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Nov 02, 2024

Fascinating documentary uncovers the highs and horrors of living in an iconic on-screen Hollywood home

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a “famous” home that has been transformed from a simple abode into an on-screen icon? Would you enjoy the notoriety of living in a house that appeared in a

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a “famous” home that has been transformed from a simple abode into an on-screen icon?

Would you enjoy the notoriety of living in a house that appeared in a popular movie or TV show? Would the relentless throng of tourists cause pleasure or pain? Would it raise or lower the property value? And most importantly, how could you cash in on it?

Well, an intriguing new documentary, titled “The House From…,” sets out to answer all of those questions — revealing the very complicated reality of living inside a familiar on-screen property.

Directed by Tommy Avallone, the newly released film takes viewers inside a slew of very recognizable homes that have popped up in a wide number of movies and TV series over the years, including “Full House,” “The Golden Girls,” “Breaking Bad,” “Twilight,” “Home Alone,” “Friday,” “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” “Old School,” “Roseanne,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Family Matters,” “The Goonies,” “A Christmas Story,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “Halloween.”

These homes — and their notoriety — have long fascinated Avallone, who said of the inspiration behind the project: “Visiting these houses was something that I have been doing for years. Asking to come inside with a camera was just the logical next step.”

What Avallone found is that there is no blueprint for ideal “famous” home ownership — in fact many owners of these recognizable properties have very mixed emotions about their residences. Some, he learned, revel in the attention, while others not only shy away from it but reject it outright, building fences and walls around their houses in a desperate attempt to shield it from prying eyes.

The reality is, owning a famous home is bound to come with a fair share of visitors, particularly if the property is in an accessible location.

“For fans, it can feel like they’re a part of the show,” says narrator Jason Lee, as footage is shown of a superfan dunking a basketball in the standard above the garage at the “Wonder Years” house in Burbank, CA. “But for homeowners, it can feel like trespassing.”

As it happens, the owner of the “Wonder Years” home is happy to allow fans to pay homage to the show on his property, admitting that he finds their devotion rather endearing.

But for others, the swarms of TV tourists are nothing more than a nightmare.

Take the owner of the “Breaking Bad” bungalow in Albuquerque, NM. She has been caught on camera numerous times cussing out fans who dare to step foot on her property — particularly if those fans come with pizzas in hand, in hopes of recreating a famous scene from the show in which lead character Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston) hurls a pie onto the roof of the home.

Avallone shows us that the people who buy and/or live in these famous homes tend to fall into one of five categories: Those who embrace it, those who ignore it, those who resent it, those who revel in the lucrative opportunities that owning such an iconic property presents, and those who take capitalizing on the fame to a whole new level.

Some famous homeowners just get a kick out of living in a famous home, allowing — and even encouraging — looky-loos and tourists to come, take pictures, and revel in their fond memories.

The current owner of the “Goonies” house in Astoria, OR, paid $1.5 million for the privilege of living there, and encourages fans (naturally called “Goonies”) to take pictures in iconic locations around the exterior of his home.

He is happy for guests to do everything from recreating a scene in which Mike gazes out over the porch railing to performing the “Truffle Shuffle,” which requires people to lift their shirts up and energetically wiggle around in his front yard.

The owner has even gone to war with his neighbors, who are not as excited as he is about the never ending train of tourists that continuously shows up.

Another owner who embraces the love fans show is the owner of the South Pasadena home in which “Halloween” character Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, resided in the hit horror movie.

The home’s latest resident happily pages through the scrapbook she’s made of the fun notes and letters she’s received from fans who thank her for keeping the iconic home as is and for allowing them the privilege of taking pictures on the doorstep.

“I’m very serious about my duties here,” she says. “We just decided we were the type of people who were going to embrace it.”

She even keeps a pumpkin in her front yard, so people can take pictures with it.

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Thousands of “Golden Girls” fans, as well as relatives of the former owners of the house used for exterior shots, were devastated when the new owners painted the single story home in Brentwood, CA, relandscaped it and put a modern black fence around it. It had been a popular stop on the Homes of the Stars tours for decades.

That put an end to the hundreds of letters, addressed not to the actors but to the characters themselves, that the previous owners had received. But it also sparked a fierce debate about whether the owners of these properties have some kind of obligation to indulge fans’ obsessions.

But if “Golden Girls” fans were left devastated by the aesthetic changes to the iconic house — imagine the horror that “Family Matters” lovers experienced when a Chicago house that featured prominently in the show was torn down to make way for a modern triplex.

Viewer Megan Johnson understands why they did it but admits she was disappointed.

“Particularly when we’re young, these places are so real to us. We really believe these families live here,” she says. “We generally believed that we invited these people into our homes every week and we, in return, were invited back into theirs.”

One famous house on Rubio Street in Altadena, CA, has been used for locations of so many television shows, movies, and commercials that fans seem to lose track.

Owners Liz and Mike proudly list the projects that have been shot in their home, both inside and out: “7th Heaven,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “This Is Us,” “American Pie 1 and 2″ (Stifler peed off their balcony); and movies Can’t Hardly Wait,” “Cheaper by the Dozen” (with Steve Martin), “The Mentalist,” “NCIS,” “Criminal Minds,” “Ghost Whisperer,” “Desperate Housewives,” and “I Know Who Killed Me,” are but a few.

“To think that the house itself is famous makes me very proud,” said Liz, mentioning that friends and relatives from all over call to tell her: “I saw your house.”

It’s also likely to have made them very rich. Location fees can reach up to thousands of dollars per day, and homeowners are often put up in swanky locations with all expenses paid while the scenes are shot.

The owner of Jesse’s mansion from “Breaking Bad” gives examples of how she was able to benefit from shooting certain scenes (some of them quite gruesome) in her Albuquerque, NM, home. The crew used both the interior and the exterior.

She reports that if they just needed to come into the house to scope things out, they paid her $500 per day. If they filmed there, they paid her $2,000 per day. If they don’t film more than 14 days there, state regulations say that she doesn’t need to pay income taxes on her earnings.

“At that point, my son was in high school, and I was able to buy him a car,” she says. “On a school teacher’s salary, it was hard for me to be able to afford things, so I put that money towards a used car.”

Another homeowner of a house used in “Breaking Bad” is the polar opposite of the preceding sentiment. She’s become sick and tired of fans dropping by to recreate the famous scene of White angrily tossing a pizza on the roof of his own home.

She has been seen time and time again expressing her frustration and anger at these fans—and was actually caught on camera by Avallone screaming at a group of people who turned up at the house to toss their own pie.

“The show ended eight years ago! Get a life!” she tells one visitor, in one of her less-printable rants.

This group is probably the most intriguing of them all.

They range from one homeowner who charges fans $10 a pop to take photos sitting on her porch, where they filmed “Can’t Hardly Wait” to the guy who could well be making millions from his “Christmas Story”-themed “campus.”

The owners of the home used for Bella Swan’s house in the “Twilight” films bought the fixer-upper in St. Helens, OR, and restored it to the same condition it was in while the iconic movie franchise was being shot. They even kept the furniture and appliances that were in the film. They turned it into a very successful Airbnb that appears to be booked for the next several years!

Then there’s the owner of Buffalo Bill’s House from “Silence of the Lambs.” Located in Perryopolis, PA, the home has been fixed up to use as a short-term rental and a spooky special events location.

Set on almost two acres along the Youghiogheny River, the $290,000 house seems to be a bargain, since it features a pool, rose gardens, fountains, an antique train caboose, a three-car garage that was once a general store and a creepy basement.

But the prize for the most creative, and probably most lucrative use of a famous location home goes to the owner of the Cleveland, OH, “Christmas Story” house, and several other buildings on the street.

Rather than actually live in the property, he turned it into a museum, an interactive experience house, parking lots, and a gift shop where they sell custom manufactured pink bunny onesies like Ralphie’s, leg lamps, shot glasses shaped like leg lamps, and numerous other similarly themed tchotchkes.

He estimates that hundreds of thousands of tourists show up annually, and around 80,000 of them pay for a guided tour.

“Once a house reaches a certain fame level, there’s no way to comfortably live in it as a personal residence,” he says. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in the ‘Home Alone’ house. There are people always coming by to see it. You can’t personally and quietly enjoy your residence.

“That’s a problem, and that’s why this house will always be ‘The Christmas Story’ house, and nobody else is ever going to buy it. It will always be an attraction.”

The “Christmas Story” homeowner has the spirit that seems to work best for the most iconic homes. But why are people so drawn to them?

Avallone attempted to answer that question by interviewing Villanova pop culture professor Susan Mackey-Kallis.

“I think pop culture has replaced religion, particularly for a lot of young people who are no longer religiously affiliated,” she says. “It is their world. As a culture, we are much more secular, and people are not going to places of worship the way their parents and their grandparents did. But that impulse doesn’t go away.

“The idea that there’s something bigger. I think pop culture has replaced churches or synagogues as places of worship for them. That draw is still there, they just fulfill it in different ways.”