Q.  Where is it supposed to be?


After Mia points out the Casablanca window, she & Sebastian begin walking up the street, talking, while studio action whirls around them.



39:56: They walk east/northeast along the north side of French Street,

He first asks her about her current boyfriend, Greg, but that doesn't last long.

They then walk past a blue & white building which looks like a Victorian barn, and which (for some reason) sits right next to the coffee shop building.

In the scene, that rural-looking building has been decked out with a stylized Old West saloon theme (complete with green cactus, wagon wheels, bails of hay, and a roulette wheel in the doorway). Outside that barn, make-up people are prepping several young actors dressed like cowboys. There's even a live horse tied near the building.



When Mia says she loves being around this stuff, Seb says he knows what she means, because he drives five miles out of his way just to be near a jazz club., the Van Beek, and he tells her about its history and how it's been turned into a samba-tapas place.

40:29: a guy from a movie crew, which is filming on the street, blocks their way, saying they are about to roll.  Sebastian tries to play it cool (and somewhat embarrasses himself in the process), so Mia directs him to walk off the sidewalk, out in the street, and out of the way of the film crew, where the couple stops and continue their conversation in a whisper.



As the camera continues to watch them, we see there is a small production underway right next to the "saloon". with camera, lights, a boom mike, etc. 

An actress in a red dress is waiting to begin filming with her leading man.

( I believe, but am not 100% sure, that this may be the same famous actress who came into Mia's coffee shop, back at 6:02, who was also wearing a red dress and sported a similar short hairdo. )

Mia sees her and declares "I love her!"

They then stop to watch the  movie scene being shot ( a bit of irony here, a real actress shooting a scene on French street plays an actress who stops to watch a scene being shot on French Street... )

He asks her how she got into acting.

Mia tells him about her aunt in Boulder City, Nevada, who used to take her to the library to watch classic films, and how she would then put on her own "plays" in her bedroom, reenacting the movie scenes that had just watched. and then she wrote her own plays.

They walk past the film shoot, and then past a fake graveyard filled with tall headstones, and then the scene cuts to the next shot, as they stop to look inside a sound stage.

For some reason, only the opposite side of French Street really looks French.
This side (where they are walking) has only two small, mismatched buildings  (the coffee shop and the barn) and an empty lot, and it seems unrelated to the French side. 



The blue Victorian barn building, which sits next to (east of) her coffee shop building, was featured on "Gilmore Girls" as "Miss Patty's School of Ballet".

The grassy spot where the actors are filming a scene (in the scene where Mia & Sebastian stop to watch the filming) is, in real life,  just an empty, park-like space with a lawn, which takes up the entire northeast end of this small block.  The fake headstones were added for this production, and aren't a permanent part of the decor here.

If you zoom out in Google Earth and look behind this block (to its west/northwest), you'll see that there are a large number of tall trees, and behind them is another small park-like area.  Those tall trees serve the purpose of blocking the view (from French Street) of the studio's Embassy Courtyard set, to its north (which we will glimpse later), and also gives that small park a more sylvan appearance.




Here is a link to a Google Earth 3-D view
of that side of French Street


    

Move on to the next movie location seen in "La La Land".

    

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