Peter Hirschberg

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

The E.T. House

I had promised myself that if I ever made a trip to the West Coast I would visit the E.T. House - that is, the house they used when they filmed the movie E.T.

I was delighted to find that the house, according to my GPS, was only a 30 miles drive from my motel where I was staying to attend the LA Film Festival.

So as promised - me and Lincoln, Lincoln's girlfriend, and Michael all drove out there Saturday morning before heading off to check out a couple films at the festival.

I brought home a pinecone that was sitting in the driveway (figured it was fair game). You can see the pinecone in the lower right corner of the 2nd photo (thank you Michael for grabbing it for me).




Here's a couple shots of the house from the movie to compare what it looked like back then.



It was SOOOO FREAKY being there in that neighborhood and seeing that house. With the dramatic mountain behind it just as I remembered it.

E.T. is one of my 2 top favorite films of all times, and by 2 top favorites I mean tied for first place. It was one of two films that quite literally changed my life after seeing them. Standing there in front of the actual house gave me a feeling that's very hard to put into words. At one point I was on my knees in front of the driveway rubbing my hands around on the asphalt of the street in front of the house.

As we were driving through the neighborhood and driving up to the actual house, I was shocked at how different things looked. The entire neighborhood was literally brand new when the film was made, so add 25 years of vegetation, trees, and the houses themselves getting run down.

In-person, everything seemed so much smaller than it appeared in the film.

You can get pretty stunning aerial photos of the house with this link to Microsoft Live Search. Use the control in the upper left corner of the screen and you can actually rotate around the house. Very neat.

After this, we rolled by the apartment complex used in the movie "Karate Kid" and took some photos. That movie doesn't mean anything to me, so I'll skip posting the photos from that place here. We went there because of Michael and Lincoln.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to say this is very cool!
I loved E.T. and the house and it is seems magical to be there I'm sure!

nosoloSporting said...

can you tell me where is the house??? This summer i will go to los angeles and i want to make the same picture like you!!!
webmaster@nosolosporting.com

Thank you!!!!!!!!

Peter Hirschberg said...

The address is 7121 Lonzo St, Tujunga, CA 91042. If I remember it's relatively close to the Poltergeist house (too lazy to look up that address right now though).

Anonymous said...

I've been trying to find how to get to this house, but it is impossible! Lots of roads are closed off and there is a gated community I can't get through. Any special way to get there?

Peter Hirschberg said...

@Jen - really? I don't remember ANY obstructions to just driving straight to the house. No gates or anything. Maybe they closed it off due to people pestering the owners.

If you look at the map, there is a way to get there (by walking) through the woods behind the house. :-)

Just like in the movie! Enter the location into a GPS, put it in walking mode, and hike there!

Good luck! - and definitely let me know if you manage to reach the house and any pictures you have. I would have loved to get pictures of the rear of the house but was paranoid about entering the service road that runs behind it since we were driving and all.