movie houses – Page 13 – IAMNOTASTALKER

March 11, 2009March 11, 2009

Samantha Jones and Smith Jerrod’s Beach House

This weekend after stalking Carrie’s honeymoon villa from Sex and the City: The Movie, I dragged my boyfriend about 15 miles south to stalk yet another location from the film – Samantha and Smith’s beach house. Thanks to fave book Sex and the City: The Movie, which stated that the home was located on Malibu Road, this location was a snap to find! Smith and Samantha’s house, with its curved glass and steel architecture, is quite unique and it’s not hard to see why producers chose it as the residence of SATC’s trendy P.R. exec and her young movie star boyfriend.

In person, the house is absolutely breathtaking. Located right on the sand in Malibu, the home has five separate cantilevered balconies that seem to just hang right over the Pacific Ocean. I can only imagine what the views must be like at sunset! I’m not usually a big fan of modern houses, but this one is pretty special. At the time of filming the home was on the market for a cool $17 million (the price has now dropped to $14,500,000). I believe it was also vacant, which would have made filming there much easier than in a home that was occupied.

Filming of the Samantha/Smith scenes took two weeks to complete and both the interior and the exterior of the real life beach house were used extensively. Featured in the movie were the kitchen area (where Samantha cooks Smith homemade sushi),

the living room where Samantha and Smith celebrate New Year’s Eve in front of a fire,

and the master bedroom, where Smith asks Samantha to stop running off to New York every chance she gets. You can compare the above screen captures to the interior photos of the home shown on its real estate website and on this website. From the looks of it, it seems producers even chose to use the home’s real bedroom furniture for the filming.

The front of Samantha and Smith’s home wasn’t shown in Sex and the City: The Movie, but you can catch a glimpse of it in the above pic. Ironically, the front of the house looks like a normal everyday modern style home and doesn’t give any clue as to the amazing architecture located just on the other side of it. And while the front of the house will not be familiar to Sex and the City fans, the back definitely will be. Public beach access is located fairly close to the house, so if you would like to see the back view – and I really suggest you do – it’s less than a five minute walk down the beach.

The house directly next door to Samantha’s should also be recognizable to SATC fans. It was used as the home of Samantha’s hunky neighbor Dante (played Gilles Marini who is currently competing on Dancing With The Stars) on whom she develops quite a crush. As for Dante’s outdoor shower, I couldn’t find it anywhere. It is my guess that either another home was used for that scene, or a special shower was created especially for filming purposes that was later removed.

Also missing in real life – the balcony hot tub that Samantha relaxes in towards the beginning of the movie.

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Samantha’s house is absolutely beautiful in person and I highly recommend stalking it – or purchasing it if you have the means! If you don’t have $14,500,000 on hand to buy the home, it is also available as a rental property at the rate of $75,000 per month. Being that I’ve never made that amount in an entire year, let alone a month, I think I’m pretty much out of the running on this one. LOL

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Samantha and Smith’s beach house is located at 24826 Malibu Road in Malibu. Dante’s house is located directly next door at 24822 Malibu Road.

February 25, 2009August 20, 2013

The Robinson House from “The Graduate”

A few weeks back fellow stalker Scott, from the Film in America website, asked me if I knew the location of the Robinson house and the Braddock house from the 1967 movie The Graduate. He told me that he feared the locations of those homes were lost to history being that the movie was filmed over forty years ago and the addresses didn’t seem to be posted anywhere. So I just had to get Mike from MovieShotsLA on the case – and sure enough he found the houses. Well, the house, actually, but I’ll get to that later. 🙂 While doing some cyberstalking Mike came across this Wikipedia article stating that the Robinson home was located on North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills, and after a quick search of Google Maps he found the house, right where Wikipedia said it would be. 🙂

The Robinson house looks much different today than it did back in 1967 when The Graduate was filmed. At the time of filming, the home had an all white exterior while today it has a red brick facade. My initial belief was that the brick exterior was added to the house sometime after filming had been completed, but after seeing the above screen capture, I realized that, in actuality, the home has always been brick. When The Graduate was filmed the bricks were just painted white. 🙂

Because the Robinson house looks so very different today than how it appeared onscreen forty years ago, I was shocked Mike was able to locate it. But he found two “landmarks” of a sort on Mrs. Robinson’s house that he used while searching Palm Drive. The first landmark was the wierd brown wooden design that appears to the left of the front door. The second was the house’s small peaked roof area. Both are pictured above. But here’s where things get really weird!

While looking at aerial images of the Palm Drive house, I realized that the pool area and backyard looked a whole lot like Benjamin Braddock’s backyard from the movie. Armed with a pretty big hunch I grabbed my Graduate DVD and fast-forwarded through the entire thing. And sure enough, my hunch was correct – the front of the Braddock house is never shown in the Graduate – only the backyard is shown. And after looking at all of the Braddock backyard scenes one more time, I realized that the Braddock house and the Robinson house were one in the same! LOL

So last week I dragged my boyfriend out to Beverly Hills to stalk the (one and only) Graduate house and while I was there taking photographs the owner happened to drive up. So, of course, I just had to talk to her! 🙂 I asked her if she lived in the home at the time The Graduate was filmed and her mouth pretty much just fell to the floor and she said “HOW did you know this was The Graduate house?” LOL I told her that my friend Mike was a master stalker and that he had found the house by doing some cyber-stalking. She confirmed that her home was indeed used in The Graduate, but said that she didn’t live in it at the time. She said that when she purchased the house about twenty years ago, the real estate agent was marketing it as “the Robinson house”. LOL Then I asked her if her backyard was in fact Benjamin Braddock’s backyard and once again her mouth just hung open. Apparently she didn’t realize who she was dealing with! LOL She told me that, in actuality, Benjamin Braddock’s backyard existed only on a soundstage, but that his backyard and pool area were indeed modeled after hers. I’m not sure she’s entirely correct on that, though. While I have no doubt that her backyard was re-created on a soundstage and that most of the filming probably took place there, if you watch some of the Graduate pool scenes closely it becomes obvious that at least some filming did actually take place at the Palm Drive home.

So, there you have it, the mystery of The Graduate houses is finally solved. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Graduate house is located at 607 North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills.

November 17, 2008February 13, 2009

The 90210 Halloween Party House

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, has done it yet again! I really think I need to name my first born after him or something. 🙂 One of my very favorite episodes in 90210 history was the Season 2 episode entitled “Halloween”, in which the whole gang dresses up and attends a Halloween bash in a humongous, spooky mansion. I’m not sure why I loved that particular episode so much – most likely because Halloween is my favorite holiday and also because I absolutely LOVED Brenda and Dylan’s Bonnie and Clyde costumes. Ever since October of 1991, when the “Halloween” episode aired I have wanted to dress just like Brenda and Dylan did for Halloween! 🙂 Anyway, ever since moving to L.A. eight years ago I have been on the lookout for that Halloween party house, but was always unable to locate it. Then, during October’s Haunted Halloween theme, I got Mike in on the hunt, but even with our two heads put together we just could not find the house!! Until yesterday!!!

Ironically enough, Mike was looking for another movie location in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles when he ran across this article and immediately recognized the home in the picture! Mike called me and I just happened to be IN Hancock Park at that time, so I immediately drove myself right over to the house. And sure enough it was the “Halloween” house!!!!!!!! YAY! I could not have been more excited to see this home in person. It was a stalking adventure eight years in the making!

90210 featured both the interior and the exterior of the house during the filming of the “Halloween” episode. The front porch area was also featured quite prominently. It is on the front porch that Steve tells Kelly that he still loves her, right after she is rescued by both Dylan and Steve after almost being raped by a fellow party guest. Besides 90210, the home also appeared in Willard, Ben, Witchboard, The Addams Family Halloween Special, Mae West, Inner Sanctum II, Night Walker, Secret Games 3, Life Without Dick, Out on a Limb, and Masked and Anonymous. Sadly, according to the article Mike found, the owners have since “retired” the home from filming. 🙁

The house, which is known as the Higgins-Verbeck-Hirsch Mansion, has an interesting real life history, as well. The 9,918 square foot, 32 room home was built by renowned L.A. area architect John Austin in 1902 for a wealthy grain merchant named Hirman Higgins and his family. The mansion was originally located on three lots on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Rampart Boulevard. In 1919, the Higgins family sold the home to the Verbecks, who were forced to actually relocate the mansion a few years later. As strange as that sounds, apparently it was quite commonplace at the time. Due to the commercialization of Wilshire Boulevard and the widening of many Los Angeles streets, homeowners were forced to either move their homes or lose them to the wrecking ball. The Verbecks chose the former and bought a parcel of land 2.5 miles away, on Lucerne Boulevard in Hancock Park. On June 28, 1924 at 1 O’clock in the morning, house-mover George Kress split the Queen Anne mansion into two pieces, and using TWELVE trucks, moved it to its current location. Apparently the Verbecks decided to mark the occasion with a party and invited the mayor and over 100 of their closest friends to hang out in the house during its 2.5 mile, four hour drive down Wilshire Boulevard. From the 30s to the mid 80s, after many subsequent owners, the mansion suffered from severe neglect, until it was purchased by current residents Peggy and Perry Hirsch in 1986. The couple spent the next few years painstakingly restoring the home to its original beauty and grandeur. In 1988, it was designated a Los Angeles cultural historical monument.

The house is absolutely HUMONGOUS in person – much larger than I had expected it to be – and absolutely beautiful. I highly recommend stalking it, even for the rare few of you out there who aren’t 90210 fans. 🙂

Big thank you to Mike, as always, for finding the location and for providing the screen caps!

Stalk It: The 90210 Halloween party house is located at 637 S. Lucerne Boulevard in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.

November 10, 2008February 11, 2009

The Liar Liar House

One of the movie houses I have long been obsessed with finding is the home from the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar. The house in the movie is absolutely adorable, very picturesque and I so badly wanted to see it in person. I happened to mention the Liar Liar house to Mike, from MovieShotsLA,a few weeks ago and of course, he already knew exactly where it was. Duh! I should have asked him for the location right from the beginning. 🙂 LOL! Anyway, once I had the address, I dragged my dad right out to stalk it.

When I first saw Liar Liar, over ten years ago, I actually turned to my mom in the theatre and said “That house has to be in Pasadena.” The home just looked like a Pasadena house to me. And it turns out I was right! 🙂 In person, though, the house actually looks very different than it appeared in the movie. The entire color scheme of the house has been changed and the front door is now painted a bright red. But even though much of the house has been modified in the 11 years since filming took place, it is still very recognizable from the movie. And while the house is absolutely adorable in person, I actually much prefer how it appeared in the movie, with its soft green and taupe coloring. Ugh, why do people keep changing the exteriors of movie houses?? LOL!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Liar Liar house is located at 1004 Highland Avenue in South Pasadena, just around the corner from Lady Heather’s house from CSI .

September 17, 2008February 13, 2009

"I Don’t Need the BMW Anymore, I Already Have A Mercedes!"

This past weekend while out stalking Les Anderson’s house from my fave 80s movie License to Drive , I randomly found the house of his girlfriend Mercedes from the movie. This was another location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were obsessed with finding. We had been doing some cyber-stalking of Mercedes’ house for a few weeks with no luck. We both had an inkling, though, that the house was somewhere right around Les’ house. And then, this weekend, fate stepped in. As my boyfriend pulled the car away from Les Anderson’s house, he took a turn onto Loring Drive and I literally started screaming “STOP THE CAR!” Out of the corner of my eye, I had spotted the house!

Truth be told, I didn’t so much spot the house, as I did the street in front of the house. While watching License to Drive trying to find Mercedes’ house, I noticed that three streets joined and became one right at her front door (shown in the above screen capture). I had been cyberstalking all week, trying to find three streets that came together in front of a large brick house, but to no avail. Until my boyfriend took a turn onto Loring on Sunday, and I noticed the exact same street set-up that I had seen so many times in the movie. When my boyfriend backed the car up, I looked at the house located where the three streets meet and sure enough, there was Mercedes’ house! YAY!

I must say it was very exciting to be standing there in my teenage idol’s footsteps, even all these years later. 🙂 Especially since the house looks exactly like it did back when License to Drive was filmed.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mercedes house is located at 485 Loring Drive in Los Angeles, just a few blocks from Corey Haim’s house in the movie.

August 13, 2008February 13, 2009

LA Not So Confidential

For years my mom has been begging me to do some stalking of one of her favorite movies, LA Confidential. Ever since the movie came out back in 1997 she has been obsessed with finding the various houses used during filming, but none more so than David Strathiarn’s character’s beautiful, ultra modern hillside abode. Luckily, the house was a snap for me to find as the address was given right on imdb’s LA Confidential filming locations page. 🙂 In the movie David Strathiarn plays Pierce Patchett, a very wealthy businessman who runs a high class prostitution ring, where all of the prostitutes are made up to look like famous actresses. Supposedly, the ring was based on a real brothel that truly did exist back in the hey dey of Tinseltown. In the movie, Pierce lives in an amazing modern looking manse built right into the side of a hill. In real life that house is called the Lovell Health House and it is just as breathtaking in person as it appears onscreen. The Lovell Health House, or Lovell House, was commissioned by doctor Philip Lovell and built by architect Richard Neutra. Construction began in 1927 and was completed in 1929. Health-nut Lovell was completely obsessed with diet and exercise and he wanted the house to be built in such a way as to benefit the health of its occupants, which is how the house came to be called the “Lovell Health House”. Included in the home was a swimming pool, an exercise room, an eight foot tall food cooler, a water purification system, juicing equipment and plenty of windows to allow the occupants to be close to nature. The unique home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Amazingly the Lowell family only lived in the house for one year before selling it to a different family.

Both the interior and the exterior of the house show up several times in LA Confidential and the home looks much the same in person as it did on the big screen. Unfortunately you can’t see a whole lot of the home from the street. If you want a more in depth view, I recommend renting the movie for your very own up close and personal private tour of the home.Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂 Stalk It: Pierce Patchett’s house can be found at 4616 Dundee Drive in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. To see the garage area, where filming also took place, just drive a bit south of the house to the large concrete driveway and you’ll see the garage.