From the Home Alone house to the Friends apartment building, you know these places inside and out. But a new documentary peels back the layers that create the illusion of these destinations with the people that really live in them.

Editor’s Note
This article was originally written in French and the original can be found here. The English translation is provided for convenience and is edited for clarity.

Review: "The House From..." Examines Cult Houses Beyond Their Walls

90 Bedford Street, used as the establishing shot in *Friends*. Image: hookedonhouses.com

295 Lafayette Street, 90 Bedford Street, or 66 Perry Street in New York City or 1709 Broderick Street in San Francisco.

These addresses may be just a geographic detail to you, but for fans of certain hit television shows, they mean a lot. These are, in fact, the houses or apartment facades that we see in these films or TV series, better known as “general shots” or “establishing shots”, in Hollywood jargon.

Director Tommy Avallone of a new documentary, The House From… (2024) was interested in the parasocial relationships that bind fans of certain TV series— and sometimes even actors— to places they have never known or that have never existed.

The initiative is for a good reason, even if the facades of the apartments are New York or the houses seen are in Philadelphia or Chicago, this is only a decoy, because the vast majority of these film productions are shot in a studio in Los Angeles, California. That’s to the great disappointment of a large number of spectators who have long believed that these houses were really the places where the actors were filmed or where they lived.

How can we explain this emotional attachment that tirelessly pushes a multitude of tourists to go to these places like a pilgrimage?

Available to stream on Apple TV and rent from Amazon video, The House from… is an enthusiastic one-hour and forty-minute documentary during which we follow Tommy Avallone as he meets these fans of the series, neighbors but especially owners of more than familiar residences, such as Kevin's grand residence in Home Alone, who share with us their daily lives, the role and commitment to fans and the burden that these famous homes give them.

Better than just behind-the-scenes footage, this is a real investigation into topographical elements, albeit trivial, of television formats that are now part of popular culture and represent a real socio-cultural marker for an entire generation today, like Anne-Charlotte, a die-hard fan of the sitcom Friends who says she has, "seen it so much that she feels like she can find her way around without ever having been there".

The documentary is an exploration that leads to a reflection on these places so present in the media and as they relate to urban exploration adventures: heavily loaded with history, but it would be better to be content to admire the iconic exterior facade and refrain from visiting them. Because, beyond that, there is the risk of simply being disappointed and finding yourself facing an N'habite Pas a l'Adresse Indiquee (“Doesn't live at indicated address”).