Hollywood shoots a lot of movies in Arcadia, but mostly at Santa Anita Park and the Arboretum.
On Monday (Dec. 22), Vince Vaughn and the cast of his new romantic comedy “Couples Retreat” were filming scenes at the Community Center, which they turned into a faux ice rink in the fictional suburb of Chicago called Buffalo Grove (play 70-sec. video below to see Community Center makeover).
by Scott Hettrick
Just a week after the Community Center was adorned with 40 tons of snow for its annual Snow festival, filmmakers were in town using snow-making machines on the Center, the lawn, landscaping, the parking lot, and cars in the lot, the latter of which were all meticulously affixed with Illinois license plates. They even put fake ice and frost on the car windows, brought in fake trees, and enclosed the open-air entry-way with windows between the pillars. Those fake windows and even the real windows on the Center were all painted blue on the bottom portion. Very authentic signs were erected, making it appear as if this were the Buffalo Grove Community Center and ice rink.
Arcadia Recreation and Community Services Director Sara Somogyi, whose office windows also got a temporary paint job, said Vaughn was there a large part of the day filming scenes with other actors, but regular activities and meetings at the Center went on as usual all day.
Some crew members told Somogyi they had looked for quite some time in the L.A. area to find a building that could play stand-in for a Midwest-style ice rink and were greatly relieved to stumble into the Community Center while driving by one day on a personal excursion.
“Couples Retreat” is a movie of Vaughn’s buddies, including director Peter Billingsley (grown-up little Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”) and writer/co-star Jon Favreau (co-starred with Vaughn in “Swingers” and “Four Christmases”; directed “Iron Man”). Other stars in “Couples Retreat” include Kristin Davis (“Sex and the City”) and Jason Bateman (“Juno,” “Arrested Development”).
Additional interior scenes were shot later in the day at the film-friendly Santa Anita Park just days before the track’s opening day on Friday, Dec. 26. Filmmakers converted the Top of the Stretch on the west end of the Santa Anita grandstands into a Chicago hotel room where Vaughn had a scene with one of the actresses.