What I love about the DVDs of Rome are the “All Roads Lead to Rome” commentary (basically an optional “pop up video” style tutorial) that gives constant “what this is” information. The pop-ups in a scene inform that “Niobe is praying at a lararium, a shrine found to ancestral spirits and household gods in most Roman households” or “Atia is in the peristyle garden of her home, a standard feature of wealthy houses that was usually designed around [etc etc]” or “the glowing masks behind Servilia are wax copies poured from death masks of the family’s ancestors”, etc… The ROME DVDs are actually on my wishlists just for that feature. When I learned there was an HBO’s ROME book coming out I was hoping that’s what it would be, but basically it’s just a hardbound glorified episode guide.
I stand corrected. Thanks. But where did the maid go?
Presumably Alice had a private bath in her servant’s quarters.
Note that I don’t disagree that that set was a disaster. Talk about a TARDIS.
Nuh-uh. They cleaned up the basement in an early episode and made into a quiet office for Roseanne to write in. Later Darlene or Becky (can’t remember which one) spent an episode living down there as a lesson in getting along with her sister. Even when Darlene lived in it later it was obviously a basement.
I don’t remember anything about an attic bedroom, though.
For best–how about the set of “Rome”–I think that it was one of the biggest sets ever, actually, for a TV show, if not the biggest.
ETA: From wiki:
We won’t mention the last few minutes of the last episode, which also took place in the basement, because “zey are a rumor… zey neffer really happent!”
It was Darlene and there was never an attic bedroom.
Sure it’s legal. It’s very common in NYC to have doctors’ offices on the first floor in residential buildings.
As far as the rest of the house–I always assumed that they lived in TWO brownstones that had been combined into one. Here’s how I envisioned it:
As you’re facing the front door(s) from the street: The door to the left-hand building leads into the Huxtable’s living room. The door to the right-hand building leads to the doctor’s office. There is also a door to the doctor’s office from the living room at the foot of the stairs. (I seem to remember Cliff going into his office from there.)
So the living room/kitchen is one brownstone wide, and the unseen doctor’s office is one brownstone wide. But the upper floors of the two buildings have been gutted and rebuilt. So the upper parts are two brownstones wide, which would allow for the winding hallway and the seemingly endless bedroom space.
Many a sitcom suffers from the “shrunken second floor syndrome.” They have an eat-in kitchen, a huge dining room, and a living room so big that, as noted above, they have room to put the couch in the middle. Often there is a separate guest room and/or an office.
Then there’s the second floor. Mom & Dad may have a decent size bedroom, but the children all have teeny tiny bedrooms, and they often have to live two and even three in a room!
Take the aforementioned Huxtables. The downstairs has the eat-in kitchen, the huge dining room where they had half of New York come to Thanksgiving dinner, the huge living room, and Cliff’s office. Yet the five children have only three bedrooms. A brownstone that big on the first floor would have at least five and probably six or seven rooms on the second floor.
Roseanne and Dan’s bedroom was off the living room, yet there were only two bedrooms upstairs? There would be at least three and probably four.
Mama’s Family was the worse offender. She had raised her three children in that house, and the first season Mama, Fran, Buzz & Sonia all had second floor bedrooms, and Vint & Naomi had to live in the basement. The second season Fran died, apparently Buzz & Sonia died of “Chuck Cunningham syndrome,” Bubba came to live with them, yet Vint & Naomi were still in the basement.
Actually, I don’t think that’s so far-fetched. Judging by the exteriors (and going from memory, it’s been a long time), I thought the Connors lived in a Craftsman-style bungalow, and it’s not at all unusual for those to only have half as much square footage upstairs as downstairs. Around here, they’re often listed as 1.5 stories.
Yeah, I assumed it’s what people call an “airplane bungalow”.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned a single Wes Anderson movie so far.
I’m always completely boggled by the attention to detail in his sets… my favourite is the board-game filled closet in Royal Tenenbaums complete with a Monopoly charm dangling on the light-pull. Of course, his sets aren’t realistic at all, but they make up for it in whimsical charm (and besides, nothing in a Wes Anderson movie is grounded in reality).
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That was what I described from my neighborhood in post #56.
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If you watch the establishing shots from outside, the focus is definitely on just one house, as a reference to the Cosby domicile, not two joined houses; there is never a reference to, or any use of, an outside entrance to a “right-hand” portion of a house. Also, brownstone are seldom given permission to be joined (it is very hard to do according to a friend of mine), although it can be done.
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It was specifically mentioned several times that various characters went up/down stairs to get to/from the office. That would make sense if the office was on the ground floor of the one house.
Just using what I know having lived in brownstones in New York for twenty-five years, as well as knowledge gleaned from my friend on the Landmarks committee.
I vote for The Nostromo and Space Jocky sets from Alien.
The Nostromo was all one set so that the actors got to feel that wonderful claustrophobic feeling.
The Bunker’s residence was the most realistic house I had seen on TV. It reminded me of many homes I went to as a kid in the 70s. It looked very lived in unlike the Pristine, hermetically sealed, anti dust, germophobe’s wet dream home of Leave it to Beaver
There is the micro-opulance in The Beverly Hillbillies that comes nowhere near filling the mansion as seen from the outside. Any architect who designed that as the inside would be drawn and quartered.
And the impossible Tardis effect required to get **Lost In Space (TV series)**to fit anything in the Jupiter II. The lower floor tapers in so there’s no space for the sleeping quarters and kitchen they show. There’s a shuttle pod taking up a significant slice and the entire height of the saucer, and there’s even a magical engine room on a magical third floor; not to mention the landing legs cutting off any useable lower space.
The hotel in Rosemary’s Baby.
The hotel in Kubrick’s The Shining. I was disappointed by the remake which apparently had a more story-authentic hotel.
I also loved the set of Jerry Lewis’ The Ladies Man and the surreal sets of Brazil.
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I will again: an oddity to me about the Clampett Mansion is that it had 30 rooms but evidently no formal dining room. The reason for saying this is that they regarded the billiard room as “the fancy eatin’ parlor”, a mistake I can’t imagine them making if there were indeed a formal dining room. (In Max “Jethro” Baer’s plans for the Clampett Mansion Casino the upscale restaurant, Drysdale’s Fancy Eatin’s, features billiard table dining tables [yuk yuk]).
Another worst: Tim Burton movies. Even when the plot is as surreal as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there has to be some element of believability, and there’s no way that a family would live in the place Charlie’s parents live in. It’s on its side, it has huge holes in the roof and walls, and such a place would be condemned- it’s not a slum and it’s not even a shack but just a sort of throwtogether Hooverville shanty- Charlie would have been removed by CPS long ago. Strangely, however, the Willie Wonka factory- where surrealism would work just fine- is pretty much interchangeable with the first Willie Wonka movie save for its less interesting Oompa Loompas. His other movies have similar “over the top” weird sets.
IIRC, the original movie was filmed on soundstages. I forget where the exteriors were filmed.
The made-for-TV remake was filmed on location at the actual hotel in Estes Park, CO where King was inspired to write the novel.
The Timberline Lodge, on the south side of Mount Hood, Oregon (east of Portland).
Little Boston from ‘There Will Be Blood’.
I’m biased though because I got to see the film screened on the set.
I don’t even pretend to understand Fight Club beyond knowing that Tyler Durden wasn’t real. If, however, that dilapidated house existed at all, even for after The Narrator’s apartment blew up, how the hell did that place he supposedly lived in continue not to be condemned? That was a freaking mess and anyplace you had to turn off all electricity once it started raining would not be legally habitable, even on a squatter basis.
Anyone but Sampiro?
Not a yea or nay, but no one’s mentioned the ever-changeable I Love Lucy set. At various times:
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There’s a window in the back wall, there’s not window in the back wall;
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There’s a separate room for the baby, the baby has to sleep in the Ricardo’s bedroom and they start looking for a bigger place;
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The Ricardos live on the top floor (the episode where Lucy and Ethel are trapped on the roof), there’s another floor above them;
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The Mertzes live directly below the stars, or the live on the same floor (the washing machine episode where they push a broken down washing machine across the back balcony and then off).
What gives?