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[Not sure what to tag this exactly… feel free to improve tags.]

I’m currently watching The Lincoln Lawyer for the first time, and it’s struck me on several occasions that there are an unusual number of locational hints around the house where Mick Haller lives.

For example, in one episode, there’s a shot of him getting out of his car in the driveway, and a sign saying Punta Alta Dr [4000] is clearly visible in the background; and in several shots, you clearly see the number 5245 running down the side of the front door.

Because I find such tidbits interesting, I Google Maps’ed the road name, and much to my surprise, I very easily found that the real-world house used for filming is indeed located right at the corner of El Mirador Dr and Punta Alta Dr at 5245 El Mirador Dr. Clearly I’m not the only one who did that, because the house is even marked as The Lincoln Lawyer House on Google Maps.

So this address – in-universe just a regular residence/business/office whose precise location is unimportant – is actually accurately shown in its real-world location in the show. I don’t recall ever seeing or even hearing about such a thing before.

Normally, I’d expect that the creators would either shoot or edit in such a way that obvious indicators like street names and house numbers are never shown at all, or that they’d make them up for the show. Showing where the house is situated doesn’t seem to come with any sort of benefit or reason for the show, as far as I can tell.

Is this actually as unusual as it seems to me? Or are there other well-known examples of films/shows not obscuring the exact real-world address of a filming location like this?

 

Caveat: There are of course many cases of more or less well-known real-world locations being used for their real-world ‘value’ in-universe, and these of course generally ‘reveal’ their real-world locations. If an actual indication of location is given in a scene depicting the White House, the Eiffel Tower, a Harvard quad or the Pentagon, it will likely be the real-world address, since these are well-known sites, and claiming the White House is on 425 Albert Street in Poughkeepsie would just confuse viewers. There are also lots of shots in lots of shows and films where people walk down a street and street signs show us where they are. None of that is what I’m asking about here; I’m asking about places which are significant in-universe, not well-known in the real world, and whose precise addresses in-universe are immaterial, such as characters’ home addresses.

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  • Hi Janus, I like the premise of your question, but I think asking for "any example" is too broad a request ("well-known" is a subjective modifier - "how common" it is is especially difficult to answer), and rolling lists are generally not a good fit for the platform.
    – Joachim
    Commented Nov 18 at 11:21
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    @Joachim I see your point. Adding the bit about other well-known examples was actually an attempt to avoid it being too subjective and open-ended – the real question I was going for was whether this sort of thing is actually common, or whether it really is quite unusual, as it seems to me since I’ve never noticed a case of it before (I’ve edited to reverse the questions). I figured ‘is this commonly done?’ would be too subjective (what is ‘common’?), so asking for specific examples of it would be more objective.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 18 at 11:26

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The case that comes to mind would be Law & Order and its various spin-offs which would show addresses of locations, although at times the addresses might be moved a bit (I’m not familiar enough with New York to catch address issues there, but I do recall that (some of?) the addresses in the L.A. Edition were not quite accurate. Similarly, I remember an episode of E.R. where they were meeting for dinner at the corner of Clark & Dearborn, two streets that do not intersect.

It also occurred to me that Call Me Dolomite used real-life locations and even gave the correct address on-screen of a residence.

In the case of the Lincoln Lawyer, though, I think it’s less that they didn’t go out of their way to disguise things. It’s an added expense to put up fake house numbers or cover up street signs and they may have simply chosen not to go through that effort.

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    Yes, ‘not bothering to obscure real-world location’ may be a better way to look at it. Though in this case, I don’t think they would have had to do much – just shoot from a slightly different angle that doesn’t show the street sign (the house number on its own doesn’t say much).
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 17 at 23:59
  • @JanusBahsJacquet The thing is, the extra effort to carefully shoot only from particular camera angles probably won't save you much. People familiar with the neighborhood will go "hey, I know that house!", fill out the IMDB trivia page and slap a "The Lincoln Lawyer House" label on Google Maps anyway.
    – R.M.
    Commented Nov 18 at 15:06
  • @R.M. There will always be people out there who will recognise any filming location that isn’t a studio; no helping that. But to someone who doesn’t happen to know the local area, there’s no easy way to identify the real-world location of 4 Privet Drive in the Harry Potter films, the Kent farm in Smallville, the Salinger home in Party of Five, etc. If I hadn’t seen the street sign in The Lincoln Lawyer, I would have had virtually nothing to go on, except a vague view of LA, and I would never have been able to find it on Google Maps at all.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 18 at 15:20
  • @JanusBahsJacquet reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/mas927/…
    – Barmar
    Commented Nov 18 at 15:45
  • @JanusBahsJacquet My point is that someone else with more local knowledge will have already posted the info online, so hiding the street sign will only affect the small number of people who are interested enough to look up the address directly, but who aren't interested enough to simply Google "where is the Lincoln Lawyer house". It's a non-zero number of people, but is it enough to be worth the extra effort to carefully arrange shooting angles?
    – R.M.
    Commented Nov 18 at 16:48

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