If only Lowenstein's parents had bought it...
The listing photo of the house
The Victorian Terrace house in Richmond, Melbourne, that was made famous by '80s Australian film Dogs In Space is up for sale.
The film starred late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and centred around the day-to-day existence of a group of music fans sharing a house in Richmond. It became a cult hit, especially for those involved in the Melbourne music scene.
The house was where director Richard Lowenstein and The Ears' Sam Sejavka (who Hutchence's main character Sam was based on) lived in the late '70s and the film's producers rented the house from its new owners and converted it for filming.
In an interview with Inpress, Lowenstein recalled that about five years before the filming of the film, his parents “were offered [to buy] the house for $50,000”. “I was an unemployed student,” he said, “so it was out of my range, but my rather financially conservative parents thought it wasn't a good deal, and also thought that they would be stuck with all the maintenance and painting and us kids would just keep it in a terrible state, and I couldn't convince them to buy it.
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“And then I think a few years later, when it came to making the film there, what the asking price [had been] back in 1980 became the rental price. I mean, it could have been my parents renting it [out] for the film!”
It is now listed for sale with an asking price of offers over $1,000,000 and the house looks a lot different to what it did during the filming. It is described by the real estate agency as having a “colourful and chronicled history.”
The house has eight main bedrooms, four or five bathrooms, and an “elegant” entrance hall.