Earth Girls Are Easy, 1988
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Los Angeles: Flights: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
You know you want to. Pick up a treat at Randy’s Donuts, 805 West Manchester Avenue (tel: 310.645.4707), down in Inglewood
Griffith Observatory, 2800 East Observatory Road, in Griffith Park (tel: 323.664.1181)
Trivia
Randy’s Donuts is just so tempting to filmmakers: see it in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!, The Golden Child, James McBride’s remake of Breathless and two John Landis films, Coming To America and Into The Night.
The Griffith Observatory is famously featured in Rebel Without a Cause, and it’s also where Arnold Schwarzenegger materialises and gets his clothes in The Terminator.
Earth Girls Are Easy location: the ‘Deca Dance’ nightclub: Griffith Observatory, Observatory Drive, Griffith Park Los Angeles
Filmed around a candy-coloured Los Angeles, this attempt at an instant pop cult, from the director of Absolute Beginners, didn’t really take off, despite the cast – and an early appearance by a pre-stardom Jim Carrey.
Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Carrey are three furry aliens who plop into Valley Girl Geena Davis’ swimming pool.
‘Our Lady of the Valley’ hospital, where Davis’ two-timing husband intends to dissect the aliens, is the Olive View Medical Center, 1444 South Olive View Drive at Eucalyptus Avenue in Sylmar, just north of the Foothill Freeway, I-210. No longer in use as a medical centre, the facility lives on as a movie location for movies such as Beverly Hills Cop II and the Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling clunker Over The Top.
The ‘Blondes’ number beach, with its ‘No Brunettes’ sign, is Zuma Beach on Route 1, six miles north of Malibu. The freeway chase following the unintentional gas station ‘hold-up’ filmed in San Dimas Valley – home of Bill And Ted – east of Los Angeles along Foothill Freeway.
There's an appearance from that great icon of Los Angeles culture, Randy’s Donuts, 805 West Manchester Avenue, down in Inglewood. It’s the donut store shaped like – what else? – a giant donut. You may have seen it more recently in Iron Man 2.
A neat bit of location work is the ‘Deca Dance’ disco, where Jeff Goldblum plays piano on a terrace overlooking a twinkling nightscape of Los Angeles. Beneath all the neon dressing, the art-deco exterior of the nightclub is the stair, the terrace and the eastern dome of the Griffith Observatory, 2800 East Observatory Road, in Griffith Park. The observatory is, of course, a major location for Rebel Without A Cause – which happens to be showing on Geena Davis’ TV in the movie.
