uh my question is the same for all of you is your journey how did you get to this point
and what was your training and and or who are your mentors that inspired you to to push on
i came out of theater um more avant-garde theater and then into um you know doing a lot of uh
kind of the transition of also doing um music videos in rock and roll and was lucky enough to
uh meet david byrne who was about to make his first film and he said you want to do a movie
and i said yes i'd love to get off the proscenium stage and i did my first film true stories with
and then it just kept going with film so it was a a very interesting linear you know kind of path uh
and then stayed in that world i was working in san francisco in magazines and it was owned by
francis coppola and i was breaking up with my boyfriend and i needed to get out of town
and he said well how about a job in in oklahoma on a movie called rumblefish and you get to choose
you could be the assistant to the producer or you could be the art department coordinator and
i chose dean cavallaros and dennis and i are old friends so it was a natural
that's pretty great all roads lead too yes but
yeah sometimes circumstance really helps us out it's perfect and you were meant for this um
so you had so many iconic places that you needed to restore um and i realized i didn't
realize at the time that you were a native angelino so i'm sure some of it is good memory
but how did you approach how was how did you research and approach the changes you had to make
even on the street where we are right now right that's where most of it was um you know again
as dennis said it started with a great script in this case quentin's um love of this city which is
so infectious that it's unbelievable i mean his everything about him he really wrote into this
script of what made him a filmmaker so you know there was sitting with quentin you know we drove
around within the first two days of me starting because he had you know let's get out let's look
let's you know uh and what i loved about um his imagery in his brain and he was you know six when
he was at the same in 1969 but it was um you know he would say you know i remember um you know you
could you could go into grommens and you you went to a little machine and it popped out a little wax
thing of grommens and you know all these things as you're driving with him just and you did the
moldamatix you know which i loved as a kid too you know so we actually found a moldamatic we
from grommons but uh the shot was never in the film i mean we have a lot of sets
that aren't in the film actually because quentin's film is about four hours and
20 minutes and um you know sony wasn't going to let him do an intermission so uh he someday
that will come out probably on netflix or something the extended version the extended
but you know that the way his brain just throws things out and you start to like collect um
and what i also loved is there was nothing in his genre that was of the obvious you
know in doing something like the doors you knew you were going after a rock and roll
world of the doors in l.a and uh in this case for him it's a really a child's like mind of
driving through the valley and um so we it gave us it gave me a much bigger
latitude to kind of pick areas that we could that wouldn't be of the obvious hollywood boulevard was
we know very much that he wanted um marquise to him it's all about
what that look is you know as you drive up or come out of a movie theater and the neons blazing and
you know what that feels like to experience six-year-olds but even any kind of a childhood
it was the great experience as a kid when i went to gromans it was all day
you know you went to grommens you went to a movie that had an intermission you bought souvenirs
besides snacks you know you went to cc browns next door and had you know so um really the only thing
left in la that you had building structure was hollywood boulevard you know you still
had two-story buildings you've you looked at blocks that you could figure out how you could
change the thousands of souvenir shops back into something that used to be and we
we started with the big stuff because we knew permitting because we should also say that the
shock to me was how fast this film had to happen you know that was i thought we were shooting in
like august and i started the middle of february and over the shoulder of my first day i saw a
calendar and i said what's that may 10th and they said oh don't worry we have to just shoot
something on may 10th um because we have the you know and we realized that we had a really short
prep on this movie and i you know i started my supervising art director i said start hiring i
found you know nancy oh my god i got nancy can you start next week you know it's you know we i moved
quick because we had a very quick time period a lot of real estate to cover between hollywood
no no it's the location department rook schuler and his guys i mean we just never stopped because
permitting is your biggest problem here and the city was beside was um
at letting us permit this i mean that it took a lot a lot of meetings a lot of
breakdowns and then the icing on the cake was locations took uh quintin to the big you know
chamber of commerce meeting and brought him out literally out of a closet they hid him in a closet
which he he had to sit in there for 45 minutes until he almost got claustrophobic is that to just
calm him down or but when he well they didn't want the chamber of commerce to see him they
wanted to present all the breakdown and then quit and said i'll help what can i do and he says well
if you came and talked to them because he is so passionate about this city and the as things are
disappearing endlessly um and it worked i mean when they brought him out they were stunned
that he walked into the room and and he talked about his passion he said you know we're losing
everything we are hollywood we we need to this i'll bring it back briefly to show that
and you know he just won them over because they wouldn't let us do um the length of it we wanted
at one time and that was obvious because of traffic so we broke it up and did one section
and then months later did the other section and shot that so but yeah it was
it was something that we could never stop either the tourists they said you can never uh you can't
inhibit people while you're prepping which is no easy feat with giant cranes trying to put
the pussycat you know theater back on them but we worked you know by night and and uh with bringing
cranes in and nancy had probably the worst prep on that it's painful but she yes because
it cost so much money to buy locations and it was we we had to rehearse everything ahead of time in
our warehouse and then i would just assign okay you three guys are going to do these three shops
and you three and and on and on down the line but still most of the locations couldn't happen until
the day before so it was pretty painful yeah no you you could facade them and put marquis
on but you could not stop their business until like two day weekend right before we close down
hollywood boulevard so it was an army i mean you were like patton with uh yeah this military pad
with five times yes well you know again because los angeles uh antiquity here is i think 20 years
so going back to 1969 and doing your research and then creating it and finding the things that we
take for granted but they're not even at the flea markets anymore i mean where do you pull together
those resources well most of the prop houses have closed unfortunately the studio prop houses
but there are a couple that are dedicated to period dressing and of course we use those
extensively but nowadays we you have to buy online you have to search and uh and and buy
and i don't like to do it because you don't know what you're going to get till it arrives
but you don't have much of a choice anymore yeah especially for those unique character things that
are central to a moment right yeah well and we built a lot of nancy brought a lot of built a
lot of things yeah because it was um especially with anything that happened with rick's house
sure you know there's a lot of stunt work that was going to happen so we were prepared and you
built and rebuilt several western towns no one's built a western town in this city for a long time
that was so they must have been pretty sad when you went to scout them it was sad it
was sad to see because i didn't even know that paramount ranch was down to two little buildings
and now those are gone now but um you know universal uh we went after to say look you know
this was one of the great studios some of the greatest things were once shot here gun smoke and
um but through the years it had turned into kind of a it looked like baltimore it was like stone
baltimore it was weird yeah the only thing that ever used it was the tour buses going through
so uh we asked could i said could i put it back to and and make you know a real uh western town
again uh and add things into it and make it this lancer was more of a san joaquin valley western
town so it had a spanish bent to it and um and they let us of course it was you know they were
happy to have with our money you know make now a big western set again so yeah they depend on the
kindness of strangers yeah but it is you know it is a studio what quentin did love was that there's
a great history sure to the back of that lot and um it's a shame they keep stripping it away again
and making more things for tours but at least on this they were excited to maybe get it back
to being something that other people would shoot at too besides just the tour groups going through
and then you had the melody ranch and then the melody ranch which um always needs a lot of work
and that was a most of that was trying to build things back in
and to build things that wouldn't fall down on us
and some collapsible balconies things like that so and it gave us a different look
because we had um you know the older rick dalton shows which were more like the riflemen which
were always done in black and white and it was that kind of more mining town you know
look not a wealthy western town so it helped us to because the only other thing you can do is just go
and leave the state and you know go to new mexico or something and try to build outside of there but
anyway we did an inside state so you had movies with movie sets within movies within the movie
and the behind the scenes sets um was there any particular
one of those that i know the challenges of all of that getting the right equipment and all of that
but um was there one that was particularly you were particularly fond of nancy that
that or a special i can't say fond of but difficult wise
paramount uh backed out of letting us shoot the green hornet uh work there because of another film
and so we ended up going way down to norwalk and and to an adult education school
and a massive massive undertaking to make it look like a back lot and that was that was
i think we did it okay it was very convincing it was very convincing it was ironic that we couldn't
use a real hollywood backlog that's insane that just and it's a sign of the times it is the sign
of the times yeah it's sort of depressing oh gosh and then the spawn ranch was a built from
scratch right yes um the the original spawn ranch was burned in the 70s and then they bulldozed
everything they could out of there and it's now just an overgrown mound kind of but we found um
in this the same area of the santa susana pass because we wanted that terrain that rocky
a park that was willing to let us um you know completely take it over for months at a time
and build back um the old western town and then kind of all the sheds and the pieces and then
george's little house which you know we made up most of that because the only real research
and i had an incredible researcher lance mabon who started the first week i did too you know the
you get all of the police research which is those shots of them being arrested and that's the best
way to really look at the western town but then the rest of it and quentin had in his head that
george had a little house on a hill that kind of looked down at everything so locations found
that park and it had this great little mound and just was a perfect spot to put and then we just
started stakes in the ground i started plotting out when we put this air in this there and then we
we started it and played in models first so we could work out staging and horseback riding and
all the things that happened um that had to happen there and that was another uh amazing um the most
difficult part was uh the friday before the monday shoot the actor who was cast as george spahn bert
reynolds i was riding in my car and the radio was on and they announced that burt reynolds had died
and it was like wow and and they quickly cast over the weekend and we had bruce stern and and
and in the end that worked out okay but i i can't help but wonder what it would have been like if
if it had been burnt yeah that was a heartbreak yeah those are the things you can't you can
never pronounce well the the ultimate question again is uh what would you recommend to others
that might want to follow you into this profession
well i always when people when especially young people ask me i say you know get on a set
immediately you know be a pa be because the great thing of being in a production
whether you're the one just running around with a coffee cup or whatever is that you learn
all these positions because some people come to the art department and want to intern and and
then we'll send them over with something to take to editing and they start to hang around editing
and they go yeah that editing is really neat you know and then and before you know it you know ten
years later they go i'm an editor now it's a so it you can and same with you know sometimes people
fall in love with costumes because we send them over to costumes too it's it's great to
internships and and being a pa on movie sets is a great way for young people to come in and look at
what and then lock into something and and mentor if you can yeah nancy be frugal you're going to
need your money it's going to take a while spoken like a true mom it's not going to happen overnight
and and and and then and then you've got to be patient and and so many young people just think
it's going to happen right away but if you hang in there it will happen that's the best advice
thank you so much for some fine fine work
can we queue up parasite please