Movie sites I've seen

On my way to work at Caltech (in Pasadena, California) every day, I used to drive by a house that's been in lots of movies or TV shows, judging by how often I see a row of huge filming trailers parked out there. One movie I know it's in is "Catch Me If You Can"; Leonardo DiCaprio sneaks up to one of the windows and then narrowly escapes the cop cars that drive up on the lawn. I've also seen this house painted vivid blue for a filming, and then repainted white when filming was over-- I wish I know what show that was for.


If I were to drive to work on the parallel street one block north, I'd be driving by the Mr. and Mrs. Smith house every day-- the one Brad and Angelina live in and "redecorate" by shooting it up in their epic battle.

I'm proud that in both cases I immediately recognized the houses from real life when I first saw them on the screen.  They're pretty similar.  Hollywood predictably goes for big white classic second-story homes.

Right in my town there's the Arcadia Arboretum, which has been used in many movies. So has Caltech itself.  The Cigarette Smoking Man and others met in a Caltech library during a scene from the X-Files movie, Reese Witherspoon rides a bike over a Caltech bridge at the beginning of Legally Blonde, and lots of scenes from the TV series Numbers were filmed at Caltech, including a location just one floor above the lab where I worked.

Then there's the Huntington Library close by-- it's been in all sorts of movies as well, including flashback scenes in Serenity. Catherine Zeta-Jones and George Clooney once played a romantic scene for Intolerable Cruelty in front of a stone arbor at the Huntington where I've taken many pictures myself.  Here are the stars:

And here's me and a friend.

I know if I gave it any effort I could find tons of other movie sites-- I'm near Hollywood, after all. But I get a special kick out of the ones I find with no effort, the ones that are right around the corner, on the way to work, near home.