Club marquees and billboards line Sunset Boulevard, with the Hollywood Hills rising close behind.
What Sunset Strip looks like
Sunset Boulevard curves for about a mile and three quarters through West Hollywood, climbing from the Los Angeles line near toward Beverly Hills. Billboards several storeys tall stand on rooftops and building sides above the traffic, and palm trees line both sidewalks while the Hollywood Hills rise close behind the buildings on the north side.
The clubs sit low and close to the curb. The holds the corner at Clark Street in a red and black building, its marquee listing a night's bands under a rooftop billboard frame. A few doors up, the 's front is dark stucco under red neon lettering and a lit readerboard. The Rainbow Bar and Grill next door is a brick and half timber building with a tall vertical sign and a shingled roof.
Farther east, the Comedy Store fills a black curved corner building, its walls painted over with comedians' signatures under a round marquee and red curtains in the windows. The Andaz hotel rises in white panels and glass a few blocks past it, a billboard the height of several floors mounted on its Sunset facing wall.
Chateau Marmont stands at the boulevard's eastern end, a white stucco building with turrets and balconies above the street. At 8919 Sunset, where the club London Fog once stood, a barbershop now sits behind the same Tudor style timber and brick front.
Shot in Sunset Strip
The Viper Room, a few doors from the Whisky, has stood in for two clubs it never was. It played the fictional Cobra Lounge in Molly's Game and the historic London Fog, one block east of its real site, in Oliver Stone's The Doors. Gazzarri's, next to the Rainbow, played the fictional Crazy Horse West strip club in John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.
The Doors, 1991
The Whisky a Go Go
Oliver Stone filmed Val Kilmer's five day performance of The End inside the actual Whisky a Go Go for The Doors, working through the venue's own stage smoke and camera light heat. The club opened here in 1964 at Sunset Boulevard and Clark Street, and the real Doors once played the room as its house band.
Up in Smoke, 1978
The Roxy Theatre
Cheech and Chong perform Earache My Eye at a fictional battle of the bands inside the Roxy Theatre in Up in Smoke. The building held a burlesque theater called the Largo before the Roxy opened there in 1973.
Rock 'n' Roll High School, 1979
The concert scenes for Rock 'n' Roll High School were filmed at the Roxy in December 1978. The Ramones had played their first California show on the same stage two years earlier.
The Dirt, 2019
Several scenes of the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt are set inside the Rainbow Bar and Grill. The bar opened here in 1972, next to the Roxy, on the site of the earlier Villa Nova restaurant.
Guns N' Roses, "November Rain"
The video for Guns N' Roses' November Rain makes a brief appearance at the Rainbow Bar and Grill. It is hosted on the band's own channel and has passed two billion views.
Strange Days, 1995
Played the Sunset Regent hotel, 1995
Kathryn Bigelow filmed a lengthy point of view murder sequence along the hotel's exterior balconies for Strange Days, which renamed the building the Sunset Regent. The hotel opened here in 1963, and touring rock bands later nicknamed it the Riot House.
Lower Broadway's honky tonks line a wide four lane street with neon marquees and painted facades like Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, close to Sunset Strip's mix of club signage and traffic. Both strips are a compact run of freestanding nightlife fronts rather than a single building. Broadway's one to four storey brick buildings and flat street read differently in a wide shot than Sunset's low buildings against the hills, so keep the frame low and let the neon marquees and painted facades carry it. Try searching neon marquees painted facades now.
Sixth Street in Austin, Texas
Sixth Street's two and three storey Victorian buildings in limestone and light brick now hold live music bars, sharing Sunset Strip's density of freestanding nightlife venues on one strip. The neon signage over the older brick looks different from Sunset's club marquees. Austin's masonry storefronts and narrower street canyon look different from Sunset's wider boulevard and hillside backdrop, so match on close shots of individual venue entrances rather than the street as a whole. Try searching live music bars now.
Beale Street's late nineteenth and early twentieth century revival buildings hold blues clubs between Second and Fourth Street, a comparable run of clustered nightlife signage to Sunset Strip's clubs. The street is largely closed to cars and walked rather than driven. Beale's older revival facades and pedestrian crowds are a further stretch from Sunset's vehicle traffic and mid century buildings, so this only holds in tight shots on marquees and doorways. Try searching clustered nightlife signage now.
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