In this town, everyone gets called a “legend” (the NYC equivalent is “genius”), but producer Robert Evans is among the few who have actually earned that title. He has made iconic movies (The Godfather, Love Story, Chinatown, and Marathon Man, to name a few), attends the best parties (occasionally with a princess on each arm), and has a tendency to marry drop-dead-stylish women (for your consideration: Ali MacGraw).

Earning an invitation to Evans’ Beverly Hills estate is the Los Angeles answer to scoring an invite to Louis XIV’s court. “It used to be like Gatsby around here,” he tells me. Thousands of roses encircle his famous backyard pool; over the years, countless unrepentant Hollywood stars and other luminaries (Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Richard Pryor, and Ted Kennedy, to name a few) have gotten up to no good in the house’s art-filled halls.

This week, I was summoned to a somewhat less trafficked area of Evans’ home: the bedroom-and-boudoir quarters, his longtime favorite part of the house. “I feel most myself in that bed,” he says, pointing to a towering, rather Gothic affair covered in a mountain of black pillows. While undoubtedly the site of more scandalous activities, Evans also famously takes meetings on those covers. Everyone from humorless execs to aspiring starlets has perched on the edge of his duvet, scripts and contracts in hand. So famous was this ritual that Evans even hosted a Sirius XM radio show in the early aughts while lounging under said linens.

Evans’ boudoir essentially constitutes an entire wing of his estate. It boasts a sprawling dressing room with a wall of illuminated mirrors and another nook with its own barber chair. Not only is he a connoisseur of female beauty, he also clearly takes his own presentation very seriously. From the comfort of his inner sanctum, the ever-quotable Evans shares his musings on life, love, and show business, and—in honor of Oscars week—his ultimate awards date. Spoiler alert: It’s not MacGraw.