This Is Hollywood's Inner Sanctum

New LA members’ club San Vicente Bungalows stakes its reputation on protecting that of its guests. A home away from home for A-list actors, music legends and studio executives, it’s the truest expression of owner Jeff Klein’s philosophy: Discretion is the better part of luxury. Here, GQ takes a rare look at the secretive world behind the toughest doors in town

- Alex Bhattacharji

The leaker is still at large, but the authorities are closing in. “We’ve narrowed it down to three people,” says Jeff Klein, who is overseeing the manhunt. “One of them is most shocking. I don’t want to say which. We’ll find out who it is. It always comes out when you have a contained environment like this.”

That environment would be the bubble of privilege and power known as the San Vicente Bungalows, Klein’s private social club in the West Hollywood section of Los Angeles, an urban playground reserved for around 750 highly vetted members and their guests. In March 2019, one of the latter broke the first rule of the social club: You do not talk about the social club. Especially to the press. The leak, the revelation that Steven Spielberg and Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos had met here, appeared in Page Six, the New York Post’s gossip section, setting the entertainment world and its capital, Los Angeles, abuzz. This tête-à-tête between Hollywood’s feuding twin towers – its most storied film director and its most powerful executive – was held at the San Vicente Bungalows precisely because the club’s reputation and rules are built on discretion and privacy. This may help explain why Klein sounds as if he’d engaged the intelligence services to root out the rat. “I’m really using Mossad,” he says with a laugh and raises his glass. “Cheers.”