movie.

And, even though no filming actually took place there, I just had to stalk the interior of the General Store, as well. While doing so, I asked the girl at the front counter if the movie Beautiful Girls had been filmed on the premises, to which she said, “I don’t know. Let me check.” She then proceeded to pull up a list of about one hundred movies on her computer screen. Well, let me tell you, I took one look at that list and just about passed out from excitement and said, “WOW! How many movies have been filmed here?” The girl looked at me utterly flabbergasted and explained, “This is the list of movies we have for rent. I thought you were inquiring about a movie rental.” LOL As I mentioned in a previous post, I am rapidly discovering that most people in this world have never even heard of Beautiful Girls, including, apparently, people who work at locations where filming of the movie actually took place!

Anyway, the girl at the counter, who was very nice, directed me to the manager of the store, who, amazingly enough, had actually heard of Beautiful Girls and even knew about its filming. She told me that the big fight scene between Tommy “Birdman” Rowland and Steve Rossmore (aka Sam Robards) at the end of the film took place in the General Store’s back parking lot.

Unfortunately, though, there was a van parked in front of the stairway that Tommy walks down in the scene, so I couldn’t get a perfect shot of it.

You can watch the Beautiful Girls “Sweet Caroline” scene by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding these locations for me! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The exterior of the Johnson Inn Restaurant from Beautiful Girls is the Marine General Store, which is located at 101 Judd Street in Marine on Saint Croix, about twelve miles north of Stillwater. The interior of the Johnson Inn was the former Winfield Potters restaurant, which used to be located at 212 2nd Street SE in Minneapolis.

May 18, 2010
The “Beautiful Girls” Bus Stop

The fourth and final Stillwater location that my family and I stalked while in Minnesota two weeks ago was the “Knight’s Ridge, Massachusetts” bus stop where Willie Conway (aka Timothy Hutton) was first dropped off upon returning home for his high school reunion at the very beginning of fave movie Beautiful Girls. In real life, that location is not actually a bus stop at all (nor is it located in the fictional town of Knight’s Ridge, either, of course), but a liquor store named Kinsel’s Liquor which, as fate would have it, just so happened to be our very first stalking stop in Downtown Stillwater. It’s pretty darn cool that my parents and I began our Stillwater journey in the exact same spot where Willie began his in Beautiful Girls. 🙂 I found this location thanks to fellow stalker Owen and the highly-coveted Beautiful Girls master locations list which he procured for me before my trip. And even though Kinsel’s Liquor appeared in only one very brief scene in the movie, since we were in the area and since it is the location where the storyline of Beautiful Girls truly begins, I just had to stalk the place.

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The first few minutes of Beautiful Girls actually take place about a thousand miles east of Stillwater, at a New York City lounge named the 1889 Bar & Grill, where Willie works as a piano player. After the 1889 closes for the night, Willie says good-bye to his boss and heads over to New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal where he purchases a one-way ticket to his hometown of Knight’s Ridge, Massachusetts. Why a one-way ticket, you ask? Because at that point in the movie, Willie is at a crossroads in his life and is unsure of whether or not he will ever return to the Big Apple. Sadly, though, like so many other Beautiful Girls locations, the 1889 Bar & Grill is no longer. The space which once housed the lounge was torn down in 2006 to make way for a luxury hi-rise condominium building named 100 West 18th. Such a bummer!

Early the next morning, Willie gets dropped off in Knight’s Ridge, at a fictional bus stop located right in front of Kinsel’s liquor, where his high school buddy Michael “Mo” Morris (aka Noah Emmerich) is waiting to pick him up.

After a huge hug, Willie and Mo retreat to Mo’s station wagon, which is parked on the south side of the liquor store, where the two men discuss Willie’s current girlfriend of about a year, Tracy, whom he is unsure if he wants to marry. The men then head to Willie’s childhood home and the story takes off from there. 🙂 So, there it is – today’s post. It’s a short one, I know. In fact, truth be told, being that this location is “just” a bus stop, and not even a real one at that, I hesitated to even blog about it. But because it is the place where one of my all-time favorite movies truly began, it is extremely sentimental to me and I decided I just had to!

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location for me! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Beautiful Girls bus stop is actually Kinsel’s Liquor Store, which is located at 118 East Chestnut Street in Stillwater, Minnesota. The Greyhound bus dropped Willie off on the east side of the store, while Mo’s car was parked on the south side. The 1889 Bar & Grill was formerly located at 108 West 18th Street in New York City.

May 17, 2010
The River Oasis Cafe from “Beautiful Girls”

Another Stillwater, Minnesota location that my family and I stalked last week was the River Oasis Cafe from fave movie Beautiful Girls. And I’m really hoping that my fellow stalkers are not yet sick of reading about Beautiful Girls locations, ‘cause there are still quite a few of them that I’ve yet to blog about. 😉 Anyway, I found out about this locale thanks to the master locations list that fellow stalker Owen purveyed for me before I left on my trip to the North Star State. Thank you, Owen! And even though the River Oasis Cafe only appeared in one fairly brief scene in the movie, I just had to stalk the place. Especially since my mom was absolutely starving upon our arrival in Stillwater and mentioned that she wanted to dine at a “local greasy spoon”, to which I said, “I know just the place!” 🙂

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The River Oasis Cafe appeared in the very beginning of Beautiful Girls, in one of the opening scenes in which Tommy “Birdman” Rowland (aka Matt Dillon), Paul Kirkwood (aka Michael Rapaport), and Kev (aka Max Perlich) are shown eating an early morning breakfast after finishing that day’s snow plow rounds. And I am very happy to report that the restaurant looks much the same in person as it did onscreen in the movie!

Except for the large billboard which stands in the cafe’s front parking lot, though, which was covered over during the filming to read “Welcome to Knight’s Ridge”, the fictional town where Beautiful Girls was set.

Because a wide shot of the interior of the River Oasis Cafe was never shown in the movie, I wasn’t exactly sure of where Paul, Tommy, and Kev sat during the scene, but thankfully our SUPER nice waitress was able to point me in the right direction. 🙂

And while some people were already occupying the Beautiful Girls’ booth when we first arrived at the restaurant, as soon as they left I immediately ran over and snagged it so that I could snap a pic in the exact spot where Matt Dillon and Max Perlich sat during the filming. 🙂

Ironically enough, while we were dining my dad randomly took a photograph of the above-pictured sign which hangs near the River Oasis Cafe’s front door. So, imagine my surprise when I re-watched Beautiful Girls upon returning home from Minnesota and saw that very same sign hanging in pretty much the very same spot near the restaurant’s front door in the scene in which Paul is shown making a phone call to his former girlfriend Jan (aka Martha Plimpton). Nice work, dad!!! 🙂

While we were stalking the Cafe, my parents and I had the pleasure of meeting Craig Beemer – the restaurant’s owner/dishwasher, as he likes to call himself 🙂 – who truly could NOT have been nicer. Not only did he agree to pose for a photograph with me for my blog, but he also snapped a pic of me sitting in the Beautiful Girls’ booth to put on the River Oasis Cafe’s “Faces of Oasis” Facebook page. 🙂 He even seemed amenable to my suggestion of putting a plaque on the Beautiful Girls’ booth so that diners would be aware of the movie magic that took place in that spot just over fourteen years ago! So, Craig, if you’re reading this, I fully expect to see that plaque in place the next time I’m in Stillwater! 🙂 I honestly cannot recommend stalking the River Oasis Cafe enough – it’s a fabulous restaurant, which serves up some excellent food, and the staff truly could not be nicer! Love it! Love it! Love it!

On a side note – The owner of Willie’s house from Beautiful Girls, which I blogged about on Wednesday, mentioned that his neighbors always joke about creating a tour of all of the movie’s locations in the Stillwater area. I told him what a FABULOUS idea I thought that was, but I don’t think he took me seriously. But, let me tell you, even though I’ve already visited pretty much every spot which appeared in the movie, I would SO sign up for that tour.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location for me! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The River Oasis Cafe from Beautiful Girls is located at 806 Main Street South in Stillwater, Minnesota. You can visit the River Oasis Cafe’s Facebook page here.

May 14, 2010
The Drug Store and Beauty Salon from “Beautiful Girls”

Another Stillwater location that I was incredibly excited about stalking was the drugstore where Gina Barrisano (aka Rosie O’Donnell) spewed a very choicely-worded rant at Willie Conway (aka Timothy Hutton) and Tommy “Birdman” Rowland (aka Matt Dillon) over their superficial treatment of women in fave movie Beautiful Girls. Fellow stalker Owen had actually managed to track down this locale – and Willie and Marty’s houses, come to think of it – long before getting his hands on the flick’s master location list, which I talked about yesterday. Sadly, though, the Beautiful Girls drugstore, which was named St. Croix Rexall Drugs, closed in 2008 and the space which once housed it has since been completely remodeled and turned into a Dairy Queen. When Owen first told me the sad news, I was reminded of the scene in You’ve Got Mail, during which Kathleen Kelly (aka Meg Ryan) talks about the closing of her children’s bookstore and says, “People are always telling you that change is a good thing, but all they’re really saying is that something you didn’t want to happen at all has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store – did I ever tell you that? It’s a lovely store and in a week it will be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap.” Sigh. Couldn’t have said it better myself, Meg! I mean can you think of anything more depressing than a Dairy Queen? Ugh, I so hate change! I can’t even begin to describe how depressed I was over learning that the drugstore was no longer, but because it was the site of one of my all-time favorite movie scenes, I just had to stalk the location where it once stood.



Only the interior of St. Croix Rexall Drugs was used in Beautiful Girls.

And it, of course, looks completely different now than it did then. When locations change, I often stalk them anyway in the hopes that there will be something recognizable – some small remnant of the movie magic which once took place there – which still remains at the site, but, as you can see, that, sadly, was not the case with the Beautiful Girls drugstore.

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The exterior of the Dairy Queen is pictured above, but, sadly, it, too, was completed re-vamped after St. Croix Rexall Drugs closed. You can see some exterior and interior photographs of what the building used to look like on this Flikr page.



At the time of filming, the salon where Gina worked – and where she actually began her rant – was a place called Smitty’s Barber Shop and it was located right around the corner from St. Croix Rexall Drugs.

Sadly though, that, too, has since been closed and is now a tattoo parlor named Tatts by Zapp. Such a bummer!

The interior of Smitty’s was also used for a brief scene between Rosie O’Donnell, Mira Sorvino, and Anne Bobby in Beautiful Girls, but the tattoo parlor was closed when we showed up to stalk the place, so I wasn’t able to peek inside to see if it looked at all the same as it did in the movie.



As bummed as I was to discover that both the drugstore and the salon had long since closed down, I still had an absolute blast in Stillwater. The city is BY FAR one of the most adorable places I have ever visited in my life! I loved, loved, loved it! So did my parents, who, as I mentioned in a previous post, are seriously considering spending a few months there after my mom retires next year, which I think is so incredibly cool! Especially since we never would have even known about the place had it not been for Beautiful Girls. Fellow stalker Owen and I were just discussing how visiting off-the-beaten-path areas one might otherwise never have known about is one of our very favorite things about stalking. When my best friend Robin came to visit me from Switzerland last year, he asked how it was that I knew about so many fabulous, not-in-a-guidebook-type spots in Los Angeles and New York. DUH – because they were all in a movie or TV show, of course! 🙂 Anyway, if you ever have the chance to visit Stillwater, I HIGHLY recommend doing do. Not only is the architecture unique, quaint, and beautiful . . .

. . . but there are amazing views of the St. Croix River from pretty much everywhere you look! It is a truly gorgeous city!

You can watch the not AT ALL suitable for work – unless your speakers are turned off or you have headphones on – drug store scene from Beautiful Girls by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The former St. Croix Rexall Drug Store, now Dairy Queen, from Beautiful Girls is located at 132 Main Street South in Stillwater, Minnesota. Gina’s Salon, the former Smitty’s Barber Shop, is now the Tatts by Zapp tattoo parlor, which is located at 235 East Chestnut Street, just around the corner from the Dairy Queen. To learn more about Stillwater, you can visit the city’s official website here.

May 13, 2010
The “Beautiful Girls” Houses

As I remarked last week, one of my very favorite films of all time is the 1996 flick Beautiful Girls. But, being that no one that I’ve mentioned the movie to as of late has ever even heard of it, I’m guessing it was pretty much a sleeper hit, despite its all-star cast. Nevertheless, I’ve absolutely loved the film ever since it first came out almost fifteen years ago and have probably seen it no less than thirty times. So, when I found out that my dad had been accepted to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, a light bulb immediately went off in my head, as I had a somewhat vague recollection that Beautiful Girls had been filmed in the North Star State. A quick visit to the movie’s IMDB filming locations page confirmed my beliefs – the entire thing had been shot on location in the Land of 10,000 Lakes! So, I immediately called upon “the Team” – aka fellow stalkers Owen, Chas from Itsfilmedthere, and Mike, from MovieShotsLA – to see if they could help me track down some of the locales featured in the flick, which they, sure enough, did. Amazingly enough, just a few days later, Owen sent me an email with an attachment and, let me tell you, I just about died upon opening it. Somehow he had gotten his hands on the master location list from the movie – a document which detailed EACH AND EVERY LOCATION WHERE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS WAS SHOT! I’m not kidding! I was so excited I just about had a heart attack right then and there! I had hoped that one of the Team would be able to track down the homes belonging to Willie (aka Timothy Hutton) and Marty (aka Natalie Portman) in the flick, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d be able to stalk pretty much every location which appeared in the movie. THANK YOU, OWEN! 🙂

For those who have yet to see Beautiful Girls – which I am rapidly discovering is most people! – the movie centers around a young piano player named Willie Conway, who returns to his hometown, the fictional Knights Ridge, Massachusetts, in order to attend his high school reunion and to make some life-changing decisions about his future. While home, he spends time with his old high school buddies and meets his new next-door neighbor, a precocious thirteen year old named Marty, whom he immediately befriends. According to Wikipedia, screenwriter Scott Rosenberg came up with the idea for Beautiful Girls while spending time in his hometown of Boston while waiting for a response from Disney about a little script he had just submitted to them titled Con Air. He said, “It was the worst winter ever in this small hometown. Snow plows were coming by, and I was just tired of writing these movies with people getting shot and killed. So, I said, ‘There is more action going on in my hometown with my friends dealing with the fact that they can’t deal with turning 30 or with commitment’ – all that became Beautiful Girls.” Director Ted Demme said of the setting of the film, “[I] wanted to make it look like it’s Anytown, USA, primarily East Coast. And I also wanted it to feel like a real working-class town.” Demme found his Anytown, USA in the city of Stillwater, Minnesota, where most of the sites from the movie are located, including the two I most wanted to stalk – the homes belonging to Willie and Marty.

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I am very happy to report that Willie’s house, which is pictured above, looks very much the same today as it did back in 1996 when Beautiful Girls was filmed – minus the snow, of course. As fate would have it, the owner of the property happened to be outside when we arrived to stalk the place and he truly could NOT have been nicer. And, although he didn’t purchase the home until 2005, long after Beautiful Girls had been filmed, he knew quite a bit about the movie and what areas of the house had been used in it.

As you can see in the house’s real estate listing from 2005, the interior scenes were not actually filmed on the premises. The home’s real life interior is absolutely gorgeous, while its onscreen counterpart was pretty dismal and dreary. In the movie, Marty comments to Willie, “It’s a lonely house, you don’t mind me saying.” And I have to say that the set dressers and production designers did an excellent job of building a set which did, indeed, look very lonely.

According to the now-owner, the only “interior” of the house that was used in the movie was the second story window, from which Willie talks to Marty late one night in a set-up which Marty describes as “Romeo and Juliet – the dyslexic version.” 😉

Marty’s house is located right next-door to Willie’s, and it, too, looks much the same as it did in the movie.

The only difference I noticed is that the fence which surrounded the property in the movie is not there in real life.

And, of course, I just had to re-create the scene in Beautiful Girls is which Marty is shown “mashing snow” in her side yard – even though there was no actual snow for me to mash. 🙂

And I was SUPER excited to discover that the little space under the house where Marty stored her sled in the movie was there in real life, too. So darn cool! I can’t tell you how heartwarming it was for me to stalk these two residences, as almost all of my favorite scenes from Beautiful Girls took place there. If you are at all a fan of the movie, I highly recommend stalking the houses as they are sure to bring back some great memories.

On a side note – my absolute favorite scene from Beautiful Girls was the ice-skating scene with Marty and Willie, which you can watch by clicking above. And while I did not get to stalk the lake where that scene was filmed, I do know its location, thanks to Owen. For those who are interested, Marty and Willie’s ice skating lake is Lake William, which is located on Minnetonka Boulevard in Shorewood, Minnesota.

BIG, HUGE THANK YOU to Owen for finding this – and every other Beautiful Girls – location for me! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Willie Conway’s house from Beautiful Girls is located at 1337 2nd Street South in Stillwater, Minnesota, about 25 miles east of Minneapolis. Marty’s house is located right next-door at 1341 2nd Street South.

May 12, 2010
The “Grumpy Old Men” Houses

A few locations that my family and I stalked this past week while spending time in the North Star State were the homes which appeared in the 1993 comedy Grumpy Old Men. I found these locations thanks to fellow stalker Lavonna, who, a few weeks before my trip out to the Midwest, gifted me with the stalking tome Shot On This Site: A Traveler’s Guide to the Places and Locations Used to Film Famous Movies and TV Shows. In the book, author William A. Gordon states that the residences belonging to John Gustafson (aka Jack Lemmon), Max Goldman (aka Walter Matthau), and Ariel Truax (aka Ann-Margret) in the flick could all be found on the 1100 block of Hyacinth Avenue East in St. Paul. No actual address numbers were given, though, so before I left for Minnesota, I scanned through the movie with my laptop in hand and found the exact house numbers thanks to Google Street View. Yay! 🙂

In the flick, John Gustafson and Max Goldman are, as the title suggests, two grumpy old men, and long time adversaries, who live next door to each other in what is supposedly Wabasha, Minnesota. When the beautiful Ariel Truax moves in across the street, both men, of course, fall madly in love with her and comedy ensues. I just re-watched the movie last night (such a great flick!) and was shocked to discover how much filming was actually done on location on Hyacinth Avenue East. In fact, according to IMDB’s Grumpy Old Men trivia page, so much filming was done outside in Minnesota’s inclement weather that Walter Matthau actually developed double pneumonia. 🙁    Anyway, I am very happy to report that the homes look much the same in person as they did onscreen in Grumpy Old Men, but I must say that it was very jarring to see them during the Spring, sans snow and surrounded by greenery.



Ariel Truax’s gorgeous colonial-style, hilltop home is the residence which is shown most often in the flick. Due to the many trees surrounding the property, though, I was unable to get a great shot of the place.

Pictured above is what the residence looks like head on. There are so many trees that you can hardly see the house! It truly is beautiful, though.

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John Gustafson’s home also appeared numerous times in the flick and, as you can see in the above screen captures and photographs, looks much the same today as it did in 1993 when Grumpy Old Men was filmed. All that was missing in real life was the little firewood cover/roof located on the side of the residence which John climbed down several times in the movie. I am guessing that the roof was just a prop that was added for filming, though, and was never actually there in real life.



For whatever reason, the exterior of Max Goldman’s home was never shown in its entirety in Grumpy Old Men, but you can sort of see a good view of it in the above screen captures. All three residences also appeared in the movie’s 1995 sequel, Grumpier Old Men.

Ironically enough, while we were stalking the homes, my mom noticed a residence for sale down the street and went to go look at it. She immediately started yelling for me to come check out the “For Sale” sign in the front yard, in which the real estate agent had called the residence “the Grumpy Old Men house”. According to the real estate brochure, in 1993, the home’s then-owners were paid $500 for their property to appear in the background of the flick. They were also given an invite to the movie’s premiere at the State Theatre in Minneapolis. How incredibly cool is that? Even cooler is the fact that the real estate agent not only mentioned Grumpy Old Men on the “For Sale” sign, but made it the basis for the home’s entire marketing scheme! Love it, love it, love it!

So, when I re-watched the flick last night, I was SUPER excited to see the residence in the background of the opening scene. So darn cool!

Pictured above is the home’s real estate brochure – which I, of course, took! 🙂 And you can check out the property’s real estate listing here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Grumpy Old Men houses are all located on Hyacinth Avenue East in St. Paul, Minnesota. John Gustafson’s house can be found at 1133 Hyacinth Avenue East, Max Goldman’s house can be found at 1137 Hyacinth Avenue East, and Ariel Truax’s house can be found at 1122 Hyacinth Avenue East.

May 11, 2010
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” Apartment Building

In 1975, after the real-life owner of The Mary Tyler Moore Show house put a big, fat ixnay on letting the series do any more filming on her property, producers decided to move their spunky heroine to the newly-built, multi-colored apartment complex known as Cedar Square West in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis. My parents and I had actually driven by the complex, which is now called Riverside Plaza, numerous times during our stay in the North Star State – and had often commented on what an eyesore it was – but it wasn’t until stumbling upon John Weeks’ Mary Tyler Moore Show locations website while killing time at the Mayo Clinic that I realized the place was a filming location. Once I learned that the building stood in for the home of Mary Richards during the final two seasons of the iconic series, I decided I just had to write a blog post about it, which I did during the 90-minute car ride from Rochester back to Minneapolis this past Friday morning. I had planned on taking photographs of Riverside Plaza once we reached our destination, but, sadly, it rained pretty much all day on Friday, so I put it off, thinking the pictures would not come out very well. I figured I could snap a few photos the following morning while on our way to the airport to fly back home. Since we had passed Riverside Plaza on our way into town after first landing in Minneapolis the week prior, I thought it would stand to reason that we would also pass it on our way out of town while heading back to the airport, but that’s not exactly what happened. For whatever oddball reason, our GPS unit took us on an alternate route to the airport, a route which did not go past Riverside Plaza, and I therefore never got any photographs of the place! UGH! But since I had already written the content about the locale, I decided to do a post on it anyway. Which landed me in uncharted territory – a blog post with no photographs to go with it. Thankfully, though, I found a video about the Plaza on the MinnPost news website, from which I was able to make the screen captures which appear above and throughout the rest of this post. Thank you, MinnPost! 🙂 And let that be a lesson to me – never write a blog post without first taking pictures of the subject on which I am writing. 😉

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Riverside Plaza, which is comprised of six towers, was constructed in 1973 by modernist architect Ralph Rapson and was modeled after a multi-use residential housing design known as Unite d’Habitacion, which was created by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, aka Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (try saying that one three times fast!). The towers were designed in the very aptly-named brutish-style and, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, stick out like a sore thumb in the otherwise beautiful skyline that makes up Downtown Minneapolis. The buildings are such an eyesore, in fact, that each time my family drove past them, one of us would comment on their not-so-aesthetic appearance. Rapson was inspired to build the complex after a vacation in Europe, during which he discovered similar style communities in which groups of different economic and cultural backgrounds lived together in close proximity. He originally envisioned Riverside Plaza to be comprised of 11 buildings with 12,500 different apartment units which would house over 30,000 people. His vision was never realized, however. The developer funding the project defaulted on his loans and only six buildings, comprised of 1,303 individual units, were completed. Supposedly, there are several “skyways” – covered walking bridges which connect buildings – on the premises which were never finished and therefore lead to nowhere. Because 50% of the units are subsidized housing, the complex is currently home to a large number of low-income residents. According to quite a bit of information online, the Plaza is rundown, infested with crime and drugs, and is colloquially called “the crack stack”, which is why I had only planned on taking pictures of the place from afar. 😉 Riverside Plaza is scheduled to undergo a $90 million renovation project in the near future in order to make the place more energy-efficient and is currently being considered for Historic Landmark status. Being that so many Minnesota residents despise the place, though, I have serious doubts that the status will be awarded. You can see a great photograph of Riverside Plaza here.

Riverside Plaza first appeared in the Season 6 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show which was aptly entitled “Mary Moves Out”. Mary continued to be a resident of the building throughout the remaining two seasons of the series, which ended in 1977.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Riverside Plaza, aka Mary Richards’ apartment building on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is located at 1600 South 6th Street in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

May 10, 2010