The sexy (and dangerous) Sheats-Goldstein House in Beverly Crest, architect John Lautner's most masculine masterpiece, has appeared on film many times—in Snoop Dogg and Pharrell's 2005 video for "Let's Get Blown," in Charlie's Angeles: Full Throttle (as John Cleese's house), in that movie where Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton play bank robbers in love with Clate Blanchett (Bandits), and most famously as the home of pornographer Jackie Treehorn in The Big Lebowski (which turned 16 this week). Maybe least famously, the house has also appeared in actual porn.
Unleashed, directed by AVN Hall of Famer Andrew Blake and released in 1996, is an hour-and-a-half journey made with all the "little extras, like story, production value, feelings" that Jackie Treehorn lamented had become unaffordable. (Seriously, sort of!) Blake's website describes the plot a lot better than we could: "A surrealistic fairy tale starring the sultry Selena, and cool blond Laura Palmer. Each woman receives a mysterious gift - a crystal phallus - compelling them to take a magical erotic odyssey into the submissive and dominant facets of their personalities." (That's about it. Unleashed has no dialogue.)
Selena's character appears to live in the Sheats-Goldstein and, toward the end of the movie, the two women meet on the stepping stone path through the water feature in the house's entryway, where they angrily rip each other's clothes off in a scene that's scored as if it's tense, but is mostly just hilarious (also it switches between black and white and color). Then they make up and hang out with some new friends in the Sheats-Goldstein's living room, in view of the pool and the triangular roof embedded with highball glasses to mimic stars.
In real life, the Sheats-Goldstein House has been owned since 1972 by local character James Goldstein, who's known for showing off his Dr. Teeth-style fashion courtside at Lakers and Clippers games. It was built in 1963 for the Sheats family, but, starting in 1980, Goldstein worked with Lautner, and later Lautner's associate Duncan Nicholson, on several renovations that have left the property more spectacular than ever. (He's also added a James Turrell skyspace and a nightclub/office/tennis court building, with plans for even more expansion.) The concrete, the leather, the glass, the soaring angles: the house demands sex. Andrew Blake was obviously just answering the call.
Supplemental material: a fully-clothed tour through the Sheats-Goldstein, a map of all the filming locations for The Big Lebowski, and a video compilation of John Lautner houses on film.
· Unleashed DVD [Andrew Blake]
· Inside John Lautner's Dangerous Sheats-Goldstein House [Curbed LA]
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