#2: Panic in Paris. (Answer)
#4: The old man gets a major award. (Answer)
#5: Christmas in Chicago. (Answer)
#6: This family is solid as a rock. (Answer)
#7: Faking it for Christmas. (Answer)
#8: Christmas gone wrong. (Answer.)
#9: Are You My Mother? (Answer)
#10: In love with the boy next door. (Answer)
The 2006 comedy You, Me and Dupree stars Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson as newlyweds who return home from their wedding in Hawaii to their beautiful blue Craftsman bungalow…and an unwanted houseguest. Owen Wilson plays Dillon’s wacky childhood friend Dupree who needs a place to crash. Add to the mix Dillon’s manipulative new father-in-law (Michael Douglas), and comedic chaos ensues.
According to the IMDb website, “The interior shots of Molly and Carl’s house are filmed on the set of Hope and Michael Steadman’s house from “thirtysomething” (1987). The exterior is the house used at the end of 13 Going on 30 (2004), where it is pink.”
I’m not sure I believe it, though. Here’s the 13 Going on 30 house:
The roof lines and windows just don’t match up, so unless they did some extensive remodeling work on the house, they seem to be different. The interior floor plan is different than the house on “thirtysomething,” too, but since they were sets on a soundstage, they could have been reworked for You, Me and Dupree.
UPDATE: Lindsay of Iamnotastalker tracked down the You, Me and Dupree house in the historic West Adams district of L.A. and reports that it is definitely not the same house as the one in 13 Going on 30. You can see her post about it here and about the 13 Going on 30 house (which is no longer pink) here. Thanks, Lindsay!
When Carl and Molly arrive home from their honeymoon, there are piles of gifts in their living room:
“We tried to make Carl and Molly’s world sort of warm and accessible and you’ll see that in the choice of their house,” say Directors Joe and Anthony Russo. “It’s an older home, modest in scale, and the neighborhood feels like it’s been there awhile.”
That moose head that Dupree brings with him when he moves in was actually a deer head “repurposed” to look like a moose. A moose head would have been too big for him to carry around. You can see it propped in the corner below the stairs:
The front of the house has two “living rooms” with fireplaces that face each other from opposite walls. Here’s the one to the left of the front door:
And here’s the fireplace to the right of the front door:
Love those windows, and the tile on the fireplace:
In the commentary, the filmmakers mention that they shot this view of the street from inside the real house because they wanted to capture the look you can only get through old glass:
The actual house had a totally different floor plan than the set’s version, however.
After Dupree sets the living room on fire, we get a look at it while it’s empty:
After they get new furniture, it looks like this:
They wanted Carl and Molly’s house to look believable as a first home for a young couple, but it also had to reflect the fact that Molly had grown up wealthy and was used to living a life of luxury where everything was well decorated and put together.
The movie featured actors Seth Rogen and Bill Hader in small roles as two of Carl’s buddies. I had forgotten they were in this. In 2006 they were both still fairly unknown. Rogen would star in “Knocked Up” in ’07, and at the time of filming, Hader was in his first year on SNL.
The dining room has a window seat:
The Kitchen:
In this shot you can see the checkerboard floor:
The Bedroom:
I’m not sure about the odd window treatment over the bed:
The woodwork and built-ins in this room are beautiful.
In one of the deleted scenes on the DVD we get a look at the upstairs landing that isn’t seen in the movie:
Owen Wilson says he based the character of Dupree on a dog he used to have. And that explains a lot, doesn’t it?
Craftsman-style houses like this are so popular in the movies. Makes me wonder why more builders aren’t taking note and trying to recreate some of the classic home styles that may be small on square footage but are big on charm and character. I’d take one of these over a sprawling McMansion with soaring ceilings any day.
Visit TV/Movie Houses to See More Craftsmans in the Movies, fromMonster-in-Law to Must Love Dogs!
The original 1939 version of The Women is a classic. It’s so campy and over the top that I always get a kick out f it. There were several “gimmicks” to the movie. For one thing, there wasn’t a single man in it. For another, it was filmed in black and white except for a lengthy fashion-show scene that they shot in color.
Writer and Director Diane English says she always thought it should be remade for contemporary audiences “because women have changed so much since then.” In 2008, she did just that, with a version that features actresses like Meg Ryan, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Annette Bening.
The tagline for the original was “It’s All About the Men.” But Diane believed that women have many more interests than just the opposite sex these days, so she says she “wanted to weave in issues of female empowerment, body image, and self-esteem.” She wrote the first draft in 1995, but it was stuck in development for over a decade.
Maybe that’s why the movie felt a little stale when it finally did come out? After shows like “Sex and the City” and the “Real Housewives” series on Bravo, The Women seemed dated, almost like it was actually made in ’95.
Meg Ryan plays good-girl-done-wrong Mary Haines, and her traditional red-brick house held my interest more than the movie itself.
Here’s a shot of the living room during a party Mary threw for a large group of women. She supposedly did all the cooking for it herself “because I think people appreciate it.” Considering the size of the party, I had a hard time believing she did everything herself, but whatever.
Mary’s Kitchen:
I really liked the kitchen with the stained wood backsplash and the open shelves. The fabulous Cloris Leachman plays Mary’s housekeeper and was one of my favorite characters in the movie.
Meg Ryan is one of my favorite rom-com actresses, but she just didn’t look like herself in this movie. I watched her in the 2001 movie Kate & Leopold yesterday (photos of her NYC apartment in that one coming soon!) and was surprised by the difference.
Ryan’s first acting job was playing Candice Bergen’s daughter in the George Cukor filmRich and Famous. Bergen played her mother again in The Women.
Diane English wrote the TV show “Murphy Brown” in the 1990s, which turned Bergen into a sitcom star.
The brass and hunter green in the kitchen seemed like a bit of a ’90s flashback to me. Was that to show that the kitchen had been around a long time and wasn’t too trendy? Or is it a sign of trends to come?
I’m a little puzzled by the TV on the counter, too. Wouldn’t that make it hard to open the cabinet doors above it? You may recall that they used that TV to show us part of a Dove commercial. Dove products were also shown on the bathroom counter in one scene.
The Powder Room:
Stephen’s Study:
It felt like many of these rooms, including Stephen’s study, were part of the real house and not sets. Some of the rooms felt a little empty–not as staged and “decorated” as you’d expect from a movie like this.
Master Bedroom and Bath:
Linda, who writes about movie sets at Silver Screen Surroundings, points out that the bed looks small for a master bedroom.
She also notes that the arched window in the bathroom matches the one on the exterior of the house. She believes this scene was filmed in the actual house (you can see more photos and information about the movie in her post):
Decorating for Christmas:
I thought this room looked so pretty when they were decorating it for the holidays. The painted mantel is gorgeous.
The Screened Porch on the Side:
This may be one of my favorite parts of the house–the screened porch. I wish they showed us an inside view!
A lot of the movie was filmed in Massachusetts (Georgetown and Boston). I believe that’s where this house is located, as well, but I couldn’t confirm it. If anyone knows for sure, let me know.
Clare Boothe Luce wrote the original play as a poison-pen letter to all the catty, back-biting women she had met in New York City society. It was a smash hit on Broadway.
It was made into a movie in 1939 with MGM’s biggest female stars who were under contract with the studio at the time. Joan Crawford was one of them. She didn’t want to play the role of mistress Crystal Allen, but it turned out to be a great career move for her.
Eva Mendes played the part of Crystal in the remake but was fairly toothless compared to Crawford’s maneater:
Norma Shearer was perfectly cast in the role of good-girl-done-wrong Mary Haines. She had a great house in the original movie, too. Let’s take a look at it while we’re at it!
Rosalind Russell played Sylvia Fowler, and it was her first comedic role. Her next movie was the classic screwball comedy His Girl Friday with Cary Grant, one of my all-time favorites. I’ve seen it so many times, I could probably recite it from memory…
I love the corner window seat at the base of Mary’s stairs. The windows are lined with open shelves:
In the play, there was a lesbian character that didn’t make it into the original movie. Diane English revived the character and developed Alex more thoroughly for the remake (played by Jada Pinkett Smith).
Mary’s kitchen in the original:
A lot of the action in the original took place in a spa where the women gathered to gossip:
Did you like the remake as well as the original? What did you think of Mary Haines’ house–past and present?
4/10 UPDATE: I found the real house that the 2008 version of The Women was filmed in. To see the photos and compare the real interiors to how they appeared in the movie, click here.
Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for more, including other Meg Ryan movies like You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle.
