Seeing Stars: Where the Movies Were Shot (on Location)
2007
The 2007 movie "Disturbia"
isn't exactly a remake of the classic Hitchcock thriller, "Rear Window",
but it comes close.
The plot has young Kale (Shia LaBeouf)
confined to his room by house arrest (and an electronic ankle bracelet),
who fights boredom by spying on his neighbors, who include: the man across
the street who is cheating on his wife with the maid, some bratty kids
whose Mom is unaware that they are watching adult cable TV behind her back,
the hot new girl who just moved in next door (Sarah Roemer),
and Mr. Turner (David Morse),
the seemingly normal neighbor who may be hiding a deadly secret.
Disturbia
opens with a scene of Kale and his father
out fly fishingin a river, having a father/son talk. (On their
way home, the father is killed when they get into a car accident.)
Those fishing scenes
were filmed up at Bishop, California,
in the winding Owens River,
about two miles east of the town of Bishop. Bishop is located about 270
miles due north of Los Angeles, and about a hundred miles southeast of
Yosemite National Park. (The Owens River is indeed a good spot for catching
brown trout.)
The main
"Disturbia" house, Kale's home,
is located at 6222 Painter Avenue,
in Whittier, CA.
All of the homes seen in the movie
(with the exception of Turner's house) are located on the same block of
Painter Ave., between Broadway (on the north) and Camilla Street (on
the south). (See
a map.)
Kale's home is on the east side
of Painter Ave, three houses south of Broadway.
In the photo above, we are looking
at the west side of the house (with the camera pointed (northeast).
The lawn where he is busted by the
cops (after accidentally straying outside his limits) is on this same west
side. The driveway, where he talks to Ashley (across the rope), is on the
south side of the home.
The town of Whittier
is located about 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
[ Warning: This
is a private home. Do not trespass on their property,
knock on their door, or do anything else that might disturb the residents.
]
The section of Painter Avenue seen
in the movie is located just four blocks north of Whittier College, the
alma mater of former President Richard Nixon. It's also about a mile east
of Whittier High School, where they filmed the school scenes for "Back
To The Future".
(And on the subject of "Back to
the Future", you may notice that Kale's home looks a lot like Doc Brown's
home from that classic movie. That's because they are both great
examples of the Craftsman style of architecture, particularly popular in
the Pasadena area.)
Ashley's house
is (as you would expect) right next door to Kale's house (to the south).
The address is
6232 Painter Ave.,
in Whittier.
The window
(through which Kale watches her undress)
is located on the north side of the house (so Kale was looking south),
on the second floor. The shingled roof
where she sunbathes is located right outside
(north of) that window.
But it's not
quite as simple as it looks. The pool in
the back (where Ashley swims) and the wood deck
(where she throws a party) are both fake. They're not really at the house
- they were built on the spot by the producers. That pool area (to the
east, between the house and the rear garage) is really just open space.
[ Warning: This
is a private home. Do not trespass on their property,
knock on their door, or do anything else that might disturb the residents.
]
Remember the
Pilchs' house? The red one
where Mr. Pilch is carrying on an illicit affair upstairs with the maid
when Mrs. Pilch goes out to play tennis? Well, it's right where you would
expect it to be, on the other side of Painter Avenue, directly across the
street from Kyle's house. The address is 6221 Painter Ave.,
in Whittier.
[ Warning: This
is a private home. Do not trespass on their property,
knock on their door, or do anything else that might disturb the residents.
]
Immediately
to the left (south) of the Pilch house is the small green
house where Kale watched a father toss
a baseball to his son, out on the front lawn. The address is 6227 Painter Ave.,
in Whittier.
[ Warning: This
is a private home. Do not trespass on their property,
knock on their door, or do anything else that might disturb the residents.
]
And directly
to the left (south) of the green house is the small white house which Frankie's
mother runs past (early on in the movie),
chasing the little kid driving his Big Wheel tricycle down the street.
The house is right across the street from Ashley's house.
[ Warning: This
is a private home. Do not trespass on their property,
knock on their door, or do anything else that might disturb the residents.
]
[ Click
here to go to page 2 of Disturbia filming locations. ]
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