Diane Lane’s Italian Villa in “Under the Tuscan Sun”

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on AUGUST 16, 2009

Welcome to another Movie Monday, when I feature the houses from our favorite films. Under the Tuscan Sun, a movie (loosely) based on the memoir by Frances Mayes and starring Diane Lane, is a perfect “house movie.” After divorcing her cheating husband, Frances takes a trip to Italy, falls in love with an abandoned villa, and decides to buy it. As she restores the house, her life undergoes a kind of renovation of its own.

We get a glimpse of the home she shared with her husband as she’s packing up to leave:

Frances takes nothing but some boxes of her personal things and this blue vase. She pulls the flowers out of it and dumps the water on the floor before walking out:

Her best friend Patti is played by Sandra Oh of “Grey’s Anatomy.” In the movie, she’s in a relationship with Grace, played by Kate Walsh, who starred on “Grey’s Anatomy,” too, before getting her own spin off (“Private Practice”). In the movie, they’re expecting a baby together.

Because of the pregnancy, they give Frances Patti’s ticket to Italy, hoping that a vacation is just what she needs to get her life moving again.

While she’s there, Frances looks at the real estate listings that are posted (how many of us have done this on vacations, too?). She sees one she likes, for a villa called “Bramasole:”

Later, the tour bus pulls up next to the villa. She shouts, “Stop the bus!”

She steps inside and looks around:

It needs work, but Frances sees the potential in the old house:

She buys it on the spot, despite the pigeons that are living there (and one that was particularly rude to her when flying overhead):

After signing the papers, Frances tries to come to grips with the fact that she just bought the rundown villa:

She starts cleaning things up and taking inventory of all the things left behind, like bottles of wine:

And stacks of old newspapers:

She hires a team of Polish workers who don’t speak much English:

Frances says she wishes she had somebody to cook for. Then she realizes that she does have someone she can feed: her workers!

The workers set up a makeshift table for lunch:

The meals that she cooks for them are so good, they applaud. (I wish someone would applaud one of my meals around here–just once! I usually get comments like, “Why couldn’t we order pizza?” and “Pot roast again?!” But I digress.)

Her pregnant friend Patti (Sandra Oh) appears on her doorstep one day. Her girlfriend Grace (Kate Walsh) has left her, deciding she’s not ready for motherhood (this plot point was hard for me to buy, but whatever–it was a way to bring Patti back into Frances’s life). She moves into the villa’s blue bedroom:

Frances’s writing room:

Patti points out that there is steam coming up from the toilet, which probably indicates that there is something amiss:

A view of the living room, looking into the dining room:

The kitchen:

My apologies to Diane Lane for this horrible photo of her. I was concentrating on the kitchen in the background and not her face when I snapped it!

Patti dances with her new baby under the wisteria arbor:

The writer and director of the film, Audrey Wells, says that they didn’t actually change much of the house during filming to show the before and after. They just cleaned it up a little and “filmed it in warmer, prettier light,” she says, to make it look like the rooms had been renovated.

The front door:

Frances’s room (love her white dress):

Also love the church that Frances’s young friends get married in, so I had to snap a photo of it for you, too:

Frances hosts the wedding reception in her garden, where she meets an American writer played by David Sutcliffe (who coincidentally appeared in “Private Practice” with Kate Walsh–small acting world!).

You can see how much her terrace has been transformed since she bought it:

Frances steps out onto her balcony and we get a glimpse of the side of the house:

A close-up of Frances’s desk with her finished manuscript for Under the Tuscan Sun on it:

Who wouldn’t want to buy a villa here? Gorgeous!

A reader sent me a wonderful photo of the actual villa (thanks, Joanie!). She says, “We visited Cortona a few years ago and stayed at a hotel very near to Bramasole. The picture is from the car window, as I was trying to be nonchalant!”

Diane Lane has starred in several other movies that feature beautiful homes, too such asMust Love Dogs and Nights in Rodanthe. Which of her movie houses is your favorite?

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to all the others I’ve featured so far, from Sabrina to You’ve Got Mail.

You might also like:

“Nights in Rodanthe:” A Romantic Inn on the Beach

Diane Lane’s Bungalow in “Must Love Dogs”

The Beach House in “Something’s Gotta Give”

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The Money Pit: Tom Hanks & Shelley Long Buy a Fixer Upper

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on NOVEMBER 14, 2010

The 1986 comedy The Money Pit stars Tom Hanks and Shelley Long as a young couple that impulsively buys a grand Federal-style house that they think is a bargain. As you can probably guess from the title, it’s not. But they don’t figure that out until they move in and the house starts falling down around them–literally.

Here’s how the house looks when they drive up to see it for the first time:

Maureen Stapleton plays the homeowner-slash-con artist Estelle, who gives them a tour of the place and tells them that she has to sell right away. There’s no time to think about it–or to get an inspection or anything like that.

Estelle tells them she’s keeping the lights off because she can’t afford the electric bill. They later find out the wiring is faulty.

The upstairs bedroom:

They buy the big bed with the house. When Anna (Shelley Long) stretches out on the mattress on moving day, she slowly sinks through it…

The fireplace in the bedroom:

Walter checks out the powder room:

The kitchen–before the electrical fire destroys it:

It has an old stove and fridge that look original to the house:

Anna practices her violin in the parlor soon after moving in (before the renovation starts):

When she turns the water on in the master bathroom, a brown sludge oozes out:

Without running water, they’re reduced to filling the tub the old-fashioned way:

But after pouring only two buckets of water go into it, the entire tub falls through the floor and into the room below:

Walter says, “You hear about that guy up in the Bronx, went crazy, thought he was a pigeon? They found him in the park, throwing bread crumbs at himself. And he was only putting in a guest bathroom!”

The staircase fiasco starts with one loose floorboard that Walter innocently tries to fix.

Next thing he knows, the entire thing is falling apart.

A close-up of the front of the house with the old car that came with the house:

When Walter realizes he has locked himself out of the house, he knocks on the door…and the entire thing falls down:

The workers arrive, and they look like a pretty scary bunch, but they’re the only ones who would work for an amount of money Walter could afford.

Anna: “Who are they?”

Walter: “The plumbers.”

Anna: “Are you sure?”

Walter: “Not really, but I don’t care. I’m just thrilled to see somebody actually working!”

~

When Walter returns home from work at the end of the day, the workers are gone and this is what’s left of his house:

In the DVD Special Features, Director Richard Benjamin shows the model of the house that they used when planning stunts. This is the back of the house on the model:

And the back of the actual house:

Working on the entry hall:

And finally, it’s finished:

We get to see the new staircase. The entry hall. A peek into the parlor where Shelley Long is standing:

A peek inside the living room, where Tom Hanks is standing:

And that’s it. We don’t get to see how the kitchen, the bedroom, or the bathroom turned out. Nope. Just a quick view of the main rooms in front, and then it’s over. It makes me mad every time I watch it.

Does that drive anyone else nuts, too, or is it just me? In fact, I found it so irritating that we don’t get to see how all of the rooms turned out, that for a long time I refused to do a post about this movie at all. So many of you requested it, though, that you eventually wore me down. Ha.

The movie ends with Walter and Anna getting married in front of their finally-finished dream house:

The “after” of the house looks identical to the “before” shot at the beginning of the movie. The only change I can see is that window boxes have been added:

Here’s how the house looks today. More windows have been added so that there are three over three on each side of the front door (thanks to Garrison for these photos from the listing!):

I read that it was built in 1898 . . . and that it was built in 1906. Not sure which is correct, but let’s say it was built sometime between the two. It’s known as “Northway House.”

It was on the market last year for $7.9 million. In the movie, Walter and Anna get the house for a steal–$200,000. Here’s a photo of the real staircase, which was shown in the listing:

The Money Pit was a (loose) remake of the Cary Grant-Myrna Loy classic Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, one of my all-time favorites (you can see that house here).

Have you seen both movies? Which is your favorite?

P.S. Coming up on the next Movie Monday: a look at the gorgeous Craftsman from “Zathura.”

Click Here to See More Famous Houses from the Movies!

You might also like:

Sam’s Houseboat in “Sleepless in Seattle”

Meg Ryan’s Brownstone in “You’ve Got Mail”

Doris Day’s Fixer-Upper in “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies”

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