Home is where the film crew is
Pasadena is no stranger to film crews. I like to call it Hollywood’s Back-Backlot. Rather bizarrely, they like to use Pasadena to double for Anywhere USA, as if driving fifteen miles east of the lots in Burbank gets you to “regular USA”. Pasadena has been used in fifteen trillion films (officially) and thirty-one bazillion commercials (officially). It can be seen in Halloween, Father of the Bride, The Wonders Years tv series, Pleasantville, even (briefly) Star Trek: Generations.
But for me, its shining moment has got to be Back to the Future, where it features prominently. (Technically, some of the streets used in filming were in South Pasadena, a different city bordering Pasadena to, um, the South. Whatever.) And most prominently of these prominently featured prominences is, of course, the Gamble House, which exterior doubles for Doc Brown’s home in the 1955 segments (before he squandered the family fortune and sold the land to developers and Burger King).
When I moved to Pasadena in 2001 one of the very firstest things I drove past was the Gamble House, not because it’s very impressive — it is — but because the Doc lived there.
I thought everyone knew about the Gamble House and its role in cinema history. Thus my surprise when the following scene occurred at my local Blockbuster:
I’m standing in an aisle browsing movies while two bored employees I know slightly exchange chit-chat at the registers.
Employee One: … and I saw the house in Halloween, and I saw the house in Nightmare on Elm Street, and I saw [etc.]. I’m still looking for that house in Back to the Future.
I wander over, my curiosity piqued.
Me: Which house in Back to the Future?
Employee One: Doc Brown’s house.
Me: That’s the Gamble House.
Employee One: Is that what they call it?
Me: It’s a museum, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. You can visit it.
Employee One: Um.
Me: You just drive down Orange Grove Boulevard and … well you just drive down Orange Grove and then there it is. It’s just across that bridge thing, where Orange Grove twists south.
Employee One: Yeah?
Me: Yeah. Remember the garage in the movie? It’s a book shop now. But only the exterior was shot at the Gamble House. The interior was shot at a private home. So the interior’s different from the movie.
Employee One (turning to Employee Two): Hey, ever seen the house in Nightmare on Elm Street?
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The point is that I thought everyone knew about the Gamble House and its role in cinema history. But I was wrong. Two guys at Blockbuster didn’t, and they live in the same goddamned town.
So if you’re a fan of Back to the Future and are ever in Pasadena, stop by the Gamble House and check it out. Just remember that the interior was shot at a private house elsewhere in Pasadena. It’s probably not recommended you visit that one — the owners might become cross — and even if you did, it wouldn’t look the same, since the house changed owners after the first movie was shot, and they gutted the interior. Hmm.
In fact, I know of people who come to Los Angeles to take the “Back to the Future Tour” (as distinct from Back to the Future: the Ride at Universal). You start in Burbank on Victory Boulevard (the Burger King in the beginning of the movie), then the Hollywood United Methodist Church on Franklin (interior scenes of the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance), then hop down to lovely Arleta to see Marty’s stunning 1985 home (complete with high-tension power lines behind the residence), then over to Whittier High School for, naturally, the high school scenes, then up to the even more gorgeous Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry (alas very different today), then finally to Pasadena where you can drive up Bushnell Avenue (host to most of the 1955 town street scenes) and then come to a stop at the Gamble House. My but isn’t that fun.
If I said I’d actually done this tour would you laugh at me?
Home is where the film crew is.