OTHER TECH

The words "successful Hollywood producer" evoke images of manicured lawns filled with hanging bougainvillea surrounding a mansion staffed by an army of butlers and maids. So it's a littl e surprising to find that Charlie lives in a modest Shaker-inflected farmhouse on 8 acres divided by a trout stream - a parcel of land he bought from his childhood friend, the actor (An American Werewolf in London, After Hours) and director (Practical Magic, Fierce People) Griffin Dunne. Between Charlie's land and Griffin's property sit the pens for Charlie's menagerie of ostriches, exotic hens, llamas, prize-winning rams, and retired racehorses. It's all tasteful, quirky, and fun, but nobody's idea of opulent. The living room home theater. The finished room shows the Philips 50-inch TV and B&W speakers in position. But then, Charlie isn't a preening or pretentious Hollywood type. He's a down-to-earth guy who just happened to grow up in Beverly Hills and just happens to make movies. And his entertainment system turns out to be a pretty accurate reflection of its owner. No tube amps in handcrafted hardwood cabinets, no screening room with plush seats and a 15-foot screen, no D J booth and dance floor by the pool - in fact, no pool. Instead, his gear is the kind of stuff you see reviewed all the time in S&V.

It's not that Charlie's unaware of ultra-high-end gear - he's had systems made up of Krell and McIntosh components. And when he was a kid, he was bitten by the audio bug while listening to what was, for its time, a fairly high-end rig. "Miguel Ferrer [Crossing Jordan, Twin Peaks] is my friend," Charlie says, "and his mother is Rosemary Clooney, who had this Altec Lansing system with Voice of the Theater speakers on either end of what seemed like a 15-foot-long credenza for the electronics. It was 1969. We walked in from school, and she was listening to a recording she was working on. It was her voice with a 40-piece orchestra, and all I could think was, 'Holy shit!' It was like they were right there in the room. Listening to it changed my life." During construction, plywood sheets nailed to the studs indicated where the plasma TV and in-wall speakers would go.

For his new house, though, Charlie wanted a system that was simple, easy to integrate, both idiot- and bulletproof, and all but invisible. His installers were Jim Young and Wayne Tomblin of Audio Video Environments in Shelton, Connecticut . For a lot of people, calling in the installers is the end of their involvement with the system, but Charlie worked with Jim and Wayne all the way - partly because of his audio/videophile tendencies, partly because of his professional instincts for keeping track of e very aspect o f a production, and p artly because of his intense cur iosity about what's new and possible.

That curiosity meant the system evolved a lot throughout planning and installation. The initial idea was to have a home theater in the living room that would feed music to some of the other rooms. The final system proved to be far more sophisticated than that, though just as easy to use.