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Have you ever watched a movie and said to yourself isn’t that the guy from ____? This has made me become a menace to anyone I’m watching a movie with. But have you ever watched a film and thought you recognized a place? Maybe you have! Going to these places can be a great experience. My personal favorite movie is Night at the Museum (NATM) so going to the NATM museum (New York Natural History Museum) was a genuinely enjoyable experience. But maybe you don’t want to book a flight halfway across the country to see the outside of a building. No worries! If you’re a resident of the Southern California area, there’s already plenty of movie shooting locations you can visit, or look at. ;) Here’s my top 5.
La La Land
Set in the City of Angels, this movie is such a fun ride. Getting to see Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone at notable Los Angeles Locations like the Colorado Bridge and The Griffith Observatory which are probably the most notable locations outside of the movie. Big shout out points to the Griffith Observatory because if you are a big space nerd (like myself) they have plenty of great exhibits, a gorgeous view of the Los Angeles skyline, and a planetarium! The Colorado Bridge is just a plain old bridge but it IS apparently haunted so maybe Ryan Gosling is possessed by a ghost now.
Lady Bird
This is quite silly but, I love to think about how close Saoirse Ronan was to me because this movie has scenes shot at Alverno High School. It was mainly used for its classrooms but there are scenes of the exterior that I recognized. Another fun fact is that Alverno High was used in a scene for The Princess Diaries. The school has a building called Villa del Sol d’Oro which is used as Mia’s school. This school is snuggled on Michillinda Avenue in Sierra Madre.
Oppenheimer
Speaking of Sierra Madre, if you’ve seen this historical biopic you’ll have seen Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh at the Sierra Madre Playhouse and parts of the city’s downtown was also used as a filming location. Sierra Madre’s downtown has also been seen in Bird Box (the one scene with the car stunt) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (This movie is from the 1950s so Sierra Madre’s downtown is fit to the time. Still super cool if you want to see how it looked almost seventy years ago ). :)
Back to the Future
Of course I had to include my favorite movie trilogy from the 80s! The first film is shot all over the San Gabriel Valley. The younger versions of Marty’s parents both have their houses on Bushnell Avenue in South Pasadena. Marty’s house is also located in Arleta, California. Most notably Doc Brown’s house in the 50s is played by The Gamble House which is a historical building in Pasadena. I highly recommend going here for all you history lovers, they offer tours! Skipping to the third movie, Hill Valley in 1885 was also filmed in California.
Legally Blonde
Ending on the movie that lowkey started this infatuation of mine. Sat down to watch this movie and 15 minutes in I said “Is that the bridge at Caltech?”. Yes. Yes it was. Caltech was only used in that one opening scene but USC and UCLA are the recurring shooting locations used as the stand in for Harvard. This movie was also very funny to me because having been to Massachusetts plenty of times you can clearly tell this movie was shot in SoCal (the palm trees on “Harvard's” campus is a dead giveaway). Harvard’s library was also played by the Pasadena Central Library.
Hopefully this list was as interesting to read as it was to research. If you learned something new, now you can recreate your favorite scenes to your heart’s content!
Sources:
Wayne, Gary. Hollywood on Location (2001), www.seeing-stars.com/Locations/2001Locations.shtml.
Admin. “Back to the Future - Rob on Location Filming Locations.” Rob on Location, 15 July 2022, robonlocation.com/movies/back-to-the-future/#:~:text=The%20McFly%20House,it%20looked%20in%20the%20movie.
“Movies Filmed at Alverno Heights Academy.” MovieMaps, moviemaps.org/locations/8pe.
“Oppenheimer Locations.” Lat Long Finder, www.latlong.net/location/oppenheimer-locations-1744#:~:text=Oppenheimer%20was%20filmed%20in%20Belen,Universit%C3%A4t%20Z%C3%BCrich%2C%20University%20of%20California%2C. Accessed 2 Sept. 2023.
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