LOS ANGELES—With just a touch, Ned the Pie Maker, the hero of the new ABC fantasy-comedy Pushing Daisies, can make rotten fruit turn ripe and bring the dead back to life. The show’s 38-year-old creator, Bryan Fuller, does not enjoy such instant gratification. In 2000 he bought and began renovating a place he calls “the boathouse.” High in the Silver Lake hills northwest of downtown Los Angeles, the three-story 1905 structure seems to levitate above the turquoise reservoir. Only the western vista of tiled roofs and the distant Hollywood sign give away its location.

Fuller has been trying to do for his first home what Ned can do so easily: restore life. Initially, the comic-book fan and sci-fi aficionado treated it like a playhouse—the kind of place where, says friend Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed the Pushing Daisies pilot, you’d expect to see “too much stuff made of plastic that originated in a galaxy far, far away.” But after seven years, Fuller’s residence has evolved into an elegantly idiosyncratic home. “Bryan has gone from geek to chic,” says Betsy Burnham, the interior designer who helped guide the transformation.

GOLLUM of The Lord of the Rings fame crouches in a living-room corner. A bowl of lifelike glass eyes is an attention-getter. --PHOTOGRAPHED BY BARBARA DAVIDSON

Fuller, a writer-producer whose credits include Dead Like Me, Star Trek: Voyager and Heroes, says the house started as a funky little place with a spectacular view of the water—“quirky and odd enough to feel like my home and a great template to do something fun with.” The problem: too much fun, not enough focus.

“Tin wind-up robots and plastic action figures were occupying the same space as an entertaining area,” he says. “There were lots of toys in the living room.”

Some survived exile to Fuller’s cluttered office on the lower level. Woof Woof, a werewolf doll that TV’s Eddie Munster carried as a teddy bear, sits on a stack of Edgar Allan Poe books on a bamboo media cabinet in the bedroom.

“Bryan had his own style, a dark whimsy, but it was more like a boy lived here,” Burnham says. Relocating his extensive collection of toys to custom-built shelves in his office, she adds, “was not a slap on the wrist. It was just time.”

Fuller, who dresses in English-tailored tweed vests, candy-colored Paul Smith shirts and Prada shoes, agrees. “I was still in the transition space between apartment living and home owning,” he says. “Betsy said, ‘Why don’t you select a few toys and framed movie posters surrounded by beautiful fabrics and interesting furniture that is more grown-up?’”

Burnham had no intention of curbing Fuller the collector.

For proof, look no farther than the living room, where Star Wars light sabers are propped near the fireplace, next to a replica of the cane that vampire Barnabas Collins carried on Dark Shadows.

Sitting between a plantation chair trimmed in suede and nail heads and a sofa upholstered in a rich Schumacher paisley, a life-size replica of Gollum, the ghoulish creature from The Lord of the Rings films, looks as if it has been sentenced to a time-out.

“I understand the need to have things around,” Burnham says. “I think it’s so much more rich and layered than someone who just wants to accessorize their house.”

The designer suggested new materials and categories: precious metals, anthropological specimens, nautical objects and more traditional men’s collectibles, such as barware and smoking paraphernalia.

“Betsy brought a timelessness to the style of the house,” Fuller says. “Before it was much more pop-culture specific. Now you have a taxidermy duck and a brass lighthouse cigarette holder on a campaign chest instead of a plastic Darth Vader and Jason Voorhees.”

Much of the decoration suggests that Fuller and Burnham have their fingers on the pulse of contemporary design: Zebra-print wallpaper and upholstery mixed with boldly colored Chinoiserie furniture, lighting and window treatments exude Hollywood Regency glamour. A menagerie of animals and bugs in bronze, bone and ceramic scream neo-Victorian eccentricity, as does a bowl filled with lifelike glass eyes.

For a dash of upscale boathouse style, the dining room sports polished nickel hardware and lighting fixtures with a nautical vibe, along with Burnham’s use of bespoke men’s shirt and suiting fabrics for curtains and upholstery.

In the master bedroom, grass-cloth walls, a sisal rug, a woven rope bed and a British Colonial ceiling fan conjure the island ambiance.

“It’s definitely a tropical getaway room,” Fuller says. “If you open the curtains, you don’t know whether you will see the oceans or the jungle.”

Instead of a trendy amalgam of popular decorating styles, the rooms feel unified—an organic outgrowth of Fuller’s tastes and, as Burnham puts it, “fearlessness when it comes to color and pattern.”

Defined by animal objects, antique Oushak and Samarkand rugs and an African beaded chair, the double-height living room has the opulence of a safari lodge.

With its fretwork dining chairs and its wallpaper and wing chairs in an Asian toile print, the Ming blue dining room is English with a Chinese accent. The mix is what one would expect from the creator of Pushing Daisies, a color-saturated, slightly surreal show in which characters live in Edward Gorey splendor, with interiors where “the carpet matches the wallpaper, the drapes and the comforter on the bed,” Fuller says.

His own home is a reflection of who Fuller is as a person and as a story teller, says designer Scott Roberts, Fuller’s boyfriend.

“It is ‘The Addams Family’ meets Dorian Gray: humorous, dark, romantic and unexpected,” Roberts says. “The more complicated the mixture of colors and patterns and textures, the more he loves it.”

Although Fuller defines home as “the place where you can actually exhale after holding your breath all day at work, running from one thing to the next,” he doesn’t necessarily want to live in a safe, serene environment.

“I want rooms that are dramatic, exotic, dense and rich. When you walk into a room, you’re given so many options of eye candy,” he says. “It’s a warm and welcoming space, but if you look closely, you might be upset by some of the things you see. I don’t want to live in normal spaces, I need to be stimulated.”

From Geek to Chic

LOS ANGELES—With just a touch, Ned the Pie Maker, the hero of the new ABC fantasy-comedy Pushing Daisies, can make rotten fruit turn ripe and bring the dead back to life.

Into Greener Pastures

THE Captain’s Bar at Mandarin Oriental rang with celebration as investors, real-estate players and members of the press toasted the unveiling of Greenfield City, envisioned to be the jewel in the crown of Santa Rosa, Laguna.

Urban Monologues: Striking A Balance

WHEN I was a kid, the church in Magallañes used to be one of my favorite places to hear Mass because of its infamously short services. The priests gave short sermons, songs were simply recited rather than sung, and the lines for communion weren’t long at all.

Reeling: (9) Songs, Lots of Sex, and Infinite Sand

I WISH I were Mae West when I get confronted by a film like 9 Songs. I could have just muttered the lines: I used to be Snow White but I drifted. But there is only one Mae West and there are very few films like 9 Songs, and even fewer filmmakers like Michael Winterbottom.