Neighbors flipping out over flipper
Los Angeles real estate reality television star Jeff Lewis, who is known for his cocksure, confrontational style, has made the neighbors of one of his projects very afraid, they said, and they want a restraining order to keep him at bay. Lewis is the star of “Flipping Out,” a Bravo channel show that follows him as he buys, renovates and resells homes.
Terence Beesley and Ashley Jensen, who live next door to a house Lewis is improving on Valley Oak Drive in Los Feliz, said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the developer constructed a deck at the house that encroached on their property.
When they became aware of the encroachment earlier this year, Lewis offered them $10,000 to buy an easement, but their real estate experts concluded the easement was worth $100,000, they said.
Lewis countered during a nighttime visit to their house with an offer of $30,000 and threatened to make their lives miserable by casting them in a negative light in front of 3 million television viewers, they said in their complaint.
Named in the suit is Lewis’ partner, Ryan Brown, who, the neighbors described as Lewis’ “supposedly relatively even-keeled” foil, and Lewis’ company, Vicious Investments. It accuses the pair of trespassing, property damage and assault, and demands that the encroaching deck be removed. No financial damages were specified.
According to Beesley and Jensen, Lewis’ actions at their home are in keeping with his TV persona. Their suit says the show “involves documenting the rude, outrageous, boorish, offensive, mean-spirited bullying by Jeff Lewis of anyone or anything in his way.”
Lewis responded to the complaint in an e-mail send by a PR agency, saying, “Actress Ashley Jensen . . . and her husband Terry Beesley and I have a simple encroachment dispute that should have been resolved informally.
“Having apparently watched my reality show, they now feel they can exploit my personality to increase their media exposure and their alleged damages. I have never threatened either of them with physical harm, nor was I abusive or verbally threatening to either of them. In fact I have never even met Ms. Jensen. The court will decide how much the easement is worth and Ms. Jensen and Mr. Beesley will then be left having to earn media coverage on their talent alone.”
-- Roger Vincent
From: L.A. Land: The rapidly changing landscape of the Los Angeles real estate market and beyond
For more, go to: latimes.com/laland
--
ENTERTAINMENT
Turning Langella into Nixon
Though the greatest special effect of “Frost/Nixon” came from Frank Langella’s haunting ability to channel the essence of disgraced former president Richard Nixon, he did have some help from hair and make-up.
Hairstylist Colleen Callaghan used old pictures of Nixon and a 1977 cover of Time magazine, in particular, to work with wig-maker Favian Wigs by Natascha in re-creating the exact wave of the president’s hair. The $5,000 wig, which was made from real human hair, was applied to the actor in a 45-minute process that ended with Langella transforming himself internally. “Toward the end [of the application], he would start to pull into Nixon,” Callaghan says. “On the set, everyone addressed him as Mr. President.”
The second key aspect to Langella’s appearance was his nose, a gelatin-mold created by makeup artist David Anderson.
“I created five different noses,” Anderson says. “Choice 1 was basically Langella’s nose with two bumps. Choice 5 was a full-blown Nixon nose, but it looked a little gross on Frank’s face.”
The production went with Choice 4 -- something just shy of the full-size presidential schnoz. The challenge was keeping the set cool enough. “If his body temp got too high,” Anderson said, “the nose would melt.” Tricky indeed.
-- Patrick Kevin Day
From: Entertainment News & Buzz: Breaking news, industry scoops and beyond
For more, go to: latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz
--
BABYLON & BEYOND
In the mood for a Cairo Christmas
Here we are in the coming winter of hard skies. Cairo. Men in tunics coil turbans, sniffles in their noses. Fires burn, garbage smokes. Stones grip the night’s chill. Delivery boys pedal through morning and girls in white linen hijabs hurry over train tracks.
Gruff dudes sell Christmas trees in the roundabout, but the silver tinsel and the pop-up cardboard Santa seem like misfits against the palms at the desert’s edge. It’s as if they fell off a truck on their way to someplace else. Someplace far away. A friend called from Los Angeles. Happy Holidays.
She’s in “low-level freakout” over the economy and all the news about bundled mortgages and the cracking mirages of car companies and hedge funds. Mirages have been cracking in Cairo for centuries. The poor boy with his hand out and the lady with her baby keep asking for change: “Mister, mister, hungry, hungry.”
It makes you wonder about Pharaohs and pyramids and what happens to great civilizations. They become stones in the sand. Bluster and hubris hushed by wind. Enough contemplation. There are tasks at hand. It’s time to buy a Christmas tree, maybe from the guy near the market, where slaughtered sheep are delivered in the trunks of battered black-and-white taxis.
That guy has good trees. Not pine, but something green; something to hang a light on in the night. Winter in Cairo is more of a mood than a season, anyway.
-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
From: Babylon & Beyond: Observations from Iraq, Iran, Israel, the Arab world and beyond
For more, go to: latimes.com/babylon
