Academy Award® nominee and Emmy® winner, Production Designer James J. Murakami, whose work can be seen in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming J. Edgar, his sixth collaboration with the noted director, will receive the Hollywood Film Festival’s Hollywood Production Designer of the Year Award at the Festival’s October 24 Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony, it was announced today by festival founder and president Carlos de Abreu. Murakami’s selection followed a recommendation to the festival by the Art Directors Guild Council.
Murakami received his Oscar® nomination for the 2008 Changeling. His Emmy® for Outstanding Art Direction for a Single Camera Series was for Deadwood in 2005. The Art Directors Guild nominated him for two awards in 2008—Excellence in Production Design for Contemporary Films (Gran Torino) and for Period Films (Changeling).
He was Production Designer on last year’s Hereafter and among his other films are Invictus and Letters from Iwo Jima.
He attended Chouinard Art Institute and started his career in the motion picture industry at ZIV Television Studio in 1958. He was employed as set designer for eleven years and became a member of the Art Directors Guild as the assistant Art Director on Godfather II in 1973.
Murakami will be honored during the Hollywood Film Festival’s black-tie Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony banquet before a gathering of 1,200 industry and guild executives, stars, celebrities, filmmakers and media, from the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. Previous recipients of the Festival’s Production Designer honors are Robert Boyle, Henry Bumstead, Rick Carter, Stuart Craig, William Creber, Dante Ferretti, Sarah Greenwood, Grant Major, Harold Michelson, John Myhre and Robert Stromberg.
