SELLER: Ryan KavanaughLOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $10,500,000
SIZE: 2,791 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Have mercy, children. Your Mama has a lot on our damn plate right now. That ain't your problem, of course, but it means we sometimes miss the celebrity real estate brass ring the first time it comes around on the carousel. In addition to telling new stories, over the next couple weeks we'll also be discussing older–and often previously reported–celebrity real estate matters we over-looked, passed by or otherwise just didn't get to sooner. Case in point: About two weeks ago former venture capitalist turned Hollywood super-producer Ryan Kavanaugh listed his ocean front Malibu residence with a price tag of $10,500,000 and we're just circling back around to it now.
Mister Kavanaugh probably isn't a household name in Peoria, Poughkeepsie or Paducah but in Tinseltown everybody–and we mean everybody in The Industry–knows Mister Kavanaugh operates as a high-powered player in the highly competitive game of movie making. Few may know his name but most regular movie goers and watchers have likely seen at least one if not a handful of the dozens of movies in which he's had a financial hand in getting made
According to a January 2009 article in Malibu Magazine, in the early Noughts Mister Kavanaugh was living large as a brash and baby-faced 20-something year old venture capitalist with a multi-million dollar house and a douche baggy Ferrari. Yes, that's right. We said it and we meant it too. Take note Justin Bieber: Twenty-something year old men with more money than life experience who scoot around in attention demanding Ferraris always, always, always look like hardcore douche bags. The only people who don't find it to be silly and tacky are the twenty something year old moe-ron men who drive Ferraris and that certain kind of woman who finds douche baggery sexy. Even more stupefyingly ridiculous? A teenage boy driving a Ferrari. Gwaawd. Gag Your Mama with a damn spoon. We're not jealous of Little Boy Bieber people, so don't even waste your time and energy to go there. We do not want to hear it.
Anyhoo, Mister Kavanaugh's venture capital business went bust, he lost all his money and eventually turned his hard-charging attentions to The Big Business of Show. He founded Relativity Media in 2004 and in the six or seven years since has executive produced scads of hyper-successful movies that include (but are far from limited to): Cowboys & Aliens, The Fighter, Salt, Nine, Little Fockers, Frost/Nixon, Burn After Reading, Mamma Mia!, Pineapple Express, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. A long list of projects in the works (and in the bag) include The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and an as yet untitled Snow White film staring hotsy-totsy baking soda heir Armie Hammer as the prince and Oscar winning actress (and fellow Malibu resident) Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen.
Relativity Media has agreements with half a dozen major studios to co-finance films and has begun to snatch up various film production and distribution operations. It seems, puppies, that Mister Kavanaugh–a whippersnapper just in his mid-thirties now–is well on his way to being the next Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Along with Mister Kavanaugh's rocket to showbiz success came a Hollywood Big Baller lifestyle that included a lavish and controversial commute from his home in Malibu to West Hollywood by helicopter. That's right, he commuted by helicopter. We do not begrudge Mister Kavanaugh his money or success. We really don't. However, a lot of people bristle and squirm with inequality and righteous indignation when they hear of such naked extravagance, particularly during the current and terrifying volatility of the economy that has a lot of folks wondering how they're going to pay for four dollar a gallon gas to get to their near-minimum wage job where they perform various services for the rich people who spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars every day to fly themselves to and from work by helicopter. But, poodles, we digress and that is really another topic for another blog.
Before moving to Malibu prop records reveal Mister Kavanaugh owned a secluded contemporary crib on Beverly Ranch Road, just off twisty and famous Mulholland Drive and up a private shared driveway high in the hills above Sherman Oaks, CA. In December 2007 he sold his house on Bev. Ranch Road for $3,100,000. We're not sure where he went from there but records indicate he eventually landed in a 1930s Spanish-style casa on the sand in Malibu where in February 2009 he shelled out $5,850,000 for an ocean front residence at the western end of Malibu's celebrity-lined La Costa beach. Mister Kavanaugh quickly caught a case of the Real Estate Fickle and flipped the house to director/producer Todd Phillips (The Hangover, Starsky & Hutch) for $9,000,000. The house sits sandwiched between David Spade's house and the 1930s cottage that Oscar winner Charlize Theron sold to Glee creator Ryan Murphy in May 2011 for $6,562,500.
In October 2009, a number months before he sold his house to Mister Phillips, Mister Kavanaugh splashed out another $7,000,000 for another oceanfront pad, this one also on La Costa but down at the opposite end not so far from the house Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne have been trying to sell for an eternity and is currently on the market for $9,500,000.
Property records reveal that Mister Kavanaugh acquired the property from spectacularly successful class-action trial attorney Thomas W. Girardi, the real life attorney who litigated the Anderson vs. Pacific Gas & Electric case that inspired the Erin Brockovich movie that won Julia Roberts an Academy Award. Mister Girardi's eponymous firm reportedly took in "at least $120 million" in legal fees for that case.
Listing information for Mister Kavanaugh's current crib in the Bu states that it's been "recently renovated and updated." Presumably these recent renovations and updates account for the toe-curling 50% increase in asking price over the $7,000,000 he paid for the place less than two years ago. At it's current $10,500,000 asking price, Mister Kavanaugh's house is the most expensive house currently listed on the open market on La Costa beach.
The listing, held by Mister Kavanaugh's Beverly Hills-based real estate agent mother, states the tile-roofed sort of-Spanish/quasi-contemporary beach abode was originally built in 1955, measures 2,791 square feet and in includes 2 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
A gated and walled entry courtyard puts a grassy buffer between the perpetually busy Pacific Coast Highway and the glass front door. Inside the open plan living/dining/kitchen area has white washed hardwood floors and a full wall of floor-to-ceiling wood framed glass windows and doors that marries the cozy interior spaces to the sea side outdoor entertainment area.
The mildly but unmistakably feminine and unexpectedly Shabby Chic-inspired day-core makes Your Mama wonder if Mister Kavanaugh actually lives (or lived) here or if all of his things were removed and replaced with a truckload of white slip-covered sofas and wood coffee/end tables from Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota's giant warehouse of banal staging furniture. Whatever the case, the sky-lit living area has shallow vaulted ceiling, built-in bar counter, and a double-wide fireplace flanked by display niches and wood-storage boxes. A kick-up-your-feet white slip-covered sectional sofa that faces away from the ocean encircles a beachy wood coffee table. On the wall opposite the ocean, a giant over-sized mirror makes it possible for someone on the sofa to view the ocean even though not facing it. Blech! Gack! Maybe we're just funny this way but Your Mama would much rather turn the damn sofa around so the ocean can be seen directly rather than through the dizzy-making reflective artifice of a mirror.
Behind the dining area the deluxe but design-wise fairly ordinary center-island kitchen with breakfast bar has white Shaker-style cabinets with glass-fronted uppers, grey-veined marble counter tops and high-grade commercial style stainless-steel appliances. Upstairs, at the road end of the house a sizable family/media room has a wood-beamed vaulted ceiling, corner fireplace, sand-colored wall-to-wall carpeting, and another white slip-covered sectional sofa wrapped around a wood coffee.
A notable–and we think successful–architectural effort was made in the second floor master suite where the ridge line of the wood-beamed vaulted ceiling was replaced with an angled sky light that runs the full length of the room. The room faces the roiling Pacific Ocean through an entire wall of wood-framed glass windows and doors that open to a petite private terrace with glass railing and up-close and personal view of the waves and whitewater. The attached bathroom also has a vaulted wood ceiling pierced by at least one dramatic sky light and includes double sinks and a soaking tub separate from the two-headed (and sky-lit) shower area.
A decent size for Malibu but far from huge entertainment deck off the main living area hangs over the sand and, as per listing photos, offers enough square footage to accommodate a few sunbathing beds at one end, a teak dining table for eight at the other and, in between, yet another white slip-covered sectional sofa curled around a wood coffee table. High-powered heaters mounted in the eaves ensure the salty aired deck can be used even when the weather gets a bit cool and coastal.
Your Mama has no knowledge of where Mister Kavanaugh plans to decamp but iffin we were the wagering type–and we're not–we'd bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly and our mean ol' pussy Sugar he's headed someplace more expensive and more impressive. We shall see, butter beans, we shall see.
Property records also show that in July 2008, Mister Kavanaugh spent a total of $1,290,000 for three 625 square foot apartments in a newly constructed apartment building walking distance to Rao's in New York City's can-be-sketchy East Harlem 'hood. Rao's, for those who don't already know, is a teeny-tiny old-school Italian eatery well-known as the most difficult–near impossible–restaurant at which to secure a reservation in all of New York City. 'Tis true. Check it out.
listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty / Beverly Hills
