Sepulveda VA Medical Center is a large medical campus located at 16111 Plummer Street in the North Hills neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California. The site was developed as a Veterans Administration hospital after Lester and Mary Gentry donated approximately 160 acres of land for the project in 1952. The complex grew into a major medical and surgical centre serving veterans throughout the San Fernando Valley. It suffered severe damage during the 1994 Northridge earthquake and had to be evacuated, after which the main hospital building was demolished and inpatient services were transferred elsewhere. A new 242,000-square-foot ambulatory care facility was completed in 1996, while several older buildings remained on the extensive campus. The combination of active medical facilities, vacant institutional buildings, courtyards and hospital architecture has subsequently made the site a frequently used filming location.
Sepulveda VA Medical Center has appeared in Halloween II (1981), Alias (2001–2006), Accepted (2006), Halloween (2007), Step Brothers (2008), Grey’s Anatomy (2005–) and Argo (2012). Different buildings across the campus have represented hospitals, psychiatric institutions, a college and the United States Embassy in Tehran.
In Halloween II (1981), Sepulveda VA Medical Center appears as Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, where Laurie Strode is taken after surviving Michael Myers’ attack on Halloween night. The rear side of Building 10, facing the parking area, provides the hospital exterior and entrance seen when Laurie arrives. This part of the building has since been altered, with a smaller structure added immediately outside and the former entrance changed, making the filming location less recognisable today. Another section of Building 10 is used when security guard Mr Garrett investigates the failure of the hospital telephone lines. The hospital interiors where Michael stalks Laurie and murders members of the staff were primarily filmed at other hospitals.
In Alias (2001–2006), Building 200 appears in the season 2 episode “Salvation” as a private hospital in Geneva operated as a front for Julian Sark. Sydney and Jack Bristow infiltrate the hospital disguised as a daughter donating a kidney to her father in order to obtain research on a deadly virus and collect a blood sample from an infected patient. They incapacitate the medical staff, steal the research and escape as security closes in. Interior areas of Building 200 were used for the Geneva hospital sequence.
In Accepted (2006), Building 4 becomes the abandoned Harmon Psychiatric Hospital that Bartleby Gaines and his friends convert into the fictional South Harmon Institute of Technology. After being rejected by every college he applies to, Bartleby creates the fake institution to convince his parents that he has been accepted somewhere, only for hundreds of other rejected students to enrol through the website created for the deception. The building is used extensively as South Harmon’s campus, with both its exterior and interiors appearing throughout the film. A swimming pool was even constructed in one of the courtyard areas for the production.
In Halloween (2007), Sepulveda VA Medical Center returns to the Halloween series, this time as Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. Building 4 and its interiors are used for the institution where Michael Myers is confined after murdering members of his family as a child. The location appears during Michael’s years under the care of Dr Samuel Loomis, including scenes in the family visiting room, and during the events leading to the adult Michael’s escape from the institution. Remarkably, one of the rooms later used as the visa application office in Argo was the same room used as the family visiting room in Halloween.
In Step Brothers (2008), the grounds around Building 4 are used for the scene in which Brennan Huff and Dale Doback encounter a group of young neighbourhood bullies. The two middle-aged stepbrothers initially attempt to stand up to the children but are badly beaten and humiliated, adding another setback to their increasingly dysfunctional attempt to live together. The scene uses the open areas of the VA campus rather than presenting the location as a hospital.
In Grey’s Anatomy (2005–), Building 200 was used for many years as the exterior of the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital, later renamed Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital and eventually Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. The south side of the building was commonly used for establishing views, while the north side provided the entrance where Meredith Grey and other characters are seen arriving, leaving and gathering outside the hospital. The production also occasionally filmed inside the real building, including its lobby, walkways and areas used in the pilot. Most hospital interiors were constructed at Prospect Studios. Sepulveda was primarily associated with the earlier seasons, with exterior filming later moving to West Los Angeles College beginning around season 19.
In Argo (2012), several parts of Sepulveda VA Medical Center stand in for the United States Embassy in Tehran during the recreation of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Building 4 was used for close exterior views within the embassy compound, while a temporary façade was also constructed in a parking area on the campus. Building 5 provided interior material, including areas representing the embassy’s visa section. The sequence depicts Iranian protesters overwhelming the embassy while staff desperately destroy classified documents and six American diplomats escape unnoticed. Exterior views from outside the embassy walls were filmed separately in Istanbul, but much of the material inside the compound was created at Sepulveda.
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