Julian Schnabel is fairly secretive about his sojourns to Mexico: "The last time I surfed was in Mexico, but I'm not telling you where," he told an interviewer earlier this year. But just recently, a reporter from the Guardian was walking down the beach in Troncones, a place where the Schnab has been schpotted, when he happened upon what might have been his Mexican lair. How did he know it was his? He just knew:

We are moderately confident we identified the home of artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel while on our way to a natural tide pool surrounded by rocks and filled with bright blue tropical fish. It wasn't just the faultlessly tasteful house, and the faultlessly tasteful sand castle in front of it. There were also the orange hammocks slung gracefully below a palm leaf palapa — an open-sided thatched hut — decorated with similarly coloured glass buoys which, for me at least, conjured up images of Schnabel's film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

It all sounds magical. Although we don't get how the sight of the house conjured images from the movie for this guy. For us, it conjures an image of the Schnab, naked but for a loincloth, supine in a hammock and surrounded by locals who fan him with giant banana leaves. Obviously.

The Loveliest Beach In Mexico [Guardian]