This classic red-brick house is the one that Steve Martin’s character Neal owned in the 1987 John Hughes comedy Planes, Trains & Automobiles. He spent most of the movie trying to get back to it in time for Thanksgiving.

Now it’s on the market in Kenilworth, Illinois, for $1.799 million. Here’s how it looks today:

John Candy played Del in the movie, who ends up traveling with Neal.

Interspersed with scenes of them being stranded in airports, sleeping in seedy motels (“those aren’t pillows!”), and watching their rental car go up in flames, we saw Neal’s wife and 3 kids back at the house, waiting for him to get home.

We only get a few glimpses inside the house…

So it surprised me to read on the IMDb website that 7 interior sets were built for Neal’s house. It took them 5 months to create them and cost $100,000, “which angered Paramount executives and caused turmoil on the set.”

If they spent all the time and money on them, I wish they would have filmed more of the rooms for us!

The blue tile in the kitchen doesn’t seem to go with anything else in the house:

Love the headboard in their bedroom and wish we could’ve seen more of it:

Okay, so here’s how the real interior of the house looks in the listing today:

It was built in 1916:

“Stately, red brick center entry Colonial…with 3 car garage, 2 blocks to Lake Michigan, features 6 bedrooms, 3.2 baths, first floor library, sunroom, first family room, eat in kitchen, finished basement & 3rd floor!”

Like it? For more photos and information, check the listing by Barbara Mawicke of Coldwell Banker. (Thanks to Sue for telling me about it!)

A lot of people have pointed out the similarities between the Planes house and the one from John Hughes’ classic comedy Home Alone, which was on the market recently, as well. Some have even asked if they’re the same house–but as you can see below, they’re different.

Let’s compare the two, shall we? Here’s another shot of the Planes house:

And the one from Home Alone, which is bigger and lacks the third dormer that the Planes house has.

It’s one of my favorite movie houses ever. You can see the interior photos of it here:

The Real Home Alone House For Sale in Winnetka, Illinois.

Hooked on Houses from John Hughes Movies?

• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  
• Miracle on 34th Street
• Home Alone
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
• Mr. Mom

My sister-in-law Shelley was the first person who told me about The Help when Kathryn Stockett’s novel came out a few years ago. She gave me her copy and promised that I’d love it. She was right. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down. And when I heard they were making a movie out of it, I couldn’t wait to see it.

I thought they did a great job adapting it for the big screen. The ’60s-era sets were fun to look at, too. There were four main houses that “the help” worked at in the movie, so let’s take a look at them, starting with Skeeter’s classic antebellum mansion.

Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan’s Antebellum Mansion

The Help is the story of two women, Minny and Aibileen, who have spent their lives taking care of privileged white families in Jackson, Mississippi. “Skeeter” Phelan is an Ole Miss grad who’s expected to settle down and get married, but she’d rather be a writer. She decides to interview them and write a book about their experiences.

The novel by Kathryn Stockett came out in 2009 and stayed on the bestseller lists more than 100 weeks. Before she found a publisher, though, her manuscript was rejected by 60 literary agents who declined to represent her. Bet the ones who passed on it are kicking themselves now.

Although the book and movie have both gotten great reviews–and the movie garnered several Oscar noms, including Best Picture–they have also had their share of controversy. Not everyone loved it. For example, Ida E. Jones, the national director of the Association of Black Women Historians, wrote an open letter stating that “The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers.”

Stockett says it was based on her childhood experiences growing up in Jackson and her close relationship with her own nanny, Demetrie.

Production designer Mark Ricker and Set Decorator Rena DeAngelo had 47 sets to create for the film. They scoured flea markets, antique stores, and even some old attics to find enough period-appropriate objects to fill the scenes with. They did an amazing job pulling them all together.

The movie was filmed on location in Jackson, Clarksdale, and Greenwood, Mississippi. Ricker says the Phelan home was “lighter in tone and a bit newer in decoration choices as Charlotte (Skeeter’s mother) would have layered her own choices with the history of the house.”

Some of my favorite sets in the movie were the kitchens because you get a glimpse of their everyday lives in them.

Emma Stone plays Skeeter, whose crazy curly hair is the bane of her existence. Allison Janney plays her mother and makes her a bit more sympathetic than she was in the novel (at least for me).

One thing I didn’t like about the movie version was the change made to the story about Skeeter’s beloved maid Constantine, and why she left.

An aerial view of the property:

Elizabeth Leefolt’s Brick Ranch

Skeeter’s longtime friend Elizabeth lives in a more modern house in town.

Aibileen (Viola Davis) takes care of Elizabeth’s daughter Mae Mobly, who is pretty much ignored by her mother.

Ricker says that the rooms in Elizabeth’s middle-class ranch were designed to be “bland and uneventful.”

Elizabeth’s decor was inspired by Better Homes and Gardens decorating books from the era. I own one of them from 1956, and it does look like the photos from it, come to life!

Hilly Holbrook’s Traditional Colonial

Bryce Dallas Howard fearlessly played the horrible Hilly Holbrook. One of the funniest scenes is when Skeeter gets back at her by “misstyping” the newsletter to tell people to drop off their “old commodes” instead of their old coats at Hilly’s house.

Ricker says that Hilly’s house style was the “first phase of the new South,” and the interiors are “prim, perfect, pastel and icy”–like her.

My parents-in-law have these same chairs in their kitchen (below). Fun to see them pop up in Hilly’s breakfast room!

Bathrooms play a big role in this story. Hilly doesn’t want the help using hers and goes to extremes to make sure none of them do.

Celia Foote’s Plantation House

Celia lives on the outskirts of town with her new husband Johnny in the old plantation house that belonged to his family.

To say the house doesn’t suit her would be an understatement. She says she dreams of filling it with wall-to-wall white carpet and making everything more modern.

The stuffed bear in the story made me laugh–especially when Minny had to figure out how to clean it.

It came from a taxidermy shop in Wisconsin.

Mark Ricker says, “Celia’s house was a ton of work because we did everything in it. All wallpaper, complete reconstruction of the kitchen, building all the curtains, and the sheer amount of layering in the house. We wanted it to have the most ‘history,’ so we just kept buying and buying…”

The kitchen is really old-fashioned, and Celia doesn’t feel very at home in it (she doesn’t know how to make much more than corn pone), but I love it. So charming.

Octavia Spencer won an Oscar for her role as Minny Jackson.

Mark Ricker says he also looked to the classic Southern movie Gone with the Wind for inspiration when he took this project on.

Minny teaches Celia how to cook for her husband Johnny, who hasn’t been told that she hired help around the house:

The movie ends with Aibileen (Viola Davis) walking down the street, away from the Leefolt house, and saying she has raised her last baby. She’s going to be a writer now. It’s hard not to cheer for her.

If you loved the movie and the sets, you can read more about them at Atlanta Homes, Cinema Style, and Vignette Design. Photos via DreamWorks Pictures.

Hooked on Movie Houses?

• Gone with the Wind
• The Blind Side
• Secretariat
• Search for your favorite!

One of the most searched-for movie houses on my blog is the Spanish hacienda-style ranch that Meryl Streep owned in the romantic comedy It’s Complicated. Who could forget that tile roof, the wide veranda, the beamed and vaulted ceiling in the living room, or the sumptuous kitchen? I couldn’t!

So I was pretty excited to hear that the real house where the movie was filmed is now on the market for $12 million. Okay, so it may be over $11 million too much for most of us, but at least we can look, right?

The Nancy Meyers film co-starred Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin as the men competing for Meryl Streep’s heart. Here’s a shot of her standing in front of the house in the movie:

It was posing as a house in Santa Barbara in the movie, but the property is actually about an hour south of there, on an equestrian ranch with over 56 acres in Hidden Valley.

Here’s how the front of the house looks in the listing today:

Iamnotastalker tracked the property down in person a couple of years ago. She wrote on her blog:

“Throughout the movie, Jane’s house is shown to be surrounded by a long, white wooden fence. That type of fence pops up quite often in film and television productions and when it does, it is pretty much a dead giveaway that filming took place somewhere on Potrero Road.

“So, I decided to begin my search there. And sure enough, about ten minutes into the hunt, I located Jane’s house! As it turns out, it is situated less than half a mile east of JMJ Ranch, which was featured in Win A Date With Tad Hamilton and the more recent Back-Up Plan with Jennifer Lopez.”

Interesting! You can see her post about it here.

The interior scenes were shot on a soundstage in Brooklyn. Here’s how the movie version of the living room looked (via Elle Decor):

The real one has a similar vibe with beamed ceilings and a window seat:

The real house is larger than the movie version appears to be. It has over 6,000 square feet. Unlike the movie house, which just has an open area between the kitchen and living room with a dining table in it…

…the real house has a proper dining room down the hall:

Meryl’s bedroom in the movie was a bit smaller than the real thing, too:

The real deal:

No freestanding tub in the real master like there was in the movie:

Another one of the 5 bedrooms in the listing:

I kinda feel sorry for the kitchen in the real house, which is perfectly nice but couldn’t stand a chance of competing with the famous film version that Meryl Streep cooked in:

Here’s how it looks in the listing:

The house was built in early 1900s and has reportedly belonged to several celebrities over the years, including W.C. Fields.

In the movie we see a hallway lined with windows that overlook the courtyard:

And the real house has one, too:

I especially love this cozy little sunroom:

Not to mention the built-in dining area on the veranda, which is where I’d want to have all of my meals (cooked by Streep’s culinary character Jane, please):

The amazing cutting garden from the movie isn’t shown in the listing…

…but there is a lovely pool and poolhouse that are:

Another thing we didn’t see in the movie: the front gates that guard the long private drive to the house:

For more photos and information, check the listing by Nicki & Karen. Thanks to Luciane at Homebunch for the scoop! Joni wrote a great post about the real house when it was on the market the last time with photos of how it looked then that you can see at Cote de Texas.

Want to see more photos of how the house looked in the movie? Check out my original post about the sets (including Streep’s to-die-for bakery) in It’s Complicated.

Writer and Director Nancy Meyers has built a reputation for movies that feature houses we’d love to live in. Thanks to her, we also have these other great movie houses to drool over–all of which I’ve featured and are among my personal favorites:

• Father of the Bride
• Baby Boom
• Something’s Gotta Give
• The Parent Trap
• The Holiday

Do you have a favorite Nancy Meyers movie house? I don’t think I could choose. I’ll just take one for every day of the week, if that’s okay…

In the early ’70s, a now-classic documentary was made about Jackie Kennedy’s aunt, Edith Bouvier Beale, and her daughter, known as “Little Edie,” who were living together in a broken-down family mansion in East Hampton. In 2009 the HBO movie Grey Gardens introduced a new generation to the story–and the beautiful old estate they lived in.

There’s a new house on the market in Massachusetts that was inspired by the HBO version of Grey Gardens in its heyday (shown above). But first, let’s take a look at how it looked in the movie:

Production designer Kalina Ivanov did an amazing job recreating the rooms and bringing them to life.

In the movie, Jessica Lange played the eccentric Big Edie, and Drew Barrymore was her daughter, Little Edie.

Sadly, by the time the documentary was filmed in 1973, the real-life Grey Gardens had deteriorated to this:

Hard to believe the women were still living there amid the filth and rotted floorboards–not to mention raccoons and other critters. Albert Maysles, one of the directors of the documentary, said the most difficult thing about filming it was the condition of the home: “The first thing you noticed was the smell from all the animals,” he said.

Here’s a screenshot of it from the original film, when it looked abandoned:

In 1984, Architectural Digest featured the iconic house, which had been bought in 1979 by Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, writer Sally Quinn. Here’s how it looked then, after its restoration:

You can see how similar the real entry hall and staircase is to the one in the movie I showed you above:

AD photos taken by Peter Vitale.

Even if I hadn’t told you these photos were taken in the ’80s, I bet you would’ve guessed, right?

Here’s how the exterior of the real house looks today:

Which brings me to the reason why I started looking at photos of Grey Gardens again in the first place–a newly built home in Falmouth, Massachusetts, which was inspired by it.

The homeowner, Michael E. Jaye, saw photos of the house from the HBO movie and told his architect, Leonard J. Baum, that he wanted the exterior to look like it (shown at the top of the post, with the shutters). Here’s the result:

It’s not as large as the original, and the interior layout isn’t the same, but the front and sides look the way the real one did at the turn of the century, shutters and all.

The interior has a lighter, less formal feel to it than the original.

The new house has 5 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, and about 4,000 square feet. It’s on the market for $2.995 million.

I really like the rugs in these rooms.

Thanks to Betty for telling me about this house. I love it!

It sits on nearly 2 acres overlooking Oyster Pond in Upper Cape Cod. The listing says:

“Enjoy swimming from your private dock, exploring the Salt Pond Bird Sanctuary Conservation area across the street, walking to the sandy beach on Vineyard Sound or biking the Shining Sea Bikeway.”

If you could build a house inspired by one you’ve seen on TV or in the movies, which one would it be? It’s hard for me to choose–I love so many!–but today I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind living in a version of Kate Winslet’s English cottage from The Holiday. I could also go for the beach house from Something’s Gotta Give. Or this one from Grey Gardens!

For more photos and information:

• The listing with Robert Paul Properties
• An article on Cape News about the house
• The 1984 article in Architectural Digest

I love new houses that are built to look old. Click here to see more!

Who could forget the charming Italian villa called Bramasole that Diane Lane buys on a whim and fixes up in the movie Under the Tuscan Sun? I wrote a post about it a couple of years ago and discovered that it was filmed on location in Tuscany in a villa that they didn’t actually remodel for the shoot–they “just cleaned it up a little and filmed it in warmer, prettier light,” according to writer-director Audrey Wells.

The real restoration work on the real-life Bramasole began in 2006, four years after the movie was filmed here. Here’s how it looks today.

There are actually two buildings on the property.

This is the one Diane Lane’s Frances Mayes sees in the movie when she visits for the first time (for those of you who don’t know, it was based on a true story, but this is not her actual villa):

When she walks in, things are in pretty bad shape:

At the end of the movie, when the renovations are complete (supposedly, thanks to Movie Magic), it looks like this:

The real-life restoration work was much more extensive and involved more than just cleaning up. Here’s how it looks now:

You can rent the villa the next time you’re in Tuscany. According to Italian Villas, “Bramasole lies nestled on a hill just three minutes outside the ancient town walls of Cortona.”

The kitchen in the movie was much smaller:

According to the rental website, “Every bedroom on the property is unique with beautiful original features, hand woven Busatti fabrics and the highest quality bed linen. All bedrooms rooms have air conditioning, Wi-Fi, en-suite bathrooms and its own view of the surrounding countryside.”

A bedroom in the movie:

There’s plenty of room for everyone here, with 10 bedrooms and 10.5 baths.

Again, the bathroom in the movie was much more basic than they are now!

One of the updated baths:

The views from the villa are beautiful:

“There is always something to keep you entertained, whether it be a swim in the travertine pool, a soak in the Jacuzzi, a walk through the Medici parkland to visit the ducks on the lake, or a Bocce tournament with other guests.” Sounds like the perfect vacation to me!

For more photos and information about renting this movie location, visit Italian Villas. (Thanks to Betty for telling me about it!)

A reader took this photo of Frances Mayes’ actual Bramasole (her real house, not the movie version) while she was on vacation in the area and sent it to me–thanks, Joanie! You can see my original post about the movie with more pics and info here: Under the Tuscan Sun.

P.S. Did you watch the Oscars last night? I never miss it! If you think you know your famous movie houses, see how well you do on this quiz:

Can You Name the 10 Oscar-Nominated  Films These Houses Starred In?

Visit my Movie Houses page to see more, including:

• Secretariat
• Must Love Dogs
• Nights in Rodanthe

Who could forget the iconic four-story townhouse that Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly lived in on the Upper East Side? Now the real thing, where the exterior shots and some of the interior scenes were filmed for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is on the market for $5.85 million. (I’ll bet Holly paid a lot less than that to stay there in 1961!)

I thought it would be fun to compare how the building looked in the movie to how it looks now. It has changed so much in the past 50 years that I’m not sure I would have recognized it.

In the movie, which was based on a short novel by Truman Capote, the building sported green and white-striped awnings that must have blocked out most of the light coming into the rooms:

The front door was green, too:

Audrey Hepburn was not who Truman Capote had in mind for Holly. He pictured Marilyn Monroe in the role, but she turned it down. Kim Novac was reportedly offered the part, as well.

Hepburn was an unlikely actress to play the 19-year old country girl from Texas whose real name was Lulamae Barnes. For one thing, Hepburn was in her 30s; for another, her accent was anything but Texan. In the novella, a character says, “When she opens her mouth…you don’t know if she’s a hillbilly or an Okie or what.”

Hepburn herself felt she was miscast and said she was uncomfortable with the role. She essentially created a new–and memorable–version of Holly for the movie.

According to an article in the New York Times about the brownstone, most of the interiors were shot on a soundstage. However, the previous owners reported that it was used for some scenes, “with cameras perched outside so they could shoot into the rooms.” It’s believed that the party Holly hosted in a bed sheet, for example, was held in the real living room.

In the book, the story takes place during the war, in the 1940s. In the movie, it’s 1960.

Holly was a much more scandalous character in the original story, especially for those times. A lot of her rough edges were smoothed down for the movie–and so that Audrey Hepburn could play her.

I want to cry every time Holly throws “Cat” out of the cab, into the rain. Hepburn once said it was the worst thing she ever had to do in a movie.

See the little white “loveseat” in her living room? It’s a claw-foot tub cut in half.

Hepburn wears the same black dress about four times in the movie, but it looks different the way it’s styled and accessorized.

George Peppard played Holly’s upstairs neighbor Paul Varjak, a struggling writer who is “kept” by a wealthy woman.

I always want a better look at this screen in Holly’s bathroom:

She’s so thin in this movie that it’s hard to believe she gave birth to her son Sean only 3 months before filming began.

Paul’s apartment has been furnished by his “decorator,” a woman who goes by the name 2-E (they don’t explain it in the movie but it’s because her name is Emily Eustace).

In the novella, Holly and her neighbor were never lovers, she never finds the cat again after throwing it out of the cab, and she moves to Brazil in search of a rich husband. In the movie, she changes her mind and stays with Paul–and the cat, which they find in an alley.

Mr. Yunioshi was played by Mickey Rooney, pretending to be Japanese (different times, I know, but I cringe through those scenes). He lives in an apartment on the top floor:

Here’s how the townhouse looks today in the real estate listing:

It’s currently divided into two duplex apartments.

There’s even a solarium:

For more photos and information, check the listing with Corcoran. You can see the floorplans at Curbed and read about the current owner in the NYT article.

Remember the Stepmom House?

While we’re on the topic of real-life movie houses, I was excited to hear from the owner of the one where the Julia Roberts-Susan Sarandon movie Stepmom was filmed that it’s back on the market. The price has been reduced by a million or so and the new listing has more (and better) photos of the gorgeous old home in Upper Nyack, New York.

Check out my post about it for the updated information and pics:

The Real Stepmom (& Bounty Hunter) House

More Classic Movie Houses:

• Auntie Mame
• Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
• Mildred Pierce
• See ‘em all!

When Allison Pearson’s novel I Don’t Know How She Does It came out in 2002, I thought the story about frazzled working mom Kate Reddy was pretty funny, so I was looking forward to the movie version. I don’t think it was quite as awful as the reviews led me to expect, but the book was better.

What didn’t disappoint: the fabulous Boston townhouse that Sarah Jessica Parker’s Kate lives in with her handsome hubby (Greg Kinnear) and their two kids. Let’s take a closer look!

Although Kate lives in Boston, most of the filming actually took place in New York City. According to Covering Media, Production Designer Santo Loquasto was given the task of finding New York locations that could pass for Boston:

“The leafy, townhouse-lined streets of Brooklyn Heights stood in for the Reddy family’s Back Bay neighborhood in Boston, while a stately early-twentieth-century office suite overlooking Madison Square became Kate’s Boston workplace.”

The book written by Allison Pearson was based on a newspaper column she wrote about the challenges of being a working mother. In the novel, Kate was a Brit living in London and traveling to New York for her job. Anyone else read it?

The townhouse interiors were built at Cine Magic Riverfront Studios in Brooklyn. The set decorators were sure to include plenty of “family clutter” in every room. The house may be beautiful, but it’s far from pristine or perfect. It looks lived in!

Looking into the dining room from the kitchen:

The kitchen was the real show-stopper for me. Love it.

In her review of the movie on The Flick Cast, Grace Suh wrote:

“Kate and her (underemployed or unemployed) architect husband Richard…live in a huge, gorgeous townhouse  in the most picturesque and expensive corner of Brooklyn Heights, with high ceilings and beautifully eclectic furnishings and an amazingly huge and gorgeously appointed kitchen that’s flooded with sun and would put the Williams-Sonoma catalog to shame.

“I know the story’s supposed to be set in Boston, and many of the street scenes were obviously shot in Boston, but I assure you, that townhouse they live in is in Brooklyn Heights, and it costs $4 million, at a minimum.”

She went on to say, “In actuality, even at the top investment banks, someone in a mid-level position such as Kate’s would more probably be living in a relatively modest 3-bedroom New York City apartment (still $2 million) or a house in Teaneck, but somehow she’s able to swing that $20,000 monthly mortgage payment, plus private school for her kids (set at Plymouth Church School on Orange).”

Hollywood has never let reality get in their way when filming a chick flick like this, though. We’ve come to expect our heroines to live in a fabulous house and be courted by men like Pierce Brosnan, even she meets him with lice in her hair (makes my head itch just thinking about that scene!).

What did you think of the movie? Did you find yourself looking at the sets behind the actors?

P.S. To see the entire list of movie houses I’ve featured or to request one of your favorites for a future Movie Monday post, click here.

More Sarah Jessica Parker Houses:

• Sex and the City (Movie)
• Sex and the City (TV Show)
• The Family Stone
• SJP’s House in the Hamptons

Several years ago I asked for the movie Just Like Heaven on DVD for Christmas because I loved the fabulous wood-paneled San Francisco apartment in it! Based on the number of requests I’ve gotten from readers to see it, I wasn’t alone, so I thought we’d take a closer look at it.

Reese Witherspoon played Elizabeth, a hard-working doctor who doesn’t have much of a personal life. She does, however, own an apartment in this Victorian Russian Hill building with killer views of the city from every room…

After she’s in a terrible car crash, a landscape architect named David (Mark Ruffalo) rents her place. There’s a catch, though: her spirit is still living there, and she wants him out.

Leslie Dixon, a San Francisco native who co-wrote the film, used to live in this apartment building. They actually only shot 10 days in San Francisco The interiors of the dream apartment were built entirely on a soundstage.

As Mark Ruffalo talks about filming the movie for the DVD’s special features, you can see the outside of one of the windows on set:

Here’s how it looked when they filmed Reese’s character through that window:

The hallway is beautiful but looks a little spooky in this shot…almost like it belongs to the house in “American Horror Story.”

The movie is based on a novel called If Only It Were True by the French author Marc Levy.

This round windowseat with the fabulous view is one of the best features of the apartment–love it:

As Elizabeth is arguing that she’s not a ghost, she looks down and realizes she has wandered into the center of the dining room table…

The bedroom has more great woodwork and another round window big enough to fit the bed in:

David starts wearing boxer shorts to shower in, since he never knows when Elizabeth might make a surprise appearance…

The Kitchen:

Jon Heder plays Darryl, the psychic who is confounded by how “alive” the spirit seems to be.

Production Design was done by Cary White, and Set Decoration by Barbara Haberecht.

Up on the Roof:

According to the DVD commentary, the apartment’s rooftop was built on a soundstage. They used CGI for the San Francisco skyline. Here’s a behind-the scenes photo taken of the set:

SFGate reports, “The sweeping vista was filmed from the deck of a slightly more elevated apartment one block away on Russian Hill at Taylor and Green, according to location manager Rory Enke.”

“From this place, you could see the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, Transamerica — you kind of get your highlight reel of San Francisco from that rooftop,” director Mark Waters says.

David, who is a landscape architect, created a heavenly rooftop garden for Elizabeth before leaving.

I won’t spoil the ending for those of you who haven’t seen it, but it was kind of a surprise. Did you see it coming?

Click Here to See More TV & Movie Houses, Including:

• The Victorian in Mrs. Doubtfire
• Paul & Jamie’s Apartment in Mad About You
• Andie MacDowell’s Apartment in Green Card

Have you seen the Jason Bateman-Ryan Reynolds comedy about a couple of friends who switch bodies (and lives) after making a drunken wish in a fountain? Well, I have to say the best thing about it are the sets, which are pretty fun to look at. The rest…well, it was a little over-the-top rude and crude for me. Hope that doesn’t make me sound like an old fuddy duddy, but gross-out humor just doesn’t do it for me.

This traditional white house in Atlanta that Bateman’s character Dave lives in with his wife Jamie and three cutie-pie kids, however, does, so let’s take a closer look at it, shall we?

According to an article in the L.A. Times by David A. Keeps, the movie was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, where production designer Barry Robison and director David Dobkin found this house and decided it would be perfect as Dave’s “beginner McMansion.” (The exterior, anyway–the interiors were sets they built on a soundstage.)

Robison explained: “It’s not quite Colonial or Arts and Crafts but a pastiche of traditional elements. We noticed that a lot of houses in Atlanta had a similar style: dark floors, white cabinetry, iron railings, creamy walls, which we replicated with Benjamin Moore Linen White, and beautiful fabrics on windows and furniture.”

When Mitch (in Dave’s body–it gets kind of confusing) carries the twins around the corner into the kitchen, we can see a little more of the hallway behind him and the built-in china cabinet in the family room:

I recognized a few Dash & Albert rugs in the house, like this one. Love ‘em. That’s where I bought the striped one for my sunroom.

Looking into the Living Room…

They purchased custom furniture for the living room from Bungalow Classic in Atlanta.

I like the scene where Dave (as Mitch) tells his wife to ask him anything that only he would know. She asks, “What’s my favorite color?” And he draws a blank. Mitch (as Dave) says, “It’s celadon! Look around. There are accents of celadon everywhere in this house!”

I wonder if the set designers took their cue from that line when they set out to decorate the house, or if the actors took their cue from the sets!

The Kitchen:

I didn’t notice that little child’s desk and chair at the end of the island until I snapped this photo of the kitchen.

The floral curtains in the kitchen are an unusual choice. We’ve come to expect either simple valances or just bamboo blinds over kitchen windows, haven’t we? (It reminds me of Dorie’s charming bungalow kitchen, which is green and has curtains that come to the tops of the counters like this, too.)

Colefax & Fowler and Osborne & Little fabrics were used for the window treatments here and throughout the house.

The countertops are polished Vermont granite. Can’t say I’m crazy about them, myself. Do love the green tile backsplash, though. It’s refreshing to see something with some color and pattern instead of the standard all-white kitchen we’ve all come to expect in a house like this. (The tile is from Waterworks.)

The Dining Room:

Seemed a little odd to me that a young family like this would have its regular weeknight meals in the more formal dining room, instead of the kitchen. If I had twin babies, I wouldn’t be feeding them next to that linen fabric!

Leslie Mann, who plays Dave’s wife, is married in real life to producer-director Judd Apatow. They worked together on other comedies like Knocked Up and Funny People.

Love the striped runner on the stairway. Took several photos of it for my inspiration file.

There’s a windowseat at the end of the hall, outside the twins’ bedroom:

The twins’ nursery is pretty darn adorable, just like they are (they’re real-life brother and sister):

Dave and Jamie’s bedroom:

Robison told the L.A. Times that Dave leaves all of the decorating decisions up to his wife, so they created the couple’s bedroom as a “pattern-filled feminine space.”

You can see a little more of the fabulous windowseat behind Jason Bateman in this shot:

I couldn’t stop staring at the blue and white bedding. Love it.

The quilt and shams are from John Robshaw Textiles:

And you can buy the trellis duvet here:

So pretty!

The master bath ain’t too shabby, either:

Marble subway tiles, lighting, mirrors and plumbing fixtures were chosen from Waterworks and Restoration Hardware for an in-home spa vibe.

Mitch’s bachelor pad couldn’t be more different from Dave’s place with its vibrant and saturated colors–I loved the red Smeg fridge in his kitchen:

Production Designer Barry Robison describes it as, “a place he found in college and he’s never moved.” It’s the perfect apartment for a guy who hasn’t grown up and has no intention to.

You can find more photos and source information about the Change-Up sets at Cote de Texas and the L.A. Times. If you’re looking for something I didn’t mention, check there!

Did you see the movie? What did you think? Despite the rated-R language and yucky sight-gags, it kind of had a sweet message in the end about appreciating the life you have and making the most of it. I’m not sure I would have made it to the end, though, if it hadn’t been for the sets!

Hooked on Movie Houses? Click here to see more, including The Blind Side, which was also shot in Atlanta!

When I asked you which Christmas-movie houses you’d like to see that I hadn’t featured yet, I got a lot of requests for Orchard House from the 1994 version of Little Women.  I thought that was a great suggestion, so I watched it again over the weekend and revisited the warm and welcoming home of the March family. The sets in this one really are gorgeously done.

The exterior was built to look like the real Orchard House that was the longtime home of Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, including Louisa May Alcott who set her novel there. Here’s the real thing in Concord, Massachusetts, which looks almost identical to the movie version:

The exterior for the movie was built on Vancouver Island in a forest where there were two houses already built next to each other. They constructed new facades for each of them.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of them filming outside the Orchard House facade:

The location was chosen because there was a second house already next door, which was necessary for the story (Laurie, played by a young Christian Bale, lived there), and the driveways connected.

The movie was filmed at the beginning of summer in Vancouver, so they had to add the snow to make it look like winter.

Laurie’s house is a complete facade in front of a real house that the owners continued living in during filming. The director, Gillian Armstrong, points out that it must have been dark in there!

Here’s a sample of one of the sketches done of how they wanted Orchard House to look–in this case the back of it:

And here’s how it looked in the movie:

The opening scenes of the town were shot in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in the winter (real snow). This was the first film that had ever been allowed to shoot there. They made an exception for Little Women because Louisa May Alcott was from the area.

The interiors of Orchard House were all built on a soundstage, and that’s where the majority of filming was done.

The Production Designer was Jan Roelfs and the Set Decorator was Jim Erickson. They really did an amazing job bringing these houses to life and making them feel like they were real, and had real history in them.

Gillian Armstrong, the director, explained in the DVD commentary that although the sets were built to resemble the real Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, where Louisa May Alcott lived, the rooms had to be built bigger to accommodate the filming equipment.

The colors are much starker and the look is more formal inside the real Orchard House, as you can see on the museum’s website. Lots of white walls.

Most of the furnishings in the Orchard House Museum belonged to the Alcott family, and the rooms are kept the way they did when they lived there. I’d love to see it in person someday.

The filmmakers wanted their version to look warmer than the real thing. They chose “restful, earthy colors in the greens and grays so everything blends together and feels as one in the home,” according to Armstrong.

The Alcott family bought a 12-acre apple orchard in 1858 that came with two early-18th century houses. They moved the smaller of the two houses onto the back of the larger one and named it Orchard House.

Alcott based the Little Women on her real sisters and gave them all different names except for Beth, who had died. She said she couldn’t bear to change her name–she wanted the character to be as exactly as she remembered her sister.

The house in the movie looks as sad as its inhabitants do after Beth’s death:

The fabulous Mary Wickes played Aunt March. (Loved her in White Christmas.) She died a year after the movie came out, in 1995.

The Dining Room:

Claire Danes was Beth:

The movie wasn’t greenlit until Winona Ryder, who was a rising star in the early ’90s, was cast as Jo. (I featured her house here if you missed it!)

The Kitchen:

The Bedrooms:

The cast had to take knitting and etiquette classes before filming so they would know how to behave like young ladies of the 1860s.

I thought Susan Sarandon was wonderful as their “Marmee.”

Look at the woodwork in this bedroom. Love it:

The shot of Beth’s empty bedroom after she dies chokes me up every time:

Meg gives birth at home–to twins:

The screenplay had the movie opening with the girls acting out one of Jo’s stories in the attic.

They later decided it made it too hard to get to know the characters, and the new beginning was shot of them wishing each other a Merry Christmas.

Here grown-up Amy (who was played by Kirsten Dunst in earlier scene) visits her sisters Beth and Jo in the attic. Amy, who was a budding artist in the novel, was based on Alcott’s sister May. She never became a successful artist as she hoped. She illustrated the first edition of Little Women, but her artwork got negative reviews.

May/Amy did, however, teach Daniel Chester French, who became an artist and sculptor. She gave him the tools that he eventually used to sculpt the statue of Lincoln that sits in the Lincoln Memorial. Pretty cool, right?

When May died, she left behind a 2-year old girl called Lulu. Alcott took the toddler in and raised her.

Meg kissing her future husband John (Eric Stoltz) at the front door:

One major change Alcott made in the story is the ending. Jo falls in love with a German professor and marries him. But in real life, the author had no real interest in men and never married.

In one interview she gave, she explained that she had decided to be a lifelong spinster “because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

She did, however, have a romance during her time in Europe with Ladislas Wisniewski. She later said that “Laddie” was the model for the character of Laurie in the book.

Little Women was one of my favorite books as a girl. This is the copy I had on my shelves, and I must have read it a hundred times. Anyone else have this illustrated Junior edition?

I told my husband that I wished I still had my old copy, and he found one on eBay for me for Christmas. How sweet is that? It was one of my favorite gifts this year. Looking at the illustrations in the book really brings back memories of poring over the book when I was little and wishing I had a house full of sisters like theirs!

P.S. Visit my Movie Houses page to see if your favorite onscreen houses have been featured!