You’d think growing up in LA I’d be immune to that, but recently when my wife and I flew to Copenhagen, as we were on approach I spotted the bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo and I became a total geek. “Ohmygod! There’s the BRIDGE from “the Bridge!” We had watched the limited series on Netflix that featured that bridge prominently. It was a bigger thrill than seeing Tivoli Gardens. Had it been a year ago I probably would’ve glanced out the window at the bridge and gone, “Hunh.”
I guess I’m immune to LA landmarks because I’m used to seeing them. “Hey great, they’re at the Hollywood sign,” but when I go out of town I get excited just as much as anybody. My first time through downtown Minneapolis I was looking for the WJM building and outdoor restaurant where Mary ate in the opening titles of THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. And when I broadcast for the Mariners I had to see the Snoquaimie Falls, used on TWIN PEAKS.
Television exposure doesn’t just make people famous, it does the same for inanimate objects as well. The Bull & Finch bar (exterior for CHEERS) is a more popular tourist attraction in Boston than the Freedom Trail. The corner diner shown on SEINFELD is a huge New York attraction (and that’s a town that has lots of attraction).
This can become a problem however. A number of people have been approached by production companies asking if they could use the exterior of their house for a particular show. A hefty fee comes with that. At first the homeowner thinks he’s won the lottery. Free money! But then tourists come and gone is any privacy and serenity. Again, I go back to THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. Remember the cute little duplex she lived in for the first few seasons? That homeowner got inundated with tourists. To drive them away and prevent the endless snapping photos the homeowner put up big signs saying “IMPEACH NIXON.” Eventually the producers moved Mary to a high-rise apartment.
I feel sorry for the poor owners of the Walter White house from BREAKING BAD. How many people tried to flip pizzas onto the roof?
And scarier still are the people who saw landmarks like Mary’s TV house and believe Mary really lived there. How many people went into the CHEERS bar actually expecting to see Norm & Cliff? Judging by the mail I used to see when I was on that show – PLENTY.
But I find it intriguing that any crummy apartment building, any bowling alley, any tollbooth on the Jersey expressway can become as big a tourist attraction as the Liberty Bell. So if your house is the exterior for a popular TV series and the looky-loos are bothering you all hours of the day and night, there is a solution. Just put up a big sign that says “IMPEACH TRUMP.”
Actually, put up one of those signs anyway.
Ah, don't you mean Tivoli Gardens?
ReplyDeleteDidn't you at one time refused to allow shooting of a movie at your house ?
ReplyDeleteEliza Dushku skinny dipping in your pool and you refused !!!!???
"BOYCOTT Ken's Blog "
Dave Mirkin of the Simpsons said on a commentary track that you can make lots of money renting out your house for TV shoots. (Though the crews will destroy your most of your house in the process.)
ReplyDeleteBrother lives in Boston. I am a history geek, so Freedom Trail, USS Constitution, Faneuil Hall, Bunker Hill, etc. was more interesting to me. Since it was towards the end of the Cheers run made the obligatory trek to the "Cheers" bar. When I saw the line, I said "Fuck this!" and wanted to split but everyone else in the family insisted we go in [which took 45 minutes]. Once we made it in, got mad because nobody knew my name. Was more surprised how small it was, seemed like a quarter of the size of the TV Cheers. Bought a T-shirt and long-sleeved shirt, more out of the fact that the staff were pretty nice even though the inside of that place was like feeding time at the zoo after a pride of lions had been deprived of dinner for a week. I can only assume the staff was in a back room somewhere taking massive doses of Xanax, Valium, Librium and Lexapro to be able to deal with how many people were acting like assholes.
ReplyDeleteSomething I've noticed and wondered about: there is a bar in San Diego that appears to be named "Cheers". From the outside of course looks nothing like it, except they do have the awning complete with logo. Never been inside. I always wondered if it's a themed bar...if they're violating some sort of trademark by doing it...or what the deal is there.
ReplyDeleteThat also happened in Astoria Oregon which is on the way to our frequent vacation spot, Seaside. There was a house where The Goonies was filmed and for a while it hosted a museum or something like that until the neighbors complained. They had to shut it down. https://www.velvetropes.com/backstage/goonies-house/
ReplyDeleteI remember the Bull & Finch from back in the day, having gone to school in Boston in the mid-80's. But FYI it's now part of the Cheers pub franchise - https://cheersboston.com/locations/beacon
ReplyDeleteSurprised you didn't stumble across HGTV's recent renovation of the Brady Bunch house, which was only used for exterior shots and didn't match the stage sets at all (for one thing, the actual house only had one story while the sets famously had two). They gutted the thing, got the six grown Brady kids to hammer and saw, and reproduced the interiors as well has anyone could have 50 years after they stopped making orange Formica countertops. I'm not proud that I found it surprisingly good viewing.
ReplyDeleteRalphie's house from "A Christmas Story" is now a museum to the movie, complete with a leg lamp in the window (https://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com/). I bet the neighbors are thrilled!
A few years back I walked in "The Great LA Walk" with a bunch of people, and totally geeked out and took a selfie in front of a Beverly Hills city sign. The rest of the people on the walk weren't impressed at all with the photo, and I realized "Oh yeah, you *live* here, don't you...."
ReplyDeleteWas in LA last month - walked up to the Ennis House. It was amazing, and, though the owners may have some issues, I can imagine it's really annoying for the neighbors on that narrow, winding road (most people will drive up, not walk), and the neighbors didn't get paid. (PS: the Bradbury was really cool, too)
ReplyDeleteCould be worse- you could live next door to the home used in the exterior shots, and the series could feature a goofy neighbor character. For example, there was the Bishop family who lived out on the Olympic Peninsula in Wash. State. Their farm happened to be next to the chicken farm that inspired the book and movie "The Egg and I". So to the public, they were Ma and Pa Kettle. They sued Betty MacDonald for libel, but lost.
ReplyDeleteI'm from Wisconsin, and a number of years ago I got sent to Boston for work for a few days (where I had never been before). My biggest tourist goal? To see the main office building from Boston Legal. Unfortunately the building turned out to be in a far west area, so I never got around to seeing it. Very disappointing!
ReplyDeleteThe last episode of the latest Twin Peaks revival had some fun with this, when Agent Cooper goes to what he believes to be Laura Palmer's house, only to have the person answering the door tell him that they Palmers don't and never have lived there--and that person at the door was played by the person who in-real-life owns the house depicted on the show.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that bit of meta-casting was hardly the biggest bit of mind*ckery the narratively insane Twin Peaks revival served up.
"Midsomer Murders' is a long running murder detective mystery TV series in the UK that is set in beautiful small towns and villages (half the pleasure of the show is seeing the scenery and buildings) which has led to the the "Midsomer Murders Effect" on real estate. If your home or building has appeared in the series, owners and realtors are asking a 20% premium over the actual value of the listing compared to comparable properties that haven't appeared in the show.
ReplyDeleteIronically, the "Seinfeld apartment is in Los Angeles. When they show the exterior one can see what looks like decoration, but is in fact earthquake reinforcement.
ReplyDelete"The Brady Bunch" house has become a celebrity in its own right. I've never been there despite the fact that it's only a few miles from my house. I did see Barry Williams once.
When I went to Chicago we went by the circular apartment buildings seen in the opening credits of "The Bob Newhart Show." I saw the fountain from "Married with Children." Having never been anywhere frozen before I didn't know they turned off the fountains in the wintertime. And we walked by the "cheeseburger" restaurant from "Saturday Night Live." We didn't go in, however.
Finally, this won't mean much to people outside of California. But, we had a local celebrity, the late Huell Howser who would travel around visiting interesting people and places. I get a warm feeling every time I pass by one of the places he visited. Recently I was in Cool, California. It's literally a gas station, a few stores and a restaurant. Yet, I had to get a t-shirt. When they asked me how I heard about Cool, I said. "I saw you on Huell Howser." They miss him very much. I do, too.
M.B.
That wasn't an "outdoor restaurant" in the MTM opening credits; it was inside the atrium of the IDS Center, described by Steve Buscemi in Fargo as "IDS building, the big glass one, tallest skyscraper in the Midwest after the Sears..." The building didn't open until 1974, so that shot appeared only in the later seasons.
ReplyDeleteVince Gilligan told a funny story about one of the homes they rented for Breaking Bad. They were doing a dinner party scene in a fenced-in backyard, and apparently the next-door neighbor didn't appreciate it and demanded that he be paid, as well. The location manager politely explained that's not how it works, so once filming commenced, the moment the neighbor heard them say ACTION, he fired up his chainsaw. The moment they yelled CUT, he'd stop. After a few blown takes, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to deal with this (including maybe just paying him what he wanted), but someone asked, "What if we just reverse the call?" So they quietly informed all cast and crew that, for the rest of the day, CUT really means ACTION, and vice versa. It worked. Their takes were quiet from then on, but needless to say, they never shot at that house again.
ReplyDelete"Once we made it in, got mad because nobody knew my name". Yekimi, that is the line of the day.
ReplyDeleteThe Bob Newhart building in downtown Chicago where Bob worked has had it's entire facade redone, so you don't even recognize it, but the apartment building is still about the same.
Also, there were Cheers themed airport bars. I have a coffee mug from the one in Detroit. And didn't George Wendt and John Ratzenberger sue those Cheers bars for using their likenesses?
A friend of mine lived in a Manhattan apartment building that offset a good deal of its maintenance by renting out its exterior to TV shows and movies. (The building featured in GOSSIP GIRL as Blair Waldorf's home, for example.) I never heard they had problems with tourists, probably because to most of us one Manhattan apartment building looks much like another.
ReplyDeleteI have read, though, that Vince Gilligan and his production company have begged fans to stop trying to flip pizzas onto the BREAKING BAD house because the owners are legitimately fed up.
wg
Not about the topic at hand, but just wanted to chime in and say damn, THE BRIDGE is an excellent show. There are several Scandinavian cop dramas on Netflix and Hulu right now that are must-see TV imo (there's even a name for it: "Nordic Noir").
ReplyDeleteBORDERTOWN and TRAPPED are also excellent shows.
I'm from Seattle, so I knew where every single place in the movie Singles was. Also, I lived 4 blocks away from the Rebecca DeMornay character's house, and one scene was filmed a block from school.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteChaplin Keaton Lloyd etc locations- then and now, with great detective work
https://silentlocations.com/about-john-bengtson/
I should clarify - the Rebecca DeMornay character from Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
ReplyDeleteNew York (where I lived for thirty years) is full of movie and TV sets, but the only one I had a personal relationship with was the Abbey Tavern on Third Avenue, which showed up on an episode of KOJAK. Good fish and chips, Irish music on Saturday night.
ReplyDeleteHere is Manhattan tourists flock to the CHEERS building in the West Village.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is all the folks who feel compelled to write something on the building'e exterior, pissing off the current owner (a restaurant) to no end.
I can't imagine why...
There's a certain pedestrian crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, London, that savvy motorists avoid in summertime.
ReplyDeleteI always notice and get excited when car commercials are shot at the Sepulveda Dam. So many of them are.
ReplyDeleteIt was exciting when a Columbo episode was shot at the health club my father managed. Robert Conrad was the villain and they dressed him the way my dad dressed in those days. I enjoyed teasing my dad that he was the murderer. The club is long gone so is my dad so it’s fun seeing it during its glory years. Bill Shatner was a member of the club and I was a Star Trek fan at the time. What a shock the first time I saw him without his toupee!
My turn to clarify, the Goonies house in Astoria was never a museum. It was just open to visitors to observe and then closed to visitors when it got out of hand, by the owners of the house, according to the link that I posted on the comment.
ReplyDeleteIt can get stranger. Patch Adams was filmed on the UNC-CH campus, my alma mater. But they also used locals as extras, so my advisor is sitting behind Robin Williams in the climactic hearing scene.
ReplyDeleteWhile situational, MIT had scheduled The Paper Chase to be shown as the weekly classic movie one early December...which happened to be the year several groups, including mine, reintroduced the practice of hacking the Harvard-Yale football game, held a couple a weeks prior. Huge cheers during the scene set at Harvard Stadium and when Hart was trying to talk to Kingfield's daughter shouts of "Use the sound system! Everyone else does!" (At least two groups had rewired the sound system, managing to cancel each other out)
Curious, I don't think we ever got a good exterior shot of Frasier's building in Seattle, did we? Like a wide shot of the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteThere's a Cheers in Tacoma (or maybe neighboring University Place), too. I think they use the same logo but in blue.
ReplyDeleteI thought the house from The Hand That Rocked the Cradle was in Tacoma.
Astroboy, a UK paper recently did an article about the most dangerous places on earth, but the county of Midsomer has had 222 murders plus numerous accidental deaths and suicides, since 1997 and should have been included. As should Cabot Cove, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy going to sites from Bond films when vacationing.
ReplyDeleteJust for the record:
ReplyDeleteCabot Cove ME recorded just over 60 murders in 12 years time.
(Murder, She Wrote had a house rule: no more than five episodes in any given season were set in Cabot Cove; the rest of the time JB Fletcher was on the road or in NYC (during the final six seasons).
I know, it's a joke.
An excruciatingly unfunny one …
Here's a fairly funny one:
Kolchak: The Night Stalker's Chicago-based "news service" was located in a real building just south of the Loop Elevated.
In 1974,the actual occupant of that particular office was a school for bartenders.
Now that's funny …
The stairs where Laurel and Hardy filmed "The Music Box" still exist here in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteFor me though, it's the Hanna-Barbera building at 3400 Cahuenga that is like the Eiffel Tower. I like to go to the LA Fitness next door (a building was their production annex) and do laps in the pool as I glimpse a portion of the original building, which is kind of neat.
The Hanna-Barbera building is considered historic and protected by the Los Angeles Conservancy, so the very '60s exterior is largely unchanged. There are several companies using offices inside (with space for rent). Behind it are some condos. A small parking area behind the building has a few dino footprints on the pavement leading to a little sign with Dino from The Flintstones, indicating that this was once the Hanna-Barbera Studios. Before Hanna-Barbera moved to Cahuenga, they were in the former Chaplin Studio that became A&M Records and is now Muppet Studios.
Walt Disney's original Hyperion Studio, where the original Mickey Mouse, Oswald the Rabbit and Silly Symphony cartoon and "Snow White" were produced is now a Gelson's supermarket on Hyperion Avenue. There is a small plaque on a pole along the sidewalk to that effect, plus inside the store, there are some vintage photos.
My wife and I honeymooned in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" was filmed in 1956. The little was largely unchanged as far as the landscape, but of course, the set pieces from the movie were gone. We were told to stand by a certain flagpole to get the background view where "June is Bustin' Out All Over" was filmed. Seeing the movie again, it was true. One of the best things was how cheap and fresh the lobsters and clams were, pulled fresh from the water before they were cooked. This was a real nice clambake and we all had a real good time.