So, we purchased what had been Bing Crosby’s home on nearly five acres. It kind of looked like a ranch (at least a Hollywood version of a ranch in the middle of Holmby Hills, just blocks away from UCLA). We started to remodel the house, and, as we tried to bring it up to current codes and more traditional style, it became more apparent that we needed to start all over.
Thus, plans for a home that was shaped like a wing, L’Oiseau, began to emerge. It would be six years until the Spelling family moved in, and my kids were over the “we want to live on a ranch” phase by then.
My favorite room is probably the most famous. It’s one of the smallest (less than 300 square feet). It’s my gift-wrapping room. In 1991, it was a novelty, but my priority. Now, many people tell me they couldn’t live without theirs. It gives me such joy to buy new papers and decorations (and organize my glue guns and bows), second only to actually giving people gifts.
We built the gift-wrapping room for me (and Aaron agreed it was necessary, as it seemed we gave as many gifts as the nearly 2,000 people our company employed each year). I created the projection room for Aaron. While he was making episodes of Fantasy Island, my own fantasy was that if I built the most-spectacular screening room, he’d work more at home. His hours were long, and, at the end of the day, he watched clips from each of the shows.
How could my plan fail? One night I sat straight up in bed with the answer. It would have the ultimate Hollywood “reveal.” Our 40-foot screen would delicately, yet shockingly, emerge from below, not from the ceiling. No one had ever seen that before, I was sure. I made sketches, worked on how the silk carpeting could part like the Red Sea, and ordered the finest movie projection and sound equipment ever invented. And that was when I learned about excavation, but proceeded nevertheless.
Aaron literally swooned the first time he experienced two valuable paintings moving to reveal two projectors, when the hidden black blinds quietly covered the windows, and when the screen, as delicate as water ballet, emerged from the floor to make its presence known. He loved showing it to people (almost everyone swoons), but rarely used it for his work. Not many television shows are made for movie theater-size screens half the size of Radio City Music Hall or Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome.
Now that I had the special rooms for Aaron and me, all I needed to do was design the rest of the house. Oh, wait, there was also the bowling alley for Aaron and the video arcade for Tori and Randy and their friends.
