Myriad Movies, TV Shows and Other Entertainment Have Been Filmed or Set Here in Town
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Stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan on a break from filming Disney’s remake of “Freaky Friday” at Palisades High in 2002.
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
When you think of bad movies, you think of Harry Medved. No, really, it’s okay, he doesn’t mind.
If filmmaker Ed Wood will forever be associated with bad moviemaking, film historian (and Palisades High School graduate) Medved may be linked with the criticism of bad moviemaking. After all, he co-authored four books on Hollywood’s worst, two of which doled out Golden Turkey Awards to the most deliciously horrible flicks ever spawned by Hollywood. He also inspired John B. Wilson, a Westwood Village Theater ticket-taker, to create the Golden Raspberry Awards jeer-fest. So movies with a capital “B” will always be in Medved’s hemoglobin.
Now the head of public relations at Fandango.com, Medved has also become an authority on movie shoot locations. Fandango’s Web site offers a location vacation “road trip” section, and Medved co-authored, with current Palisades resident Bruce Akiyama, Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). As PaliHi pals, Medved and Akiyama bonded seeing the gloriously godawful Old Dracula (with David Niven) at the now-defunct Bay Theatre.
We turned to Medved as we sought samples of how Pacific Palisades has been the set or the setting for popular entertainment over the years.
FEATURE FILMS
Palisades High has been the de facto location for a number of features, from the volleyball and track sequences opening the Academy Award-nominated 1976 horror thriller Carrie to that year’s less Oscar-worthy The Pom Pom Girls, and the 1978 monster movie Slithis.
Medved was 16 when Hal Ashby filmed scenes with Jon Voight for Coming Home at PaliHi. Medved remembers watching the Vietnam veteran drama, which swept the 1978 Academy Awards, being filmed inside the multi-purpose room (now Mercer Hall).
“I was totally starstruck, not by the stars, but by the talent behind the scenes,” Medved tells the Palisadian-Post.
He adds that he was excited to meet Haskell Wexler; and the cinematographer, who won the 1976 Oscar for his direction of photography in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, was impressed that Medved knew all about his directorial effort, Medium Cool.
Recent features shot at PaliHi includes 2001’s interracial romance Crazy/Beautiful with Kirsten Dunst, and the 2003 remake of Disney’s body-swapping comedy Freaky Friday. Also in 2001, the Palisades doubled for Malibu in The Glass House, starring Leelee Sobieski.
Havoc (2005), featuring Anne Hathaway, was set and filmed at PaliHi. The teen drama was produced under the specter of tragedy after its promising young screenwriter, Jessica Kaplan, 24, died in a light plane crash in 2003. Impressively, Kaplan had sold Havoc, her first screenplay, to New Line Cinema at age 16.
Beyond the Pali campus, movies classic and otherwise have been shot all around us. What Medved calls the “classic columned mansion on the cliffs on Castellammare” known as the Villa Leon doubled as the haunted house in 1948’s The Spiritualist (a.k.a. The Amazing Mr. X). Speaking of spirituality, 60 years later, this summer’s Mike Myers’ comedy The Love Guru gave us a glimpse of the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine on Sunset.
Filmed in the vicinity of Patrick’s Roadhouse in Santa Monica Canyon, the 1950 Mickey Rooney film Quicksand had a shot of the old bath house (now a plant store) at Chautauqua and PCH. Chautauqua also appeared in the Nicholas Ray noir classic, In A Lonely Place, released that same year, in which Humphrey Bogart’s unraveling screenwriter, Dixon Steele, loses it while driving.
Tim Samut remembers when Blake Edwards shot footage for his 1968 Hollywood satire The Party at his family’s Santa Monica Canyon home on Sycamore Road.
“The Mirisch Corp. shot the very beginning of this film there,” Samut says. “The film crew was there for a full week and they used 10 to 20 seconds. I still have the contract that my father had [the film’s executive producer] sign before they began.” Samut’s father received nearly $4,000 from Mirisch.
The Gumball Rally (1976) was filmed in town, and scenes from 1978’s House Calls, starring late Palisadian Walter Matthau, were filmed in the village. Will Rogers State Historic Park provided a setting for Grand Canyon, The Parent Trap remake, and the spoony The Story of Us. Heck, they even cloaked the Klingons’ spaceship in the park’s polo fields (doubling for San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park) in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. John Woo shot a scene for the 1997 John Travolta/Nicolas Cage thriller Face/Off on Swarthmore, while scenes from Albert Brooks’ The Muse and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, and for this summer’s Eddie Murphy bomb Meet Dave, were also filmed locally.
Local controversy ignited when Joel Schumacher shot The Number 23 in February 2006. The Post ran Letters and Two Cents items complaining about the film crew’s use of cigarettes and electric generators at Temescal Gateway Park, despite a sign marked “Trails Closed Due to Fire Hazard.”
TELEVISION
The most prominent series to utilize Pacific Palisades was undoubtedly Baywatch. The lifeguard drama lite, which rescued David Hasselhoff’s sinking career, ran from 1989 until 1999 (or 2001, if you count its 11th hour Baywatch Hawaii revamping). Co-created by Gregory J. Bonann (PaliHi class of ’70), the series was filmed near Will Rogers State Beach’s tower 15. Also shot at this spot: the notorious Bennifer bomb Gigli (in a subplot thread where one character obsesses over Baywatch). A popular contemporary of Baywatch, the Saturday morning staple Saved by the Bell (1989-1993) took place in the Palisades.
The 1970s hit The Rockford Files was often filmed in and around the Palisades, while the culmination of a Mod Squad chase sequence was filmed in the alley behind Mort’s Deli (now Village Pantry).
Pacific Palisades was the title of an Aaron Spelling-produced series that utilized a rented home on Alma Real Drive and lasted less than two months in 1997. James at 16 (1977) and Malibu Shores (1996) were shot at PaliHi , as was the 1979 made-for-TV movie, Young Love, First Love, featuring Timothy Hutton and Valerie Bertinelli. Ditto 1999’s teen soap Popular, which didn’t live up to its title, lasting only two seasons.
The critics’ darling, Curb Your Enthusiasm, which debuted on HBO in 2000, takes place in and is shot around the Palisades. In one memorable episode, star Larry David (playing an exaggerated version of himself) deems the Mort’s Deli sandwich named after him not as good as the Ted Danson, and wants his sandwich’s ingredients switched.
Harry Medved’s older brother (and his co-author on several books covering cult movies), the film critic and radio personality Michael Medved, also attended PaliHi. Michael collaborated with classmate David Wallechinsky (son of novelist Irving Wallace) on What Really Happened to the Class of ‘65? The 1976 bestseller chronicled members of that graduating class and how their privileged lives evolved post-high school. Its success inspired a short-lived TV anthology series, which Harry Medved confirms was not shot at PaliHi.
POPULAR MUSIC
In March, the Post reported on the 45th anniversary of the Beach Boys’ first hit, “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” which name-drops Pacific Palisades. Irish rock group Ash featured the tune “Pacific Palisades” on its 2001 album Free All Angels, while California band Rilo Kiley recorded “Spectacular Views.” Here’s an excerpt from the lyrics to the latter’s Palisades tribute, which may convey why writers, artists, filmmakers and musicians return again and again to this panoramic Westside enclave for inspiration:
In steep cliffs
with rocks all piled up
mysteries of your passing luck
Ages past
shells and bits of foam
forming new limestone
to give things their turn . . .
. . . We can see the stars
from where the birds make their homes
staring back at us
Indifferent
but distanced perfectly
projected endlessly
it’s so . . . beautiful.
There are no better words for the coast today/
then you ask what’s a palisade
and if we’re too late for happiness?
Harry Medved will sign copies of Hollywood Escapes when he hosts a special Venice Historical Society fundraiser and archival screening of local movie location clips on Sunday, September 7 at 5 p.m. at the Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice. The event includes a silent auction, champagne and chocolate. Non-members: $60. Free parking. Visit www.venicehistoricalsociety.org/calendar.php.
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