Page 53 - 2014 Travel Guide to California

HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME, right; the
heels of Hilary Swank and Mariska Hargitay
at Hargitay’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star
ceremony, November 8, 2013, below.
movie business. One of the better-kept
secrets is Greystone Mansion and Park in
Beverly Hills. This estate is part of a public
park that sits on 16 acres of land and is the
setting for dozens of movies, including
Star Trek Into the Darkness (2013), The Social
Network (2010), the Spiderman series
(2002-2007) and X-Men (2000).
If you are hungry, snack on an apple
fritter at Randy’s Donuts, the oft-filmed
and iconic 24-hour drive-thru bakery, seen
in Iron Man 2 (2010) as protagonist Tony
Stark munches on the sweets reclining
inside the giant donut sign. Take a tour of
the Walt Disney Concert Hall featured in
The Soloist (2009) in downtown Los
Angeles. Or join Dearly Departed Tours for
their special Halloween Horror Film Loca-
tion Tour around Hollywood and Pasadena.
LA isn’t the only place movies are shot.
San Francisco has been the backdrop for
countless films. San Francisco Movie
Tours’ three-hour bus excursion visits
locations where 70 movie scenes from
more than 55 movies were filmed (e.g., Ver-
tigo, Mrs. Doubtfire, Basic Instinct, The Rock,
Contagion, The Pursuit of Happyness).
Down the coast a bit, the Monterey Movie
Tours wind through Monterey, Pacific
Grove and Carmel, spotlighting locations
of other films; still farther south, a more
active tour put together by the Santa Bar-
bara Bicycling Coalition cycles along two
Sideways (2004) routes. You can also
devise your own itinerary up and down the
state and visit the locations of your
favorite movies shot in California.
Perhaps you’re nostalgic for classic films
such as American Graffiti (1973), shot in
downtown Petaluma in Sonoma County,
and East of Eden (1955), filmed in Mendo-
cino, or Some Like It Hot (1959) filmed at the
Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. Or you
want to retrace Tippi Hedren’s steps in
Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic suspense film, The
Birds, shot in Bodega Bay and other parts of
Sonoma County and in San Francisco.
Beyond these coastal film locations, the
Sacramento River Delta has been used
many times as a movie location, especially
as a stand-in for the Mississippi Delta. In
the late 1950s, at least seven major movies
were filmed in the Stockton area, such as
God’s Little Acre, The Big Country (with Gre-
gory Peck and Charlton Heston), Miss
Brooks, Porgy and Bess (Sammy Davis, Jr.
and Pearl Bailey), Cool Hand Luke (1967)
starring Paul Newman and Raiders of the
Lost Ark (1981).
Studio Tours, TV Audiences & Extras
Other ways to get a glimpse of the enter-
tainment business are to take a studio
tour, attend a live taping of a TV show or
sign up to be an extra in a movie.
Although there are movie studios in
other parts of California, including Pixar
Animation Studios and Lucasfilm in the San
2014 T R AV E L G U I D E T O C A L I F O R N I A 51