Seeing Stars: Where the Movies Were Shot (on Location)



PART  10

Filming locations of TV Shows,
Made-for-TV Movies & Music Videos.

If you're a fan of the NBC show "CHUCK", you'll recognize the Spanish-style apartment courtyard where Chuck lives. You'll find that courtyard at 1832 Grace Avenue, at the southeast corner of Fountain & Grace, in Hollywood. Built in 1928 by Cecil B. DeMille, it's known as "El Cabrillo". It was once the home of silent movie stars, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. They built a duplicate of this courtyard as a set at Warner Bros studio (so they don't have to trek out here all the time), but this is the original - and the red-tiled roof you see in the shows occasional aerial shots of the courtyard.

And speaking of "CHUCK", you're probably wondering where his "Buy More" store is, right ?

The exterior shot (above) that you see on the show is actually an old Mervyn's department store, located at 6605 Fallbrook Ave, Canoga Park - in the Fallbrook Mall.

(That's on the southwest side of the San Fernando Valley.)

In the shot above, you are looking north, at the south side of the store. As you can see in the aerial photo below, it's a perfect match (except for the fake "Buy More" sign, of course).

(All Mervyn's stores have gone out of business, and as of 2010, the store is currently empty. It will eventually be replaced by another store, so odds are its look will change.)  

And do you remember that beautiful stone church where Chuck & Sarah
finally got married (in the 2011 season finale)?

 

The sign outside read "First Church of Saints", but don't believe it.

This is actually the Church of the Angels, at 1100 Avenue 64, in Pasadena, CA.
It's an Episcopal-Anglican church and was built 122 years ago, in 1889.

(Here's a matching Google StreetView of the church.)

The very final, poignant scene from "Chuck" has Chuck & Sarah sitting on a beach,
sharing a kiss that might (or might not) have restored her lost memory.

This final scene was shot on Cabrillo Beach, in San Pedro, CA.

But not the main beach.  It was shot on a small stretch of beach on a jetty
between the historic Cabrillo bath house and the Cabrillo Pier parking lot.

The camera was looking north, as Chuck & Sarah faced the ocean to the south.
The palm trees seen behind them line the road leading to the pier parking lot.

(Here's a matching Bing Birds-Eye view of that beach.)

Courtney Cox's 2009 sitcom, "COUGAR TOWN", is set in a residential neighborhood in Florida, a cul de sac of red tile-roofed homes. In real life, that street (in the pilot episode) was actually the 9800 block of Forbes Avenue, in North Hills - in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. (You can see one house on that street in the photo to the left.) But then an odd thing happened.  In the second episode, they switched neighborhoods!  Despite the homes having similar red-tile roofs, they actually moved the filming 20 miles southeast. Courtney's new address became 4033 Lamarr Avenue, in Culver City. That just happens to be right across the street from Sony Studios (formerly MGM). [ Warning: these are private homes. Do not knock on their doors, trespass on their property, or do anything else that might disturb the residents. ]

Did you watch the final episode of "24"?
You'll never guess where it was filmed.
Click here to find out.

What if the whole world blacked out for two minutes? That's the premise
of "FlashForward", a 2010 ABC drama series.

For two full pages of FlashForward filming locations, click here.

On the 2010 ABC show, "THE DEEP END", about first-year lawyers at a law firm,
the office tower in which they worked was almost a character on the show, providing
striking background vistas of the city skyline and the mountains beyond.

  That building is the Paul Hastings tower, at 515 S. Flower Street, in downtown
Los Angeles. It is one of a pair of identical 52-story towers at the Arco Plaza
(now called City National Plaza). It is the tower to the north, at 5th & Flower.

They appear to have actually filmed many of the scenes within the building itself
(at least for the pilot episode). The building is no stranger to Hollywood.
Just recently, it appeared in "Heroes" as New York's "Kirby Plaza".

(And appropriately enough Paul Hastings is a major law firm.)

On the 2009 ABC show, "EASTWICK", if you're curious about just where that cute, little
New England town is (the one you see when the show opens, with that little white church),
the answer is: several different places.

The establishing shot of that aerial fly-in (that you see above) was shot in Camden, Maine.
The little white church (seen in the middle of the photo above) is actually the
Chestnut Street Baptist Church, at 29 Chestnut St, in Camden, Maine.

Other exterior location shots were filmed at different spots around New England,
and are dropped in occasionally to give the illusion that Eastwick is located there.

But most of the actual filming on the ground is done on the back lot of Warner Bros Studio,
on their "Midwest Street" outdoor set, which just happens to have a little, white church
that looks a lot like the one in Camden. This same small town set was recently used
extensively as "Star's Hollow", the setting for "The Gilmore Girls", and in a zillion
other productions before that (including "The Music Man").

You can see this set, up close, when you take the studio tour
of the Warner Bros studio, at 3400 Riverside Drive, in Burbank, CA.

             

* Locations marked by an asterisk (*) may be located in areas with high crime rates.
Exercise reasonable caution.