Pizzas On The Roof & 7 Other Reasons You May Reconsider Buying That Famous House

It sounds like the ultimate fan’s dream, living in the house or apartment building made famous by your favorite TV show or movie; the knowledge that your home is itself a celebrity, elevating the enjoyment of your otherwise mundane life. But that’s before you have to deal with all the “a-holes” throwing pizzas on your roof.

Some homeowners lived in these well-known locations before they were featured in TV shows and movies, while others may have moved in afterward. Either way, there are more than a few downsides to sleeping where treasured fictional characters pretended to sleep.

Here are a few memorable movie homes and unforgettable TV pads that may have you thinking twice before you sign that deed:

1. Breaking Bad

Back in 2015, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan had some pointed words for fans of the show who kept showing up at Walter White’s home in Albuquerque and throwing pizza on the roof in an homage to a scene from the show, among other bad behavior.

Gilligan warned then that would-be tossers that “there is nothing original, or funny or cool about throwing a pizza on this lady’s roof.”

Just this week, the home’s real-life owners told KOB-4 that they’re so fed up with unruly visitors, that they’re putting up a six-foot wrought-iron fence around the property to keep them out.

That’s not all — the renter living in Jesse Pinkman’s apartment told the news station that selfie-takers show up on the porch several times a week.

2. The Goonies

The owners of Mikey’s house from beloved ’80s flick The Goonies — located in Astoria, OR — welcomed visitors for years, letting them do the “truffle shuffle” in the driveway or gawk from the street, even letting some lucky fans inside the house.

But in 2015, after dealing with an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 visitors tromping around the house almost every summer day, she decided to close it off to the public, reported The Daily Astorian.

“She was overwhelmed and looking for help to try to get some semblance of normal life back,” the local chamber of commerce’s marketing director told the paper. “It’s just a constant stream of people coming at all hours of the day.”

Though you can no longer bike up to the house to do your best Corey Feldman or Martha Plimpton impersonation, the property does get its own marker on Google Maps:

3. Sex and the City

Though Sex and the City‘s Carrie Bradshaw lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the actual brownstone shown in the long-running HBO show is a private home several miles downtown in Greenwich Village.

Not only do the residents on this upscale neighborhood have to deal with the constant photo-taking and SATC-related tour groups, Carrie herself — Sarah Jessica Parker — ticked off the brownstone’s owners when she staged a photo shoot on the stoop for her shoe line, Page Six reported in 2014.

The owners of the home had previously strung a “NO TRESPASSING” sign across the steps to deter nosy tourists and busloads of the show’s fans from trying to walk in Bradshaw’s footsteps.

4. The Exorcist

Author William Peter Blatty once lived in this lovely two-story brick home in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. He would later immortalize the building — and the steep, stone staircase that neighbors it — in both the book and screenplay for The Exorcist.

For all the terrifying and grotesque images in the 1973 movie, the visual most associated with it may be the eerie, gaslit shot of Max Von Sydow standing on Prospect St, and about to enter the house:

While it’s very easy to find the house — the steps going down from Prospect to M Street were well known long before his book — the house now looks very little like it did 44 years ago.

There’s the heavy, nearly solid fence erected by owners at some point in recent years; a far cry from the wrought-iron gate in place at the time of the movie.

Also, it looks like about half the house is now gone. That’s because it wasn’t ever really there. In order to make it more plausible that someone could fall out of the house’s second story and onto the stone staircase, the film crew built a fake addition that stood where there is now a yard.

In 2015, the infamous, neck-twisting stairway was declared an official Washington, D.C. tourist site, with a plaque designating it as “The Exorcist Steps,” reported ABC News.

5. Mrs. Doubtfire

Now a spot that sometimes serves as a memorial to Mrs. Doubtfire star Robin Williams, the real-life owners of the San Francisco home made famous by the movie reported a suspected arson in 2016 after someone poured gasoline on the home and set it on fire, reported ABC-7.

The fire was put out and no one was hurt, but fans were upset that someone would attempt to such a thing.

“I can’t believe that, it’s an iconic house you don’t do something like, it’s disgusting,” one fan told the station.

6. Full House

On the heels of the Full House reboot in 2016, fans headed in droves to the Victorian home of the Tanners, one of San Francisco’s famous “Painted Ladies.”

The show was never filmed inside, but that doesn’t stop people from gawping, neighbors told ABC-13, with as many as 100 people dropping by per day.

Occasionally, they get in the way.

“What I do is I usually open the garage door and they ignore it. And then I go out and say, watch out! Crazy lady backing out! So far I haven’t hit anybody,” one neighbor told the station.

7. Jersey Shore

In what sounds like a bit of karmic payback, the home where Snooki and The Situation did their smushing during MTV reality fiasco Jersey Shore has been the subject of vandalism in the past.

Back in 2012, the realtor for the Seaside Heights, NJ, home told TMZ that hordes of visitors had been tagging the walls with comments and praise for the show’s stars.

Things got so bad at one point, the realtor apparently had to repaint the home on a weekly basis.

8. The Conjuring

Think horror flick The Conjuring was scary? Try living in the Rhode Island farmhouse that inspired the movie, the homeowners said in 2013.

Hundreds of people descended on the home when the movie came out, the owners’ daughter told the BBC. She said they’d caught trespassers shining flashlights through their windows at night, and had received anonymous phone calls from fans.

“My mum is in her 60s and my father is 70 and has a heart condition. This is exhausting for them,” their daughter said at the time.

In 2015, the couple sued Warner Brothers over the trespassing fans, CBS News reported.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist