Aaron Sorkin Settles In Above the Sunset Strip

BUYER: Aaron Sorkin
LOCATION: Devlin Place, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $6,100,000 (sale)
SIZE: 3,700 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: At the end of a secluded cul-de-sac in prime Sunset Strip. Dramatic, stylish & private. Completely redone sprawling contemporary with explosive head-on views. Designed by John Bersci, 4 bedrooms (including maids), 4 baths. 55' living/great room, opening to spectacular pool, spa, and major outdoor entertainment areas. Light, bright, and open. Gourmet commercial kitchen, incredible master suite overlooking pool and amazing city views. Impeccably done to the last detail.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There are property flippers and then there is John Bersci, who quite frankly makes anal retentive real estate re-habber Jeff Lewis look like trailer trash. Don't misunderstand Your Mama kids. We love us some Jeff Lewis and look forward to seeing him mince his way across our television screen snapping at his assistant Jenni and firing his staff for bringing Styrofoam into the house. However, Mister John Bersci, the man responsible for the renovation of this house, plays in an entirely different league than the lovable Miss Lewis.

The other day Your Mama as gabbing with a source we'll call Property Pimp. In the course of chatting about a Bird Street house being sold to the daughter of a billionaire for a surprisingly large sum of money (more on that on another day), he casually mentioned the Sunset Strip house that television and film writer/executive producer Aaron Sorkin (Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Charlie Wilson's War) recently purchased for $6,100,000.

Our big ears popped up started digging for more information. Your Mama checked the property records, followed up with the Property Pimp, and gave our Our Fairy Godmother in the Sunset Strip a ring-a-ling. Sho enuf, the deep pocketed writer had indeed plunked down $6,100,000 for a freshly redone house on Devlin Place by primo property developer John Bersci.

Property records indicate that Mister Bersci, through one of his property holding companies, purchased the house in February of 2006 for $2,450,000. The place was wreckage. We've seen pictures. A real piece of shit children. But a great location for those that can tolerate the drive past the apartment buildings that line N. Clark Street. Mister Bersci worked his renovation hocus-pocus, squeezed some blood from a turnip and turned this broken down old Pontiac into a mint Maserati.

Now we know not everyone will like all the grey with yellow accent staging...but that's just staging children. All that somber stuff was surely moved out long before Mister Sorkin signed on the dotted line and Your Mama imagines the man has done hired himself a nice gay decorator to get in there and work some furniture magic. Let's move past the furniture then and have a look-see at the architecture and design of the physical space.

The front facade of the house presents like so many of the flat roofed residences that line the twisty turny roads that snake up into the Hollywood Hills above Sunset Boulevard. Inside, we find lots of sand blasted green glass walls and an almost disturbingly long 55-foot living/dining room space. A wall of floor to ceiling glass panels slide open to turn the entire space into a dee-luxe covered porch with stunning (if not jetliner) views over the city. Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's housekeeper Svetlana would sooner slit our throats that be constantly wiping all that glass clean of fingerprint smudges and dog nose trails. So we hope that Mister Sorkin warned his cleaning team that extra Windex and newspaper were gong to be required on a regular basis.

Your Mama normally loves a sleek kitchen and we pee our pants over miles of Carrara marble counter tops (red wine stains be damned). We very much appreciate the built in cappuccino machine, because Your Mama requires a caffeine injection first thing in the a.m., and we'd pull our own teeth for a refrigerator like the one we see tucked at the back. However, we're not thrilled with the grey color on the cabinets and we are concerned that the long narrow island looks a little like a slab for chilling bodies in a very high class morgue.

The bedroom, with its corner of sliding glass walls that give out to the pool deck, is dee-voon. The addition of the warm and glossy wood behind the bed was a good call on Bersci's part for warming up the place and injecting a much needed bit of organic material.

Out back the sunken spa sits above the modestly size swimming pool and the pool deck has been extended over the hillside with some gorgeous decking. Although we imagine Svetlana would huff and puff and ask for a considerable raise in order to keep that glass railing dog snot free, we love it anyway. And for the record, Your Mama loves the lack of foliage in the back yard. Just think how much money Mister Sorkin will save on his landscaping bills not to mention the water bills when water in California becomes as scarce as Paris Hilton's sense of decorum.

The children will recall that Devlin Drive is the same street super-mannequin Giselle Bundchen recently sold a house for $4M and former child star Fred Savage recently flipped a Steve Hermann designed house (sans swimming pool) for $3,500,000. It's also the same street where durty new mommy Xtina Aguilera parked her glistening white Rolls Royce until she and music executive huzband Jordan Bratman dropped $11,500,000 in May of 2007 on the Ozzy Osbourne mansion on Doheny Road.