UHF - My 15 Year Pilgrimage
by Rob O'Hara"Don't change the channel, don't touch that dial, we want it all on UHF!" - UHF, Weird Al.
Introduction
I was ten years old when Weird Al released In 3D, the classic album that put him on the map with songs like "Eat It," "I Lost on Jeopardy," and "The Brady Bunch." I've been buying his albums and attending his concerts ever since.
In 1988, fifteen years ago, Weird Al began filming UHF, one of the funniest comedies (in my opinion) of all time. It encompassed all things Al -- the humor, the parodies, and of course, the weirdness. While some of the interior shots were done back on sound stages in California, the majority of the film was shot on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about two hours from where I live in Oklahoma City.
In 2002, Weird Al's masterpiece was finally released on DVD. On the DVD, Al includes a commentary track in which he mentions the actual street address of almost every filming location used in the movie.
Eventually, the idea formed itself in my head. For the fifteenth anniversary of the filming of UHF, I would drive to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and take pictures of all the locations used in the film.
Armed with my laptop, Microsoft MapPoint, screen shots from the DVD of all the locations, a list of all the addresses, my digital camera, and a co-pilot willing to ride along and assist with my adventure, I set out on a pilgrimage of sorts. Along the way I would have quite a few successes, some minor technical difficulties, and one really big disappointment.
Here the filming locations I was able to find in Tulsa in 2003, fifteen years after they were filmed for Weird Al's movie, UHF.
Burger World
In the beginning of UHF, we meet George Newman (Weird Al) and his friend Bob (David Bowe), two guys with big dreams and bad hair. After a bit of daydreaming and a slip of the lip by George, the two are fired and ejected from Burger World. In the DVD commentary track, Al states the Burger World in reality is Hardens, located at at 6835 E. 15th.
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| Burger World Then | Burger World Now |
Success! As you can see trees have grown up in front of the restaurant over the past fifteen years. As you can also see, the building is currently quite vacant. For fifteen years later, it looks amazingly unchanged.
Kuni's Karate School
After being ejected from Burger World, George and Bob head back to their apartment, located directly under Kuni's Karate School. On the DVD commentary, Al states that Kuni's Karate School is actually the Tulsa Pump Company, located at 114 W. Archer.
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| Kuni's Karate School Then | Kuni's Karate School Now |
Success! In the before picture you can see Weird Al getting out of his car. Note that cute little tree directly behind the rear of his car. Fifteen years later you can see just how much one tree can grow. We were tempted to cut it down to get a better photo but quickly decided against it. Although Al's car has been replaced by SUVs, the building basically looks like it did in the film. Except for, you know, that BIG TREE.
Crazy Ernie's
Weird Al's comedic genius shines through in UHF. In one of Al's funniest commercials we meet Crazy Ernie, a used car salesman who threatens to club a baby seal if his cars don't sell. During the commentary track, Al mentions that Crazy Ernie's Used Car Emporium is now in fact Ernie Miller Pontiac at 4700 S. Memorial.
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| Crazy Ernie's Then | Crazy Ernie's Now |
Although we found the address, we weren't able to find any buildings that lined up with the one in the film. In the before picture you can see the window panes divided as two big ones, a door, two more big ones, and two half windows. That was shortened to "two/door/two/halves," a mantra I repeated for ten minutes as I drove up and down Memorial road scanning every used car dealership. Finally, right in front of our noses, we found Ernie Miller Pontiac.
If you've ever pulled into a car lot, you know exactly what happened. Even before we could park, several used car salesmen were circling our car like hungry sharks. The Ernie Miller Pontiac dealership has multiple buildings on site, but none of them resembled the one seen in the movie. Eventually one of the salesmen approached our car and asked if he could help with anything. I tried explaining what we were doing, but unfortunately he had never heard of either Weird Al or UHF (gasp). Finally he said, "bring your laptop inside and let's take a look," and so we did. Inside, salesmen swarmed from every corner of the building, offering to help. At one point at least ten men in ties and slacks were peering at my laptop. I explained to them that a movie had been filmed at that very location fifteen years ago and I was looking for that building that appeared in the film. Unfortunately used car lots have a pretty high turnover rate, and none of the salesmen recognized the building in the movie.
Finally, an old veteran of the dealership who had worked there for 30 years stopped by and noticed the word "truck" written on the building in our screen shot. He quickly identified it as the old Ernie Miller Pontiac Truck building, and informed us that the building had been bulldozed down and rebuilt. This was the first official casualty of time I experienced during my pilgrimage, but it would not be my last.
Special thanks to all the friendly and helpful salesmen at Ernie Miller Pontiac for all their help and information.
Spatula City
One of the most memorable parody commercials in UHF is an ad for Spatula City, a business that "sells spatulas... and that's all!" Infamously, the crew had a real billboard installed along the interstate advertising Spatula City, which apparently confused more than one traveler who exited the highway in search of the mythical store. On the commentary track, Al mentions that fifteen years after the film was released he still occasionally receives spatulas from his fans because of this parody. On the track, Al mentions that the Spatula City location was actually the Warehouse Market located at 6300 S. Peoria.
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| Spatula City Then | Spatula City Now |
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| Spatula City Then | Spatula City Now |
Here is Spatula City as it appeared 15 years ago, and today. Another success! There it is! Other than the metal siding changing from tan to red and a conspicuous lack of spatulas, the building remains basically unchanged. In the second picture, my passenger played the part of the wild crowd that appears in the film.
Oaklawn Cemetary
Another parody commercial in UHF advertises the Plots R Us Mortuary Service. In the commentary, Al gives the location as the Oaklawn Cemetery, located at 11th and Peoria. Finding the Oaklawn Cemetery was the easy part. Finding the exact filming location turned out to be nearly impossible.
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| Oaklawn Cemetary Then | Oaklawn Cemetary Now (?) |
We had an extremely difficult time finding an area of the cemetery that lined up with footage from UHF. The cemetery has changed a lot over the past fifteen years. I was operating under the assumption that the tombstones in the film were real, but I'm not sure that they were. Most of the headstones in the cemetery face east or west, so we took that into consideration while trying to find the shooting location. In the scene you can see what appear to be wooden fence posts, but the cemetery currently has a metal fence surrounding the property, which made identifying the spot even more difficult. In the same shot you can see a house in the background with a Camaro in the driveway, but we couldn't find any houses that resembled that one nearby. We spent about an hour criss-crossing the property as respectfully as possible before finally giving up. If would have been a lot easier if they had left the arms and legs sticking up out of the ground like in the movie!
Update! Mike Ransom (of TulsaTVMemories.com) and one of his eagle-eyed readers recently discovered that although some of the scenes were indeed shot at Oaklawn Cemetary, the screenshot in question actually came from Moore Funeral Homes' Rosewood Chapel at 2570 S Harvard Ave., just north of Steve's Sundry. Please follow this link to see an actual photo comparison. That explains why we couldn't find it. Thanks for the info, guys!
Channel 8
In UHF, Al's nemesis is R.J. Fletcher (played by Kevin McCarthy), owner of the rival television station Channel 8. In the commentary, Al states that the external shots of Channel 8 were in reality the Hewlett Packard building, located at 66th and Lewis.
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| Channel 8 Then | Channel 8 Now |
Here's Channel 8 (then) and the HP Building (now). Other than the giant fake number hanging to the left of the door, the building looked exactly like it did fifteen years ago. Success! I had initially hoped to get a picture of the interior of the building near the elevator, but it turns out they lock the building up on weekends.
Technical Difficulties (Intermission)
About halfway through the trip I ran into some technical difficulties. To find all the filming locations, I had brought my laptop and my UHF DVD with me, which I was constantly referencing. In retrospect, the pilgrimage would have been much simpler if I had simply brought printouts of all the screen shots to reference. I was also using the laptop for naviation purposes, and four hours into my adventure, the laptop's battery died. I anticipated this as a porability and had brought with me a cheap DC-to-AC power inverter for charging the laptop from the cigarette adapter in my wife's new minivan. The moment I plugged the laptop into the power inverter, the car blew a fuse.
Of course, I didn't realize the van had blown a fuse and instead assumed the power converter was broken, so we then backtracked downtown to the nearest Walmart in search of another power inverter. When that one also didn't work (and I noticed the radio would no longer turn on), I put two and two together and realized the van had most likely popped a fuse.
Without printouts of all the locations, I was relying on the laptop to find the locations. After another stop, this time at a convenient store, I was armed with some $5 needle nose pliers and a few spare fuses. One fuse-swap later, we were back up and running. With the laptop's power criser averted, it was time to add our final three address into the computer: Raul's Apartment, City Hall, and the Holy Grail of the entire trip ... UHF, Channel 62. (Keep in mind that this pilgrimage took place in 2003. Smartphones hadn't been invented yet, and many people were still accessing the internet through dialup. I don't think my laptop even had WiFi. With today's technology, this pilgrimage would be infinitely easier to perform.)
Raul's Apartment
Raul Hernandez (played by Trinidad Silva, who was tragically killed before filming completed) is the host of one of UHF's eclectic television shows. Al mentions in the commentary track that Raul's apartment is located at 330 E. 11th, which is exactly where we found it.
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| Raul's Apartment Then | Raul's Apartment Now |
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| Raul's Apartment Then | Raul's Apartment Now |
Another success! Other than some minor paint differences (and my minivan), the apartment building looks strikingly like it did fifteen years ago! In the top left corner of the original picture, you'll see Raul tossing a poodle out of the middle window, "teaching it to fly." In a strange coincidence, the same window was open when we showed up. If this scene doesn't seem familiar, it's because many channels like Comedy Central remove it when showing the film on cable.
City Hall
In UHF, we first meet reporter Pamela Finklestein (Fran Drescher) and her "height challenged" cameraman Noodles (played by the late Billy Barty) on the steps of City Hall, which Weird Al reveals in the commentary is actually the First Christian Science Church located at 10th & Boulder.
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| City Hall Then | City Hall Now |
Another success! As you can see, the building is basically unchanged. Everything from the lamp posts to the columns to the parking meter in the bottom right hand corner are still there. The only glaring difference was the "City Hall" sign, which was obviously a prop.
Success after success after success!
This left us with one final destination. The mecca.
Channel 62.
UHF - Channel 62
Seeing Channel 62 was to be the highlight of my pilgrimage, and as such, I had saved it for last. The location of Channel 62 was the coup de' gras of my trip -- the wad, the money shot, the Holy Grail, the big Kahuna, the sacred cow, the picture of all pictures. As such, I had saved it for last.
UHF is named so because the movie is about George Newman, a regular (?) guy who inherits Channel 62, a UHF station. This is the core of the film, and was the climax of our day. Al mentions on the commentary track that the UHF station was actually the KGTO AM 1050 transmitter, located at 49th and Edison. The closer I got to that address, the more excited I became. From a couple of blocks away I could see the top of the red and white tower, but the closer I got I began to realize that something wasn't right. First we went north; then, south. We had trouble finding the road that led to the station. We circled around once, then twice. We saw one road that seemed to lead to the station, but it didn't. Finally, we found the one that did. When I finally found the right location, this is what I found.
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| UHF Then | UHF Now |
TRAGEDY! To the left you can see the red and white transmitter still standing in its original position. The road (a little worse for wear) still leads to where the building stood, but as you can see, KGTO AM 1050 -- also known as UHF Channel 62 -- no longer exists. I know that the building was only used for exterior shots, but I couldn't help feeling a little sad knowing that the building that had stood in for Channel 62 was no more. It's probably just as well; after leaking the address on the commentary track, there's a pretty good chance people would have been leaving spatulas there for decades to come.
Conclusion
Star Wars is my all time favorite series of films and my UHF pilgrimage was at least in part inspired by stories I've read of die hard Star Wars fans who have visited the sands of Tunisia and the California Redwoods in search of filming locations and left behind artifacts. Unfortunately I don't like flying or deserts, so a flight to Africa seems out of the question. Thus, a two-hour road trip to Tulsa in a minivan with air conditioning, air bags, and a DVD player seemed much more up my alley.
Right up there with my love of Star Wars, however, is my love for all things Weird Al. Al's listing of every address used in the filming of UHF on the DVD's commentary track combined with PC-based map software made for a very easy voyage of discovery -- anybody with UHF on DVD, a map (or some map software), and a digital camera can reproduce our adventure. (Note: today, I'd just use my iPhone.)
Speaking of UHF on DVD, if you don't own it, go buy it right now.
Finally, here are a few lessons I learned from my adventure that I shall pass on to you:
-- Plan before hand. I could have shaved an hour or two off my trip had I planned out all the addresses in advance. Instead, I criss-crossed and backtracked across the city multiple times, wasting time and gas.
-- Take full-color printouts of all the sites you plan on taking pictures of. I wasted a lot of time messing with the laptop and technology that could have been spent finding sites. Also, if you are asking people for assistance, it's a lot easier to show them a color picture than it is to hand them your expensive laptop. (Again today, I'd use my phone or a tablet for this.)
-- Become a master of the U-Turn. I quit counting how many illegal u-turns we performed after the first dozen or two. We missed almost every single address the first time around, and made so many u-turns I began getting dizzy.
-- Bring pliers, bottles of water, spare fuses, patience, and a sense of humor.
Thanks to the lady in the Home Depot parking lot who directed us to Walmart; thanks to the guy in Walmart who directed me to the power converters, thanks to all the salesmen at Ernie Miller Pontiac for spending some time with us, thanks to my lovely wife Susan who let me borrow her brand new minivan for this sily adventure, and finally...
...thanks to Weird Al (and his band!) for 40+ years of yuks and joy.
Back to RobOHara.com
http://www.weirdal.com - Weird Al's Official Site
UHF on DVD - Amazon.com, $4.99
Tulsa TV Memories' UHF Page