‘Barry’ Shows NoHo’s Charms

The San Fernando Valley has figured prominently in movies and television shows, but few mass media productions have promoted the Valley as consistently and overtly as the current series “Barry.” The show on HBO – a subsidiary of AT&T Inc., parent of Warner Bros. in Burbank – even features a major character named NoHo Hank. From Residuals Tavern in Studio City to Fields Market in Canoga Park to NoHo Hank’s Burbank hideout, the backdrop of “Barry” has been unapologetically 818. Co-created by veteran showrunner Alec Berg (“Silicon Valley”) and the show’s star, former “Saturday Night Live” player Bill Hader, “Barry” has received acclaim for expertly walking a fine line between comedy and thriller-like dramatic tension. Set largely in North Hollywood, the dark comedy sees Hader as a hit man, freshly relocated to Los Angeles. While on an assignment involving a member of a community theater troupe, Barry becomes attracted to North Hollywood’s theatre arts scene. Soon, Barry wants to leave his assassin profession to indulge his newfound passion for acting. Acting coach and NoHo community theater leader Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) unwittingly urges Hader to tap into his dark side to create authenticity onstage, while the underworld figures, including his hit assigner Fuches (Stephen Root), and wispy, wormy Chechnian criminal NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), won’t let the talented hitman walk away from his dark past, always returning to blackmail him into yet another assignment. Since its March 2018 debut, “Barry” has landed two Primetime Emmy Awards and the 2018 Peabody Award. Location breakdown From episode one, “Barry” indulged in Valley locations as it unveiled the seedy underbelly of Barry’s world. When Barry picks up a rented car at “Ontario Airport,” it’s actually Hollywood Burbank Airport, at 2627 N. Hollywood Way. He chills out at the Toluca Lake-located Patys Restaurant at 10001 Riverside Drive. First season’s episode two utilizes Courtyard by Marriott Los Angeles Burbank Airport at 2100 W. Empire Ave. Several local places have been used as permanent locations, such as Residuals Tavern, 11042 Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, where Barry and his actor friends often gather; and the Burbank house where NoHo Hank resides at 1038 E. Harvard Road. Seth Ayott, who owns Residuals Tavern, hasn’t seen any direct impact in terms of customer business from “Barry” but it has brought attention. “Having our name being said (on the show) is very cool,” Ayott said. “We got a lot of phone calls. … I can’t say I’ve seen an uptick or a bump. It’s an HBO show so you’re going to have people come in. There’s definitely interest. (For the regulars, there’s excitement that) their home bar is on a TV show.” Back in 1986, a showrunner on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” opened Residuals with the idea that any actor with a residual check of under a dollar would get a free drink, and the tavern’s walls became papered with said residual checks. Ayott, who worked there for 16 years as bartender and managed it for a decade before purchasing it nearly six years ago, said the usage of Residuals in the pilot at the go-to hang-out for Barry and his struggling actor friends began after Ayott was approached by the show’s location manager, who explained that the “Barry” star and co-creator had a particular affection for this, an old hangout. “Bill Hader frequented Residuals back in the late ‘90s,” Ayott said. “When they got into the place, they made it look like it looked like back in 1996. The set decorator did a great job.” In season two, Sally’s abusive ex-boyfriend Sam (Joe Massingill), is seen staying at Courtyard by Marriott Los Angeles Sherman Oaks, 15433 Ventura Blvd. In season two’s standout episode there’s a prolonged mano-a-mano battle between Barry and a Tae Kwon Do master named Ronny (Daniel Bernhardt), ending in a police standoff at a Valley drug store. The store is actually Fields Market at 23221 Saticoy St. in Canoga Park. Denmark-based Mike Hansen, whose blog filminglocs.blogspot.com details both seasons of “Barry,” including Fields Market, pinpointed the series’ locations based on intel from various sources, from Google Earth to Reddit discussions and posts from other bloggers. “During the scene, the entrance door is visible, and the street number is also visible above the door, but inverted, and it seems to match the one of Fields Market,” Hansen said, supplying an inverted shot from the scene clearly depicting the “23221” address number over the doorway. Previously an Alpha Beta supermarket and in operation for 60 years, the store for the last 17 years has been co-owned by Bill Rinck and Richard Smith. Rinck, whose wife Jennifer Rinck coordinates filming at Fields, served as the site rep during the “Barry” filming. “A lot of it took place in the evening time after 5 p.m.,” he said. “We kind of shot through the night.” To accommodate the three-day shoot, which took place in early January and included elaborate fight and gunplay choreography as well as store-display destruction, the 25,000-square-foot market did not operate. “We closed down completely for those days,” Rinck said. “There was a lot of prep work for them. They had to redesign (parts of the store).” “Bill Hader, he’s a great guy, him and I talked,” he continued. “Everybody is very respectful that we’re offering the location for this shoot.” Television shoots that the Rincks had previously booked at Fields included a hostage scene for “Desperate Housewives”; the CW’s DC superhero show “Birds of Prey”; and “Animal Kingdom.” Rinck said that while he enjoyed hosting the Emmy-winning HBO production, they have not yet felt any after-effects from the “Barry” shoot — perhaps because viewers have yet to recognize their market in drugstore drag. “It does happen,” he said. “When we had ‘Bird Box’ (a 2018 Netflix film starring Sandra Bullock), we had people come to the store. Various shoots are more popular others.” Santa Clarita scenery Season two’s narrative deepens Barry’s backstory as a former Marine in a series of flashbacks recalling a tragic turn of events that occurred back during his tour in Afghanistan. However, “Afghanistan,” in reality, unfolded in Santa Clarita at Blue Cloud Movie Ranch, a 250-acre production site located at 20019 Blue Cloud Road. Dylan Lewis, who purchased the movie ranch in July 2015, said that the “Barry” production turned to Blue Cloud for these scenes because the ranch’s centerpiece location is “the big Middle Eastern town, which plays for Mexico, India, Columbia.” According to Lewis, who was present during the shoot, the “Barry” crew did a couple of days of preparation work and one day of shooting for these scenes for both episodes in October 2018. “A very well-run production,” he said.