Interior layout of the Boar's Nest

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

Has anyone every figured this out? Been watching some eps on CMT and trying to nail down the interior layout. Of course I've noticed the way they changed things around occasionally. From what I've observed so far, it looks like at some point they completely swapped the two sides of the room relative to the front door.

Here's a start (although not perfectly scaled):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/10867551@N00/14610424077/sizes/l/

[russell1997]

that looks pretty good the way I remember it looking.

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

I'm slowly going through several episodes from various seasons (DVR'd from CMT from the last few weeks), and so far it seems that the set was reversed mid way through season 3 and stayed that way the rest of the series.

M

[HossC]

Here are a few images to illustrate to swap-around. This screengrab from 'Return of the Ridge Raiders' in season 2 shows a small stage on the right side of the Boars Nest. The pinball machine is in the corner, but the stage is in front of an otherwise plain wall. It looks like there's a copy of the Mona Lisa above the pinball machine, while other screengrabs I have show Whistler's Mother behind the musical acts - I wonder how many other famous paintings there were.

The two screengrabs below were taken from the end of season 5, and it's clear that the right side of the Boars Nest had a completely different layout. The first is from 'Welcome Back, Bo 'n' Luke', and shows the pinball machine squeezed into the corner beside the "RECEIVING" doors.

Most of the rest of the wall and some of the bar can be seen in this shot from 'Farewell, Hazzard'.

The layout for this era of the show must've been something like the revised plan below. I've removed some items from Mark's original drawing because I didn't see those areas in the episodes I scanned through (they may well still be there).

I'll carry on looking for other screengrabs which give more details of the varying layouts.

[Roth Potter]

I like the later seasons one the most. It just was a bit more of a warm feeling.

Hoss, in your layout I think your missing the closest in boss his office.

Recently I found a screengrab from S03E09 'The Great Santa Claus Chase' which features the Boars Nest being filmed from inside a sort of cleaning closet showing the entrance to the Nest in the background.

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

Hoss, in your layout I think your missing the closest in boss his office.

Yes, Hoss eliminated that from my original drawing (think he was just demonstrating the middle room switch-around). That wall was always there in Boss' office, but the 'closet' door appeared sometime late in the series. I'm sure there was an episode where the needed a closet for something in the script, so the door was added. I first noticed it when I was watching 'Opening Night at the Boar's Nest' and have seen it in some other eps.

M

[Roth Potter]

somehow the picture I posted was removed, so here is it again.

[HossC]

I remembered that about half of 'Bad Day in Hazzard' in season 4 takes place in the Boars Nest, so I went looking for screengrabs. The first two pictures consist of a pair of screengrabs merged together to show the whole of the right side (which is why Daisy appears twice in each). Some of the following screengrabs are a little blurry because the camera was still moving when it showed the best angle.

Roth is right about the closet in Boss' office (which means my external door position is wrong) - I omitted it from the plan because I didn't see it in the episodes I watched last night. The external door is behind Bo.

The bad guy on the left has just come through the door from the main bar area. Rosco is sat at the pool table.

[HossC]

Now the rest of the main bar area. Just inside the entrance on the left there's a booth with the Indian next to it.

A little further over is the entrance to Boss' office and the jukebox (or should that be Duke box? ).

This is the rear corner. The jukebox is over on the left, and there's a door behind Jesse (more on that below).

The rear wall continues across to meet the bar.

[HossC]

Due to all the escape attempts in this episode, there are some shots of places we don't normally see. This is the door on the back wall. It appears to lead to another room where Bo and Luke (and one of the bad guys) find a ladder to the roof.

The ladder somehow comes out at a trapdoor next to the sign. Maybe they crawl unseen through the attic to get from the back to the front.

During one of the fights, Bo gets thrown through the "RECEIVING" doors. It looks like there's a small, self-contained room behind ...

... but later it's on the way to the storeroom with the trapdoor in the floor.

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

Wow those are great everybody!! I'm going to come up with some blueprints of the interior and the changes.

Looks like I got you going on something Hoss!

Mark

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

Also, take a look at 'Treasure of Hazzard' for that rear door (it has a 'complaint department' sign on it).

Mark

[HossC]

Also, take a look at 'Treasure of Hazzard' for that rear door (it has a 'complaint department' sign on it).

The sign was just inside the entrance in season 1. I made a comment about the incorrect use of the apostrophe in the Mistakes (Bloopers)/Things I've Noticed About The Show thread.

I'm trying to figure out the layout of the Boars Nest in 'Treasure of Hazzard'. We get a good look at the left side as Lester Crabb enters for the first time. The bar starts at the front wall, and is set quite a long way back from the entrance. Then the wall comes out for the "RECEIVING" doors, but Lester walks past these towards the back. When the shot cuts to inside Boss' office, Lester enters through what would become the external door in later episodes. The closet is in the corner, but it has no door (just solid walls). After establishing the door next to the closet as the way through to the main bar area, Laura Bardsley and Enos come and go through the door on the other side of the office, and that also leads to an internal room.

There's another anomaly later: when Lester gives Boss the fake map, they start digging up the floor of the office (well, they hit the carpet with axes), but when they hear on the CB that the Dukes have found the strongbox and it's been stolen, Boss and Lester are standing in a hole in the main bar area. When Boss realizes they've got a fake map, most of the right side of the bar area can be seen behind him. It appears to be a flat wall with the pinball machine in the corner followed by the jukebox and the Indian. There's no sign of any doors or booths.

[HossC]

Here's a look at the season 2 bar layout that I mentioned above. It's from 'Officer Daisy Duke'.

From the same episode, an overhead view which shows the shape of the bar quite nicely.

Another small detail: in 'Find Loretta Lynn', the "RECEIVING" doors are replaced by solid doors as that area becomes the men's room where Bubba steals the uniform from Loretta Lynn's driver.

[HossC]

In 'The Return of Hughie Hogg', Hughie persuades Boss to sign over all of his properties, and Hazzard becomes Hughie Town. What I'd forgotten was that Hughie gives Boss' office at the Boars Nest a makeover, complete with white piano and chrome/glass furniture. I thought I'd post a couple of screengrabs to remind y'all of the alternative interior .

[LizzyJackson-Davenport]

Perhaps and maybe this is just me but what I get from reading this thread and looking at the two drawings on the first page is that the bar is on one side and Boss's office is on the other. I took some time to look over the drawings and the conclusion I came to was it was possible that they just changed their filming angle. It's like in the first couple of seasons they filmed from one direction making it appear as though the bar is left side and Boss's office is on the right side and then they switched it around for the rest of the seasons.

Perhaps the Boar's nest has two doors to the exterior (three if you include the one in Boss's office). You've got the main door to the front of the building where when you come inside the bar is to the right and the office to the left and then you've got the back door and if you walk in that the room would look reversed.

From the way I'm looking at the screen shots from the different season's everything is on the walls in nearly the same positions so it just seems odd to me that they would swap around the entire middle layout. It would make more sense if they just changed their direction of filming.

Did that make any sense?

[Roth Potter]

It could be that they did that, but then they moved the main entrance to the other side of the room totally turning the interior 180 degrees is it was a real building.

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

Lizzy, I thought that was the case as well until I started looking at the series episode by episode and making notes. The layout was indeed reversed during season 3- the two 'sides' were swapped, or the 'door' section was moved to the back (depends on how you look at it).

Mark

[HossC]

I was curious to checkout the interior layout of the original Boars Nest, so I dug out my season 1 DVDs last night. So far I've only looked at the first three episodes, and the bar area was pretty dimly lit in the scenes I saw. What I did notice was how much bigger Boss' office appeared to be. He also had a large collection of stuffed animals on the walls and a very prominent gun rack.

This one shows the view through to the bar area.

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

I just reviewed the first few (GA) episodes; The layout of the GA Boar's Nest doesn't seem to resemble the Warner studio set at all. Overall very little takes place inside the Boar's Nest; I think we see Boss' office more than the bar area.

Moving to CA, they clearly concentrated on matching the exterior, but clearly started from scratch with the inside.

Mark

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

When something on a 'permanent set' changes during a series, there is usually a reason for it; its usually something in the script that needs to happen and its usually small changes to things that the director/producers feels nobody will notice. As I move through the episodes to nail down details of the Boar's Nest interiors, there are several subtle changes made to the set that I've noticed; things like a hood over the bar (appearing in season 2), support poles in the middle of the room (they disappear sometime during the series), and the closet door in Boss' office. Another detail mentioned previously are the little windows in the 'RECEIVING' doors. The doors were solid in season one, but they appear suddenly in episode 2 of season 2. Why? Because Bo and Luke were hiding in the back room and needed to silently get Daisy's attention as she waits on Boss and his guest. Opening the doors a little wouldn't make visual since they would obviously be spotted by Boss who was facing the rear of the room. So there needed to be windows.

If you take a look at the screen cap, you can see that the paint was touched up around where the windows were cut. Plus, the trim around the edges is a little rough- almost like the windows were created hastily, perhaps even on the fly as shooting was happening on the set that day.

[Hobie Hartkins]

Remember, there were Japanese people working on the show and I wonder if maybe they wrote the sign by the door....? That would account for the " Complaint's" ( instead of "Complaints") on the sign, since English is a second language for them!

[HossC]

Remember, there were Japanese people working on the show and I wonder if maybe they wrote the sign by the door....? That would account for the " Complaint's" (instead of "Complaints") on the sign, since English is a second language for them!

There were other spelling mistakes on the show. If you look through The Patrol Cars In Pictures thread, you'll see that "US Marshal" was often spelled "US Marshall" on cars and uniforms. Bringing the discussion back to this thread, I've been calling Boss' bar the "Boars Nest" because that's what's on the sign, but really it should be the "Boar's Nest" (or possibly the "Boars' Nest"). I very much doubt that this was down to "Japanese people working on the show" - I spent over 10 years working in the sign-making business, and before the industry started to become computerized in the mid- to late-80s, most of the work was done by hand. Speaking from personal experience of working with these people, there were some amazingly talented artists, but good spelling was not always amongst their skills. Even the good ones occasionally let the odd typo through.

Remember: bad spelling started long before Facebook and Twitter made it popular (or should that be compulsory? ).

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

I misspelled a few things when I worked on a tv series called 'SeaQuest DSV'. One of them was on a patch design on costumes that were sold to the public after the show ended, so its become known among collectors, so its still a bit embarrassing.

Mark

[Mark B / Scooter Davenport]

I'm trying to figure out the layout of the Boars Nest in 'Treasure of Hazzard'. We get a good look at the left side as Lester Crabb enters for the first time. .

I think I can help with some of this having reviewed a bunch of episodes looking at the details.

The bar starts at the front wall, and is set quite a long way back from the entrance. Then the wall comes out for the "RECEIVING" doors, but Lester walks past these towards the back. When the shot cuts to inside Boss' office, Lester enters through what would become the external door in later episodes. The closet is in the corner, but it has no door (just solid walls). After establishing the door next to the closet as the way through to the main bar area, Laura Bardsley and Enos come and go through the door on the other side of the office, and that also leads to an internal room..

That door next to the 'closet' (it was just a wall until later in the series when they added a door) had previously been established as the outside door, and the door on the left had been established as leading to the rest of the bar. For some reason, these thing were ignored- I'm wondering if the director for some reason didn't care what was 'established'? It does happen and generally speaking everyone does what the director wants and directors aren't always very concerned with continuity if he feels something looks good.

There's another anomaly later: when Lester gives Boss the fake map, they start digging up the floor of the office (well, they hit the carpet with axes), but when they hear on the CB that the Dukes have found the strongbox and it's been stolen, Boss and Lester are standing in a hole in the main bar area. When Boss realizes they've got a fake map, most of the right side of the bar area can be seen behind him. It appears to be a flat wall with the pinball machine in the corner followed by the jukebox and the Indian. There's no sign of any doors or booths.

Most sets are built directly on the soundstage floor, usually with just a layer of plywood underneath. Its likely that in order to portray a hole being dug in the floor, they had to build a deck so the actor could be in the hole. The would have had to move a wall from the permanent set to use on the deck, or built a similar wall to match. I'm betting they threw together the simplest wall possible (the stock wood paneling as seen in the bar), decorated it a little with a pinball machine, etc. Notice that shot is also very darkly lit, so you don't notice what's in the background.

Mark