MTF On Location! Fanboying Venice! The Venice Canals and The Filming Locations For Romy and Michele! Valentine’s Day! A Nightmare On Elm Street! LA Story! Touch Of Evil! The Net and More!
The other day a few friends of mine were like… We should check out Venice. I was like.. Hmmmm… this sounds like a prime Fanboying opportunity! I don’t really get out to Venice much and there have been a few filming locations I’ve wanted to check out.
The day was bright and sunny and along with MTFer Scotty The Music Man was my friend Scott and Hillary.
Our first stop on our Fanboy adventure was the Venice Canals. The Canals were built in 1905 by Abbott Kinney. His intention was to make a smaller version of Venice, Italy here in Southern California. By the 1920’s the area had fallen into disrepair and many of the canals were paved over to make getting around easier.
So many films were shot in the canals over the years. Most recently the Venice Canals were used in the Garry Marshall film Valentine’s Day. Ashton Kutcher played a florist who was proposing to his girlfriend in the movie. The thought of a small florist owning one of these homes is comical but I digress.
After a bit of searching, we were able to find the house and the bridge they used for shooting.
The bridge is where Ashton and Jennifer Garner finally admitted that they loved each other and romance was in the air. Shut up, I actually liked the movie. LOL…
The homes on the canals go from 2 to 3 million dollars so that means Ashton needs to sell a hell of a lot of flowers.
I couldn’t resist a small recreation of the scene with my friend Hillary on the bridge. I mean why not right?
Also shot in the canals was a small scene in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. In the scene Heather Langencamp and Johnny Depp talk on one of the bridges.
Scotty grabbed a quick photo of me on the bridge.
Now the canals are a wonderful place to walk around, they were also used in The Doors, Charlie’s Angels and so many other Hollywood films.
Heading down to the main boardwalk I quickly noticed the Sidewalk Cafe and A Small World Books. This entire building was used in Southland Tales. Say what you want about Southland Tales, I actually liked it even though it was a tad over the top, head scratchingly out there. lol…
The main location on this stretch of Venice I wanted to visit was Romy and Michele’s apartment building from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.
It’s one of my favorite movies and thankfully, the building looks pretty much the same as when Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow made there way here back in the day.
I could resist getting some photos on the steps as well. Sigh… I just wanted to do an interpretive dance set to Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors but I didn’t.
This was a very hectic day, let me tell you! There were people everywhere!
One spot I learned about from the awesome Lindsay over at I am not a stalker was Sarah Jessica Parker’s apartment building from LA Story. This same building in Venice was also used in Orson Welles classic Touch of Evil.
As Lindsay pointed out, the door to Sarah Jessica Parker’s building was actually built for the production and not actually part of the building. Insane. God bless Hollywood.
I hate it when people change buildings, sometimes they are barely recognizable! Such was the case with Angela Bennett’s house from The Net.
The exterior was drastically different and again I found this location from Lindsay and she has way more info than I dare to put into it, but it’s almost unrecognizable from when Sandra Bullock got her identity stolen so many years ago.
The back shots however from the ally and bridges do look the same. This house was literally five seconds away from where we parked for the canals.
In the film Sandra Bullock runs from the cops into the canals to escape. God bless her.
Speaking of running… LOL…
That was the end of my Venice excursion. Now, I’m sure I didn’t hit everything there was in the area but for me… It was pretty awesome.
Until next time kids…
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Love these kind of posts Mike! Just another different perspective on being a movie/tv fan. Too bad you can’t post up images of how the location looked in the actual production. Keep posting the location stories. Very interesting.
never knew there were canals in venice,ca!! very interesting article,keep writing
So cool, Mike! I didn’t know you had done this! Love it! It’s the whole reason I created my site. 🙂 Glad you had fun.