This is what ultrawealth looks like

When Paul Eskenazi, location manager for Mountainhead, a new film from Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong, set out to find a house to serve as the primary setting for this satire about a group of ultrarich tech bros, he needed a very specific kind of extravagance. In the same way that Succession, which Eskenazi also worked on, revelled in “quiet luxury”, Mountainhead needed its moneyed protagonists to be living large but without flamboyance. Its characters are too wealthy for mere McMansions, and not any private residence would do.

Mountainhead tells the story of four ultrawealthy tech bros who gather for a weekend at a secluded ski chalet as the world crumbles. Credit: NYT

Portraying how the ultrawealthy really live – with all their subtle signals and status cues – has become something of a specialty for Armstrong and Eskenazi. It’s about not just private jets and sprawling homes, but the quiet hierarchies within the top 1 per cent. There’s a pecking order between the 0.01 per cent and the 0.001 per cent, the kind of distinction that insiders equate to owning a Gulfstream G450 versus a Gulfstream G700.

When Eskenazi found a lavish, 2000-square-metre ski chalet built into a hill of Deer Valley in Utah, he knew it was the right fit – not because it was so large and impressive, although it’s certainly both, but because its extravagance had a subtlety that made it almost understated.

Mountainhead stars Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef as four billionaire friends who get together against the backdrop of a rolling international crisis.

“There’s a kind of quiet wealthy embedded in that location that doesn’t necessarily scream at you. It reveals itself slowly,” Eskenazi said, pointing out that it has a private gondola with direct access to a nearby ski resort.

“It’s not flashy, but it’s deeply exclusive – the kind of feature that signals a level of access and control money affords without ever needing to show off.”

Mountainhead is a tightly wound satirical chamber drama about four rich friends in tech who gather for a weekend of carousing while the world is plunged into chaos. There’s Venis (Cory Michael Smith), founder of a Twitter-like app whose new artificial-intelligence-creator tools have triggered a tidal wave of online disinformation; Jeff (Ramy Youssef), whose content-moderation software holds the key to resolving global strife; Randall (Steve Carrell), an elder plutocrat with a philosophical bent; and Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), whose meagre $US500 million ($777 million) net worth has earned him the nickname Soups, for “soup kitchen”.

Virtually the entirety of Mountainhead takes place within the palatial walls of Hugo’s mansion, which feels like a fifth character.

In real life, the house is on West Crestwood Court in Deer Crest, a gated community adjacent to the Deer Valley ski resort, where celebrities such as Khloe Kardashian and Gwen Stefani have hit the slopes. Designed by architect Michael Upwall, it has seven bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, as well as a two-lane bowling alley, a full-size basketball court, an indoor rock-climbing wall, and a spa with a steam room and sauna.

The house recently sold for a figure “in the high $US50 million range,” according to the real estate firm Engel and Volkers.Credit: NYT

Outside, it features an infinity pool and a whirlpool bath, both built into a 465-square-metre heated patio. But it’s more than just well appointed. As Eskenazi pointed out, the house is “not nestled into a community flanked by neighbours” but is “set apart, elevated, with sweeping views that feel deliberately unobstructed”. That sense of “space, privacy and silence”, he said, provides “its own kind of luxury”.

Media-mogul wealth: “Flashy, public, very performative”. Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) in Succession.Credit: Foxtel/HBO

This was a stark contrast to Armstrong’s Succession and its protagonists, the Roy family, who own media conglomerate Waystar Royco. “That kind of media-mogul wealth is about access and movement. It’s flashy, public, very performative,” Eskenazi said. “With Mountainhead, it was the opposite. Jesse wanted just one main house – huge, remote and a little unsettling.”

The Mountainhead house has 16 bathrooms, a bowling alley and an indoor basketball court.Credit: NYT

“It was more about isolation and privacy than prestige,” Eskenazi added.

The remote home is the “pinnacle of ultraluxury”, in the words of Engel & Volkers, a real estate firm that recently listed the property for $US65 million. (It sold for a figure “in the high-$US50 million range,” a representative for Engel & Volkers said.)

Deer Valley ski resort, Utah. Credit: Adam Barker

Mountainhead wasn’t conceived with this specific property in mind. Instead, the crew was briefed to search for something elevated and isolated, ideally set against snow and ice. What Armstrong wanted “wasn’t about a specific architectural style so much as a feeling”, Eskenazi said. “The house needed to be remote and imposing, yes, but also strangely intimate – a place that could hold both grandeur and silence. It had to feel like it had a history, even if we didn’t spell it out on screen.”

The search for the right setting started broad: the crew considered homes in Europe, while HBO urged it to consider locations in Canada, such as Whistler, British Columbia, because of the country’s ample tax credits for visiting productions.

Grandeur and silence: the house became part of the story.

An architectural profile in magazine Robb Report clued the crew into the Deer Valley property. “The moment Jesse saw it, everything changed,” Eskenazi said. “That was when the location locked in, and we knew: this is it.”

Stephen Carter, production designer on the film, and the crew added faux-stone veneers and cedar panelling to cover up some of the house’s bare walls, and he was responsible for details such as art and furniture, including a $US300 toaster and “a lesser-known Jeff Koons”.

Some of these fixtures were meant to convey Hugo’s desperation to impress as well as his status as the minor magnate. For example, the art: “While these items would auction in the six figures, they’re not quite at the level” of the others in the group, Carter said. (“Was your decorator Ayn Bland?” Jeff ribs Soups when he arrives.)

Qualities like expansive, unobstructed views helped define the house as an ultraluxury setting. Credit: NYT

One of the wittiest touches? A work by Damien Hirst in the entry hall: “Beautiful Bleeding Wound over the Materialism of Money Painting.”

The cumulative effect of these details and the property in which they’re situated suggests a kind of gilded cage – the perfect place to sequester four rich tech bros as society starts to collapse all around them.

“The house didn’t just support the story,” Eskenazi said. “It became part of it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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