The Production Design of Lynch, Malick & Anderson

An interview with Jack Fisk

Jack Fisk

Jack Fisk is a production designer perhaps best known for his work with David Lynch, Terrence Malick and Paul Thomas Anderson. Fisk agreed to share rare sketches and photographs with Trevor Hogg, who interviewed him back in 2012. Their conversation reveals some interesting insights into Fisk's working processes, and into what it's like to collaborate with some of Hollywood's most revered filmmakers.

On David Lynch

David Lynch's The Straight Story (1999)

Jack Fisk appears as Man in the Planet in Eraserhead (1977)

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001)

From Trevor Hogg (Flickering Myth):

“David [Lynch], I have known since 9th grade, and he is a complete original in a world of his own design – as much a painter and furniture maker as a filmmaker. I know that David cannot stop creating and if he is not making a film, he is painting, drawing, printmaking, making furniture, composing music, or writing. To work with David you need to embrace his style, but he is a kind and fun to be around.” A break in the routine was to make a movie with Lynch which was grounded more in reality. “It was fun to watch David take a real story like the one of Alvin Straight and make it his own. I think he was able to draw from his real life to find quirky original moments for Alvin and the film. Working together on The Straight Story [1999] was fun as David would often paint and build on the sets; he loves to work.”

[...]

“It seems that it was completely by accident that I became a production designer, but now after 40 years in film I see how everything I learned and experienced before working in film has helped me be a better film designer,” says Jack Fisk. “I moved to Los Angeles with David Lynch who came to attend the first classes at the American Film Institute. Having seen an impressive show of James Rosenquist’s paintings at the Met in New York, I was looking for work as a billboard painter. There were no jobs available painting billboards, but I learned of a small biker film hiring assistants and signed on to that for $100 a week. I remember on my first day I was holding traffic on Topanga Blvd about a quarter of a mile from filming. I became curious about filmmaking and met a network of young people working on non-union films around Hollywood; that’s how I first started working on films. On each film following I worked to get closer to the action and began working in what became the Art Department. At that time there were few film schools, however, we worked for Roger and Gene Corman and learned a lot about making films.”

[...]

I am very familiar with David’s style as I have been around him since we shared a painting studio in high school. I work with David by designing in the ‘style of’ Lynch. It can be fun and refreshing to work in someone’s style, especially a style as unique as David’s. [Read More]

On Terrence Malick

Fisk's photographs of set construction for Malick's Days of Heaven (1978)

Fisk's photographs of set construction for Malick's Days of Heaven (1978)

Fisk's photographs of set construction for Malick's Days of Heaven (1978)

A still from Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998)

A still from Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (2011)

A still from Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (2011)

From Trevor Hogg (Flickering Myth):

Terry Malick and I have been working together for 40 years, since his first feature Badlands, and we have developed a style together. The minimal style first started because we had tight budgets and I started choosing dressing carefully because we could only afford a few things. This led me to an appreciation of painters like Edward Hopper who has a great economy to his images and to minimalist artists. Now, having worked with Terry so long we can communicate pretty well as we have many reference points in our history together.”

[...]

When we finally found the location for Days of Heaven [1978], I learned that because the Hutterite farmers were going to harvest the wheat in 6 weeks I would only have four weeks to design, build and dress the house and buildings around it. We were too young to know it couldn’t be done! We did it with some great carpenters, design shortcuts and a lot of luck. I hired a lot of young Hutterite boys to work every Sunday after church to help in construction. Other challenges that come to me are: the ships in The New World [2005], the airplanes and landing craft in The Thin Red Line [1998], the whole film Phantom of the Paradise [1974] was a challenge, and the fires in Badlands [1973] and Days of Heaven. Building a village in Guadalcanal with native women was a fun challenge; they are hard workers, but the men chewed betel nut and watched.”

[...]

For Terrence Malick, Jack Fisk has always been his production designer of choice. “His films are made today with his select crew, which he describes as like a jazz band, or fingers of the same hand. Of course he is the only one with the music; we all contribute the best we can.” As for what has led Malick to make three films in two years, the resident of Charlottesville, Virginia remarks, “Two things have propelled Terry into making so many films in the past few years. First he has found an enjoyable way, for him, to make films, with a crew that is in synch with his new methods. Secondly, I think Terry has ideas that he wants to put into film and doesn’t know how much time he will have to do it. He works constantly. I asked him why he didn’t take a day or week off once in a while and Terry answered, ‘I took fifteen years off.’” [Read More]

On Paul Thomas Anderson

Jack Fisk's draft design for the oil derrick in Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007)

A still from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007)

A still from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007)

A still from Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012)

From Trevor Hogg (Flickering Myth):

“I search to find the challenges in each film I do,” reveals Fisk. “As much as designing settings solving problems is an important part of the job of a production designer. Sometimes it’s the miniscule budget and sometime it is the scope of the film. Each challenge has a solution and finding it is one of the fun parts of film design. I remember PTA [Paul Thomas Anderson] asking me how I was going to build the derrick in There Will Be Blood [2007] and me replying, ‘I have no idea.’ He seemed to like the honesty of my answer but I needed to figure it out. My solution was to build it real just like they would have in 1916. I found plans for an 1896 wooden derrick at the oil museum in Taft, California which I purchased for $3. I added a staircase and put it on the side of a hill, but it was the 1896 derrick.

[...]

After working on There Will Be Blood for about two months, Paul asked me one day, ‘Why are you picking all of the colours?’ I gave him a new Benjamin Moore paint swatch book and said, ‘Okay, you pick ’em.’ I watched him carry that colour book around for a few days. When finally he came up and handed me back the swatch book, Paul said, ‘You pick ’em.’ When Paul called me to work on There Will Be Blood we started an interesting creative journey; his first design related comment on that film was, ‘Let’s not have any signs.’ I liked that idea; it fit well with my minimal approach and the design evolved from that. We didn’t look for easy solutions choosing to shoot in West Texas because it was so inhospitable and rough. We worked to keep it real but a stylized real eliminating all the clutter of the actual world. Paul shared his writing research so our sources for the visuals of the film were the same.

[...]

“The strength of the design of There Will Be Blood is that every part of it was designed and constructed. We rented a 50,000 acre ranch in West Texas and created our world there. Paul and I would walk around dreaming and designing where we would put the church, the town, and the derrick. It is easier to design everything and can make for a more cohesive film.” In regards to the visual research he conducts, Fisk remarks, “I usually try to find photographs and writings of the subject and the time period when researching a film. Much like a detective I approach writing skeptically taking in account the human factor. I love to see period drawings, paintings, photographs and documentary films, if they exist. I usually avoid looking at commercial films for research. I don’t want to be confused by other designers and directors take on a story. By the time we start building the sets I have a feeling for the time and place; I have left the research, and work on instinct and gut feelings.”[Read More]

Jack Fisk has also spoken to the Paul Thomas Anderson site, Cigarettes & Red Vines, on his experience of working on The Master [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Filmmakers: David Lynch
• Comparing Terrence Malick and Andrew Wyeth
• How Terrence Malick Constructed To The Wonder
• David Lynch: Behind the Scenes of Eraserhead
• Paul Thomas Anderson: An Autocritique

Comparing Terrence Malick and Andrew Wyeth

A look at artistic inspiration and critical reception

Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World (1948)

Andrew Wyeth, Turkey Pond (1944)

Andrew Wyeth, Wind from the Sea (1947)

A still from Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978)

A still from Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978)

A still from Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978)

From Dulwich on View:

[...] But it is more interesting to see from a wider perspective how Wyeth and Malick share an important socio-cultural position. Both men straddle the artificial division between ‘High Art’ and ‘popular / commercial’ culture. Wyeth merits display in such an august artistic institution as the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Yet his work has been dismissed by some critics as “sentimental”, “mere illustration”, “emotional”, “formulaic stuff”. Wyeth was known as the “Painter of the People,” due to his work’s popularity with the public.

This divided reaction mirrors the fallacious division of cinema into two rigidly separate realms, the worthy one of the “arthouse” and the despised one of the “popcorn multiplex”. Malick’s films are fascinating in how they challenge the misguided and snobbish assumption that all American cinema belongs in the latter category. Like all his films, Days of Heaven is a Hollywood film, featuring Hollywood stars, and made via the Hollywood system, albeit an off-centre strand. Producer Bert Schneider was also a cross-over figure. Co-creator of plastic pop group The Monkees. But then an avid supporter of the New Hollywood via Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and, later, Days of Heaven.

At times Days of Heaven looks and feels like a Western, structured narratively as it is around two common themes of that genre, the parallel battles of man (sic) versus nature, and civilisation versus man’s (sic) lower, passionate nature. A battle for “order” on both levels.

The “art” v “popcorn” fallacy rests heavily on another myth, that of the “auteur” as solo filmmaker, responsible alone for a film’s entire artistic and literary content. Malick is often claimed as a rare example of a Hollywood auteur. Not surprisingly given the signature trademarks which run through his films. All of which are present in Days of Heaven: strong visual narrative; shot almost entirely outdoors; use of minimal electric lighting; characters often backlit and filmed towards late afternoon / early evening; much on the spot improvisation; use of almost disembodied voiceover to drive narrative. The result is a series of films often described as ‘hypnotic’ or ‘transcendental’. A long way from standard Hollywood fare.

Malick’s auteur persona reflects how unusual he is as a Hollywood filmmaker. He studied philosophy at Harvard and Oxford, then taught at M.I.T. Since his first feature, Badlands in 1973, he has made a total of just 5 features in 37 years. Compared to the 31 films directed by that undisputed Hollywood auteur, Clint Eastwood in a similar period. In between films Malick has continued to teach. Clearly a man not driven by standard Hollywood motivations of fame, wealth or ego.

On the other hand, Malick is in some ways a quintessential American filmmaker. Born in the spirit of E Pluribus Unum into a family of middle-eastern (Assyrian) background,. Brought up as a farm boy in Oklahoma and Texas, neither known as hotbeds of High Art. Established in his Ivy League career the lure of Hollywood drew him from the East Coast via the not unusual route of journalism then scriptwriting.

Like Wyeth, Malick has been criticised from two directions. To hardline arthouse fundamentalists his films are “superficial” and “sentimental”, not far enough from mainstream Hollywood. While users’ comments on IMDB by members of the multiplex demographic who have stumbled on his work via DVD rentals frequently include the words “boring” and “pretentious”. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• How Terrence Malick Constructed To The Wonder
• Terrence Malick: Film and Philosophy
• Critchley on Nature in Terrence Malick
• Terrence Malick on Days of Heaven
• Terrence Malick: act of creation

X-Radiographic: Seeing Through Edward Hopper

From the Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

A radiographic of Edward Hopper's Hotel Lobby (1943)

From Richard McCoy (Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog):

In the comments on that last post Karen T discussed the importance of being able to make a 1:1 comparison between a radiograph and a painting, and then Christina responded with some first-hand experience with our new system. I confess, though: I cheated a bit and asked Christina to answer that question because, after all, Christina is an experienced paintings conservator here at the IMA, and I’m not.

Christina and I were talking about all of this when the Chief Conservator, David Miller, walked into the lab and joined the discussion (you can find out more about both of them on the Mainardi web page). To make a long story longer, the three of us decided to put together an example that illustrates how the new system handles the 1:1 comparison issue. So David and Christina printed out an image to demonstrate a 1:1 comparison of the radiograph and the painting. The photo above is of Christina holding a 13” x 19” print out of a radiograph of the IMA’s Edward Hopper’s 1943 painting Hotel Lobby. The painting was fully radiographed as part of a technical study of Hopper’s painting technique for an exhibition (and catalogue) opening at the IMA in August of 2008, called Edward Hopper; Paper to Paint, that explores the relationship of the artist’s drawings and studies to the finished painting. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Edward Hopper's Sketchbook
• Finding Edward Hopper's Nighthawks
• Gail Albert Halaban: Out My Window
• Solitude and Light

Gail Albert Halaban: Out My Window

Photographs suggest a myriad of personal stories in the contemporary urban landscape

Photograph: Gail Albert Halaban

Photograph: Gail Albert Halaban

Photograph: Gail Albert Halaban

On her official website, Gail Albert Halaban hosts an online gallery of photographs collected as a series called 'Out My Window'. The photographs explore the relationship between inside and outside space in an urban environment, and - I'm not the first person to say this - recall Edward Hopper in their portrayal of isolated figures framed by windows and interiors. Another photographer that springs to mind is Michael Wolf, whose exhibition, The Transparent City, was hosted on A Piece of Monologue back in 2008. But to reach out for comparisons does not do justice to Halaban's work, which suggests a myriad of personal stories in the contemporary urban landscape. [See More]

Albert Halaban has also been the subject of a recent article in The Observer, where Killian Fox reports she has gone in search of sites featured in Edward Hopper's paintings. Her motivation is an interesting one: 'People kept comparing me to Hopper and I wanted to know where that came from.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• The Transparent City
• Edward Hopper's Sketchbook
• Finding Edward Hopper's Nighthawks
• Saul Leiter's Typographic Fragments

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye

Tate Modern: Exhibition · 28 June – 14 October 2012

Edvard Munch, New Snow in the Avenue, 1906. Photo: Photograph: Munch Museum/Munch-EllingsendGroup/DACS 2012

Adrian Searle (The Guardian) reviews Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye, an upcoming Tate retrospective of Munch's work: 'Even the paintings that are misconceived or a mess are fascinating records of a struggle. To be between greatness and inarticulacy, and to not care either way, takes a perverse sort of courage. At times Munch's paintings show great daring; at others, they become incoherent. Munch was extremely good at doing nasty. You could say he savoured it, and so do we: all those vampires and ruined relationships, horror, illness and death. His appetite for the sanguine is shared by most of us who watch thrillers and crime dramas and read murder stories. How Scandinavian of him, as Björk might sing.' [Read More]

Finding Edward Hopper's Nighthawks

Pursuing the inspiration behind a 20th Century masterpiece

Jeremiah Moss investigates the elusive location for Edward Hopper's signature painting, 'Nighthawks':

In 1941, Edward Hopper began what would become his most recognizable work, one that has become an emblem of New York City. "‘Nighthawks,’” Hopper said in an interview later, “was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet.” The location was pinpointed by a Hopper expert, Gail Levin, as the “empty triangular lot” where Greenwich meets 11th Street and Seventh Avenue, otherwise known as Mulry Square. This has become accepted city folklore. Greenwich Village tour guides point to the lot, now owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and tell visitors that Hopper’s diner stood there. But did it? [Read the article]

Jeremiah Moss, 'Nighthawks State of Mind'

New York Times, 2 July 2010

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Edward Hopper's Sketchbook
• The Transparent City

Edward Hopper's Sketchbook

A glimpse at earlier versions of the American painter's work

Edward Hopper's sketch for 'Office in a Small City' (1953)

Edward Hopper, 'Office in a Small City' (1953)

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is hosting an online selection of Edward Hopper's work from an exhibition in 2007. The website includes a slideshow of some of Hopper's best-known paintings, and an interactive sketchbook where readers can see original sketches for signature works. As one of the quintessential twentieth-century painters of American life, the site appeals to experts and newcomers alike.

• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Edward Hopper

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Seeing the Light
• The Transparent City
• Solitude and Light: The Paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi

Solitude and Light

The paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi

I've been spending a lot of time looking at the work of Vilhelm Hammershøi, a distinctive Danish painter born in 1864. I first encountered his painting on an anthology of Ibsen's dramatic works, and was struck by its starkness and simplicity. Since then, I've discovered that Vilhelm Hammershøi is a painter that continually returns to the same kind of subjects again and again - and it's a compulsion that I find fascinating.

Much like Edward Hopper, Vilhelm Hammershøi often paints solitary figures that appear on the brink of some kind of narrative. There is also a keen attention to light and shade in austere, minimalist spaces that are characteristic of much of Hopper's work. But, for all their similarities, the two painters are of course worlds apart. Edward Hopper is a painter of Americana, of familiar twentieth-century settings and Hollywood everyman archetypes. While Vilhelm Hammershøi often paints faceless solitary women contained within a Victorian domestic space.

What is perhaps a little odd about Hammershøi's paintings is that while they seek to depict a traditional nineteenth century reality, there is something that feels distinctly modern about them. They appear free from the moralizing concerns of other contemporary realist paintings of the time, and instead appear to be making a comment or a social critique on their respective subjects. It's not difficult to understand why Hammershøi has been used on the cover of A Doll's House, or why the composition of his paintings has inspired dramatic productions of Henrik Ibsen's work.

But what appeals to me most about Vilhelm Hammershøi is the simplicity of the composition, and the position of each painting's protagonist. There is something both fascinating and compelling about their solitary nature, and something oddly creepy about their surroundings - which appear to trap them within their confines. Most of all, the silences appeal to me: there are so many mysterious rooms, half-seen corridors and quiet, muted colours.

You can read more about the painter's work at the Royal Academy of Art's website, which recently held a retrospective entitled 'The Poetry of Silence'.

Seeing the Light

'Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.'

Edward Hopper

The last time I moved house I made a simple promise to myself. From that point onward, whenever looking for a property, wherever it may be, certain essential criteria would have to be met.

Firstly, it was important - no, vital, it was vital - that the new space have an abundance of fresh, circulating air: air that was clean and fresh at all times. As I am an asthmatic, and my symptoms have flared up just lately, I can’t emphasize this first point enough. I didn’t want any more of that damp furniture smell sparring with my lungs, and I was through with sampling previous tenants’ intestinal offshots.

I also wanted a plentiful supply of natural light. And I can’t stress this one enough, either. After spending a year living in a room with a poor light supply, I became amazed at the effect it had on my personality, and my general outlook on life. Everything began to feel numb and dumb and interminable. I started to become depressed and irritable, and found it strange that my room, the one place that has always brought me comfort and solace, became a site for sparks of anxiety and sometimes even misery. So now I reach for natural light every chance I get, and no bulb can serve as a substitute. I find myself yearning for it like a sapling struggling towards the sun.

Natural light has since become not only a requirement to my sanity and well-being, but something of a fixation. I can understand the fascination the impressionists felt in their approach to light and its representation. I can understand Edward Hopper’s strange outburst about wanting to paint light on the side of a house. And I can see natural light everywhere I go, glinting through trees, bouncing off table-tops and gleaming on wet stones. It adds colour, depth, mood and atmosphere to every environment; I’d even go as far as to say that light is that environment. It’s everywhere, and it’s beautiful.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that I’ve lost the plot, and perhaps you’re right, but I’m not budging on this strange new standpoint. The next time I move house, as I prepare my list of necessaries and prerequisites, right at the top, above the gas/electric cooker, above the strength of the shower, even above the air supply, will be ‘natural light’. Underlined. In bold capital letters.

Die Brücke

One of the great artistic movements of the 20th Century

A few years back a friend and I decided to spend a week in Berlin. We followed the tourist handbooks and navigated our way through the city. After a few days, with growing confidence, we even began to explore with the guidebooks tucked away in our pockets, and gradually started to establish our bearings. I loved the experience, and to this day I feel that Berlin is one of the greatest places I've ever visited.

I found it amazing to see the way Berlin accepts and adapts to its own history: a history that shaped much of twentieth-century Europe, and which manifests itself in every street and every square of the city. There are so many signifiers of a dark and troubling past, amid so much optimism and urban development. The collision of the present with the past, light with dark, was often more than a little on the uncanny side.

We saw bars and restaurants located around Checkpoint Charlie, where tourists can sip a cold beer and contemplate the divide; fragments of the Berlin wall outside shopping malls and train stations; and memorials and high-rise buildings constructed over underground caverns of Nazi administration. Walking through the city was, at times, awe-inspiring, and at others it was frightening.

It was in Berlin that I first came across the work of Ernst Ludvig Kircher, Ernst Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, painters of the Die Brücke expressionist movement. Their name, literally meaning 'the bridge', derives from a desire to merge traditional artistic techniques with the evolving avant garde movement. I was initially drawn to investigate the group while reading about David Bowie, who emulates the pose of Heckel's Roquairol on the cover of his Berlin album "Heroes". Iggy Pop strikes a similar pose on the cover of his album, The Idiot, released the same year.

Despite their expressionist techniques, I always saw a certain realism in their work that always appealed to me. I was drawn to the lone figures, that seemed to be trying to comprehend their surroundings. At times I was reminded of some of Kafka's short stories, at others I thought of Edward Hopper's anonymous city dwellers, but sometimes I didn't think of anything specific. I just daydreamed. That was what I loved about them.

I was reminded of Die Brücke again just recently, while reading James Knowlson's fantastic biography of Samuel Beckett, Damned to Fame. In the mid-1930s, as national socialism began to gain momentum, Beckett embarked on a kind of cultural pilgrimage, touring the museums and art galleries of Germany.

Ironically, many of the modern pieces that interested Beckett most, including those of Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff had recently been declared decadent by the Third Reich and were taken out of the public eye - either to be stored, bought by private collectors or destroyed. Beckett witnessed the censorship first-hand, and was appalled to meet painters and artists who were suffering from the new policies. But despite this, Beckett did find numerous opportunities to see the works he had been looking for, and retained an interest in the Die Brücke movement, and painting in general, all of his life.

Lying in bed this morning, I spent some time in a dreamless haze, watching the sun move gradually up the wall. I was contemplating the morning coffee, but couldn't quite find the motivation to get up and do something about it. It was at this point that I noticed some of the postcards that have been tacked about the place, here and there, to give my room a bit of colour. Two such postcards were bought from an art gallery gift shop in Berlin: two paintings by Kirchner. I decided to make myself a fresh pot of coffee and go in search of some more paintings online.

And I found them. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is currently holding an exhibition of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's work. There is a website filled with great examples of his painting, and plenty of information about his life and that of the Bridge movement. You can see it for yourself by clicking here.

The Transparent City

A new photographic exhibition

Photographer Michael Wolf has compiled an 'Edward Hopper meets Blade Runner' exhibition based on Chicago's city landscape. The exhibition is entitled The Transparent City (which, in itself, sounds like the title of a J. G. Ballard story) and you can check it out here.