Forgetting Sarah Marshall | 2008


- Locations |
- Hawaii;
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Nicholas Stoller
First-time writer Jason Segel and first-time director Nicholas Stoller deliver the goods in this school-of-Apatow rom-com, set mainly against the pleasantly balmy setting of Oahu, Hawaii.
Oahu, although not the largest of the Hawaiian islands, is the most developed, and it’s where you’ll find state capital Honolulu, with major attractions such as Waikiki Beach and and Pearl Harbor. Honolulu is on the popular and crowded South Shore, but the resort to which heartbroken Peter Bretter (Segel) retreats to recover from his bust-up with TV celeb Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), is up on the quieter North Shore. It’s Turtle Bay Resort, 57-091 Kamehameha Highway, Kahuku, on the very tip of the North Shore.
Other spots you may want to visit are the dramatic coastline at Laie Point, which is where Peter leaps from the 30-foot cliffs on the northwest coast; the white sandy beaches of Keawa'ula Bay to the west; and Mokuleia Beach on the northeast, which you might recognise as the resting place of the airplane fuselage from TV’s Lost.
Oahu’s North Shore boasts some of the world’s best surf beaches, and the surfing scenes were staged on the breathtaking shores of Haleiwa in Waialua Bay.
And Kawela Beach, just west of the Resort, provided the beach at the centre of the arena for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
It’s not all Hawaii, of course. Peter’s rather nice Los Angeles home is 1973 Palmerston Place, just north of Franklin Avenue, in Los Feliz.
You can see a few LA landmarks, including the the Dresden Restaurant, 1760 North Vermont Avenue, just north of Barnsdall Park in Los Feliz, where Peter and brother Brian (Bill Hader) have a boys' night out. The Dresden was made famous in 1996, by Doug Liman’s Swingers, with Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn.
In happier times, Sarah and Peter walk the red carpet at the Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard. The Egyptian, a 1922 cousin of the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, is now home to the American Cinematheque, along with the Aero cinema in Santa Monica (itself a location, seen in Donnie Darko and Get Shorty).

One interesting location is supposed to be Hawaii, but isn’t, is the interior of ‘Lazy Joe's’ bar, where Peter gets time on stage and a face pounding from Lazy Joe.
It was Silverlake gay bar Le Barcito, which stood at 3909 West Sunset Boulevard. Formerly the Black Cat Bar, in 1967 Le Barcito was the site of what was up to then the largest gay rights protest, two years before the famous Stonewall riots in New York which are generally considered to have given rise to the gay activism movement.
In November 2008, the site of the former Black Cat Bar was designated City of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #939. It closed down in 2011 but has since reopened as a restaurant under the original name of The Black Cat. Incidentally, Le Barcito also became the 'nun bar' in 'San Francisco' for Sister Act.