Peeking in These Homes More Than Voyeurism
Peering into other people’s houses, an activity that design magazines and their television counterparts make possible, satisfies two distinct impulses.
One is a strain of pure voyeurism, the natural curiosity that drives even those with scant interest in architecture or interior design to examine how strangers live. Such nosiness is rarely directed down the socioeconomic ladder. We want to be dazzled by the closets and butler’s pantries of the famous, or at least the rich. If they have style as well as money, so much the better. If not, we might at least get a glimpse of wretched excess that would be as good for a laugh as Celine Dion’s Oscar-night get-up.
Beyond the gawk factor, visual invitations into people’s homes can be a source of ideas for the design enthusiast. Copper pots suspended over a kitchen work island? Family room walls painted the color of guacamole? I can do that!
So don’t let the name scare you. “Hollywood Homes,” a one-hour special on HGTV premiering Sunday, isn’t another fawning journey through impossibly perfect and lavish celebrity havens, although its gushing commentary makes reaching for the mute button tempting at times. The show delivers both stimulation and voyeurism by offering a half-dozen choice, diverse destinations, all belonging to behind-the-camera Hollywood talents. No Aaron Spelling nymphet who’s invested her paychecks in a first home here. (For that, see In Style, any month.)
The grandest home is the show’s least interesting. A 32-room mansion renovated and dressed to kill by writer-producer-novelist Stephen J. Cannell (“The A-Team” and “Hunter” are among his TV shows), it is the only one touched by an interior designer. The rest of the tour visits the houses of a costume designer, set designer, production designer, writer-producer and married special effects makeup artists. They are all professionally creative people who share a love of drama and confidence in their own taste. In their idiosyncratic, extremely personal spaces, including a tiny Venice cottage with a surfboard as a coffee table and a four-room apartment in a landmark Hollywood building, the design philosophy that governs is “it works if it pleases me.”
As Deborah Siegel Cosentino, a television set decorator who lives in a cozy eight-room bungalow, says, “I just put things in my home that I love. I don’t like decorated-looking places.” Cosentino loves black-lace curtains in the dining room. I don’t know if I could do that. But I enjoyed seeing it.
* “Hollywood Homes” airs at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Sunday on HGTV cable channel.