Meryl Streep’s House & Bakery in “It’s Complicated”

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on JULY 11, 2010

When the movie “It’s Complicated” hit theaters in late 2009, I posted a few photos of the Spanish-style ranch that Meryl Streep’s character Jane lives in. Since then, I have gotten numerous requests for more photos, including ones of the sumptuous bakery that she owns. All of the sets were pretty incredible, so I think it warrants the full Movie Monday treatment.

Writer and Director Nancy Meyers calls this “The Santa Barbara movie we filmed in New York.” The house they used for exterior shots was in Los Angeles (“Filming in Santa Barbara would have been too expensive”), and the interiors for the houses and the bakery were built on a soundstage in Brooklyn.

Living Room:

Everything looks so warm and sunny in the movie that you’d never would guess that it was actually cold and snowing outside these soundstages during much of the filming, would you?

The painting over the fireplace was done by artist Mitchell Johnson.

Jane’s friends were played by Mary Kay Place (amazing on “Big Love” as Adaleen Grant, and a long-time friend of Nancy Meyers’), Rita Wilson (who is Meryl Streep’s friend in real life), and Alexandra Wentworth.

The large armoire opens to reveal a TV for the family to watch on Movie Night:

Kitchen:

The interiors were created by Production Designer Jon Hutman, who also worked his magic in movies like “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” “The Holiday,” and “Something’s Gotta Give.”

SPOILER ALERT! I will be discussing major plot points from this point on. Look away if you haven’t seen the movie yet!

You can see the living room behind Jane and Adam (Steve Martin) as they chat in the kitchen. Martin plays the nice guy who is courting her, unaware that her ex Jake (Alec Baldwin) is trying to win her back.

Meyers says she was influenced by old screwball comedies like His Girl Friday(one of my all-time faves!) where the exes fall in love again and it complicates things. In “His Girl Friday,” Rosalind Russell is all set to marry nice-guy Ralph Bellamy when her ex, played by Cary Grant, reenters the picture and decides he wants her back. Poor Ralph doesn’t stand a chance.

Meyers says that after “It’s Complicated” came out, someone said to her, “You let Ralph Bellamy get the girl!”

Jane’s grown children looked to me like they were plucked right out of a J. Crewcatalog.

John Krasinski played Harley, engaged to Jane’s daughter Lauren. Meyers enjoyed working with him so much in “The Holiday” (he had a small role as Cameron Diaz’s assistant) that she cast him again in this one.

Did you know he married Emily Blunt in Italy over the weekend? Loved her in “The Devil Wears Prada.”

The food in the movie was as drool-worthy as the sets were, thanks to Food Stylist Susan Spungen. You can read an interview with her about how she made everything look so fabulous here.

Patio:

Hallway:

Bedroom:

Bath:

Meryl Streep only looks like she’s sitting in a tub full of water here. She’s actually dry, sitting under a shelf that was built around her. There’s a Tupperware bowl with water on top of the shelf that she uses to dip her washcloth into.

The setup was Streep’s idea, who didn’t want to sit in water for the 2-3 days it would take to film the scene.

Garden & Yard:

When Adam staked out where the addition would be, I was gobsmacked. It’s going to be HUGE. And I’ll admit I still don’t entirely understand why she even needs a new kitchen, when the one she has is already so lovely, and she’s living alone.

But it works for the story, I guess, and brings Adam into her life. I just hope there’s a sequel so we can see how it all turns out!

Jane’s Bakery:

When Jane tells Adam he can choose anything from her bakery’s menu, and then she makes him that divine-looking chocolate croissant, I was ready to marry her myself! Every time I see the movie I go away from it hungry.

Did you think Jane ended up with the right guy in the end?

I was glad she didn’t fall for Jake again, which would have been a little more predictable, but I thought Adam was a bit dull. I wish he had been more like Newton Davis, the architect he played in “Housesitter” (one of my favorite Steve Martin characters–photos of that movie here).

2/11 UPDATE: You can see the real house that was used for the exteriors at Cote de Texas.

Set photos via Universal Studios and Traditional Home, where you can see more of the stills. Or check out my original post about the movie here.

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to other Nancy Meyers films likeSomething’s Gotta Give, Father of the Bride, and The Parent Trap.

You might also like:

Meryl Streep’s Spanish-Style Ranch in “It’s Complicated”

A “Complicated” Kitchen by Wendi Young Design

Movie Monday: The House in “Father of the Bride Part II”

LinkWithin

Tagged as:

Steve Martin’s Yellow House in “Housesitter”

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on JUNE 7, 2009

Welcome to Movie Monday, when I post photos of the houses from our favorite films. Today I’m featuring Housesitter, a romantic comedy withSteve Martin and Goldie Hawn that came out in 1992 and has remained one of my favorites ever since. Even though I have watched this movie more times than I can count, I still laughed out loud while watching it again today. It never gets old for me.

Steve Martin plays Newton Davis, an architect who built a dream house for his girlfriend Becky (Dana Delaney). He tied a big red ribbon around it and asked Becky to marry him, but she said no. He draws a sketch of the house on a napkin and shows it to Gwen (Goldie Hawn), a waitress at the Cafe Budapest.

Here’s what it looks like when Gwen sees it in person, with the ribbon drooping and the house empty and abandoned:

According to an article about it in Entertainment Weekly:

Sexy Dana Delany, who plays architect Steve Martin’s hard-to-please squeeze in Housesitter, must be the only person in America not impressed with his dream house. Nestled by a pretty pond in Concord, Mass., it’s both snug (1,800 square feet) and architecturally prestigious. The columned porch is classic Yankee farmhouse, the gables evocative of 1800s Greek Revival, the clapboard siding and checkerboard window pattern very ”American Gothic.”

”It taps a memory bank,” says architect Debra Wassman, who did the design with husband Jonathan Lanman. And [the house plan] is available by mail from New York’s Trumbull Architects.

Davis (Steve Martin) disappears after a one-night stand with Gwen (Goldie Hawn), leaving her with nothing but the napkin and stories about his idyllic hometown of Dobbs Mill. Knowing the house is empty, she sets out to see it for herself–and maybe take a little vacation there while she’s at it. Here she is exploring the village after getting off the bus. (“Housesitter” was shot in Concord and Cohasset, Massachusetts.)

Gwen spots the little yellow house. Finding the front door unlocked, she looks around.

We don’t get to see much more of the upstairs loft than this — the view of the pond from the window:

It’s really a very small house — one bedroom and bath, a great room, a kitchen, and an open loft. But it looks like it would feel much bigger than that:

A Little “Housesitter” Trivia:

• Designer Kelly Wearstler (Top Design judge) is listed in the credits (she helped with the sets).
• Meg Ryan was originally cast in the role of Gwen, but she dropped out.
• In one scene, Goldie Hawn is singing “The Name Game,” and she inserts the names Katie and Ollie into the song. Her children are Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson, who were still young at the time.

Gwen loves the house and moves in. She tells a little fib to get the local grocer to put her food on Newton Davis’s tab — that she’s his wife — and word spreads fast. She soon meets his parents, who fall in love with her and help her furnish the house as a wedding present.

Davis comes to Dobbs Mill with plans to sell the house and discovers her there. Here he is, shocked to discover that his house is fully furnished, decorated, and lived in:

The decorating is very eclectic–and looked very fresh and new to us in the early ’90s.

He spots Gwen in the kitchen, cooking, and she asks, “What are YOU doing here?”

In this photo, when she’s pulling her dog off Davis, you get a glimpse of the dining area, furnished with mismatched chairs that are each painted a different color:

When he tells her she has to get out of his house, Gwen climbs into bed and pouts. “Boy, we had a great marriage going until YOU showed up.”

Davis’s old girlfriend Becky (Dana Delaney) walks in on their argument, and he’s surprised to find out she and Gwen are friends. Becky says she was never able to picture Davis as the type of guy you’d marry until she saw him through Gwen’s eyes. She admits she’s a little jealous of Gwen now and wishes she hadn’t been so quick to turn his proposal down.

So Davis strikes a deal with Gwen — they’ll pretend to be married for a little while longer, and then when they “divorce,” he’ll get Becky back.

This will probably shock you, but things don’t go as he planned. He finds himself falling for Gwen instead.

In all the times I’ve seen the movie, I never noticed what Gwen was hanging on the wall in this scene — the napkin sketch of the house.

I wanted to get a shot of the porch with the blue-painted ceiling, but this is the best I could do:

Here are Davis’s parents on the porch (played by the fabulous Julie Harris and Donald Moffat):

A view of the house from across the pond, where a house is being built for Gwen’s “parents” (who are really two homeless people she hired to play the parts):

I was heartbroken to read that this house was built specifically as a “standing set” in Concord, Massachusetts, for the movie, and was torn down after filming ended.

Excuse the credits, but this is the only picture I could get of the house from overhead (I took these while watching the movie because I couldn’t find any good ones of the house anywhere else):

UPDATE 1/10: I was just contacted by Debra Wassman, the architect behind theHousesitter house. She says there were two houses. Her company built the first one, which was named House Beautiful’s “Best Small House 1990.” I remember that issue! Wish I still had it. But at least you can see it on their website: Trumball Architects.

The second was built for the movie. It was a temporary structure that was torn down afterward. She explains:

The main difference between the movie house and ours is the center feature of our house was the two-story fireplace not an opening to the kitchen, and we also had a garage. The film house was a set and torn down; our house was bought and badly renovated so really both are lost.

The original plans were built all over the country, and the world; we have seen a few. I know the changes on the movie house were made for filmability, but also so they didn’t have to pay us a fee! We got film credit because we asked, not because they offered.

Thanks, Debra! You can see more examples of her amazing work at Trumball Architects. I love all of the houses they’ve done.

Visit my TV/Movie Houses for links to all of the others I’ve featured so far, from Father of the Bride to Baby Boom.

You might also like:

Movie Monday: The House in “Father of the Bride Part II”

Movie Monday: The “Father of the Bride” House

Movie Monday: The Perfect World of Stepford, Connecticut

LinkWithin