Designer Robert Vincent Derrah's "pedestrian village" in Hollywood is the site of Sid Hudgens' (Danny DeVito) cluttered Hush-Hush office. According to Oppewall, renting a space in clear view of the complex's iconic tower was key.

“That involved walking up and down and banging on the doors and seeing who would be willing to vacate his or her premises for a week or so,” she says.

To keep the period illusion intact, Oppewall and her team installed a green hedge in front of a “mean-spirited” metal fence fronting Sunset Boulevard, which betrayed “a non-ending stream of contemporary cars.”

Bud White (Russell Crowe) gives a domestic abuser a taste of his own medicine at this now extensively-remodeled house in suburban Long Beach.

“It's condos now, but then it was pretty much abandoned and inhabited only by the odd filmmaking company,” says Oppewall of the historic former headquarters of the Pacific Electric transit company (and later the Southern Pacific railroad).

“We shot the detective bureau and the interrogation rooms and the police chief's office and the office of the District Attorney [there],” she continued. “We managed to corral all eight floors of that building, and I found places that could work for all of those locations.”

The scene of Jack Vincennes’ (Kevin Spacey) pot-bust photo op was one of the most difficult locations to find. Tasked with tracking down an old-school movie theater and an apartment on the same block, Oppewall was at a loss until she spotted the John Parkinson-designed California Bank building at 5620 Hollywood Boulevard. 

But turning the former bank building into a movie theater wasn't easy. For one thing, the owners forbid the production from nailing anything to the facade, forcing Oppewall to get creative. 

“What I ended up doing was designing the movie marquee as a freestanding triangle,” she says. “We shoved it up against the building, and then we built two pilasters on the back two legs that disappeared directly into the background of the building ... And we had to have a supporting pillar in the front, which we painted black. I specified that we had to always have some extras standing directly in front of it so you wouldn't see that it was actually standing on three legs.”

Long before marijuana became legal in California, down-on-his-luck actor Matt Reynolds (Simon Baker) began his ultimately-fatal downward spiral during a pot bust at this Hollywood duplex.

The history of this Golden Era nightclub and restaurant stretches all the way back to 1927, and at the time of shooting very little had changed since its heyday as Hollywood hotspot. As Oppewall recounts, its period art deco interior required very little in the way of production design for a scene in which Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) gives Bud his badge and gun back.

“It feels like it's been remaindered by time,” she says. “Which is something all production designers dealing with history long for and embrace lovingly.”

LA's dark underbelly is represented most vividly by this remote motel, which is where Captain Smith ambushes Bud and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) at the end of the film. But don’t waste your time trying to find it—the structures were built from the ground up in the Inglewood Oil Field and subsequently demolished.

“To me it had all the correct metaphors, because it was about the city being sucked dry by some kind of corruption,” says Oppewall, who built the 1920s-style cottages after failing to find a suitable period motel for filming. “We kept that metaphor in the background with the oil derrick pumping the whole time.”

“We drove around for hours on the dirt roads in the oil fields, having gotten permission from the oil company to explore,” she says. “And finally found a flat place...[with] oil derricks behind it and trees surrounding it on two sides and a cliff on one side. It really was the perfect metaphor for a no-exit motel.”

Exley didn't have to travel far from the precinct to reach the scene of this multiple homicide—the diner (a.k.a. JJ Sandwich Shop) is located right across the street from the film’s police station set at the Pacific Electric Building.

Though “a lot” of work had to be done on the interior to make it period-specific, one architectural feature in particular made it perfect for the film. “It happened to have, in the inside alley of the building right behind that restaurant, a bathroom that we could use for the murder scene,” says Oppewall.

The Lovell Health House, a pioneering hillside abode designed by Richard Neutra, doubled as Pierce Patchett's (David Strathairn) luxurious home, whose modernist design represented a distinct change from Ellroy's novel.

“Curtis had been thinking that unlike what seemed to have been written in the Ellroy book, that the Strathairn character would have modern taste and live in a modern building,” she says. “And that place came to mind because all architectural historians, amateur and professional ... know about it.”

The house where Vincennes pumps boxer Leonard Bidwell (Robert Barry Fleming) for information is in hilly Angelino Heights, which also contains the spooky Victorian seen in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.

The rundown home where Exley and Vincennes arrest three men suspected of the Nite Owl massacre is located in a crumbling multi-family dwelling in East Hollywood. Judging from the latest images available on Google Street View, the years have not been kind.

Bud makes short work of a kidnapper at this spacious multi-family home in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood.

Vincennes' go-to meeting place is this iconic dive on Hollywood Boulevard, long rumored as one of Charles Bukowski's favorite imbibing spots. Due to its classic interior, only a minimal amount of updating was required, though Oppewall says the Pantages Theater next door required a bit more work to make it period-accurate.

This still-in-existence Sunset Boulevard motel—where Vincennes discovers the body of Matt Reynolds—was desirable for its “seedy” appearance and its location in the heart of Hollywood. 

“We didn't have to go chasing something in Sierra Madre,” says Oppewall. “There are older motels [all] around the city of LA, but it's always better if you can find an appropriate one in the area in which the story's actually written, and which some people might actually physically relate to.”

Bud makes a grisly discovery in the basement of this unassuming Echo Park home, where the mother of a murdered Rita Hayworth lookalike swears that a rat died behind the wall. She wasn't far off.

This modest El Sereno residence with its sweeping front lawn is the home of Captain Dudley Smith, who gives Vincennes a brutal third-act surprise in the kitchen. RIP.

Bud and Lynn take their leave of the vice-ridden metropolis at the steps of Los Angeles City Hall (i.e. the center of corruption itself). The building of course worked well for the period on its own, but some digital trickery was required for the surrounding area.

“There was a lot that was incorrect for the period looking down that street,” Oppewall says of the final shot of Lynn's departing car. “What I did was I just stood there and photographed everything and pieced it all together and made notes and circles and suggestions, and we sent that through the digital effects department, and they essentially got rid of stuff that was wrong for the period digitally.”