On ‘Party Down,’ It’s All About Location, Location, Location
The co-creator and production designer of the revived Starz sitcom discuss how important site is for exploring the lives of Hollywood’s haves and have-nots.
The co-creator and production designer of the revived Starz sitcom discuss how important site is for exploring the lives of Hollywood’s haves and have-nots.
When Party Down premiered on Starz in March 2009, it was with an episode titled "Willow Canyon Homeowners Annual Party." Viewers watched a hilarious cast of subpar L.A. caterers sling hors d’oeuvres out of a suburban kitchen when they’d really rather be doing anything else (ideally, getting their big breaks in Hollywood). Each subsequent episode was set in a different location—sometimes a million-dollar mansion, sometimes an Elks Lodge turned strip club for an adult entertainment awards afterparty. Every venue helped set the scene for the storyline to come.
"When we’re starting each episode, we’re thinking almost entirely about what kind of world we want to be diving into," says Party Down co-creator John Enbom. "Every episode is a little Christopher Guest movie dipping into a new environment with new characters. While character is what we think about first and foremost, we absolutely think about what kind of space will give us that feeling of, ‘These are the people who live here, this is what this universe feels like, and this is how our characters react to it.’"
Though the series was initially canceled in 2010 after two seasons, it recently came back from the dead for a third, bringing with it a slew of new characters and locations. Episodes take place everywhere from a slightly dingy Hollywood bar to a radio station contest winners’ luau, with each venue introducing a new set of issues for the cast to solve—or to make even worse, as is often the case on the series. "A key part of the show is the idea that these people are always working for somebody else, serving somebody else, or doing something else while they’re in the corner in any of these borrowed spaces trying to get their own shit together," says Enbom.
Party Down follows the employees of a Los Angeles-based catering company—all with dreams of Hollywood success—as they tend bar at wild parties with eccentric guests.
Photo courtesy of Starz
Locations aren’t just important to the Party Down plot—they’re essential. The show has always been shot entirely on location, with the entire cast and crew rolling into a new venue every week. For the third season’s second episode, "Jack Botty’s Delayed Post-Pandemic Surprise Party," production rented out a family home in Encino to use as the house of James Marsden’s Jack Botty. Because the character is a Robert Downey Jr./Chris Evans type, having starred in multiple Marvel-style action movies, his home had to reflect both his sensibilities and stature—something the production team made happen by choosing a modern residence with a sleek white interior.
Production designer David Saenz de Maturana says that after choosing to go for a "modern Hollywood glam vibe" for Botty’s home, the team started scouting locations around the San Fernando Valley. They found a few that would work for the show’s specific needs, which include not only a visually interesting space to shoot party scenes, but also a big, separate kitchen to film the catering setup. Ultimately, they went with the home they thought made the most sense for Botty’s slightly gauche character, who—spoiler alert—also happens to be cheating on his very nice producer girlfriend played by Jennifer Garner. "There was a lot of white, a lot of glass, and a lot of stainless steel and chrome, and that really helped shine things up a little bit," says Maturana.
"The house also speaks to this open, infinite, ‘the world is your oyster’ kind of feeling," Enbom adds. "We kind of lucked out that we found this house that really spoke to that idea."
Once the Encino house was locked down, production also had to figure out what a Marvel-level actor’s birthday party would look like, from balloon arches to oversize banners, which Maturana says is a departure from the sort of rinky-dink events the show has focused on in the past. "We had more money this go-around than we did the last, so we were able to imagine different kinds of functions than we did when our budget was very small," says Enbom. "For the first two seasons, we focused almost entirely on the kinds of events that could take place in cheap venues. I think we literally hit every Elks Lodge and random little rental venue in the Valley."
All of Party Down’s shooting locations have always been within the Los Angeles Studio Zone’s 30-mile radius. That’s for both budgetary and union purposes—productions that leave that zone must pay more for crew members. Enbom says that while the show really pushed the boundaries of that zone in early seasons looking for cheap locations, this time they were pretty much able to shoot everything in the San Fernando Valley. Maturana adds that when you’re looking for more celebrity real estate–level properties like Botty’s, for instance, "that’s kind of where you need to go to get them," citing Brentwood and Sherman Oaks as solid go-to neighborhoods for shooting locations in the area.
Another one of the show’s biggest house parties takes place in the second season, after actor Steve Guttenberg hires the crew to cater his birthday bash, but when the gang shows up, there’s no celebration, as Guttenberg’s friends threw him a big surprise the night before. The ’80s icon invites the gang to stay around and hang out, though, and the evening evolves into a staged reading of a screenplay plus a little hot tub seduction. Enbom calls the "Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday" episode "an interesting contrast" to Botty’s, as both depict a party in the home of "somebody who had material comfort and the grandiosity of a life well lived, but what you see is basically the difference between our budget then and now."
"While that was a wonderful location for us and it was a delightful episode, in real life that place was much smaller," says Enbom, adding that the filming location had no real yard and was laid out in such a way that they could really only shoot in parts of the home. "If you actually look at that episode compared to this one, it’s much more focused in these very specific areas, which are the only places that had the kind of scale that spoke to what we hoped to present about Steve Guttenberg and how he lives. We saved a bunch of money by not having any extras, so that’s how we were even able to afford that house in the first place."
Ultimately, says Enbom, it’s important to note that the Party Down characters never treat any of these places—from Jack Botty’s multimillion-dollar estate to a run-down VFW—with any great respect. (Multiple characters actually use Botty’s personal bathroom during the episode set there, with Ken Marino’s Ron even taking a shower.) In Enbom’s mind, the show’s homes and venues are meant to give the caterers "something to compare their own lives to" that’s elevated, but still not entirely out of reach. "We always wanted the show to be about the idea that they were seeing all these different levels of regular life," he says, "as opposed to always looking up at people fancier than they are."
Top photo courtesy of Starz.
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