Well the only reason I can think of, other than it afforded the producers the elegance of being on the beach to film the scene is because of the language of this particular structure. It's cool, hip, modern, wow, measurably definable within a particular era, California 1980's slick. The language that the Norton House uses to communicate recounts the struggles of a generation of architects attempting to break with tradition and make a product that speaks the same language that is understood by the masses. TV and advertisement has done a great deal to impart ideologies into the heads of creative thinkers. The era of the information age has transformed the architect from anti-symbolism to the Ultra Symbolists.
Reference is by far the most important clich that is discernable by the intelligent masses.
Today's mass market is ruled by industrial and electronic gadgets that shape our world into a multitude of sexy colors and shapes. From the beginning of the industrial revolution, and particularly when the means of the average citizen was there, competition pushed the common day use objects past function and into the realm of beauty. Architecture followed suite. It would be nice to say that architecture led the way, but I don't think that is the case. The average person has a cool looking television set, a hot new computer, a fancy knock off Torche lamp fixture, but not a state of the art house.