Sometimes I see pictures of old Hollywood, and I just can’t believe what this place used to be.

The above is the palatial Hollywood Hotel, built on Hollywood Blvd in 1906 and demolished in 1956; below it is the Hollywood & Highland shopping complex, built at the same address in 2001.

If you ever read Raymond Chandler books, you often find his detective, Philip Marlowe, bemoaning the state of Hollywood while reminiscing about how nice it once was. “I used to like this town,” he says in The Little Sister. “A long time ago.” As a modern reader, this can be confusing. Wasn’t Chandler writing in the 1940s, during the Golden Age of Hollywood? Wasn’t that the high point? What previous version of Hollywood is he referring to?

If you go back to the days when the hotel was built in a pre-movie era, Hollywood was a rural farm town, filled with citrus orchards and only dotted with newly-built homes. For those who lived in downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood was considered a relaxing weekend getaway to the country, about an hour away via the transportation available at the time.

Then, around 1910, the silent film business arrived due to two major benefits that Hollywood offered in abundance: sun and land. Back then, film stock was very primitive and required a ton of light for proper exposure, and the simplest solution was to simply use sunlight in open-roof studios (often, a studio was simply an old barn with its roof removed).

As Hollywood had year-round great weather and no shortage of land, it quickly became the obvious place to relocate the industry to (and yes, distance from Edison and his pesky patent claims).

And then, over the subsequent decades, HOLLYWOOD arrived, with all its good – and especially its bad. By the time is Chandler is writing, Hollywood is nearly unrecognizable as the former pastoral eden it once was, and he endlessly lathers on his disdain for the grift and seediness that now seems to have infected the soul of the city.

In hindsight, Chandler couldn’t have guessed how much worse it would get. The studios eventually vacated Hollywood in search of more land, leaving only a handful behind. It became more of a music and TV mecca during the 60s/70s. And then, when the 80s hit, things took a dark turn.

What is it today? The analogy I think about a lot (about pretty much everything, honestly, as I grow older) is that of a gold mine. At one point, a gold mine exists to mine gold. And then one day, the vein runs dry, so what then? You sell t-shirts and give mine tours.

I think there’s still some gold left in the mine. Paramount has been at its current site in Hollywood for a century this year, and there are still plenty of independent studios clustered on Sunset and elsewhere. At the same time, it’s hard to walk Hollywood Blvd today past Hollywood & Highland and not think that you missed out on something one-of-a-kind, an era that will simply cannot and will not ever happen again.

It’s ultimately a good reminder to always be on the lookout what is flourishing in the years you’re given. As Chandler experienced, such epochs are often hard to identify in the midst of it.

But you always know when they’re over.

While we’re on the subject of gas stations, this is one of my favorites in LA, of the historic variety: AMT Motors in Montecito Heights, dating (I believe) to 1943.

While it no longer sells gas, it’s still in operation all these decades later as a repair shop, and could easily be set-dressed for a period film with minimal effort.

Love the curve of the overhanging roof, love the plate windows, love the compactness of the building – everything about it is as classic as it gets.

Hope to help find a place for it in the movies someday!

When I’m watching a movie/TV show, sometimes it’s hard to shut off the location scout part of my brain that’s analyzing every scene and thinking about how they pulled off their shoot. One location that always triggers instant anxiety is The Gas Station…

Gas stations are, unsurprisingly, expensive. But unlike the majority of expensive locations, there’s really no negotiation to be had. Each pump is expected to bring in an average amount per day. That’s the starting number. There’s simply no reason to charge below that.

And being seen in a movie doesn’t carry any advertising benefit that will, say, generate future business. In fact, it’s the opposite; people who are told their regular gas station is closed for the day will go somewhere else, and that might become their new go-to place.

So the final cost is always a combo of pump price + business interruption, and that can easily be in the low tens of thousands. The way to save money is to reduce to a single island of pumps, or seriously minimize your hours – but those are often nonstarters for production.

Now, around LA, a number of movie set gas stations exist, as well as some out of business places, and they’re workable.

But any decent production is going to want to heavily dress such a location to make it look active and contemporary, which can be equally expensive.

So what’s the best option? Never an easy answer for gas stations… But maybe just have your characters gas up right before the movie begins?? Just a thought! 🙂

As a location scout, I love visiting classic movie locations, because it’s a fun exercise to consider why this of all possibilities was chosen. One great example is the toll booth scene in the Godfather where Sonny is gunned down…

This was shot on Long Island, on a runway at the old Mitchel Air Force Base in Garden City. And looking at the overhead, you see exactly why it’s such a brilliant choice…

Private land. Total control. Ridiculously expansive views offering both scope and an eerie stillness. Existing roads. The large runway to play as the highway, the curve to play as the off-ramp.

All that’s left is for art to build some tollbooths – and I cannot imagine a better pick for this location.

And the craziest thing from when I went out to visit? I’m almost positive those are the same white road lines seen in the film.

Be sure to check out my look at EVERY Godfather location here!

The New York Filming Locations of The Godfather, Then and Now

How about a bit more Euphoria S3 locations chat? One of my absolute favorite locations that I helped scout, the ominous Hotel Los Gatos, was also the most surprising for me to see on screen…because I thought it’d been rejected!

In the show, Alamo sends some of his crew to a medical clinic in Mexico to facilitate a drug run. We cast a wide net for medical clinic options, and I was sure I’d found the winner when I passed the gorgeous Edificio Toscano building, in the South Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Built in 1928, I loved everything about it – the worn stucco, the beautiful balconies, the triple pane windows, the existing signage…

In my mind, all we had to do was pick a storefront, dress it as a medical clinic, and we had our location. Done and done!

So I went back with the production designer and location manager, who stared at it and said, “OK, that’s good…but what about that actual medical clinic next door?”

Fantastic. This is the nightmare for every location scout, where you take the VIPs by a location only to have them look around and say, “well, there’s a much better option!” All you can do is hide your embarrassment for having missed it and say that you’ll try to clear it for filming.

Now, obviously, “better” is extremely subjective, and entirely depends on how you’re going to play the scene in question. What I hadn’t realized is just how important the conversation in the parked ambulance was, and looking back, it’s a no-brainer that you needed a clinic exterior with a parking lot in front (I had originally thought they’d just be parked curbside).

In the end, it all worked out. The clinic was willing to allow filming, and so we had our location. But still…as a scout, it stings when you miss something so damn obvious! Ah well…I’d just have to remember ol’ Edicificio Toscano for a future production.

And then, I’m watching the episode, and…holy shit!

There’s the little Edifico Toscano and it looks SO. DAMN. GOOD!

As I’ve mentioned before, once a location is chosen, I’m on to the next search, and rarely hear how the filming actually goes. So I was beyond thrilled to see the building I thought had been firmly eliminated makes its on-screen debut as the absolutely iconic Hotel Los Gatos, with Bishop getting an epic hero shot on the balcony…

…and even a walk down the upstairs corridor:

As I’ve said many times before, filmmaking is the consummate collaborative art form, and I’ve long found that the most successful are those who somehow manage be both passionate about their ideas, and yet not precious. Because in the end, it’s not about who “got it right” – it’s about how you helped pave the way.

When I was first assigned to find Gargamel’s castle, I thought I was going to get fired (a good example, incidentally, of the very unique professional concerns us location scouts grapple with).

This was for the first Smurfs movie, and while it was unclear if an exterior was even needed, better to get ahead of the problem while there was time. So I was told to find as many castles as I could within a reasonable distance of NYC.

Castles….near New York City?? Outside of Belvedere Castle in Central Park and The Cloisters, I’d never heard of anything, and was positive I’d be coming back empty-handed. Shouldn’t we be doing this search in Europe??

As it turns out, New York has castles. Lots of castles. So many castles, in fact, that what I’m posting here is just a small selection of what exists.

In my research, I learned that many date to the early 1900s, when it was in momentarily in vogue for industrial magnates to own a castle, ideally along the Hudson River (it seems to have gone out of vogue just as quickly).

Just as I was really getting into it, I was switched to a different assignment, and never got to visit half the castles I’d discovered.

But the takeaway has stuck with me to this day: until you know for certain that something doesn’t exist, assume it does, and that you’re just not working hard enough to find it.

Once, I was scouting a decommissioned wing of a still-active prison when the guard asked if I wanted to try being locked in the solitary confinement cell with the lights off to see what it felt like.

Nope.

When I’ve scouted desert properties with old mines, the owners will tell me how people trespass and break into the mines in search of undiscovered gold, with no regard to deadly odorless gases or cave-ins.

Later, owners will find tire tracks, discarded tools, and liquor bottles.

I’ll never forget a prison I once scouted that had frosted windows opposite the cells. Pigeons kept landing on the ledge outside…

And it made me think how torturous it must’ve been for prisoners, to see these small creatures peer in, then fly away with all the freedom in the world, again and again and again.

When a film shoot ends, you often get a wrap gift or two, and Euphoria delivered exactly as one would expect.

Thanks Sydney!