It is not often that a movie location is inspired by a work of art, but such was the case with the modern beach pad Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) called home in the 1995 action classic “Heat.” For the shoot, director Michael Mann enlisted famed film scout Lori Balton to track down a residence embodying artist Alex Colville’s 1967 painting “Pacific,” a moody piece depicting a man looking out at the ocean through a large picture window with a gun resting behind him on a table in the foreground. And Balton certainly delivered! The dwelling ultimately selected, which she scoured the Southern California coastline to find, perfectly encapsulates the painting and, as Balton beautifully summarizes, “the feeling of discomfort it somehow evokes despite its perfect harmony.”
Purported to be in Santa Monica in the movie, Neil’s home can actually be found in Malibu Cove Colony, an exclusive guard-manned gated community consisting of 51 oceanfront homes that line a single dead-end road about a mile north of Paradise Cove in Central Malibu. Towering two stories directly above the sand at 26940 Malibu Cove Colony Dr., the ultra-modern structure is the ultimate beach pad! (Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.)
Cinematic through and through, the dwelling, perhaps not surprisingly, is the work of Ron Goldman, FAIA, of Goldman Firth Rossi, the very same architect behind such oft-filmed properties as the Jenny Residence in Zuma Beach (from “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”), Rancho Cielo in Agoura (which, sadly, no longer stands but was a regular fixture on “The Bachelor”) and portions of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley (of “The Mentalist” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” fame).
Goldman constructed the beach pad as his own private residence in 1982. It has changed hands several times in the years since, most recently in December 2020 for $7.25 million. And now it has just hit the market once again! Listed by broker Pamela Ulich of Douglas Elliman Realty (whose extensive resume includes stints serving as both the mayor of Malibu and a city council member, as well as in-house counsel for both the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America!), the property is being offered for $21,585,000 – or a whopping $6,164 per square foot. Apparently, living like Neil McCauley requires some very deep pockets!
-
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty Though the residence’s façade is somewhat nondescript, one step past the privacy wall and visitors are immersed in a large sun-dappled front courtyard featuring a breezeway leading straight to the beach and a whimsical but non-functional floating staircase art installation – a definite conversation starter!
-
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty The interior is an architectural delight with four bedrooms and three baths spread throughout a spacious 3,502 square feet. Open and bright, the rear of the estate is framed with walls of glass and large sliders that open to a patio running the entire width of the property, offering unparalleled 180-degree views of the Pacific Ocean, the Queen’s Necklace and Santa Catalina Island beyond. As the listing notes, “every angle” of the residence is “maximized for privacy, light and inspiration.”
-
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty Generously-appointed living spaces include a dining room, a living room, a chef’s kitchen featuring a slew of top-of-the-line Miele appliances and an expansive media room lined by a wall of handsome open shelving.
-
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty The second level is reached via a geometrically-inspired floating staircase which stands on display like a work of art beneath a magnificent protracted pyramidal skylight that mimics the lines of the exterior breezeway.
-
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty Off the main landing is the owners’ suite, a grand solarium-windowed space boasting an adjacent study with a built-in desk and fireplace, a private balcony and a large bathroom with a walk-in shower, dual vanity and a soaking tub overlooking the blue waters below.
-
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty Thanks to its beachfront location and multitude of courtyards and balconies, the property feels leagues larger than its 0.15 acres. And bonus – it comes equipped with a Tesla charging station, so energy-minded occupants can always be charged up and ready to make a getaway in 30 seconds flat if the heat is ever spotted nearby!
-
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures -
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty Sleek, stark and utterly exclusive, the property perfectly encapsulates the personality of master thief Neil McCauley. Though only featured in two brief scenes comprising about three and a half minutes of “Heat’s” nearly three-hour run time, the beach house certainly leaves a marked impression – so much so that the Scraps from the Loft website deems an early scene in which Neil is shown standing against the glass sliders staring out at the ocean the film’s “defining image.”
-
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures -
Image Credit: Simon Berlyn for Douglas Elliman Realty The dwelling was dressed down considerably for the shoot. Neil is, after all, a guy who lives by the mantra, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” As such, his house is devoid of furnishings, décor and any sort of trappings of daily life. As detailed by Scraps from the Loft, “McCauley is a man of few words and fewer possessions. His clothes are monochrome, his movements deliberate—he aspires to anonymity, even invisibility. McCauley is a man defined entirely by what he does, not by what he owns.” Thanks to the gifted work of Lori Balton and production designer Neil Spisak, his residence is a perfect reflection of that.
-
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures Though likely only noticed by the most hawk-eyed of fans, a bank of prop mailboxes was affixed to an exterior wall near the home’s front entrance for the shoot to give it the illusion of being an apartment and further the theme of Neil’s foundationless existence. Balton explains, “That was the thing about De Niro’s character….impersonal, ready to walk away at a moment’s notice, and able to blend in . . . so an apartment is more impersonal and less permanent than a house.”
-
Image Credit: 20th Century Studios “Heat” is not the residence’s only claim to fame. It also briefly popped up as the home of Blair (Jami Gertz) in a flashback scene at the beginning of the 1987 drama “Less Than Zero,” in which she tells her then boyfriend Clay (Andrew McCarthy) that she will not be going to college following her high school graduation.
A role in both an ’80s and a ’90s classic? You can’t put a price tag on that!