The Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California offers daily tours of its back lot. This is one of the things I was really looking forward to seeing on the vacation and it did not disappoint. The Warner Bros. back lot consists of almost 30 sound stages and lots of other sets both indoors and out. Some of them were instantly recognizable, some of them were recognizable with a bit of prodding, and some you wouldn’t recognize in a million years.
Our tour began with a brief movie showing clips from nearly 100 years worth of WB movies, television programs, and cartoons. Between the four of us I would say we recognized roughly 20% of the clips. Many of them were from old movies and new television shows we had not seen. Once the movie was over we headed outsite, climbed upon our 15-man golf cart, and hit the road!
This is the first location our guide pointed out to us:
“Why are we looking at a dirt road,” we all asked. Apparently, this is the dirt road that a T-Rex chased a jeep down in Jurassic Park.
The road was only about 30 feet long and our guide explained that they drove up and down the road many times to string together enough footage for the chase sequence.
Just past this road on the left was a small cabin.
“Has anybody here seen TRUE BLOOD?” our guide asked. Nobody on the train had seen True Blood. “Oh well, if you had, then you would recognize this cabin as Merlottes Bar and Grill!” We quickly learned that telling the guide that we had not seen a movie or did not watch a television show didn’t prevent her from showing us the location regardless.
The pond on the right hand side was much more interesting.
This pond has been a lot of things, including the sea in Poseidon. However, what I recognized it from was this:
If you look closely you’ll see Pee-Wee Herman swinging across that very same pond.
Actually if you want see what the back lot looks like (at least the outside of the sound stages), watch the chase scene from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Here’s a shot of the fake backdrop Pee-Wee places to fool the security guards chasing him:
…and here’s a shot of the back lot itself.
There were tons of little places that you might only see in a few seconds of a movie. Here are a small set of steps that lead to nowhere.
(Note the square around the tree. All the trees are actually potted plants and can be added or removed depending on what the shot calls for.)
In the movie Gremlins, these steps are in the heart of Chinatown, and lead down to a mysterious shop where a man looking for a Christmas present for his son purchases a Mogwai!
Right around the corner from this was a small alley.
You might recognize it as the dark alley in which a wet Pee-Wee Herman runs into a bunch of thugs shortly before discovering Madame Ruby the Fortune Teller…
…or you might recognize those steps as the ones the orphans sing on in the 1981 version of Annie.
It was also the place where Spider-Man’s famous “upside-down” kiss took place.
A block or so away is the front of Annie’s orphanage. Many of the locations were difficult to recognize because the fronts of many of the buildings are actually foam core and can be switched from brick to rock to wood easily. Also all of the door knobs, lights, trimmings, and everything else are designed to be easily changeable.
One other interesting thing we encountered was the Mystery Machine, getting some fuel at the lot’s onsite gas station.
In Part 2 of this post I’ll be sharing pictures from some of the television sets and inside the WB museum.