Oscar Weekend in L.A. Part II

Sir Elton John and The Scissor Sisters wrap up their post Oscar party performance. 11:10 PM. Photo: JH.

Zest for Life. Saturday afternoon, JH and I drove out to Malibu to lunch with New York/Santa Monica restaurateur Michael McCarty and his artist wife Kim at their sensational compound (avec hillside vineyard) way up in the mountains of Las Flores Canyon overlooking the Pacific. From their vantage point, they look down on Carbon Beach right out to the Colony, to Pepperdine University beyond and Point Dume. A huge boulder fell onto Pacific Coast Highway from the hills of Big Rock Canyon during the rains and closed off Malibu, so even the McCartys were cut off from their heavenly property for a few days. Saturday was the first day traffic could get through.

Michael McCarty in his kitchen holding a glass of his Pinot Noir from his Malibu Vineyard

Michael and Kim have owned the property for years but the great Malibu fire in the mid-1990s raced through one afternoon and took everything they owned with it. Everything. And all the houses in the surrounding canyons, save one old wooden house that went untouched. Kim was home alone when the fire began. She knew enough to know that when the fires appeared to the north at the top of the ridge, from over Topanga way, she had to get out instantly. She grabbed two photo albums, jumped in the car and went off to get her two children out of school. She also took a box of silver that had belonged to her mother ... only to discover when she later opened it that it was empty – her housekeeper had removed the silver intending to clean it. That was gone too. Later, after it was over, they found the silver tea set her mother-in-law had given them on their wedding – all melted into a hard silver puddle. That’s all right – they had insurance which provided for temporary living (in the Colony on the beach at Malibu) and in 1998, the second Estate McCarty was built. And all I can say is: I could live here. Views and views, and the Pacific and those utterly otherworldly sunsets, and the light. They have a main house with their son’s and daughter’s bedrooms, a restaurateur’s kitchen open to the dining room and living room, all of which overlooks the ocean, plus a library (overlooking the ocean) and a second-floor suite which is the master ... all overlooking the ocean and the Malibu coastline. Michael prepared a lunch of white asparagus garnished with diced hardboiled eggs doused with a vinaigrette, plus his brand of roast chicken and a green salad, all washed down with the Pinot Noir from his Malibu Vineyard. He has three acres of vineyard surrounding the house and it produces 200 cases of excellent wine annually (it’s on the wine list at both restaurants).

Kim McCarty in her studio

The couple met years ago at the University of Colorado where she was studying art and he was teaching a French cooking class in French. The class grew out of a brainstorm between a couple of professors trying to figure out how to teach French majors (who could read and write it proficiently) how to speak it. Michael, who is 100% American and grew up in Chappaqua went to cooking school in Paris when he was a kid, and after a year or so there, learned the language (including that of the cuisine), so he was hired for the task. Kim McCarty March 11th - April 9th Briggs Robinson Gallery 527 West 29th Street We had our wonderful lunch out on the sunny terrace amidst the brilliant Malibu surroundings, in the company of the McCartys, their son Chas and their dog Blanche, a rescued white Lab who had previously been a crack house dog. After lunch we had a tour of their surroundings. I am not an envying person, but I must confess to having fallen prey to that deadly sin while visiting this most wonderful home. The compound also contains three other buildings – two guesthouses and a party room, surrounding the pool. A few steps away is a tennis court and underneath is a vast studio where Kim paints. A lot of her work is very familiar to customers of Michael’s Restaurant in Manhattan on West 55th Street. She’s having her first solo show in New York Friday March 11 at the Briggs Robinson Gallery at 527 West 29th Street from 6 to 9 PM. She’ll be showing there through April 9th. Wine making is another talent Michael picked up in his youth studying gastronomy in France. The hills of Malibu are excellent for certain wines because of the light and the air coming in off the sea. So we had another tour of this petite vineyard and he explained the process, all of which is fascinating and none of which I can recall to recount.

Early Saturday evening we went with our hostess down the hill to the Bel Air Hotel to have a quick drink with those New York boys, Andrew Saffir and Daniel Benedict at the bar in the hotel. JH had never seen the place before and so just doing that was a treat for him. The parking lot was packed with big black SUVs and stretches limos as well as the perfunctory Mercedes, a couple of brand new Bentleys, assorted Beamers and us in our rented white Sebring convertible. When you can put the top down in LA, who cares who makes the top? That’s what I say. Anyway, the bar was jammed with Hollywood types. And Hollywood visitor types. Saffir and Benedict have been making this weekend for the past six years, and they just can’t get enough of it. Me, it’s easy to get enough of it.

Afterwards they went off to the new temporary SoHo House that was put together in a loaned house on Mount Olympus. If you don’t already know, Mount Olympus was a hilltop private residential development created in the 1960s or 70s on the eastern side of Laurel Canyon with some of the most fabulous views in Los Angeles from the downtown all the way out to Catalina. The architecture is, or rather was, a pastiche of Greco-Roman meets Gidget Goes Hawaiian On A Bad Day. But, as I said, fantastic views, really fantastic. The result was the development never really took on the ancient prestige that was intended (or imagined). Although today, god knows, they’re probably some of the most expensive houses in town (and worth every dime if you’re a view-freak, as a lot of us are). This is where SoHo House plonked themselves down for the Big Weekend, with their eye on maybe doing a SoHo House somewhere in L.A. some time. Andrew said they were doing a great job and all the New Yorkers who are members at SoHo House were welcome to come to dine or get a massage and meet with their own kind (only the very best kind, of course) and bring their friends. After our drinks at the Bel Air Hotel, we went off to Orso to meet some old friends at another one of our Old Haunts. For din.

Donna Estes Antebi relaxes at home in Bel Air

Sunday noontime we took a drive over the hill to see the house falling down just north of Mulholland (Monday’s Diary) and then around those environs to see what other damage or whatever that we could see. We ended up on the South side of the mountain looking up at the house Errol Flynn built in the late 1930s at the top of Sunset Plaza. The house had a guest bedroom with a peephole in the ceiling so Mr. Flynn could watch his guests at their best nocturnal activities, if he felt in the mood. The coffee shop at the Beverly Hills Hotel We also passed the house of Mickey Hargitay, where he brought up his daughter Mariska, also overlooking the western part of Los Angeles. After we’d had enough of that, we stopped by the Beverly Hills Hotel to hit the coffee shop on the subterranean level, famous for its cheeseburgers, as well as its guests. By this time it was almost three in the afternoon and the place was buzzing with prep activities for the Big Night. All along Crescent Drive north of Sunset, the black limousines and SUVs with drivers were double parked, waiting to transport their charges over to the Oscars.

After lunch it was back to the house and back to work on Monday’s Diary. About eight o’clock, work finished, JH and I put on jacket, shirt and tie and headed down to the Pacific Design Center where Elton John was holding his annual Oscar party with 1000 guests and in a massive tent set up behind the Design Center (which is owned by New Yorker (and NYSD habitue) Charles Steven Cohen. The Pacific Design Center at the corner of Melrose and San Vicente Leon Hall with Joan and Melissa Rivers on the red carpet That whole neighborhood around the Design Center (and Morton’s restaurant just one block up on the corner of Melrose and Robertson) was closed off to thru traffic, patrolled by LAPD, with spotlights lighting the sky. Hollywood Party. Elton’s evening, which he hosted with his partner David Furnish, began at 4:30 for cocktails (and Oscar viewing) and dinner for four hundred or so. It was a fund-raiser for his AIDS Foundation, and they raised $5 million on this one night. As you entered, there was a half-a-block long bank of photographers and vid-cams taking in the red carpet arrivals. The Donald was there with the beautiful Melania. Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa were working the scene interviewing and evaluating the costumes of the arrivals. Elizabeth Taylor came (much to the surprise of many because it’s been said that she’s become pretty much of a recluse). Asked about her reclusiveness, she replied that some people even thought she was dead, “which I’m not, as you can see.” La Taylor, resplendent in some of her famous diamonds (and who came out for the evening on what was her 73rd Birthday!), was flanked by two handsome grandsons while there was a detail of paramedics and bodyguards also present with everything including a wheelchair, in case she needed it. She does look frail (compared to our image of this most famous movie star) and possibly isn’t crazy about putting that foot forward at this moment in her life. But she’s committed to the cause of finding a cure for AIDS and nothing was going to hold her back from attending. It was also said that Chopard, which was one of the event’s sponsors (there were a lot of women wearing Chopard this night) offered her some jewelry in kind payment for her presence. And we know Elizabeth Taylor likes her jewelry (and has lots to prove it).

"e" for Elton granting us access to the party Inside I ran into Rick Hilton who was talking to Denise Rich and her daughter and a young redheaded woman who seemed very friendly for a stranger. Which it turned out, she was not: it was Kathy Hilton who’d decided on the wig because she’d bought it for another occasion and never used it. The Hiltons were joined by their famous daughters and their entourage. Charles Cohen introduced me to Kelsey Grammer and his lovely wife Camille. Gillian Hearst was there, as Nikki Haskell with Nick Chavez who has a $50 million annual business on QVC, as was Lynn Wyatt, Tom Kranz, Fabian Basabe and Martina Borgomanero, Alex Lind, Adrian Grenier, Anthony Anderson, Randy Jackson, Bill Duke, Natasha Henstridge, Pamela Anderson, Roger Friedman, Donald Trump, George Rush, Christina Aguillera, Tim Allen, Josh Groban. We saw Elizabeth and Henry Segerstrom who’d come up from Newport Beach for the evening. Elizabeth introduced us to Henry and Susan Samueli who, it was announced in Friday’s Los Angeles Times, had just bought the Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey team from Disney for $75 million. Mr. Samueli is the co-founder (with Henry Nicholas) and chairman of Broadcom, one of the largest technology companies in Orange County and is a member of the famous Forbes 400 richest. Elizabeth also introduced us to film producer Lisa Colburn who's also on the board of the Los Angeles Opera and the Met Opera. Extra producer Richard Ayoub interviews DPC to close out the show Although dinner had long since been finished, there were continuing trays of hors d’oeuvres, salads, hamburgers, lamp chops and desserts being laid out. The main tent was one great big cocktail party until about eleven when Elton John appeared on the stage and introduced The Scissor Sisters, currently one of the top rock groups in England and also his opening act on his tour. The group entertained a rocking audience for about an hour when The Man returned to sit at his big red piano and accompany them, and then perform “The Bitch Is Back ...” The band wrapped it up right after that and so did we. The photogs and TV interviewers were still working the Red Carpet, as we were leaving (Joan and Melissa had already fled). Just outside the entrance on what had become a very cool (like brrrrr) Los Angeles night, they were distributing the evening’s goodie bag which was ... heavy with all kinds of stuff. We headed back to the hills of Bel Air, needing to be up at the crack of dawn to return to New York and The Snow (and no more Gates!).

 

© 2006 David Patrick Columbia & Jeffrey Hirsch/NewYorkSocialDiary.com