The Alex Theatre's neon tower stands blocks from the Americana at Brand and the Glendale Galleria.
What Downtown Glendale looks like
Brand Boulevard runs through Downtown Glendale, and the stands at 216 North Brand. The theatre opened in 1925 as the Alexander, a movie palace with a Greek and Egyptian interior modeled on Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre. In 1940 the architect S. Charles Lee redesigned the front and added the 100-foot neon tower and starburst sphere that still stand there, and shortened the name to the Alex. A 1993 restoration brought the tower back, and the theatre went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
A short walk from the Alex, the moved into a former pharmacy on South Brand in 2016. Its collection includes signage from the Brown Derby and Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and a paseo runs through the site to Glendale's Central Park and library.
Farther south, the and the sit across the street from each other. The Americana opened in 2008 and is built as a grid of outdoor streets around a two-acre park that is itself public land. The facades are brick, in an industrial style, with a trolley circling the property. The Galleria is older, a three-story mall from 1976 designed by Jon Jerde. Its Bloomingdale's storefront faces Broadway.
has its headquarters right behind the Galleria's parking garage, one of several offices mixed in among the mid-rise buildings along Brand.
Films shot in Downtown Glendale
The has been a filming location since the 1950s. Crime Wave filmed the side of the building in 1954, where a rooftop sign called it the place to go. God Bless America ends onstage inside the theatre in 2012, and the following year Lovelace used the Alex as the venue for an invitational screening of Deep Throat. The theatre's own Wikipedia page also lists Glee, Criminal Minds, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veronica Mars among its television credits.
You
The Netflix series You filmed at the , according to a February 2020 post from a location scouting site that ties the theatre to the show's fifth episode.
Billie Eilish, "Therefore I Am", 2020
Billie Eilish filmed the video for "Therefore I Am" inside the in 2020. The mall was closed to the public under COVID-19, which is why the video has no bystanders in it.
What Downtown Glendale can double for
Architectural comparison · 1939 to 1940, the same Streamline Moderne moment as the Alex's own tower
Fresno, California, the Tower District, around the theater's own corner at North Wishon and East Olive Avenues
S. Charles Lee designed the 's 1940 tower. The year before, he designed Fresno's Tower Theatre at the corner of North Wishon and East Olive Avenues in the same Streamline Moderne style. Both towers are concrete columns covered in neon tube lighting and topped by an illuminated orb, a starburst sphere at the Alex and a pronged orb at the Tower Theatre. Both are individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Alex since 1996 and the Tower Theatre since 1992.
Fresno's tower is 80 feet tall against the Alex's 100 feet. Its auditorium also sits at a 45-degree angle to the street corner rather than square to the boulevard, so a straight-on match needs a different camera position than Brand Boulevard's flat frontage. The blocks around it are one and two stories tall, shorter than the buildings around the Alex, so a wide shot that pulls back would not match.
Architectural comparison · 1931, six years after the Alex opened
Pomona, California, the Pomona Arts Colony on West Third Street
The Fox Theater Pomona opened in 1931 as a freestanding single screen movie palace with its own tower over the entrance, at 114 West Third Street in what is now the Pomona Arts Colony. Hollywood studios used the building for real sneak previews of upcoming films, testing audience reactions before a wide release. It closed in 1977 and did not reopen until a restoration finished in 2009. The Alex had its own 1993 restoration, when the tower was brought back to its original look. Both buildings are used for concerts and live events now, in a small arts district rather than a shopping street.
The Pomona Arts Colony around the Fox has contemporary gallery signage, murals and restaurant patios that would need to stay out of frame for an earlier period. The theater's own marquee is lit with its current name and event listings, which would need to be dressed or shot from an angle that avoids it.
Architectural comparison · 1999 to 2008, when both opened as outdoor town center malls
Columbus, Ohio, the grid of streets inside Easton Town Center's loop, in the northeast of the city
Easton Town Center opened in 1999 as a grid of streets closed into a continuous loop, with contiguous storefronts of different heights and no single building enclosing them. The followed a similar layout in 2008, its own grid of streets around a two-acre park with brick facades in an industrial style. Both replaced an enclosed shopping mall format with outdoor blocks that a camera can shoot as a real street rather than a store interior.
Both centers have national chain storefronts that would need swapping out or staying out of frame for a specific double. Easton's central plaza has a large model train display and seasonal decorations that the Americana's own park and trolley do not share, so an establishing shot of either plaza would give away which one it actually is.
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