Guests of Santa Barbara vacation rentals are often curious about filming locations, and with good reason. There are many iconic Santa Barbara locations featured in movies and TV shows. Read on to find out why our fair town is the setting of choice for so many popular productions and how you can recognize and visit famous filming locations in and around the Santa Barbara area.

Many visitors feel a strong sense of familiarity or belonging when they first explore Santa Barbara. We’re not going to discount anyone’s claims of psychic powers or a past life lived on America’s Riviera, but it’s more likely that they saw one of the 200+ different movies and TV shows filmed in whole or in part here. during the last 100 years.

Don’t leave your vacation rental looking for places made famous on the big screen until you read the complete list from the Santa Barbara Film Commission. You’ve probably seen at least one or more of these popular productions:

2009 is complicated

2006 Pirates of the Caribbean III

2006 There Will Be Blood

2006 Psychology

2006 The Bachelor

2006 Best Chef 2, Bravo

2005 monks

2005 Oprah Winfrey Show

2004 Flight of the Phoenix

2004 Monster in Law

2004 sideways

2003 Hidalgo

2003 Sea Biscuit

2003 Sorority Life

2001 X-files

2000 dazzled

1999 Double Jeopardy

1998 Star Trek: Uprising

1996 The Long Goodnight Kiss

1996 G.I. Jane

1996 face to face

1995 nixons

1994 A walk in the clouds

1994 Congo

1994 Young Indy/Hollywood Follies

Pelican Report 1993

1990 Rocketeer

1984 Scarface

1980 The Postman Always Rings Twice

1978 The Frisco Kid

1967 The Graduate

1964 Batman pilot

1923 The Ten Commandments

1914 The Perils of Pauline

It’s complicated

The most recent high-profile film to come out of our region was last year’s Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin romantic comedy It’s Complicated.

The film’s director, Nancy Meyers, chose Santa Barbara for a specific reason that any tourist or native moviegoer can relate to. In an interview with Santa Barbara Magazine, Meyers said, “Santa Barbara felt good for so many reasons: the natural beauty everywhere you look, the mood I feel when I’m there, the calm… It feels so close to good life you can get.”

It’s Complicated is a beautiful film that seems to show our beautiful city at its best.

The operative word here is seems. Most of it was shot on a soundstage in Brooklyn in the dead of winter. Only three short scenes were shot here.

• There’s a scene where Jane is jogging through her neighborhood in Montecito and her architect friend Adam pulls up in his car. This was actually filmed in her small town, as can be seen from the unique wooden street signs. If you want to put on Jane’s Montecito shoes, stop by The Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore, which may have been the inspiration for the hotel where Jane and her ex-husband had their aborted date.
• When Jane waits for her therapist at the fictional Santa Barbara Medical Center, she is actually lurking at the Anacapa Street back entrance of El Paseo, a Spanish-style open-air shopping arcade.
• While we have a dizzying array of Farmers Markets, the one Jane buys was actually designed for her outside the 1920s Spanish-Moorish style Santa Barbara County Courthouse on Anapamu Street.

Sadly, there’s no place like Jane’s delicious and convenient Village Bakery. The set was built inside the Picnic House in Brooklyn. But hungry visitors will be able to find nearby facsimiles at Jeannine’s or Xanadu (temporarily closed until April 2011 due to fire) in Montecito or Renaud’s downtown.

Oblique

The wine-tasting buddy film Sideways was a sensation when it was released in 2004. Shot primarily in the nearby Santa Ynez Valley, it sparked a new appreciation for the wines (but not Merlot!) of the area, and grew an industry craft. around people who wanted to follow in the footsteps of the film’s questionable leads.

Fans of this movie often search for “the Sideways map,” which will take you on a driving tour of the movie’s highlights. Many of the destinations even have a Sideways logo sign. If you want to travel by bike, the Sideways bike map will help you find the places.

Different locations in Santa Barbara Proper

There are plenty of local places that are featured in movies that aren’t even set in the area. This is due to the profusion of beautiful features in the area that blend in perfectly with other locations.

• Stearns Wharf is a 19th century landmark, located at the end of State Street. It is the oldest operating pier on the West Coast and the second longest pier on the Pacific Coast at just a hair’s breadth below 2,000 feet. In the 1940s, actor James Cagney and his brothers co-owned Stearns Wharf. He has appeared in A Date with Judy and My Favorite Martian and in the 1966 version of Batman. “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”
• State Street features many familiar landmarks. He has appeared in the movies Cutter’s Way and Steal Big, Steal Little, among many others.
• The Old Town Clock at State and Haley Streets was featured in The Pelican Brief.
• The Santa Barbara County Courthouse on Anacapa Street was also in Steal Big, Steal Little.
• Mission Santa Barbara was at Sunset Boulevard and 3 Cruel Intentions.

Different locations in the greater Santa Barbara area

There is much more to this region than just the beautiful red roofs of downtown. One of the reasons the region is so popular with filmmakers is its almost endless variety.

• Cold Spring Arch Bridge – Steal Big, Steal Little.
• Lake Cachuma – The postman always knocks twice
• Gainey Vineyard – Seabiscuit and Of Mice & Men.
• Downtown Los Olivos – Return to Mayberry.
• Paradise Road – Seabiscuit and Star Trek Insurrection.
• Gull Coast – Spartan.
• Seagull Easel – Of Mice and Men.
• Gaviota Tunnel – The Graduate.
• Guadalupe Dunes – The Ten Commandments, Hidalgo, GI Jane, Pirates of the Caribbean III.
• Santa María Airport – The Rocket Man and The Best Years of Our Lives.
• La Purisima Mission – Seabiscuit.
• Camino Jalama – A Walk through the Clouds.
• Surrounding ranchland: of mice and men.

fake santa barbara

Sometimes a production might be set in Santa Barbara, but for some reason they can’t film there. In that case, they can use some establishing shots from stock footage, like the pier and tower seen on the TV series Psych.

In the movie I Love You, Man, a wedding scene was supposed to have taken place at the fictional El Encanto Spa & Resort in Montecito. It was actually filmed at a private residence on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Sorry, a vacation rental concierge won’t be able to make a reservation at El Encanto, but they will be able to find you a great alternative!

Sometimes scenes are filmed with certain geographical liberties taken. In El Graduado, the scene of Benjamín driving south towards Santa Bárbara shows his car heading north through the Gaviota Tunnel, in the wrong direction. Even the church he hit during the wedding wasn’t close. It is actually located in La Verne, east of Los Angeles.

TV loves Santa Barbara

Filmmakers aren’t the only people enamored with the area. Her glamor also appeals to the small screen. Countless TV shows have been set, special episodes have been set, or our name has simply been mentioned. There was even a late-night drama in the ’80s called Santa Barbara.

More recently, our beautiful city has been featured or mentioned in episodes of Gossip Girl, Entourage, Victorious, Beverly Hills 90210, The L Word, Baywatch, Melrose Place, Privileged, LA Law, Zorro, and Oceans Away.

Sort of Santa Barbara, but not really

Then there are the productions that are set in places that sound and look suspiciously like our beautiful town, but are never openly stated as such. The television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a classic example.

Buffy’s hometown of “Sunnydale” is described as a seaside town, two hours north of Beverly Hills. Both cities are home to branch campuses of the University of California. Sunnydale’s architecture looks very familiar. Both towns border the Pacific Ocean and suffered devastating earthquakes between the two world wars. Sunnydale was also described as home to the Chumash tribe, who were indigenous to Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and many of the show’s opening shots were from…you guessed it.

Most compelling of all is the fact that, on several occasions throughout its seven years, the characters used maps of Sunnydale that were actually of… Santa Barbara. Now, we want to assure anyone staying in a vacation rental that there is no such thing as a hellhole lurking beneath our utopian city. But he may want to bring a garlic necklace if he plans to wander long after sunset.

100 Years of Santa Barbara History in Film

2010 marks the 100th anniversary of a lively and exciting film presence in Santa Barbara. Beginning in 1910, the Essanay Film Company made periodic visits from Chicago in search of better weather and suitable locations to film its popular short westerns. They were followed in July 1912 by a permanent western branch of Flying “A” Studios, which was also seeking a better climate and relief from the Edison Trust’s stranglehold on the east. They chose our town because they could find both urban and rural places very close.

Flying “A” took a huge hit due to the combined effects of World War I, the flu pandemic, and the onset of the Great Depression. But we were already well established as a chosen filming location. In 1923, Cecil B. DeMille shot The Ten Commandments in the sandy landscapes of Guadeloupe (also used in Pirates of the Caribbean III), launching us back into the cinematic avant-garde.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Coming soon from Santa Barbara

The entertainment industry is alive and well here. This past June, the cast and crew of a new film called No Strings Attached took up residence at All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church and The Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore. Billed as a romantic comedy, the film stars Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher and is scheduled to open on January 21, 2011.

There are many famous filming locations to visit. If you want to explore on your own, SantaBarbara.com offers three different itineraries that will take you around the area, exploring locations from some of your favorite high-profile movies. And when the day is done, you’ll have a Santa Barbara vacation rental to come home to and live a life movie stars envy.