The NYC Pizza Places, Bodegas, and Nightclubs of 'One Night Only'

Imagine a world where premarital sex is only legal for one night out of the whole year (and, yes, condoms are mandatory). It might seem preposterous, but it is the premise of the movie One Night Only, a hilarious rom-com that takes us up, down, and all around New York City—crucially, all in just one night.For a film that is set in the biggest city in the United States, the characters manage to cover a lot of ground (and at least three boroughs) in one wild night. Allie (Monica Barbaro), a single musician with unrealized dreams who makes her income recording pharmaceutical jingles, and Owen (Callum Turner), a charming but recently dumped pizza shop proprietor, cannot stop bumping into each other. As they encounter handsome stranger after handsome stranger in a quest to get each other laid, one thing becomes abundantly clear: looks can be deceiving.Allie (Monica Babaro) and Owen (Callum Turner) give us a whistlestop tour of New York City as they keep bumping into each other while separately seeking to get laid. Nicole Rivelli /Universal PicturesDirector Will Gluck, of Easy A and Anyone But You, was excited to take on this New York-centric film as a born-and-bred New Yorker. Part of his mission was to use as much of the city— particularly locations from his childhood—as possible, while making the characters' movements and transit choices actually plausible. “I was very concerned with geography,” Gluck said, “I'm really a stickler that it has to make sense. I don't want them going the wrong way to get to the right place.”Gluck was able to call up a lot of his local friends to take part in the film: “We were lucky that pretty much everyone said yes.” From Mike Birbiglia as a farcical cop to a bouncer at a Greenpoint club played by Ziwe, New York comedians abound. “Most importantly, I like filming parts of New York that you don't really see in movies,” he told Condé Nast Traveler. Gluck spoke to Traveler about all the neighborhoods and locales, both planned and those discovered along the way, that made their way into One Night Only.One key location for the film is the fictional Carmine's Pizza, where Owen works, which was actually filmed at The Original Ray's Pizza on the Upper West Side. Nicole Rivelli / Universal PicturesThe Upper West SideClaremont’s Pizza is Owen’s place of work and makes several appearances throughout the film, both when Owen is at work and off duty. Gluck grew up near Columbia University on Claremont Avenue, and decided to use his childhood street name as the namesake of Owen’s pizzeria. While Claremont Pizza is not a real establishment, the crew filmed those scenes at The Original Ray’s Pizza on 82nd and Columbus Ave. Though this spot is situated on the Upper West Side, Gluck imagined the fictional Claremont’s being located even further north in Manhattan's various Heights.The Heights (Hamilton, Washington, Morningside)Owen, very much a mama’s boy, spends a good deal of time at his mother (Molly Ringwald) Linda’s gorgeous Hamilton Heights apartment. After getting off at the 145th subway station, Owen, arms crossed and defeated by an earlier rejection, declares to Linda, “Mom, I’m just gonna stay in.” She encourages him to go out—she has her own spicy evening plans that involve bubble wrap and Colleen Hoover’s Ugly Love with her boyfriend (Levar Burton) to attend to. “I knew I wanted them to live up there,” Gluck says of the brownstone they shot in, which is not far from Alexander Hamilton’s former home on West 141st. “In fact, The Royal Tenenbaums, shot near there, too. We had location scouts knock on every single door until we found the one.” A little further south on Amsterdam is the pharmacy where Owen goes into the bathroom and unsuccessfully attempts to turn rubber gloves into a condom. The locale they shot in is the pharmacy frequented by Gluck’s parents: “When we went in to scout, the person working goes, 'Oh, I know your parents. Yes, you can use it.' So it was a sort of small-town thing.” The search for a condom continues in the Heights when Owen runs into an urgent care clinic, hoping to score protection. “People have watched the movie and said to me, ‘Wow that’s such a nice urgent care center!' It’s because the space is a veterinarian's office."The Foundry, a wedding venue in Long Island City, doubled for a club where Allie gets her moment in the spotlight. Nicole Rivelli / Universal PicturesLower ManhattanIt makes a lot of sense that much of the film transpires in Lower Manhattan. As most young people living in the city can attest, it's a hotbed of nightlife, and the place one might go looking if they had only one night to seal the deal. Early on, Allie finds herself in a nightclub there, accosted by a swarm of desperate suitors played by the likes of Saturday Night Live's Marshall and Nicholas Braun. The swanky lounge was filmed at Chez Margaux, the elegant red-toned members' club located in Chelsea, a stone’s throw from the Whitney Museum and the High Line.Shortly after, Owen flirts with a bartender (Julia Fox) at the White Horse Tavern and she agrees to meet up with him after her shift. That scene was shot in the historic White Horse Tavern’s West Village location. A term of th alternate reality in which the film takes place is that condoms are mandatory, so Owen flees the bar in desperate search of protection. He finds his way to a SoHo bodega where he reunites with Allie. They proceed to squabble, along with the no-nonsense bodega owner (Roma Maffia) and several strangers, over the single remaining condom available for purchase.Other Lower Manhattan shooting locations included the West Village’s Electric Lady Studios, where Allie meets up with a starry musician for what turns out to be an unromantic rendezvous. And Allie’s apartment is also meant to be located in the Lower East Side, but was actually built on a soundstage in Brooklyn.Electric Lady, a recording studio in the West Village, was used for the scene where Allie attempts a tryst with a famous musician (Charlie Gillespie). Universal PicturesLong Island CityOne Night Only crosses over into the borough of Queens when Allie heads home with a stranger she meets at the Chelsea lounge. When she arrives at his massive apartment, with exposed brick aplenty as well as forgeries of famous artworks, they don’t linger too long before the police arrive to arrest the casanova as a conman. The apartment was filmed at the Foundry, an industrial facility-turned-event venue. “When he runs naked and jumps off the balcony, you can see the 59th Street Bridge,” says Gluck. Another building of The Foundry space, which was formerly used to melt metal, acts as the interior of the club where Allie performs ‘Only You’ in a later scene.BrooklynWhile Allie goes on her adventure with the swindler, Owen turns to a dating app to seek connection. He ends up on a Citi Bike to Brooklyn Bridge Park, where his date gets him naked and then zip-ties him to a tree. This fateful series of events leads both Owen, publicly indecent, and Allie, present for the arrest of her short-lived beau, to reunite yet again at the police station. Says Gluck, “We took over an old metal factory that is still in business, actually. It was really cool. And we turned that into a police station.” Finally, they shot the exterior of the club guarded by Ziwe's intimidating bouncer at a warehouse in Greenpoint on Kingsland Avenue.The Little Red Lighthouse, a real but no longer operating lighthouse along the Hudson River in Washington Heights's Fort Washington Park, steals the movie in its final scene. Universal PicturesThe Little Red LighthouseWhen Allie and Owen find their way back to one another at the eleventh hour and finally share a magnificent kiss, they are at the Little Red Lighthouse in Fort Washington Park along the Hudson River. What appears to be a storybook prop is a real lighthouse in the Washington Heights neighborhood. “I went there all the time as a kid. No one knows about it,” Gluck explained of his secret spot. “It's cool showing a grizzled New York crew a spot they haven't filmed in nor heard about.”