Seeing Stars: Where the Movies Were Shot (on Location)
1985
"To
Live & Die in L.A." Filming Locations .(part
2).
Locations
marked by an asterisk (*) may be located in areas with high crime rates.
Exercise reasonable caution.
The check
cashing place, where they start chasing
two guys who come out of the building, was located at 1701 N. Main Street,
next to the L.A. riverbed and the train tracks, in a rough part of north
downtown L.A.
called Mission Junction (east of Dodger Stadium).
*
Rick Masters' warehouse,
where he kept his counterfeiting printing press
(and where he burns to death at the movie's end), is located east
of downtown Los Angeles, just west
of the Golden State (5) Freeway, at the south end of Moulton Avenue
(on the east side of Moulton), west of S. Avenue 21, on
thenorth
edge of the Taylor Junction railroad tracks.
The address of this parcel (which contains several warehouses) appears
to be 1920 Main Street.
The smokestack
which is visible behind the warehouse (in the photo below) is located
about 200 yards to the east, part of a light manufacturing parcel at 650 S. Avenue 21.
(In both photos, the camera is looking east/northeast.) *
[ Special
thanks to Chas Demster,
a fan who tracked down this particularly obscure location,
as well as many of the other locations in "To Live & Die
In L.A." ]
We next see
Masters in Watts, walking past a colorful mural, and agreeing to pay Jeff
Rice (Steve James)
to arrange the murder of Cody, a "mule" who is curently
in prison - but might start talking to police to get out
That Watts mural is
on the south-facing wall of what is now "Flores
Auto Parts", at11231 S. Main
Street, in south central
Los Angeles. That's at the northwest
corner of Main & 113th Streets (near
the interchange of the 110 and 105 freeways.)
In the photos here, Masters & Rice are seen walking west,
down the north side
of 113th street, just west of Main Street,
at approximately 105 W. 113th St.
*
[
Warning: Watts has a reputation as gang territory with a high
crime wait.
I don't suggest a visit. If you go, exercise caution. ]
Vukovich goes
to see 'Judge Filo Cedillo' (Val DeVargas)
to get him to sign a writ to let him take Cody out of prison to testify
against Masters. The judge gives him a hard time, but eventually signs
it.
The judge's courtyard
(above) that we see Vukovich walk through is located on the southwest side
of the 444 S. Flower St
building, in downtownLos Angeles.
That's at the northeast corner of Flower & 5th St. Vukovich is walking
north across the plaza. (Thanks,
Aaron!)
The Prison
yard, where Cody is attacked, is the Mens
Colony in San Luis Obispo. It's located
at Kern Ave & Los Angeles Ave.
(San Luis Obispo is about 200 miles northwest of Los Angeles.)
Steve Jones's
house, where Jones (Jeff
Rice) is attacked (and possibly killed)
by Masters (Dafoe),
is located in
a blue-collar residential neighborhood on the Wilmington/San Pedro border.
The
house is located at the west end of a short dead-end street: at
1442 F Street,
in Wilmington;
it's the last house on the south side of F Street, just east of four
large oil tanks from a neighboring refinery.
[Side
note: 20 years later, the same house was used
as a location on the popular TV show, "The O.C.",
where it played the role of a party house in Long Beach.]
The
street is hidden away behind (west of) the Harbor (110) Freeway, between
Figueroa Place (on the east) and a large refinery (on the west). That's
just north of the L.A. harbor docks (and just south of Harbor College).
*
[
Warning: Wilmington has a reputation as gang territory.
I don't suggest a visit, but if you go anyway, exercise caution. ]
[
Warning: Remember that this is a private home. Do not
trespass on their property,
knock on the door, or do anything else to disturb the residents. ]
The hospital
(called "Santa Fe Hospital"
in the film), where Cody pretends to have a sick relative (and where he
loses Chance), was actually the old Linda
Vista Hospital, located at 610
S. St. Louis Street, in the Boyle Heights
section of East Los Angeles.
That's just east of downtown L.A., south of 6th Street, and next to Hollenbeck
Park.
Empty since 1990, the 1937 hospital has been used as the filming location
for many a movie and TV show, including "Pearl Harbor", "Dexter",
Arnold Schwarzenneger's "End of Days" and Jennifer Lopez's "The
Cell".
[
Warning: This area has had gang problems - exercise reasonable
caution. ]
We see John Vukovich
(John Pankow)
crossing a downtown street lined with brownstones, and enter a dim, narrow
bar. Inside, he meets with Masters' attorney (Dean
Stockwell), who is getting worried about
his relationship with Masters and wants to help Chance & Vukovich set
him up. He arranges a meeting with Masters at his gym.
This bar
meeting scene was shot at 2053
E. 7th Street, at the northwest
corner of 7th Street and Santa Fe Ave,
on the east side of downtown L.A.
In real life, it's a rundown, graffiti-covered brick building in a rough
industrial district, east of the Skid Row area.
When we watch
John cross the street at the start of the scene, the camera is looking
south, and he crosses Santa Fe Ave from east to west. He actually enters
the east side of the building (on the west side of Santa Fe). In
the photo above, John is walking south inside the bar (towards
7th).
In the photo
below, the camera is looking south/southeast down Santa Fe Ave,
from just north of 7th Street, as the two men walk north up the
west side of Santa Fe Ave. The cross-street (and traffic lights) seen behind
them is 7th. *
They first meet
Rick Masters (Willem DaFoe)
up on the roof of the gym
where he conducts his business transactions (seen in the photo above).
They filmed that scene up on the roof of a building at 8051
Beverly Blvd., in West Los Angeles. That's
at the northwest corner of Beverly Blvd
& Laurel Ave. They're standing atop
an elevated portion of the roof, near the northwest corner of the building.
(Ironically, the building currently houses a printer & engraver.)
Later, they
go back to the same gym to pick up the counterfeit money that Masters has
printed for them (they are seen entering its door in the photo below,
just before they confront the bodyguard inside, at the foot of the stairs).
When they attempt to arrest Masters, a gunfight ensues.
That doorway
they enter is on the east side of the building (which contains a
series of storefronts) facing Laurel Avenue. It is a narrow door,
the third door from the building's north end. You can see the locations
on this
aerial photo.
[ Special
thanks to Debus Pascal,
a fan from France who tracked down this location,
and gave assistance on the Watts mural location. Merci beaucoup, Pascal.]
Chance goes
to a seedy topless bar,
where he gets information from Ruth (about a smuggler coming into town
on a train).
It was an actual nude bar, called "Shipwreck
Joey's", and was located at the northeast
corner of Figueroa Street & Harry Bridges Blvd.,
in Wilmington,
CA, across from the docks of the port of Los Angeles harbor. But it
no longer exists. The official address was 1331 W. B Street.
That bar is the same one that was seen in the movie "Fight
Club" as the main fight club location. Not long after the "Fight Club"
filming ended in 1999, the entire building was razed to the ground (along
with most of the buildings on that harbor strip - due to expansion of the
harbor). The address is now nothing more than a vacant patch of bare land
(although you can still see the oil refinery in the background.) *
They kidnap
the Chinese diamond smuggler (coming in on Amtrack from San Francisco)
at a train station.
This scene was shot at the venerable Union Station,
located at 800 N. Alameda St.,
in downtown L.A. Chance pulls a gun on him inside the old train station,
then the action shifts to the outside of the station, where he forces his
captive into a car.
While driving
away with the captive, he passes a building
labeled 1422 E. 6th Street,
in downtown L.A. It's there that he reaches the 6th
Street bridge (over the L.A. River and
train tracks).
It's under that
bridge (where 6th Street meets
Mesquit Street)
that Chance loses his temper, roughs up his captive, and smashes the
briefcase. *
During the Big
Chase Scene, heading west on 6th Street,
Chance passes Southwestern Bag Co,
which is located at 1380 East 6th Street,
in downtown L.A.
*
At this point, he turns left (south) off 6th Street and
onto Mateo Street.
During the chase,
he also passes the warehouse of "Select Produce", at 1580 Jesse Street
(at Mesquit Street), in downtown. (That's just south of the 6th Street
Bridge.).
Followed by
gunmen trying to kill them, they race a speeding
train and pull in front of it to elude
their followers.
The spot where they pull in front of the train was on the train tracks
on the west side of the L.A. riverbed, just
south of the 6th Street Bridge, in downtown.
They (and the train) were heading north. They then crash down into the
L.A. riverbed (also
just south of the 6th Street Bridge), and race back along the semi-dry
riverbed. *
The final part
of the chase,
where they go the wrong way
up a freeway onramp, jumps abruptly from downtown L.A. to the Long Beach
area. More specifically, it was Terminal
Island (east of the Vincent Thomas
Bridge), near Henry Ford Avenue,
Ocean Blvd, and the
Terminal Island Freeway (the green bridge
which can be seen in the photo above).
( The
final credits show the viewpoint of a
passenger in a car, heading south down the Harbor
(110) Freeway, first past the Wilmington
refinery area where you'll find Steve Jones's
house, and then east over the Vincent Thomas
Bridge onto Terminal Island,
and across to Long Beach.)
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