Old School | 2003
Age is no barrier to starring in a frat-house comedy, as Wilson, Ferrell and Vaughn keep the good times rollin' by starting their own fraternity.
The fictitious setting of ‘Harrison University’ looks an awful lot like Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the aerial views. As it would. These are leftover shots from the director's previous outing, Road Trip.
The main setting of the movie, though, is firmly in Los Angeles, with the Westwood campus of UCLA, on LA's Westside, providing the campus.
The 'Marriott', outside which Mitch Martin (Luke Wilson) catches a cab home at the start of the film, is the Cocoanut Grove entrance to the old Ambassador Hotel, which stood at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard at Catalina Street, midtown, until being demolished in the late 2000s.
The wedding of Frank Ricard (Will Ferrell) takes place, despite the best efforts of Beanie Campbell (Vince Vaughn), in Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1757 North Lake Avenue at Atchison Street, north Pasadena. A couple of years later, Vaughn was back at the same church – this time with Luke’s brother, Owen Wilson – in Wedding Crashers.
This is also the bomb-damaged ‘German’ church (CGI opened up the roof to the sky) in which General Olbricht (Bill Nighy) approaches Colonel von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) about the possibility of killing Hitler in Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie.
The wedding reception, with the foul-mouthed classics band, is held in the Ebell of Los Angeles, 4400 West Eighth Street at Lucerne Boulevard, midtown, a venue seen in countless films, including Forrest Gump, The Addams Family, Air Force One, Catch Me If You Can, Cruel Intentions, Darkman, Death Becomes Her, The General’s Daughter, Ghost, Very Bad Things and The Wedding Planner.
Mitch is embarrassed by his ‘Godfather’ reputation and the arrival of his boss's (under-age) daughter in the Quality Coffee Shop, 1238 West Seventh Street, downtown, another veteran location, which includes Se7en and Training Day, among its many screen appearances.
Unfazed by marriage, his wife later finds him streaking along Honolulu Boulevard, in Montrose, in Glendale in the San Fernando Valley. Also on Honolulu Avenue is the ‘University Cafe’, where the frat boys determine to pass all the tests set for them by scheming Dean Pritchard (Jeremy Piven). It’s the Montrose Home Bakery, 2325 Honolulu Avenue, west of Ocean View Boulevard. Eagle-eyed location spotters might recognise the plain brick wall alongside the bakery as the strangely anonymous bar seen in The Wedding Singer.
The fraternity house itself, scene of the riotous Mitch-a-Palooza, is 1803 Bushnell Avenue in Pasadena – that’s the same street as the McFly home in Back To The Future.
