Where'd You Go, Bernadette(31)
DAVID WALKER: The building of the White Castle was like a movie in fast motion. Hundreds of workers descended on the place and worked around the clock, literally. Three crews a day working eight-hour shifts.
There’s a story that during the filming of Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola had a sign on his trailer: “Fast, Cheap, Good: Pick Two.” That’s the way it is with houses. Me and Bernadette, we definitely picked “cheap” and “good.” But, man, we were slow. The White Castle, well, they picked “fast” and “fast.”
The White Castle was ready to move into before Fox and Walker had closed the walls on the Twenty Mile House.
DAVID WALKER: The You Catch It, You Keep It guy starts coming by, doing walk-throughs with the decorator. One day, he decides he doesn’t like the brass hardware. He has every handle, doorknob, hinge, and bathroom fixture switched out.
For us, it was like Christmas came early. The next day, Bernadette is literally standing in the White Castle’s dumpster when the English guy pulls up in his Rolls-Royce.
Nigel Mills-Murray did not respond to several interview requests. His business manager did.
JOHN L. SAYRE: Who would like to drive up and find a neighbor digging through his trash? Nobody, that’s who. My client would have been happy to discuss a fair price for his fixtures. But the woman didn’t ask. She just entered his property and stole from him. Last time I checked, that was illegal.
Overnight, Mills-Murray erected a razor-wire fence and posted a twenty-four-hour security guard at the entrance to the driveway. (The White Castle and the Twenty Mile House shared a driveway. Technically, it was an easement deeded to the White Castle over the Twenty Mile House’s property. This would become an important factor in the year to come.)
Fox became obsessed with getting the discarded hardware. When a truck arrived at the White Castle to remove the dumpster, she jumped in her car and followed it to a traffic light. She gave the driver a hundred bucks to salvage Mills-Murray’s hardware.
DAVID WALKER: She thought it was too tacky to use in the house. She decided to solder the pieces together with wire, like in the old days, and turn it into her front gate.
Mills-Murray called the police, but no charges were filed. The next day, the gate was gone. Fox was convinced Mills-Murray had stolen it, but she had no proof. With Fox’s job at the Getty winding down, she quit and devoted all her energies to the Twenty Mile House.
PAUL JELLINEK: I definitely noticed a different energy once Bernadette quit. I’d show up with students, and all she’d talk about was the White Castle and how ugly it was, how much they wasted. It was all true, but it had nothing to do with architecture.
The White Castle was finally completed. Its crowning touch was a million dollars’ worth of California fan palms planted along the shared driveway, each lowered into place by helicopter. Fox became furious that her entry now looked like a Ritz-Carlton. She complained, but Mills-Murray sent over the title report clearly specifying that his easement over her property was for “ingress and egress” and “landscaping decisions and maintenance.”
DAVID WALKER: Twenty years later, any time I hear the words “easement,” “ingress,” or “egress,” I still get sick to my stomach. Bernadette would not stop ranting about it. I started to wear a Walkman so I could tune her out.
Mills-Murray decided to christen his new home by hosting a lavish Oscar after-party. He hired Prince to play in the backyard. Lack of parking is always an issue along Mulholland Drive, so Mills-Murray hired a valet. The day before the party, Fox eavesdropped on Mills-Murray’s assistant as she walked the driveway with the head valet, figuring out where to park a hundred cars. Fox notified a dozen towing companies that cars were going to be illegally parked on her driveway.
During the party, while the valets snuck into the backyard to watch Prince perform “Let’s Go Crazy,” Fox waved in the idling fleet of tow trucks. In a flash, twenty cars were towed. When a raging Mills-Murray confronted Fox, she calmly produced the property title, which stated the driveway was for “ingress and egress.” Not parking cars.
PAUL JELLINEK: Elgie and Bernadette were living at Beeber Bifocal at the time, with the idea they would move into the Twenty Mile House and start a family. But Elgie was growing distraught by what the neighbor feud was doing to Bernadette. There was no way he was going to move into that house. I told him to wait, that things might change.
One April morning in 1992, Fox received a phone call. “Are you Bernadette Fox?” the voice asked. “Are you alone?”
The caller told her she’d been awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. It had never before been given to an architect. The $500,000 grant is awarded to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.”
PAUL JELLINEK: A friend of mine in Chicago who was affiliated with the MacArthur Foundation—I don’t even know how, the whole thing’s so mysterious—asked me what I thought was the most exciting thing going on in architecture. I told him the truth—Bernadette Fox’s house. Who the hell knew what she was exactly—an architect, an outsider artist, a lady who liked working with her hands, a glorified dumpster-diver. I just knew her houses felt good to walk into.