Nocturnal Animals | 2016
Discover how Tom Ford's adaptation of Austin Wright's book found all its Los Angeles, 'New York' and 'West Texas' locations entirely around Southern California, in Malibu, Holmby Hills, Beverly Hills, Century City, Hollywood and the Mojave Desert.
The spacious and stylish but oddly cold modernist home of wealthy art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is supposed to be in the Hollywood Hills, but those twinkling lights in the background were just added for the film. It's a seafront property in Malibu. And what a property – six acres overlooking the Pacific, with a 168-foot-long infinity pool claimed to be the largest residential pool in the whole of California.
The linear concrete home, low and with grass-covered roofs, blends into its surroundings so there's little to see from the road. It's 25040 Pacific Coast Highway.
Susan confesses that she feels guilty about being unhappy – and living in a property with a market value of $120 million, so she should.
Susan reveals this to her friend Alessia (Andrea Riseborough), who's happy enough with her gay husband Carlos (Michael Sheen), though their house is hardly modest.
It's a classic of Late Modernist design built in 1976 at 595 South Mapleton Drive at Club View Drive, in swanky Holmby Hills, alongside Holmby Park.
Susan's spacious white gallery is the Creative Artists Agency Building, 2000 Avenue of the Stars in Century City. You might have seen its lobby in Christopher Nolan's Inception or its exterior in Barbie, Star Trek Into Darkness and 2011's The Green Hornet.
Century City, by the way, is a 1960s development built on the site of the old 20th Century-Fox studio backlot, much of which was sold off due to financial problems – finally made unbearable by the cost of Cleopatra. It still continues to be used in movies though. Apart from the Creative Artists Agency Building, you'll find the high-rise used as 'Nakatomi Plaza' in Die Hard nearby.
The flashback to Susan's first date with Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) on a snowy night in 'New York' begins outside Saks Fifth Avenue. The snow is, of course, fake and this is Saks Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills, 9570 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills.
They go on to dinner at Mr Chow's but, you guessed, this is not Mr Chow's in New York, which was featured in Fatal Attraction. It's Mr Chow Beverly Hills, 344 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills.
The main story is intercut with the narrative of 'Nocturnal Animals', the manuscript of his book which Edward has sent to Susan.
This is a far grimmer story, set in 'West Texas' though filmed in the Mojave Desert. Thankfully, the production takes the trouble to avoid the signature Joshua Trees which are usually such a dead giveaway for the location.
After his wife and daughter are abducted during a road trip, the book's central character, Tony (also Jake Gyllenhaal), stays in the Budget Inn Mojave, 16698 Sierra Highway, in Mojave itself.
When sympathetic Texas cop (when did you last hear that character description in a movie?) Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon) goes to arrest the main suspect Ray Marcus (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) while he's properly "liquored up", the bar in which he finds him is – oddly appropriately – The Trap, 2822 East Avenue I, Lancaster in the Mojave.
The final scene, as Susan waits for Edward, is Yamashiro, 1999 North Sycamore Avenue, the magnificent Japanese restaurant overlooking Hollywood.
Built by hundreds of (it’s said) ‘Oriental’ craftsmen in 1913-14, the cedar and teak replica of a Japanese palace comes complete with teahouse, gardens and an imported 600-year-old pagoda. There was some doubt about the restaurant's future but, after a brief closure, Yamashiro re-opened under new ownership in 2016.
It stands in the Hollywood Hills on a single track road (the name means 'Mountain Palace') with spectacular views over Hollywood itself. Yamashiro can also be seen as the 'American Officers Club' in 1957's Sayonara, with Marlon Brando, in the 2000 remake of Gone In 60 Seconds, with Nicolas Cage, in John Landis’s Kentucky Fried Movie and in Blake Edwards’ Blind Date.
