North Hills – IAMNOTASTALKER

January 29, 2016January 28, 2016

The Palms Motel from “My Name Is Earl”

Another day, another motel location. Today’s is one that has been covered on many other blogs, so I realize I am a bit late to the game. I only just recently stalked it, though, and was shocked to discover that its most recognizable element had been removed! I am talking about the Palms Motel where Earl Hickey (Jason Lee) lived with his brother, Randy (Ethan Suplee), on the television series My Name Is Earl. Up until writing this post, I had never seen a full episode of the show, but my dad is a huge fan, so I had caught many bits and pieces of it over the years. I had also long been familiar with the real life location of the Palms Motel. In actuality, it’s known as the Palm Tree Inn Motel in North Hills. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, first pointed it out to me during one of our many Valley stalks ages ago and, when I was in the area recently, I decided to stop by to stalk it for my dad. I was absolutely shocked upon arriving, though, to see that the hotel’s iconic, murky-watered pool was no longer!

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For those unfamiliar with My Name Is Earl, the series centers around ne’er-do-well Earl, who, after winning $100,000 in the lottery and then promptly losing the ticket, decides to change his ways by adhering to the tenets of karma. He draws up a list of all of the people he has wronged throughout the course his life and proceeds to try to make amends with each of them. I absolutely love Earl’s mantra of “You do good things and good things happen to you. You do bad things and they’ll come back to haunt you.” It’s not a bad way to operate. After losing his winning lottery ticket and being dumped by his wife in the pilot episode (oh, and getting hit by a car – the guy was not having a good week), Earl and his brother move into a low-budget inn named the Palms Motel.

The motel went on to be featured regularly throughout the series’ four-season run. It also appeared each week in the My Name Is Earl opening credits.

The Palms’ dingy, fin-shaped pool was easily its most notable aspect – well, for me, at least.

Before venturing onto the property, I popped into the Palm Tree Inn’s front office to speak with the manager and he could not have been nicer, immediately welcoming me onto the premises to take all of the pictures that I wanted. Before I did so, he informed me that the pool had been filled in a few years prior (I believe around 2010) due to the fact that it was expensive to maintain and rarely used. He pointed me in the direction of the pool’s former location (it now serves as a parking lot addition) and, while distressed over the fact that it was no longer there, I was floored to see that its outline was still visible.

Oh, how I wish I had gotten to see the pool in person, though.

The outline of the circular space where the random blue sculpture once stood is also still visible. I am guessing that area was the site of a hot tub at one point in time.

On the series, the brothers were said to live in Room 231 and that is actually where filming took place.

Room 231 can be found on the second floor of the southeast corner of the Palm Tree Inn Motel.

That area is denoted with a pink arrow in the aerial view pictured below.

While the exterior of Room 231 was featured regularly throughout the series’ run, I believe that the actual (heavily dressed) interior was only used in My Name Is Earl’s pilot episode . . .

. . . and that a set re-creation of it was built for all subsequent filming once the series got picked up. You can check out some photographs of what the Palm Tree Inn’s real rooms look like here.

E & Z Liquor Market, where childhood Earl (Noah Crawford) taught his friend Ralph (Tanner Maguire) about “street piñatas” in the Season 1 episode “Teacher Earl,” is located adjacent to the Palm Tree Inn Motel at 8418 Sepulveda Boulevard.

The Palm Tree Inn Motel was originally built in the 1960s and was known as the Travelyn Hiway Host.

I believe that it did not become the Palm Tree Inn Motel until after My Name Is Earl started filming in 2005, which would mean that the owners re-named it in honor of its TV moniker, the Palms Motel, which is pretty darn incredible! Don’t quote me on that, though.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover while researching this post how much filming has taken place at the 76-room motel over the years.

The Palm Tree Inn appeared very briefly as the L.A. motel where Azamat (Ken Davitian) was living at the end of the 2006 comedy Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

In the Season 1 episode of The Mentalist titled “The Thin Red Line,” which aired in 2008, the motel masked as the Davis Motor Inn in Davis, California, where the CBI team investigated the murder of a state witness.

One of the hotel’s actual rooms, Room 222, appeared in the episode.

A nice view of the pool was also shown.

In the Season 3 episode of Heroes titled “Chapter Four ‘Cold Wars,’” which aired in 2009, the property stood in for the Costa Verde motel where Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) and Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) interrogated Noah Bennet (Jack Coleman).

Ironically, Room 231, the very same room where Earl and Randy live on My Name Is Earl, was utilized in the filming.

Or at least the doorway was. I believe the interior of the room that appeared in the episode was just a set.

The Palm Tree Inn Motel was featured extensively in Kesha’s 2010 music video for “Take It Off.”

Though the property was made to appear as if it was located in a remote, mountainous area for the shoot.

An extensive sequence from the video took place in the motel’s pool.

You can watch the “Take It Off” video by clicking below.

Having viewed the many productions filmed at the motel, I’m rather shocked that the owners decided to have the pool filled in. Though, as I mentioned earlier, I was told it was expensive to maintain, it seems that all of the movies and shows lensed on the premises featured it in some aspect. The pool’s unique shape added a certain je ne sais quoi to the property, making it stand out from the countless roadside motels in the area, and no doubt proved attractive to location scouts. Without it, the place looks like every other motel in L.A., which probably explains why it, sadly, hasn’t seen much filming in recent years.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Palm Tree Motor Inn, aka the Palms Motel from My Name Is Earl, is located at 8424 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills. E & Z Liquor Market, from the “Teacher Earl” episode, is located right next door at 8418 Sepulveda Boulevard. The areas of the motel that appeared on the series, as well as the liquor store, are denoted in the aerial view below. The Budget Inn of North Hills, aka the Little Miss Sunshine motel, is located a mile north at 9151 Sepulveda Boulevard. The Hometown Inn from the 2002 Britney Spears’ movie Crossroads is located just a bit north of that at 9401 Sepulveda Boulevard.

May 7, 2015April 30, 2015

New L.A. Mag Post – Seattle Grace Hospital from “Grey’s Anatomy”

Don’t forget to head over to L.A.mag.com today to read my latest post, about Seattle Grace Hospital from Grey’s Anatomy. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours

March 29, 2011March 28, 2011

The “Crossroads” Motel

One location that I have been trying to track down for what seems like ages now is the supposed Tucson, Arizona-area motel where Ben (aka Anson Mount) played the song “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” for Lucy (aka Britney Spears) in the 2002 movie Crossroads. In the flick, Ben takes Lucy into a large, very unique-looking, surfboard-shaped glass room and proceeds to play the song for her on a piano that is stationed there. Well, let me tell you, I became absolutely intrigued with that room ever since first seeing the movie almost a decade ago and immediately added the motel to my “To-Find” list, but for whatever reason could just not seem to locate it. So imagine my surprise when fellow stalker Owen emailed me a little over two weeks ago to ask if I happened to know where that motel was. He was trying to track it down because, as he said, “the big room with the large glass windows is pretty cool”. What can I say – great minds think alike. When I told Owen that I had no idea where it was located, he got right to work in finding it. He had learned from watching the Crossroads’ DVD commentary with producer Ann Carli, director Tamra Davis, and writer Shonda Rimes that the motel was located somewhere in “the Valley” and that a production designer named Waldemar had discovered it while driving around scouting locations for the film. So what did Owen do? Yep, he went straight to the source and contacted Waldemar directly! Well, the very next day there was an email from Waldemar waiting in Owen’s inbox – with an address. Yay! As it turns out filming had taken place at the Hometown Inn in North Hills. So I dragged my dad right on out to stalk the place a few days later. (Now I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here that I, too, listened to that very same DVD commentary while trying to locate the motel and never in a million years did it occur to me to go after Waldemar himself! Owen is most definitely the master and my hat is completely off to him on this one!)

Oddly enough, the room where Ben played “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” is now a restaurant of some sort and it looks quite a bit different today than it did when filming took place back in 2002. The whole motel has an odd feel to it, truth be told, and the place seemed to be rather deserted while I was there taking pictures.

I cannot express how cool it was to finally be standing in that room, though, and thinking about the fact that Miss Britney Spears had once been standing – and singing – in that same exact spot.

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Quite a bit of the Hometown Inn was featured in Crossroads, including the front entrance;

and the pool area . . .

. . . which appeared in the scene in which Lucy speaks with her friends, Kit (aka Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (aka Taryn Manning), about the fact that her mother does not want a relationship with her.

As you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, the blue lip which surrounds the perimeter of the pool still looks exactly the same today as it did when the movie was filmed!

The Hometown Inn was not used for the filming of the interior of Lucy, Kit, Ben, and Mimi’s motel room, though. As was the case with the majority of the motel room scenes in Crossroads, interior filming took place at the now-defunct Ambassador Hotel near Downtown Los Angeles. You can see what an actual Hometown Inn room looks like here.

While we were stalking the Hometown Inn, I desperately wanted to find the payphone where Lucy called her father, Pete (aka Dan Aykroyd), in the movie, but for the life of me I just could NOT seem to figure out where it was. I knew the phone had to be situated somewhere near the motel’s main entrance because Ben’s car was visible in the background behind Lucy in the scene, but I just could not locate it anywhere.

It wasn’t until after I returned home and watched the above-pictured deleted scene that I realized the payphone was located inside of the motel’s lobby.

That payphone is, sadly, no longer there. And while I did go inside the lobby while I was stalking the motel, because I did not realize it had been featured in the movie, I, unfortunately, did not get any photographs of it.

Crossroads Behind-the-Scenes Featurette–Hometown Inn

You can watch a behind-the-scenes video of the Hometown Inn scene being filmed by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Hometown Inn, aka the Tucson, Arizona motel from Crossroads, is located at 9401 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills. You can visit the motel’s official website here.

August 25, 2009August 25, 2009

The Win A Date With Tad Hamilton Grocery Store

One movie location that I have wanted to stalk for what seems like forever is the L.A. area grocery store that stood in for the Fraziers Bottom Piggly Wiggly Supermarket in fave romantic comedy Win A Date With Tad Hamilton. Josh Duhamel! Sigh! 🙂 I was so obsessed with finding this location, in fact, that a few years ago when I happened upon a real Piggly Wiggly store while visiting a small town in Arkansas, I just about died of excitement! Because Piggly Wigglys can only be found in the Southeastern United States, I had never seen one in person before. So, I immediately made my fiance pull the car over so that I could take a photograph out in front (pictured above). 🙂 Anyway, thanks to the production notes on my Win A Date DVD, I knew that producers had used a 14,000 square foot vacant supermarket somewhere in Van Nuys to represent the West Virginia grocery store where Kate Bosworth, Topher Grace, and Ginnifer Goodwin worked in the movie. With that information in hand, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I pretty much scoured the entire Van Nuys area looking for the store, but, sadly, came up completely empty handed. I even went so far as to have my dad, who used to work in the grocery industry, call up some of his old business contacts to ask them if they knew of a Van Nuys grocery store that was used in the filming of a movie back in 2003. Sadly, none of them did. At that point I honestly thought the Win A Date With Tad Hamilton Piggly Wiggly was going to be a lost cause. Until master stalker Chas entered the picture and promised to help me locate the ultra-elusive store. And locate it, he did! In just a few short hours, no less!

Since Chas knew that Mike and I had pretty much already turned the entire city of Van Nuys inside out looking for the Win A Date store, he decided to disregard the production notes and begin his search just outside the city limits. And it’s a good thing he did because it turns out that the Win A Date supermarket is not actually located in Van Nuys, but in the neighboring city of North Hills. Today, the Win A Date grocery store is actually a 99 Cents Only Store, but at the time of the filming it was a recently vacated former supermarket. According to the DVD’s production notes, the crew decked out every square inch of the empty market with signage and props received on loan from the Piggly Wiggly Corporation. The crew did such a good job of dressing up the store, in fact, that people from the neighborhood stopped in and actually tried to shop! LOL Lucy Fisher, one of the Win A Date producers, said “When we tried to explain that it was a movie set , they still tried to push their way in. Everything looked so bright and shiny and delicious, but it was all fake. Still there seemed no way to convince the neighbors that it was not a real market.” LOL LOL LOL Oh, how I wish I could have seen the store all dressed up as a Piggly Wiggly – that would have been just about the coolest thing ever!

I am very happy to report that, despite some changes, the exterior of the 99 Cents Only Store is still very recognizable from the film. The Piggly Wiggly signage has, of course, long since been removed and a small facade has now been added to the market’s sloped roof, but otherwise it still looks pretty much the same as it did in the movie.

The only major difference I noticed while stalking the place is the fact that in the movie there were two sets of entrance doors, one located on each side of the market, while today there is only one set of doors, located in the center of the store. I asked my dad about the change and he said that it is a fairly common alteration for grocery stores to make, as having only one means of exit greatly cuts down on the possibility of theft.

Although the interior of the market was used extensively in the filming of Win A Date , it, sadly, has been changed quite significantly since the 99 Cents Only Store took over. In fact, it looks as if the 99 Cents Only Company had the building completely gutted and remodeled before they moved in. 🙁 While stalking the place, I actually walked around the entire store, hoping to find some small remnant leftover from the filming that took place there just six short years ago, but, unfortunately, there was not one single thing.

Even though the Win A Date Piggly Wiggly looks considerably different post-filming and even though in reality it’s just your average, everday grocery store, I could NOT have been more excited to finally be stalking it! I was literally pinching myself the whole time, as this was one location I never thought I’d actually find.

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Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Win A Date With Tad Hamilton grocery store is really the 99 Cents Only Store located at 8723 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills.