Mariel Hemingway Has a Flair for Color

SELLER: Mariel Hemingway and Stephen Crisman
LOCATION: Indian Pony Circle, Westlake Village, CA
PRICE: $3,199,000
SIZE: 6,274 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Lovely updated home w/ spectacular park like yard! Center island gourmet kitchen w/ stainless steel appliances w/ Wolf commercial range adjoins breakfast & family room. Formal entrance, spacious formal dining & living rooms. 6 large bedrooms + an office. 3 bedrms + 2 baths down and 3 bedrms + office w/ 3 bathrooms up. 5 balconies, 3 fireplaces, maids qtrs. Or theater room. Large grassy bkyd has pool/spa. Basketball crt., gazebo, BBQ.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama likes Oscar nominated actress Mariel Hemingway. She's got an amazing pedigree (she's a Hemingway for chrissakes), she's drop dead gorgeous (or at least she was in the dew of her youth), and she starred in three films Your Mama adores. First there was the stunning 1976 fashion thriller Lipstick, and in the early 1980s there was the campy lezbo fantasy film Personal Best, and then came Star 80, a fantastic film for which the dedicated actress had her damn boobs enlarged (and later removed).

However, Your Mama can't say we feel such warmth about the big Westlake Village house she shares with her documentary filmmaker huzband Stephen Crisman and their two children. The couple recently put said 6 bedroom and 5 bathroom quasi-Spanish style house on the market for $3,199,000. Property records reveal that Mister and Missus Crisman purchased their 6,274 square foot house in June of 1998 for $1,065,000.

From the exterior photographs Your Mama had such high hopes. We love the covered patios on the ground floor framed by climbing vines that reach up to the second floor balconies. The tile roof is very pretty and we can even cope with that tile roofed gazebo thing by the pool–Your Mama needs a nice shady place to get our massages from Sven. But alas, the interiors and bizarre paint choices make us more than a little squeamish and have us reaching for our extensive rolodex of nice gay decorators who are willing to drive their Jaguars out to the suburban wilds of Westlake Village.

The big kitchen appears to be well appointed with a big Wolf range, but what decorating devil possessed Miz Hemingway to paint the walls of her big kitchen eggplant color? Eggplant! Even more disturbing than the depressing dark purple is that lighter shade of purple nastiness at the left of the photo of the dismal breakfast room. And do not even get Your Mama started on that obscene textured ceiling in the kitchen and breakfast room. Holy Moly that bizness just sends shivers up and down our spine.

We've also got issues with the acres of pickled wood flooring. Pickled. Wood. Floor. Enough said.

Up in the master bedroom we at least see a paint color that doesn't give Your Mama hives and we are quite digging that big four poster bed which looks snazzy with it's white linens and blue cushions. However, the chest at the foot of the bed is atrocious and distracting and that weird spinning wheel on the fireplace hearth is, well, it's just weird.

Given that the Crisman crew is selling this place it's probably too late for them to do anything about some of the flawed furniture choices, but it's certainly not too late to have a painter get up in there and neutralize some of the intense paint colors. Miz Hemingway, talk to you real estate agent, he or she can probably get someone over there quick. And you should.