Travel Guide to California

2016 Travel Guide to California

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2 0 1 6 T R A V E L G U I D E T O C A L I F O R N I A 47 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 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 offers multiple tours. Its three-hour bus excursion visits locations where 70 movie scenes from more than 55 movies were filmed (e.g., Vertigo, Mrs. Doubtfire, Basic Instinct, The Rock, Contagion, The Pursuit of Happyness). Down the coast a bit, the Mon- terey Movie Tours winds through Monterey, Pacific Grove and Carmel, spotlighting loca- tions of other films; still farther south, a more active tour put together by the Santa Barbara Bicycle 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 Gregory 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 Francisco Bay Area, most are located in and around Los Angeles. Those that offer behind-the-scenes studio tours include Warner Bros. (peek into the costume and prop room for the Harry Potter movies), Universal (Hollywood's most famous HOLLYWOOD'S DOLBY THEATRE and Walk of Fame, right.

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