GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S HOME SPARED FROM L.A. FIRESTORM

This one's gonna be personal, folks, and I'm hoping that writing about it will help purge my angst -- at least that's what's commonly said to do. The fact that I haven't posted one of these regular Sunday features makes it all the more grim.

I have been watching for the past few days some of the best memories of my life go up in flames. As regular readers may remember, I spent half of my life in the Los Angeles area before moving to the Pacific Northwest. Until then, L.A. and its environs was not only the place where I grew up, it was my playground.

There was never any shortage of things to do as a kid: movie theaters were plentiful and places like Disneyland (when they still used ticket books) and Knott's Berry Farm (when it was free) were highlights. As I grew older, I spent a LOT of the time at the beach, mainly Malibu and Zuma, and Pacific Coast Highway could take you anywhere you wanted on the coast. I caught my last fish while in California -- a halibut off the Malibu Pier and hit on my first girls at Zuma. When I got my own car, there were frequent trips to Hollywood where there were more theaters than you could count, a multitude of eateries (Love's Pit BBQ was a favorite), and numerous cinema bookshops with the occasional backroom comic shop before there were any storefronts dedicated to them.

But when I looked at the live feeds of the apocalyptic devastation in those same beach areas that I grew up in, not only my heart, but my soul sank. Sure, the beaches are still there and the ocean still brings the tide in and out, but the houses where I knew people and partied with were now nothing but charred ruins.

What's left of a familiar strip of Pacific Coast Highway.

Then I heard of the Kenneth Fire in the west end of the San Fernando Valley and couldn't believe when I heard that the street that I used to live on as a teenager was closed and the fire was torching a park where my pals and I played ball and I would walk my dog (I'd turn her loose and she'd run away yapping and disappear for an hour chasing rabbits . . . right in the same spot where the fire now burned). My old high school is barely a mile from there and I learned they were using it for a relief center for victims of the Calabassas Fire a little further down the road.

Then, I found asking myself: "Why am I getting so rattled about this?" I don't live there anymore and haven't for years and it's been near a decade since I've been back. After thinking a few moments, I realized that all those places are a visual representation of my early life, and, although I had no tangible or material investment in them anymore except in my memory, they remain indelible symbols of that halcyon time, and when you see those images being wiped away by hellfire it's a damned shocking and humbling experience.

Fortunately, everyone I still know there is safe and mainly unaffected, so there's a lot to be thankful for despite knowing that many more have been left homeless with virtually no material possessions to call their own. Again, fortunately there have been a few miracles against this tragic background of what is sure to impact the residents who called these areas home for years to come.

On a less gloomy note, horror fans will be happy to hear that, as of this writing, Guillermo Del Toro's "man cave" has been spared thus far from the destruction that has caused the loss of so many others' homes. Del Toro moved his monster memorabilia into what he named "Bleak House" after his wife complained of too many gruesome images adorning the walls and furniture.

Guillermo del Toro Says Bleak House Spared by L.A. Fires

The Oscar-winning filmmaker said he toured his Los Angeles creative man cave Friday and rescued hundreds of objects from his private collection of curiosities and ghoulish props.

By Etan VLessing | January 10, 2025 | TheHollywoodReporter.com

Guillermo del Toro says his Los Angeles-area Bleak House — filled with creatures, curiosities and ghoulish props, paintings and costumes that he collected during his life — is safe so far amid the wildfires sweeping across southern California.

“Brief check in — Bleak House was so far, spared,” the Oscar-winning Shape of Water helmer said on Bluesky. “We hand carried over 100 pieces out of the collection. Many friends lost their homes. Helping them now. Will be absent here for a while. Stay safe.”

The director added he visited Bleak House to check on the property and thank first responders working to battle the blazes. “Stopping by to thank everyone helping, supporting or encouraging friends, neighbors or brave safety and firefighters out here and there… Back to it,” he added in a second Bluesky post.

Del Toro’s update comes as the death toll in the fires that are ravaging Los Angeles County this week has risen to 10 as firefighters struggling against high winds are hoping for a reprieve on the fourth day of seemingly unstoppable blazes that have destroyed entire neighborhoods and over 10,000 homes and buildings as residents flee for their lives. 

A number of objects from Bleak House were included in a 2016 LACMA exhibition, Guillermo del Toro: At Home With Monsters. 

The curiosities featured included a replica of the ghost of Santi from The Devil’s Backbone, complete with blood (red smoke) streaming from a head wound, an immense head of Frankenstein’s monster looming over a walkway and the comic books that inspired del Toro’s Hellboy films.

“This is a religious place for me. See, to me, everything that surrounds us is not a collection, it’s relics. It’s relics or it’s talismans. Whatever you want to call them, they have a spiritual hold of who I am essentially,” del Toro said in a 2016 LAist story about Bleak House and his personal collection.

Bleak House is separate from another Los Angeles family home del Toro has, as his private collection had grown to the point his wife intervened when he hung a decidedly creepy Richard Corben painting too close to the kitchen. He recalled in the LAist story: “My wife says, ‘That’s too close to the kitchen, the kids are gonna be freaked out.’ And inside of me something cracked and I said, ‘I’m gonna get my own place.'”