Los Angeles (CNN) — Needle drop on Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” because you’re entering the Tarantino-verse, a funny, violent, romantic, revenge-o-matic tour of the director’s hometown through the lens, literally, of his filmography.
Your choose-your-own-Quentin-adventure is made up of smash cuts between old-school diners, indie movie theaters, dive bars, private homes, an active church, and a strip club. It’s packed with real restaurants, a motel to stay in, a real yet Gimp-free pawn shop, former movie ranches to hike through, and other diverse parts of LA you’d likely have no other reason to explore.
Because this is a Tarantino-tour, there is a body count. The robbery diner from “Pulp” is gone, as is Cherry’s Bail Bonds office from “Jackie.” RIP, Clarence’s comic book store from “True Romance,” the warehouse from “Reservoir,” and Butch’s motel in “Pulp.” Is nothing cinematically sacred?
This being Los Angeles, you’ll need a car to reach these spots, whether it’s a 1971 Chevy Nova SS (“Death Proof”) stunt vehicle, a 1968 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia (“Once”), or an airport rental. We span locations from remote LA County to the city’s southside, and classic areas between, including downtown, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Sherman Oaks and, of course, Hollywood.
Speaking of which, let’s start this Tarantour (portmanteau credit to my LA-based friend and fellow journalist Chris Kaye), just as all classic stories traditionally begin, with…
‘Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood’ (2019)
Tarantino spun up this happily-ever-after tale that rescripts one of the darkest moments in Hollywood history — the Manson “family” murders of 1969 — into an alternate version in which struggling actor and stuntman besties, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) thwart the killers before they can reach actress Sharon Tate and her friends.
Because it’s grounded in real history, you can drive up the actual, winding Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills where Sharon and her husband, director Roman Polanski, had a house (10050 Cielo Drive). If you do, just as you see our heroes do in the film, you’ll only get as far as a large, uninviting security gate. The house was torn down in 1994 anyway, according to Vincent Bugliosi’s Manson trial book, “Helter Skelter.” But Polanski’s gate and Rick’s house (10969 Alta View Dr., Studio City) are depicted in an alternative cul-de-sac filming location in the movie, and you can respectfully park in front of the private home.
Speaking of private residences, the real Playboy Mansion, seen in the film, is not open to the public. But the empty lot in which Cliff parks his mobile home is next to the Paramount Drive-in (7770 Rosecrans Ave., Paramount) where you can watch current releases. The real Van Nuys Drive-in, as the Paramount is called in “Once,” closed in 1992.
You have to decide if it’s worth the trek, but about 45 miles north of downtown LA is the location of the real Spahn Movie Ranch (12000 Santa Susana Pass, Chatsworth), where the Manson family was living at the time of the murders. But there is nothing there to mark the buildings, just a winding hiking trail through an overgrown valley. In the book “Helter Skelter” you learn all the ranch buildings burned down in a wildfire that took place during the Manson trials in 1970.
Tarantino painstakingly recreated the ranch just four miles away in another former movie ranch, now called Corriganville Park (7001 Smith Rd., Simi Valley). The “Once” set is gone but you can hike around the public park and see the building foundations he used that date back to much older films, including John Wayne’s “Fort Apache” from 1948, noted by signs in the park.
However, one of the last standing active movie ranches, also north of the city, is one of the coolest highlights of the Tarantino tour. At the very start of “Once” you’re seeing Melody Movie Ranch (Oakcreek Ave., Newhall) as the set of Rick’s ‘50s TV show, “Bounty Law.” In the story, the fictional Western was shot at Spahn Ranch. The actual 22-acre Melody Ranch was bought by its current owners, Renaud and Andre Veluzat, from the singing cowboy himself, Gene Autry.
As if moseyin’ though the Old West town wasn’t enough of a thrill — as seen in “Deadwood,” “Westworld” (the show, not film), “Gunsmoke” and many others — visitors to Melody, by appointment, also tour a large warehouse of a museum packed with memorabilia, including a tank from the original “Red Dawn,” a jeep from “M*A*S*H” (the show, not film), and a Nazi car from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Among that extensive collection is a large tooth, the very one atop the wagon driven by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) as he makes his way through Melody Ranch’s main street, riding next to the title character (Jamie Foxx) in Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”
In the scene in “Once” where Sharon Tate traverses a pair of movie theaters before she watches herself in the real 1968 film, “The Wrecking Crew,” those were the classic Bruin Theater (948 Broxton Ave., Los Angeles) and Regency Village Theatre (961 Broxton Ave.), both currently closed, but local media reports say they are due to reopen next year after renovations.
There’s also some choice eating and drinking in actual restaurants featured in “Once.” While sitting in the oldest restaurant in Hollywood, Musso & Frank Grill (6667 Hollywood Blvd.), Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) gives Rick a sobering assessment of his career. The legendary restaurant is looking as sharp as when it opened in 1919. After walking under the big green sign in the valet parking lot (seen in the film), and past wooden telephone booths inside, we were led to our table. It was the same spot where DiCaprio and Pacino sat. My daughter — a film school student who counts Tarantino as her favorite director — and I met my friend Chris there. We were served by a waiter wearing a red jacket uniform, his name embroidered on the sleeve.
On August 8, 1969, the night of the actual Manson murders on Cielo Drive, Sharon and her friends Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski went out to the fabled El Coyote Mexican Cafe (7312 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles). The eight-and-a-half-months pregnant Tate doesn’t join them in a round of margaritas (described as “legendary” on the menu). You can sit at the semi-circle booth used in the film’s recreation of the night. Then, as now, El Coyote is a low-key and dimly lit spot popular with celebrities.
On the same night in ‘69, Cliff and Rick get wasted at the non-fictional red brick Casa Vega (13301 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks), atmospheric and lit with Christmas lights, similar to El Coyote. There are red leather booths — the middle one featured in the film — and a menu offering a tangy sweet margarita named for the film’s director, which it says he designed.
Chili John’s (2018 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank) — serving primarily, and unsurprisingly, chili — gets a shout-out as a landmark restaurant in “Once,” but according to one of its owners, it’s about to get star billing this year in the forthcoming sequel, “The Adventures of Cliff Booth” (written by Tarantino and directed by David “Fight Club” Fincher). The reason there are currently window signs promoting a non-existent “Surf Burger,” and a new beach-themed mural overlooking the bright orange stools and horseshoe-shaped counter inside, is because Chili John’s will be standing in as Big Kahuna Burger in the new film. That is a deep-cut reference to the “Mmmmhmm, that is a tasty burger!” scene of Samuel L. Jackson’s in…
‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994)
There’s more fictional dining in this film, a temporally intercut plot involving drugs, crime and a glowing mystery MacGuffin inside a suitcase. But Tarantino’s second film is essentially about second chances.
Jack Rabbit Slim’s — home to the “$5 milkshake,” roller-skatin’ servers clad like ‘50s celebrities, and where gangster Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and his boss’ wife, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), twist the night away on their non-date — never existed. If you want to see the exterior of the building, though, you can look over a short wall at the former bowling alley-turned Disney Imagineering office (1435 Flower St., Glendale) and picture the shot where Vincent and Mia walk across the parking lot for dinner.
After burgers and dancing, the two head to Mia and her husband Marsellus Wallace’s house (1541 Summitridge Dr., Beverly Hills). You can only see the top of the white building as it sits just over a gated wall — Zillow offers better views — but as the name of the street implies, the vista from up there is cinematic.
Mia overdoses on Vincent’s heroin and he speeds her over to his drug dealer, Lance (Eric Stoltz). With an unconscious Mia in the passenger seat, Vincent crashes onto the lawn of Lance’s house (3519 La Clede Ave., Los Angeles). Inside — talk about second chances — Mia gets hers from the syringe tip of an intracardiac injection of adrenaline.
If you’re hankering for that milkshake, you can walk five blocks from Lance’s house to a Fosters Freeze (2760 Fletcher Dr., Los Angeles) where the cost of that refreshing beverage starts at … $5. You clearly see this old-school soft-serve takeout in the film because it sits at the corner of Atwater Avenue, the very intersection where the manslaughtering boxer Butch (Bruce Willis) runs into Marsellus, who was walking through. Butch knows the crime kingpin is coming for him for winning a fight he was supposed to throw. The deadly boxing match takes place, as indicated by exterior shots, at the Raymond Theater (129 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena), now an event space.
Butch’s motel hideout may be gone, but the exterior of his apartment, where he returns for his precious watch (and kills Vincent), is the Heatherdale Apartments (11813 Runnymede St., North Hollywood). He parks on the next street over, Valerio. And the interior of the apartment and courtyard is about eight blocks away in the Royal Gilmore apartments (11755 Gilmore St., North Hollywood).
After the hit and run, a foot chase leads Butch and Marsellus into Maynard’s Pawn Shop, filmed in an actual and still-open Crown Pawn Shop (20933 Roscoe Blvd., Canoga Park), a 30-mile drive away, so not exactly in running distance. The current staff say they get visitors asking about “Pulp” every week, and in particular, whether they have a basement. They do not. Inside the strip mall’s pawn shop are a faded, signed picture of Willis and a replica of the samurai sword — in the same spot as in the film — that his character, Butch, uses to dispatch Maynard.
Tarantino has a small part in the film as Jimmy, an associate of Vincent’s partner, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson). When Vincent and Jules accidentally shoot a colleague in their car and need to get off the road, Jules calls Jimmy. At Jimmy’s house (4149 Kraft Ave., Studio City), the host offers our gangsters cups of gourmet coffee but is anxious to get them out of there before his wife, Bonnie, gets home and discovers the dead man in the garage.
Just as I pulled up to the house — a bit slower than the crime scene fixer Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel) does in the film, in order to help with “the Bonnie situation” — the current residents walked out their front door. J.P. Goodell and Taylor Connelly were holding cups of gourmet coffee and quickly guessed why I was there. Goodell said their friends call their home the “Bonnie house,” “because of ‘the Bonnie situation.’”
If you want to see Monster Joe’s garage, where Jules, Vincent and Wolf destroy the car with the body inside, it’s actually A & R Auto Dismantlers (12143 Branford St., Sun Valley). It was after hours by the time I reached it, but I looked under the gate and saw, as you’d expect, cars.
If you’re disappointed that the Hawthorne Grill — where the non-linear “Pulp” begins and ends — has since been torn down, there are other iconic Tarantino eateries for breakfast. One of them opens…
‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992)
Tarantino’s first film is about a bank robbery gone awry. It introduces a colorfully nicknamed gang of thieves discussing the ethics of tipping wait staff in restaurants as they sit inside Pat & Lorraine’s Coffee Shop (4720 N. Eagle Rock Blvd., Los Angeles). The cozy, white-washed brick restaurant has cherry-patterned curtains, Mexican dolls and other bric-a-brac on shelves, and diner elements such as a round pie case and a counter area. Located next to Occidental College (itself a frequent filming location, including “Clueless” and “90210”), Pat & Lorraine’s leans into its “Reservoir” bona fides. Our server clocked my daughter and me noticing the framed photos and posters from the movie and asked if we wanted to sit at the table where the gang does in the film. After a filling coffee, omelet and pancake breakfast, I tipped generously.
Also seen in the film is the 1950s-era, Googie-style Johnie’s Coffee Shop (6101 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles), which still stands but only as a filming location and pop-up art gallery. It’s inside Johnie’s that Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) meets up with his police handler. (It’s also where the Dude and Walter discuss the provenance of a severed toe in “The Big Lebowski.”) Elsewhere, Mr. Orange tells the fabricated backstory that gets the undercover Orange into the gang, from inside what is now Skinny’s Lounge (4923 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood), which has since been remodeled as a ‘50s-style dance club.
As for the bank (seen only in exterior) where the body count begins, that is currently an indoor kids’ playground called My Lil Town (2612 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank). The ensuing police chase runs along York Blvd., just a handful of blocks from Pat & Lorraine’s, in the hip Highland Park neighborhood. At the end of what is now a trendy block with thrift stores, Mr. Pink carjacks a driver on the corner, between what’s now Cafe De Leche (5000 York Blvd., Los Angeles) and tiny York Park.
Just a mile and a half away, is the shootout alley (beginning at 113 N. Ave. 55, Los Angeles) where Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Orange emerge, well, scathed. And although it was torn down, the warehouse (5860 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles) where most of the film’s scenes took place, was just four blocks away from the alley. A stationery store now resides in the spot of the old warehouse, and there’s an adorable coffee shop near that corner called Kitchen Mouse Cafe where you can contemplate the ear-removal psychopathy of Mr. Blonde, aka Vic Vega (and brother of “Pulp’s” Vincent, if you didn’t know).
Vega is played menacingly by Michael Madsen, who also plays an assassin in Tarantino’s…
‘Kill Bill: Vol. 1’ (2003) and ‘Kill Bill: Vol. 2’ (2004)
Uma Thurman stars as Beatrix Kiddo (aka Black Mamba, aka The Bride), spending much of two films exacting revenge on the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, of which she was once a member. Tarantino shot much of the films in China and Japan, with a few notable LA-area exceptions.
Madsen plays Budd (aka Sidewinder), a member of the Squad who also works at the My Oh My strip club, realistically portrayed by Sam’s Hofbrau (1751 E. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles), located in a warehouse district near LA’s Skid Row. By realistically, I mean Sam’s is an actual strip club, with actual strippers, so if that’s not your scene, steer clear. I noticed a TV, by the door, showing the scenes in “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” that were shot inside of the dark and loud spot. In a scene in “Jackie Brown,” Samuel L. Jackson’s character waits inside Sam’s as well.
Beatrix finds the house belonging to Vernita Green (5506 Atlas St., Los Angeles), another fellow assassin. Played by Vivica A. Fox, Green (aka Copperhead) is retired and a mom, apparently living in the suburbs. Inside the house the women stage the best kitchen-set action sequence of any movie. Located on a tree-lined street of modest homes in the Sierra Vista neighborhood, it was surprising to find the front door of the house boarded up, the windows blackened and yet no “for sale” sign.
What Beatrix is taking revenge for is a massacre at her wedding, at the hands of her former gang and its leader, Bill (David Carradine). Shot in the head on her wedding day, the Bride was in a coma for four years, eventually waking up at St. Luke’s Hospital (2690 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena).
The massacre took place at the small, white Two Pines Chapel, 75 miles north of St. Luke’s. Next to a Joshua tree instead of pines, and next to little else, is now the Sanctuary Adventist Church (19809 E. Ave. G, Lancaster). It started as a community hall and then a filming location — as a church set in multiple films, starting with Robert De Niro’s “True Confessions” — before it became a real church. You can see the chapel’s original sign, “High Vista Community Hall,” at the beginning of the Talking Heads video for “Road to Nowhere.”
Pastor Oscar Castaneda installed “no trespassing” signs, barbed wire and a truck to obscure the view of the church, because, he explained, some fans were taking nude photos on the front porch. But he said he greets all visitors, except during Saturday service, and lets them come in, as long as they are respectful. He’s counted 14,000 signatures in guestbooks since 2007. He’s also reopened the church to films and music video production in order to support local jobs and the economy.
Another 37 miles farther east into the desert and you could get a tasty burger at Emma Jean’s Holland Burger Cafe (17143 N. D St., Victorville), the old Route 66 restaurant seen at the start of “Vol. 1.”
On the way out to the chapel, if you take E. Palmdale Blvd., you’re driving along the same stretch of road to (seemingly) nowhere as seen in another film. A payphone booth call takes place along that road, leading to a passionate moment between newlyweds Clarence and Alabama Worley in…
‘True Romance’ (1993)
Written by Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott, this is the love story of Clarence (Christian Slater), a comic book store employee, and Alabama (Patricia Arquette), a neophyte call girl, who stumble into each other’s lives and then onto a plot-driving suitcase of cocaine.
They take the goods from Detroit to Los Angeles to sell it to a famous movie director, in order to live happily ever after. Along the way, our romantic heroes mix it up with the mob, with cops, an intimidating pimp named Drexl (Gary Oldman), an imaginary Elvis (Val Kilmer) and a hilarious stoned roommate named Floyd (Brad Pitt).
The film opens in a Detroit dive bar that is actually a San Fernando strip mall dive named El Potro Bar (1113 San Fernando Rd.). The bartender spoke little English, same for the other customers, but she understood and nodded “yes,” when I asked if she’d seen “True Romance,” and she knew it was filmed there. My daughter and I played a few rounds of pool as I admired the horse motif, in honor of the bar’s name (translated as “The Colt”).
After Clarence leaves the bar he heads to a triple feature of kung fu movies at a vintage theater called the Vista. Also not in Detroit, the real Egyptian-themed Vista Theater (4473 Sunset Dr., Los Angeles) is now owned by the writer of “True Romance.” Tarantino chooses what plays on both the main screen, a mix of old and new films, and in the 20-seat theater called Video Archives Cinema Club (named after the video rental store where he once worked). The micro-cinema shows more obscure VHS and 16mm prints from the director’s personal collection. Other details I enjoyed at the Vista included the delicious popcorn, Bud Cort’s (of “Harold and Maude”) hand prints in the sidewalk out front, and that the main screen’s sound is pumped into the bathrooms so you don’t miss a beat while washing your hands, and maybe talking to imaginary Elvis.
Clarence meets Alabama inside the Vista and after the last kung fu movie she invites him to get pie and talk. The diner they head to is Rae’s Restaurant (2901 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica), nowhere near the Vista. Not only is Rae’s not open late at night (they close at 2 p.m. each day), they don’t even serve pie. Two old friends were sitting in Clarence and Alabama’s booth (third from the front) when I arrived, so I had my breakfast at the counter, facing a “True Romance” movie poster and a framed compilation of other movies set in Rae’s, including “Starsky & Hutch” and “Bowfinger.”
Still on their first night together, Alabama and Clarence declare their devotion to each other while standing outside Clarence’s apartment, in front of a billboard. While the advertisement is gone, the billboard location (721 S. Main St., Los Angeles) is easily spotted if you look up from the street, on the side of an abandoned building.
After a quickie marriage and a deadly shootout at Drexl’s pad, they finally leave “Detroit” to go to LA. First stop is their friend Dick Richie’s (Michael Rapaport) house. I tried finding it but the addresses that other movie location pilgrims shared online weren’t accurate. More excitingly, you can book a room where Clarence and Alabama do. That would be “The Safari Motor … Motel Inn … Safari Motel,” as Floyd fumbles the name of the Safari Inn (1911 W. Olive Ave., Burbank) through a fog of pot smoke. Just as you see in the film, the tiki-themed motel has a pool and sunbathing deck, but the rooms are basic and more motel-sized than the one depicted cinematically.
Our heroes are vetted as safe drug dealers over a harrowing ride on the Viper roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain (26101 Magic Mountain Pkwy., Valencia), the same amusement park that stands in as Wally World in “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” Then the final drug deal/shootout scene of the film takes place in the Ambassador Hotel (where presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968), sadly demolished in 2005. At the very end of the film, Alabama and Clarence live happily ever after in Mexico, aka Los Angeles County’s Malibu beach (US-1/Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu).
Not far from where Tarantino lived for a while as a kid, just south of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), there’s a touching scene in “True Romance” by the airport after Alabama is nearly murdered at the Safari Inn. LAX notably features in two other films in the director’s oeuvre, specifically the iconic 1960s mosaic walls inside the passenger tunnels of Terminals 3 and 4 in “Once.” You see these same hallways at the start of…
‘Jackie Brown’ (1997)
With Pam Grier in the title role, we first see Jackie, a flight attendant who dabbles in drug smugglin’ and doublecrossin’, coming home from work at LAX (1 World Way, Los Angeles). The stylish airport-adjacent accommodation, Cockatoo Inn, had already closed when Tarantino shot scenes there, and it has sadly been replaced by the cookie-cutter (though with a pool) Comfort Inn Cockatoo (11500 Acacia Ave., Hawthorne).
I would have preferred to stay at Melanie’s beachside apartment (6403 Ocean Front Walk, Playa del Rey), owned by the gunrunner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Standing in the sand outside the small apartment building, I told the guest staying upstairs and looking down at me from her balcony that Jackson and Robert De Niro once hung out in the apartment below hers. “Cool,” she said, “I’m gonna have to watch the movie now.”
Nearly every other location in “Jackie Brown” — unlike the previous five films we’ve explored — is set in the southside of LA. Ordell picks up Beaumont (Chris Tucker) from his apartment (1030 Lakme Ave., Wilmington) that’s practically in Long Beach. Jackie’s apartment (17575 Yukon Ave., Torrance) is in the same part of town as the Del Amo Fashion Center (3525 W. Carson St., Torrance), the mall where the double-crossing deal goes down. While Macy’s is still there (called the fictitious Billingsley department store in the film), a major renovation and expansion of Del Amo erased the old food court seen in the movie, same for the parking lot where De Niro’s character shoots the pothead “beach bunny” Melanie (Bridget Fonda).
But my favorite spot related to the film isn’t a shooting location but a coffee shop next to the Tarantino-owned Vista Theater. Pam’s Coffy (4473 Sunset Dr., Los Angeles), is a reference to the 1973 Blaxploitation hit “Coffy,” with Grier starring as Nurse Flower Child “Coffy” Coffin and the tagline “She’ll cream you!” The cute little hangout spot sells coffee drinks, bowls of cereal and yellow mugs with Grier’s image on one side and “A cup by Quentin Tarantino” on the other. There’s also a tiny room with a TV and VHS player, screening “The Count of Monte Cristo” when I was there in May. The barista shared that, “They say that the film shown in there is a clue to Quentin’s next project.” We’ll have to wait and see.
The Vista isn’t the only LA movie theater the director owns. The other one tops the list of a few more locations on our tour, those of…
Tarantino’s personal spots
In his own novelization of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” Tarantino gives the history of a theater where Cliff Booth is headed in one scene. “In the thirties, the cinema was a vaudeville house called Slapsy Maxie’s. In the fifties, it was where Martin and Lewis first performed in Los Angeles. Later, in 1978, it will become a revival house called the New Beverly Cinema, showing repertory films. But in 1969 it’s called the Eros Cinema, and it is one of the erotic cinemas of Hollywood (the Vista, located where Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard meet, is another).” To that history you could add that in 2007 it was bought by the novel’s author, as was the Vista 14 years after that.
New Beverly Cinema (7165 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles) is a must-visit for Tarantino fans for reasons that include the Friday midnight showings of 35mm prints of his own films, a schedule of other vintage movies largely chosen by the director, occasional celebrity and industry guest speakers, delicious popcorn, vegan hot dogs and easter egg memorabilia to find, such as the faux “Nebraska Jim” movie poster prop illustrated with DiCaprio’s likeness, as seen in “Once.”
The most famous movie theater in LA is Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (6925 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood), now owned by TCL. Tarantino has been seeing movies there since he was a kid and in the highest of honors, his star, handprints and footprints on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are located directly in front of the theater’s marquee.
I ended my whirlwind Tarantour where things began for the auteur. Before my flight home I drove to the nearby Manhattan Bread & Bagel Company (1812 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Manhattan Beach) and got a sandwich for the plane. Nothing cool, action-packed, menacing or sexy about the place. Only, from what you can piece together online, this unassuming bagel shop franchise location was once Video Archives, the movie rental store a young Tarantino worked in, learned from, and began the legendary career we can now travel all over town to follow. With that final meal, my pilgrimage felt, as the Italian pictures conclude, Fine.
Credit: Source link