SELLER: Joan Tewkesbury
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $795,000
SIZE: 510 square feet
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: An ittsy-bitsy studio apartment with a gigantic ocean view in a luxury Santa Monica high-rise, owned per property records by venerated screenwriter and filmmaker Joan Tewkesbury, has popped up for sale at $795,000. If the ask seems on the high side for a wee studio apartment, keep in mind that price is directly tied to location and high-floor, ocean-view one bedroom units in the full-service building rent for six or seven grand a month. It’s unclear when the 17th-floor condo was acquired by Miz Tewkesbury, who wrote Robert Altman’s enduringly sublime 1975 film “Nashville” and more recently served as a consulting producer on the boob-toob crime drama “The Guardian,” but current listing details indicate the pint-sized crash pad measures in at just 510-square-feet and transfers with monthly maintenance charges of $1,243.
Floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves and storage cabinets line one wall of the long entrance hall and wrap around to the bedroom area of the fairly puny pad that’s painted pretty much entirely blush pink except for one wall at the lounge end of the main living space that’s covered wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with smoked mirrors. On the surface, blush pink paint and a liberal expanse of smoked mirrors aren’t really this occasionally persnickety property gossip’s decorative boat floaters but we’re quite certain that when the sun is setting, the west-facing studio becomes an effervescent cocoon saturated in golden light. There are Old School parquet floors in the not unexpectedly tiny and perfectly ordinary but serviceable and well-maintained rental-grade galley kitchen as well as in the also perfectly ordinary and window-free bathroom. Two over-sized sets of floor-to-ceiling glass sliders open the wall-to-wall carpeted studio to a glass-railed terrace with unimpeded views over the Pacific Ocean and north along the craggy Malibu coastline. The two-towered complex offers residents 24-hour security and doormen, concierge and valet parking services, a fitness facility and spa, and an ocean view swimming pool sundeck.
Now in her late 70s, Miz Tewkesbury is at work on a novel and, among a number of other pedagogical efforts, is an instructor at the Sundance Directors and Writers Lab. Since 2003 the former dancer and actress turned deft cinematic storyteller has resided in the rugged mountains just outside of Santa Fe, NM, on a five acre spread recently described in an interview in Interview magazine as a “minimal compound.”
Listing photos: Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices
