I brought up Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent during the course of an interview with writer-director Steve McQueen who embraced the cinematic reference. We were talking about McQueen’s Blitz (Apple Original Films), a title that’s short for the Germans’ “blitzkrieg” bombing of London during World War II. The Blitz story is told largely through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy, George (portrayed by Elliott Heffernan), whose single mom, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), made the heartaching decision to send him to the countryside with other schoolchildren to flee the devastating aerial attacks.
It’s a chapter in history addressed in Foreign Correspondent, most famously in the final scene where Joel McCrea, portraying a war correspondent, stands in front of a radio microphone and broadcasts back to America the horror of the nighttime bombing that’s happening all around him. London has gone into blackout, its main defense against an aerial onslaught. McCrea’s character reports that what his listeners are hearing is the sound of death coming to London. All they can do is stand in the dark and let the bombs drop. It’s as if the lights have gone out everywhere–except in America. He implores Americans to keep their lights burning and shining bright to push back against the darkness that has enveloped the world. And in a sense that’s what Blitz does some 84 years after the release of Foreign Correspondent–underscoring not only the relevance of that piece of history to today but also figuratively keeping the lights glowing by centering on a family trying to navigate around circumstances beyond their control, keeping hope alive through the love that a mother and son feel for each other even when forced to be apart.
Heightening Rita’s anguish in Blitz is news that her son has gone missing. George had hopped off the train supposedly sending him to safety to try to return home to his mother and grandfather (Paul Weiler) in East London. The lad’s journey is perilous yet he perseveres due to a family bond that has grown stronger through adversity–not just in terms of coping with the war but George having to endure the sting of prejudice and ridicule much of his life due to his mixed-race heritage.
McQueen shared that in telling this story, he “never felt more useful as an artist.” While Blitz depicts the overwhelming scope and scale of the bombing, the death and destruction, it also shares an intimacy in which family remains a source of joy and strength–spawning resiliency–in the midst of tragedy. When asked about the biggest takeaway or lessons learned from his experience on Blitz, McQueen simply answered, “Love, love, love.”
The story of Blitz has resonated with audiences while also impacting those who made it, including cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, AFC who shared his experience in a prior installment of our Road To Oscar Series, citing the value and current relevance of telling the story from George’s perspective. “It got me to thinking about Palestinian kids, Israeli kids, Ukrainian kids, Russian kids,” said Le Saux, adding that filming George was a catalyst for thoughts and feelings about children today and what’s happening to them in the throes of war and conflict. With the insanity of war, Le Saux fears that we are “building a generation of traumatized kids.”
Blitz marks the first collaboration between McQueen and Le Saux. The writer-director found a simpatico spirit in Le Saux, noting that he was initially drawn to the cinematographer’s body of work with director Olivier Assayas (which includes the features Personal Shopper, Non-Fiction, Clouds of Sils Maria, and the TV miniseries Irma Vep).
Another essential collaborator for McQueen on Blitz was Heffernan, who was discovered in an extensive casting search. “We threw out a very large net and found Elliott,” related McQueen, recalling that in auditions the young actor had “a stillness about him” that was beyond his years, part of what made him “fascinating” and clearly the George they had been looking for.
McQueen found George and for that matter all the characters focused on in Blitz to be “fascinating” in that the movie explored uncharted territory when it came to this era, telling stories, said McQueen, about “the people who fell between the gaps of history.” Blitz taps into “a rich landscape” of a cosmopolitan London, and social strata ranging from women working in factories to so-called “beautiful people” cavorting at a nightclub, to a Nigerian soldier whom George meets while trying to get back home. And all these segments of society were thoroughly researched by McQueen and his team.
For example, the bombing of the alluded to nightclub actually happened, with Blitz re-creating many details, even the music being played at the time of the devastating attack. And the Nigerian soldier too is based on an actual person who delivers an eloquent message after befriending George and taking him to a London shelter where a man has cordoned off a family of Jewish refugees. At the shelter, the soldier explains that the self-made wall has to be brought down because it represents what the free world is fighting in Hitler and the Nazis. McQueen found those words chronicled in historical archives and brought them to Blitz. Emotionally moved by the soldier, George declares proudly that he too is Black–a heritage the youngster earlier denied due to a lifetime of being ostracized by others for it.
Supporting the realism McQueen sought for Blitz was the decision to tap into actual locations and ambitious sets–thus keeping any reliance on VFX and green screen to a minimum. DP Le Saux noted that capturing as much as possible in-camera was paramount. The sets were from production designer Adam Stockhausen who created varied aspects of the post-Industrial Revolution in London. “Actors are much more affected” when performing in an actual environment,” explained McQueen, adding that Stockhausen is a consummate artist. McQueen and Stockhausen have a track record of collaboration, including on Widows and Best Picture Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave. Stockhausen is a four-time Academy Award nominee–for 12 Years a Slave, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and West Side Story, and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. For the latter, Stockhausen won the Best Achievement in Production Design Oscar in 2015.
RaMell Ross
Director RaMell Ross made an auspicious directorial debut with the documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which followed Black residents in Alabama’s Hale County and earned nominations for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar, a DGA Award, and an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film in 2019. Hale County won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, and a Peabody Award in 2020.
Now another stellar debut–his first fictional narrative feature–has emerged for Ross in Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM Studios), which he directed and co-wrote with Joslyn Barnes, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Nickel Boys.” The drama centers on two Black teenagers sentenced to an abusive reform school, the Nickel Academy, in Florida during the Jim Crow era. Whitehead used the real Dozier School for Boys–and its victims–as a model. The cast includes Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Ross’ film introduces us to Elwood Curtis (portrayed by Ethan Cole Sharp as a boy, by Herisse as a teen, and Diggs as an adult) and Turner (played by Wilson). The Black youngsters witness and endure harrowing experiences at the reform school where they first meet. They bond as friends but also represent a clash of mindsets and attitudes–Elwood with an optimistic worldview even in the face of evil, and Turner, a skeptical, seen-it-all survivor who dispenses advice on how to cope with the brutality.
Ross–who won the Gotham Award for best director earlier this month on the strength of Nickel Boys–reflected on making the transition from documentary to narrative fiction (though based on horrific factual circumstances). Whereas he not only directed, co-wrote, produced, lensed and edited Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Ross turned to more collaborators for Nickel Boys, including cinematographer Jomo Fray and editor Nicholas Monsour. Ross explained that while he didn’t “let go” of cinematography and editing for Nickel Boys, he learned to “share the steering wheel” with Fray and Monsour. And this shared experience proved fruitful and invaluable. Ross embraced the art of expressing what he wanted, giving an idea to someone, respecting their point of view and seeing what they come up with. Through this process, you can get closer to or achieve what you want. Or sometimes you “realize that what they want is better than what you wanted.” That working dynamic, observed Ross, has given him a new dimension of “hope for future projects.”
That hope in part is grounded in the realization, observed Ross, that “pain or suffering is not unique to you” as millions of people across time and history have experienced it. So collaborating with others, “figuring out ways to open yourself up” and “be part of a larger community,” including people who share your point of view, can have creative benefits. There are collaborators who “can push the idea forward” and not just execute what you said. They can help expand limited imaginations.
Ross described Fray as “a deep thinker about images” and their power to realize “emotional resonance.” Ross felt an affinity for Fray and his commitment to create innovative and evocative visual stories rooted in empathy. Fray seeks to build upon a tradition of what he calls “experiential storytelling”–films that strive to have the viewer not only see the story but feel it as well. Towards that end, Ross said that as he and Fray operated cameras, they found themselves “engaging with the material as it is born in front of us.” With that approach, “the moment becomes more alive.” Ross noted that he found in Fray someone who has “the type of sensibility and capability of contorting according to the atmosphere.” That openness to discovery helped infuse Nickel Boys with an experiential energy and honesty that helps do justice to the story.
Similarly Ross was drawn to Monsour, an editor “interested in incrementally building the film and allowing it to change as the organism grows.” Sometimes, continued Ross, you have no idea what direction to go in but through building on sequences you are forced to evolutionally grow and shape the story.
At the same time, while letting the film evolve, Ross noted that he and co-writer Barnes (producer on both Nickel Boys and Hale County This Morning, This Evening) felt a personal responsibility to honor the Dozier School boys, to pay homage to Whitehead’s sense of urgency when writing the book, the expression of their lives through the author. Towards that end, bringing a filmic and cinematic orientation to that story, looking to capture “the camera’s relationship to the Black community,” is essential. We see and experience through the eyes of Elwood and Turner.
Ross added that there were logistical hurdles to clear, including “trying to hold the spirit of the film in relationship to the challenges of production. This isn’t animation where you can build out exactly what you want. There are time constraints, atmospheric problems. The sun isn’t the same as it was 10 minutes ago.” There are setbacks like people being stricken with COVID. “You are ever responding to the real world, If you have a billion dollar budget and time is not of the essence, then you can do your masterpiece. There are no excuses for it not being what you wanted.” Otherwise, for the rest of us, there’s “a constant competition with time and everything along with it. In managing the spirit of the film, you’re making decisions that [hopefully] don’t undermine that out of stress and self-preservation.”
Ross’ Nickel Boys opened the 62nd New York Film Festival a couple of months ago. Dennis Lim, the festival’s artistic director, shared in a statement, “Nickel Boys signals the emergence of a major filmmaking voice. RaMell Ross’ fiction debut, like his previous work in photography and documentary, searches for new ways of seeing and, in so doing, expands the possibilities of visual language. It’s the most audacious American movie I have seen in some time.”
Jason Reitman, Eric Steelberg
Director Jason Reitman and cinematographer Eric Steelberg, ASC share a deep collaborative bond. Steelberg has worked with Reitman over nine films, including Juno and Up in the Air, both of which earned Best Picture Oscar nominations. The director and DP most recently came together on Saturday Night (Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures) which takes us back to October 11, 1975 at 10 pm in New York City, 90 minutes prior to the debut of Saturday Night Live (SNL) on NBC. Saturday Night allows us to be the proverbial fly on the wall–or often on the shoulder of producer Lorne Michaels–during that hour-and-a-half leading up to showtime. The chain of events is mind boggling and mind scrambling as assorted elements have to come together to get this fledgling show on air–and there’s even some question if it will instead give way to a rerun of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, and be delayed a week or much longer.
Reitman–who also wrote the Saturday Night screenplay with Gil Kenan–and Steelberg wanted to drop the audience into this chaotic, frenetic world. At times we feel part of one seemingly continuous shot following Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) from one figurative potential fire to the next, mostly on the eighth and ninth floors of the landmark Rockefeller Center in NYC, including studio 8H.
Reitman and Steelberg ultimately decided to go with 16mm film for Saturday Night, the DP explaining that it “put us in the moment,” capturing that look of the time as if watching a movie from 1975–but being careful to avoid a gritty documentary feel. Steelberg played with film stock, attaining a softness and fashioning a color palette that helped realize the sought after creative vision.
Reitman noted that his priority was not so much how the film looked but how it felt, dovetailing with the sensation of dropping the audience into the birth of SNL, “the moment when this group of people came together and changed television history.” Reitman added, “In a way the camera becomes a character, a person wandering through the halls of the eighth and ninth floors.”
Reitman could also tap into his own experience on SNL, when a dream came true and he got to spend a week in 2008 as a guest writer and director. He even wrote a sketch that got on air. Reitman recalled that dynamic of starting on a Tuesday with nothing and then by Saturday having a finished 90-minute show of comedy and music. “It was not unlike the feeling of putting on a summer camp musical or a high school talent show,” he observed, noting that coming together to make something in this fashion is special. For Saturday Night he wanted to “capture the purity of young people living in the moment and creating whatever.”
Putting together Saturday Night, though, was far more professionally exacting and precise than staging a summer camp musical. Planning had to be intricate and meticulous, particularly in light of the extensive choreography entailed throughout–coordinating dolly and hand-held camera moves with what the actors were doing as well as with varied other elements. To get the desired feel, the camera is in a sense reacting to everything that’s happening. A prime example of the high bar set was a shot early on in which seemingly all the characters are introduced in a manner that sets the tone and pace for much of the movie. There’s one major continuous shot that starts at an elevator. Michaels and other characters get off and the camera weaves through various rooms, providing glimpses and introductions to certain folks, setting the stage for what we as viewers are going to experience. Extensive rehearsing was needed to get the timing right and everybody properly positioned.
A key part of the coordination involved the creation of the sets with production designer Jess Gonchor reviewing original blueprints for Rockefeller Center so that he could do architectural and engineering justice to the environment, making it camera friendly for Steelberg, facilitating the feel of wandering about the halls, stairs and offices of SNL. Reitman, Steelberg and Gonchor worked closely together to map out set design to support desired camera moves. Reitman had long wanted to work with Gonchor, a two-time Oscar nominee (for Hail, Caesar! and True Grit, both for the Coen brothers), but scheduling conflicts got in the way–until Saturday Night.
Reitman credited Gonchor and set decorator Claudia Bonfe with creating a setting around what the cinematography had to be, shaping the world on set as “a living, breathing space. The eighth and ninth floors have to feel 100 percent real, with the grime and history of 100 years, decades of radio and TV in that building. Jess and Claudia figured that all out.”
“Without Jess and Claudia, we cannot do our job,” affirmed Steelberg, noting that the production designer and set decorator had to account for every scene through their work. Lighting had to be built into the set, providing the right amount of illumination and sight lines to accommodate “the way we wanted to shoot.” Steelberg said that Gonchor and Bonfe were key contributors to figuring out how to best light the physical environment they had created.
Beyond his work for Reitman, Steelberg has credits which include the features Dolemite is My Name, Baywatch, (500) Days of Summer, and series such as Marvel’s Hawkeye and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Ahsoka. He also lensed the pilots for Showtime’s Billions and ABC’s The Good Doctor.
Reitman meanwhile has a total of four Oscar nominations, the aforementioned Best Picture nod for Up in the Air, directing and best adapted screenplay for the same film, and best directing for Juno. Reitman made his feature film debut with the 2006 Sundance hit Thank You for Smoking. Up in the Air also earned Reitman a Golden Globe, a Writers Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award for his screenplay. His other feature films include Young Adult, Tully, The Front Runner, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Reitman exec produced the Oscar-winning film Whiplash directed by Damien Chazelle and the Jean-Marc Vallee-helmed Demolition, and produced the cult hit Jennifer’s Body helmed by Karyn Kusuma. Reitman additionally produced four seasons of the Hulu comedy series Casual.
Morgan Neville
A Best Feature Documentary Oscar winner for his 2013 film, 20 Feet From Stardom, director Morgan Neville again finds himself in the awards season conversation–familiar for him in the documentary competition but the new wrinkle this time around is that he has a film that is also being bandied about for its prospects in the animation category. Piece by Piece (Focus Features) tells the story of composer/musician/performer Pharrell Williams–through LEGO animation. Audio interviews with Williams and collaborators like Kendrick Lamar and Missy Elliott relate moments that come to life via LEGO-constructed visuals.
Neville described the film as “creative nonfiction.” It’s a hybrid of disciplines–documentary and animation–which are masterfully meshed despite philosophically being inherently contradictory. Neville had to grapple with these contradictory elements, balancing their virtues to do justice to Williams’ story. “I realized early on that animation is the opposite instinct of documentary. The director is ‘God’ in animation. In documentaries,” quipped Neville, “the director can barely decide where to put the camera.”
Neville finds a beauty in the restrictions of the documentary form, the lack of control. He wanted to retain that lack of control at times within the animation framework, subtly looking at the friction between having control and the lack thereof, adding an artistic dimension of human realism to the film. Whereas animation of objects such as LEGOs conventionally deploys great handheld camera work, Neville on occasion wanted the camera work to be a bit jagged, with jump cuts and missed focus, even audio boom poles in the shots, different aspect ratios–flaws that are not uncommon in a documentary.
Neville found himself in a delicate balancing act, sharing that he was “trying to make sure we kept those documentary elements but at the same time letting animation do what it can do–transport us through time and space. In the beginning I was a little worried that going back and forth between these gears would feel abrupt but once it all landed in the LEGO world, those differences disappeared. You could do something ‘realistic.’ You could start floating and go with it. That was one of the happiest surprises of making the film.”
The documentary/LEGO construct also contributed greatly to Piece by Piece as a musical, reflecting the magic of music which stirred Williams during his childhood and carried through to his adult life (except perhaps for a creative dry spell when he wasn’t being true to his music). The LEGOs take us to another place. “As much as it’s a story,” observed Neville, “it’s also a kind of hallucination of his way of seeing the world. Pharrell is a magical thinker. This gave us license to embrace the magical thinking in the storytelling. He’s somebody who puts things together that don’t necessarily fit. He sees things that others don’t see. We can see sound [through the use of LEGOs]. How incredible is that? A conventional film–scripted or documentary–couldn’t really do that.”
It all originated with Williams who said a documentary about his life had to be done with LEGOs. That was the gist of Neville’s first conversation with Williams. “I didn’t know what that meant,” recalled Neville. “I didn’t know if that was possible. But I got very excited right away. It was a big crazy idea.”
In essence, Neville wound up making the film twice, gathering materials, conducting interviews, shooting footage, using existing footage–and hiring a student from art college to draw what was being cobbled together. Neville put together a cut which was screened and re-screened. “You could watch it in a theater,” he said. “It was a weird Frankenstein-like cut. When we finished that, we started working with the animation studio.”
Neville’s point person was animation director Howard Baker who worked with teams around the world. Neville and Baker built a rapport, discussing everything from production design to character design. There were 1,500-plus shots, every shot going through multiple rounds of notes as Neville and Baker looked to hone and refine the work. At first, Neville said he and Baker were from different worlds, kind of like “two flavors that don’t go together.” But they both evolved. Neville expressed the need to honor the imperfections of documentary filmmaking while gaining respect for the incredible artistry and transformative powers of animation. “Howard became much more attuned to the documentary form. I became much more attuned to animation,” said Neville. This broadened perspective sometimes had Neville advocating for animation and Baker for documentary sensibilities.
Piece by Piece was some five years in the making. Neville first met with Williams in January 2019. It took about a year to get LEGO on board. They did a proof-of-concept piece to sell it and really began in earnest at the beginning of 2020. Then COVID hit. Neville did most of the interviews remotely during the pandemic. It was four years of solid work, with Neville for the first time experiencing the painstaking animation process.
The years that go into making a film can be similar between a conventional documentary and an animation film–but for different reasons, observed Neville. “A documentary will often take many years. Your subject goes away. You don’t have funding. It’s not like you’re working on something every day for years and years.”
By contrast, there’s what Neville described as “the nonstop drip of animation. Every morning there are 20 shots to look at and get notes on. You can go a little bit crazy doing that. It’s a micro-focus. But I really got into it.”
The LEGO process, though, was impacted by the documentary form. Normally a LEGO-animated movie would have some giant beautiful sets that are used repeatedly, giving a kind of unifying aesthetic to the entire film. There are primarily wide shots, showing character in full body.
Instead Piece by Piece as a documentary has you montaging from location to location, traveling through time and space. Sometimes a location is used for just a shot or two. And there are a lot of medium and tight shots of the characters. Neville embraced the process and what was necessitated by bringing the documentary and LEGO moviemaking together.
He also valued being able to come together with the animation community. Because of Piece by Piece, Neville has had occasion to dovetail with animation pros on the promotional circuit. He recently was part of a panel discussion with animators, for instance. “I feared they would see me as an imposter,” said Neville. “I have to say they’ve been great. I felt very welcomed and love that feeling from the animation world. I knew animation was hard. But now I have such a profound love and respect for animators and what they do.”
Piece by Piece adds to a body of work for Neville which includes Won’t You Be My Neighbor (about Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers); Roadrunner: A film About Anthony Bourdain; Best of Enemies, centered on the debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley; They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead about the final film of Orson Welles; Keith Richards: Under the Influence; STEVE(!) Martin a documentary in 2 pieces; and Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with Dave Letterman.
Massimo Cantini Parrini
A two-time Oscar nominee–for Pinocchio in 2021 and Cyrano in 2022–costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini turned his attention to Maria Callas, the legendary opera singer, during the final week of her life in 1970s Paris as depicted in director Pablo Larrain’s Maria (Netflix). Angelina Jolie portrays Callas whose voice and dramatic life captivated millions. Larrain’s film delves into Callas as she confronts her identity, life, insecurities and vulnerabilities–all the while looking to sing again, not for audiences but for herself.
This marked the first time Cantini Parrini had worked with Larrain. Via an English translator, the costume designer told SHOOT that a phone call from the director about Maria was a complete surprise. “I adore Pablo, his cinematic language, the way he makes movies.” Getting the opportunity to collaborate with Larrain was “a dream come true” for Cantini Parrini. And the dream didn’t end there. Cantini Parrini is an unabashed admirer of Callas, affirming that he has loved and adored the Italian diva and opera singer “all my life” and it was a pleasure “to enter her life and wardrobe.”
Cantini Parrini met with Larrain in Rome. “As soon as we met, we shared a wonderful feeling and vibe for each other. I loved the way he thought, what he said. We really were on the same page.”
The two immediately got to work, sharing images and photographs. Subsequently more extensive research was done, unearthing videos, more pictures.
The script was the main guideline for Cantini Parrini as he did his own research for the film, seeking and finding documentation that provided insights into the clothing ensembles worn by Callas. He created close to 70 outfits for Maria.
While he re-created and re-designed Callas’ outfits very precisely for Jolie–particularly as the film flashes back on the singer’s career–Cantini Parrini noted that he had some creative license due to the nature of the storyline, which covered the last week of her life. “That’s when I got the opportunity of creating my own look for Maria Callas’ wardrobe,” he shared, noting that there weren’t many images of her during that juncture. She had spent most of her time at home and there were no photographs of her at that time.
That dovetailed nicely with Cantini Parrini’s penchant for putting “something that is new and novel even in period costuming,” reasoning that a contemporary element can make a character and wardrobe more relatable to audiences.
Maria marked the second time that Cantini Parrini worked with Jolie, the first coming back when he was an assistant costume designer on director Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. Cantini Parrini regards Maria as his first full-fledged collaboration with Jolie and he was duly impressed. “Angelina is so dedicated, completely devoted to portraying her character. She was always in perfect form when we fitted outfits, always remained in character–from the morning, on set until the end of shooting. She never needed any retouch. She was always in character. Never stepped out of it even during pauses from one shoot to the other.”
Cantini Parrini said he was struck by the “great professionalism” of both Jolie and Larrain.
Maria marks the third entry in an unofficial trilogy for Larrain on the lives of world-famous women who found themselves at emotional crossroads. He helmed the biopics Jackie about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (portrayed by Natalie Portman), and Spencer centered on Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart).
In addition to his pair of Oscar nominations, Cantini Parrini saw Cyrano and Pinocchio each garner a Costume Designers Guild Award nod. And Cyrano also was recognized with a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Costume Design.
Collen Atwood
Colleen Atwood has a dozen Oscar nominations for costume design, winning in 2003 for Chicago, in 2006 for Memoirs of a Geisha, in 2011 for Alice in Wonderland, and in 2017 for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Now she is yet again in the awards season banter for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warner Bros.), continuing her longstanding collaborative relationship with director Tim Burton. Since their teaming on Edward Scissorhands in 1990, Atwood and Burton have paired up for Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, her Oscar-winning turn on Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, and the Netflix series Wednesday. Atwood garnered Academy Award nominations for Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow. And in 2023, she won an Emmy for an episode of Wednesday.
Like Burton, Jenny Ortega is a colleague providing another measure of continuity for Atwood on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Atwood has costumed (and continues to costume) the actress for Wednesday.
“Jenny and I have a lot of trust for each other. She’s young but incredibly smart, with intuitive ideas about character,” related Atwood, noting that Ortega informs her costuming as they compare notes, look at wardrobe possibilities–all based on the reality of the character she’s portraying.
As for Burton, the collaborative bond dates back some 35 years spanning movies, TV, photo shoots and videos. Their process is well defined as she typically will gather pictures, images, materials, talk to him about characters. He provides his take on everything and as Atwood builds costumes, she shows him what’s evolving for the actors. Atwood said her time with Burton, as with many directors, is “compressed” so they make the most of it. They’ve been together long enough to the point where they now communicate a great deal via “shorthand.” The priority for them, she affirmed, is to continually “challenge ourselves not to get into the same old groove.” They are always looking to break new ground.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice dovetailed nicely with that aspiration. While the famed Beetlejuice suit pretty much carried over from the original film to this new iteration–only slightly baggier, dirtier, covered with moss in certain areas with a little bit more of a paunch built in for Michael Keaton–most of the costuming otherwise represented new territory to navigate as the underworld is different than in the first film. Costuming underscores that passage of time, adding a modern vibe to its timelessness.
Among the array of crazy characters Atwood clothed were the Shrinkers, which required research and development as their heads are small and their arms move differently than people. The humans inside the Shrinker canary-yellow suits had to be able to see with the tiny heads perched atop them. Mesh shirts were devised so that the people inside the costumes had a field of vision so they could act and move about.
In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Ortega plays Astrid, the daughter of Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder). Staying true to the character of Astrid, who doesn’t care much about how she looks, outfits were created that looked kind of haphazardly put together and grungy–though that changed on occasion, like when she dons a Marie Curie Halloween costume which looks sort of reflective and radioactive. Corpse bride Delores (Monica Bellucci) meanwhile wears a multi-colored Victorian-style corset gown.
Atwood first and foremost appreciated Burton keeping as much as possible in-camera, not having to rely on visual effects. “It’s fun to be able to keep the craft on the costumes,” she affirmed.
As for the balance of Atwood’s aforementioned 12 Academy Award nominations, they came for Little Women in 1995, Beloved in 1999, A Series of Unfortunate Events in 2005, Nine in 2010, Snow White and the Huntsman in 2013, and Into the Woods in 2015.
This is the seventh installment of our weekly 16-part The Road To Oscar Series of feature stories. Nominations for the 97th Academy Awards will be announced on Friday, January 17, 2025. The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2, 2025.
