No bodily fluid is left untouched in Kristen Stewart’s raw, unflinching poem to wetness, adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir. Adapted (with Andy Mingo) and directed by the actor with Imogen Poots as Stewart’s front-of-camera proxy playing Lidia, it charts the non-linear, tortured path of a girl who is sexually abused by her father and finds sanctity in the chlorinated depths of her school swim team. Her prowess in the pool is what sets her free to some degree, taking her away from a somnambulist mother and her father’s fingers to college where sex, drugs and the healing power of writing led to pregnancy, addiction, self destruction and the redemption of art. And always there is immersion in water: in baths, lakes, pools, showers, rain. ‘In water, like in books,’ Lidia intones in one of many overlapping, murmured voiceovers offered like dream-state remembrances, ‘you can leave your life.’
Told in four chapters, it explores the legacy of trauma, the physical/emotional pain of losing a child, BDSM and the difficulty and release of becoming an artist. A writer from childhood, Lidia’s confronting prose finds purpose when she joins a writer’s class with author Ken Kesey (Jim Belushi) at the University Of Oregon. But can she trust an older man who values her work? Or is he another predatory male? And does the sweet college boy who becomes her partner (Earl Cave) deserve the disdain she literally spits in his face?
Impressionistic yet graphic, The Chronology of Water shows a woman experiencing all her body is capable of: female ejaculation, excretion, birth, orgasm, destruction. And It seems that Stewart pours all of the teaching she’s gained from the dazzling array of filmmakers she’s worked with as an actor into the production of a woozy, elemental, bruising mood piece that is like its protagonist; messy, unbridled, in need of structure. Stewart has described her film presented to Cannes as a ‘first draft’ and in that regard it could use some corralling; but equally, like Lidia, it shows fierce potential. As Kesey notes, ‘you can write, girl’.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Photography courtesy of Scott Free Productions The Chronology of Water premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival
‘Hindsight,’ runs Eddington’s tagline on its poster depicting buffalo tumbling off the side of a cliff, ‘is 2020’. For Ari Aster’s latest, that means training his quirky eye on America, linking where we are now to events of 2020 when Covid bred paranoia, conspiracy and MAGA like a socio-polical petri dish. Popping the pandemic in a neo-noir Western set in the appellative New Mexico town during May of that year, Aster picks at virtue signalling, bandwagonning, social media, fake news, radicalisation, trauma and first amendment jingoism via the moral and emotional meltdown of the town sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix).
A mild-mannered chap in a fraught marriage to his doll-making, damaged wife Lou (Emma Stone) and living with his conspiracist mother-in-law (Deidre O’Connell), Joe is law-abiding until medical mandates come around. An asthma-sufferer, the sheriff does not believe anyone should wear a mask if they don’t want to (or that Covid is a real threat) and clashes with mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). The two men have history involving Lou and Joe is fired up enough to run for office against his romantic rival, leaning into NRA/MAGA sentiments and further losing his rag when Lou brings home a charismatic cult leader (Austin Butler) and gazes at him in a way she hasn’t looked at her husband in many moons. Suddenly, this is no longer a movie in the vein of John Sayles’ Lone Star and takes an Asterian turn to something darker, more febrile and explosively ludicrous. As Aster films go, it’s less challenging than the big swings of Beau Is Afraid but not as startlingly fresh as Hereditary.
Peppered with as many fatalities as delicious performances, Eddington is surprisingly droll, luridly violent and has the prescience to use a Katy Perry song in a film that worries about the potential stranglehold of big tech in all aspects of life. (The proposed data bank that promises infrastructure and jobs for the area looms throughout as bellwether commentators warn of political control, ecological impact and wealth disparity.) There’s gallows humour to be found as characters declare Covid is ‘not a here problem’, espouse the virtues of Bitcoin and watch TikTok videos as news. The ranting homeless man who staggers into town at the start muttering incoherently about perceived wickedness is no longer the anomaly as ideologies burn brighter, fuelled by misinformation, frustration and ultimately, actually gasoline.
This is an accomplished cast so it’s no surprise that Phoenix holds focus despite playing an insubstantial man with shifting morals, ably supported by Pascal (stoic), Stone (fragile), Butler (scene-stealingly slithery) and Michael Ward, faultless as an ambitious sheriff department officer who becomes a pawn. Nothing so horrific as the decapitation of Hereditary, but Eddington offers a seething discomfort in recognising the start of the slip towards the dumpster-fire rolling-news reality we now live in. Which is truly terrifying.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Photography courtesy of A24 Eddington premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival
Student Alice is used to being picked up and brushed off by her parents whenever she stumbles. Though we never see her, we hear and know about her via her parents; over-protective Frank (Matthew Rhys) and his exasperated paramedic wife Maddie (Rosamund Pike). Early in the small hours, Alice calls her sleep-deprived mum in a panic – she has taken her dad’s car and driven to the titular road in a nearby forest where she’s accidentally knocked over a pedestrian. The parents jump into Maddie’s car to reach her, their SatNav informing them of the distance to reach their daughter while an increasingly upset Alice keeps them abreast over the speakerphone of the terrible, fatal mess she’s got herself into.
Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Essentially a real-time bottle episode in the vein of Locke, Hallow Road then unfurls, one mile and minute at a time, in the car as the couple struggle to help their child remotely, question their parenting and reveal the fractured family dynamic that preceded Alice storming out of the house earlier. And as the country roads become more labyrinthine and dark, a folk horror aspect begins to hover over proceedings as both parents’ psychological secrets come to the fore.
Hallow Road starts with a warning – a battery depleted smoke alarm chirruping – and grows in tension and disquiet as Rhys and Pike master myriad emotions while the green dashboard light casts a queasy hue over their distraught faces. To give more detail would be to spoil, but if you’re familiar with director Babak Anvari’s previous work in Under The Shadow, the fact that the crisis at the start of this thriller morphs to something more primal and primordial at its close should come as no surprise. Like the fraught relationship between parents and daughter (voiced by Megan McDonnell), there is something else going on in the trees – what exactly is open to interpretation by each viewer. And, based on a post-credit sting, those interpretations will not necessarily align.
Playing like a lost episode of Inside No 9, this disorientating, brisk thriller is an easy way to spend 80 minutes this weekend while also opening conversations of guilt, grief, helicopter parenting and the inherent creepiness of deep, dark woods.
In case you missed the previous instalment, The Final Reckoning begins by ensuring viewers are on the right page with this adventure, kicking off a couple of months after the events of Tom Cruise’s 2023 summer blockbuster. Now Ethan Hunt’s (Cruise) hair is longer, his tech whiz Luther (Ving Rhames) is ill and the rogue AI threat, The Entity, has plunged the world into chaos. The Entity plans to initiate a world wipeout via armageddon by taking control of the nuclear codes of all nations, the only way to stop it is to retrieve its source code from the bottom of the Arctic ocean where it’s trapped in a crashed Russian sub (seen in Dead Reckoning) and then play out a complicated game of digi cat-and-mouse. The only person who can complete this mission is Hunt – appealed to by the US president (Angela Bassett) – and the thorn in his side is Big Bad Gabriel (Esai Morales) who holds a vital piece of the plan. The mission is literally world-saving and it triggers Hunt’s memories of all the people he’s lost and all the crazy stuff he’s done across seven previous films. Cruise and his co-conspirator/producer/director Christopher McQuarrie set this chapter up as a swan song (but is it really?), and ensure it goes out with a bang.
Courtesy of Paramount PicturesCourtesy of Paramount Pictures
As is now expected of Cruise, The Final Reckoning ups the ante on stunts that its star completes personally, his face clearly visible as his body is battered by water and G-force. While there’s plenty of globetrotting, trademark running, mask removal, double crossing and bomb defusing, the big ticket here are two set-pieces in which Cruise and cinematic innovation are pushed to their limits. After a series of fights and escapes, Hunt embarks on solo deep diving to the Russian submarine, his chance of drowning immeasurable due to depth, location, temperature. Add to that a sub that is glitchy and moving on the Baring seabed, and the sequence becomes literally breathtaking as Hunt is trapped in the oceanic version of a freezing washing machine as his oxygen depletes. The production built the world’s deepest and largest water tank at Longcross studios and devised new diving masks to show Cruise’s face to complete the scenes for real, and it translates. It’s a claustrophobic, teeth-clenching watch.
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
It’s no spoiler to mention the finale – promotion quite rightfully leans hard into the vintage bi-plane sequence which see Cruise clinging to the spindly wings of not one, but two different swooping, diving and barrelling planes with South Africa’s stunning Drakensberg Mountains flying beneath him. His face flapping in the G-force, his body weightless as the planes invert, this is another breath snatching moment (certainly for Cruise trying to suck a breath in hurricane-level wind resistance) and provides some much needed levity. There’s a reason Hunt is costumed like Indiana Jones at this point – it’s the sort of delirious der-doing that evokes classic cinema. It’s worth the ticket price alone.
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Though the extended IMF team play a part in proceedings (a bow-out adds emotional resonance), they are certainly second fiddle, facilitators to the Hunt show. That may disappoint fans who enjoyed the previous spike of Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Paris (Pom Klementieff). Via additional characters the movie champions the unpredictability of human nature, the concept of being on the right side of history despite the rules, the celebration of the rebel, the maverick. That’s seen in Bassett’s POTUS, Hannah Waddington’s aircraft carrier Admiral and Tramell Tillman’s sub captain who likes to call everyone ‘mister’ (bringing Jeff Goldblum levels of deliciously unexpected line delivery). But the star is certainly Cruise, his previous M:I incarnations celebrated in flashback montages and his character praised continuously by his team. ‘Only you can do this,’ he is constantly told, and when you see Cruise dangling off the corner of a vintage Boeing Stearman as it flips around a canyon, you might have to agree.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
As he prepares to release his eighth (and final?) instalment of the Mission: Impossible series, Tom Cruise brings the action to Cannes.
Just as he brought Top Gun: Maverick to Cannes in 2022, the world’s biggest movie star returned to the Croisette this year to deliver his eighth Mission: Impossible film, The Final Reckoning, to the Palais. Stopping to sign autographs and greet fans on the red carpet (where an acapella group sang the film’s theme tune), Cruise’s latest actioner garnered a 6 minute standing ovation when it premiered.
Earlier in the day he made an unbilled appearance at a Q&A with Mission director Christopher McQuarrie who credited the actor/producer with keeping him in the film business. Cruise’s enthusiasm for cinema, McQuarrie told the crowd, was a turning point. ‘When I met him, I was going to quit the business.’ The duo have made 11 films together since and have developed a shorthand together figuratively, and on the latest film, literally – as Cruise completed death defying stunts while underwater in a groundbreaking submarine set as well as dangling from the wings of a vintage bi-plane over South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains.
Final Reckoning rejoins the narrative a few months after the action of Dead Reckoning as Cruise’s Ethan Hunt comes to terms with losses from their team and the fallout of an agent called Gabriel (Esai Morales) trying to control an AI programme called ‘the entity’. The team must reassemble to find the source code for the AI in an attempt to stop it from triggering all-out global nuclear war. Known for completing his stunts himself, Cruise is battered in a rolling submarine on the ocean floor and fights negative Gs and incredible physical strain on his body on the wings of a vintage Boeing Stearman. During their joint on-stage chat, McQuarrie admitted that at one point during filming he didn’t know if the actor was conscious or not during a take, fearing for his life as the pilot could not land the plane with him on the wing. Luckily, Cruise rallied, climbed to the cockpit and the plane and performer landed safely.
Not such worries at the Carlton hotel on the Croisette when Greg Williams photographed Cruise balancing on a chair in his suite before walking the red carpet…
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
Paolo Sorrentino’s latest muse burns the screen up in Parthenope. Hollywood Authentic meets the Italian actor who made the leap from extra to lead to talk beauty, fame and the advice Gary Oldman gave her.
Sitting on the rooftop of the JW Marriott in Cannes, writer-director Paolo Sorrentino considers on his latest love letter to his home town of Naples. Why, he contemplates, did he choose to tell his story through the Greek myth of Parthenope (who precipitated the creation of the Bay of Naples) and focus on the siren at the heart of it? ‘What I wanted to do was to tell the story of a girl, a woman, from the moment she is born, to the moment in which she becomes an elderly person. What I really had at heart was telling how time changes us. And it does change us, even if we wear wonderful clothes.’ His currently leading lady certainly wears wonderful things in the sensual, smouldering film that almost gives audiences sunburn when watching. Sorrentino tells the tale of ‘70s Naples teen, Parthenope, born in water and drawn to the sea like a mermaid – seducing men without even trying as she puffs on cigarettes in a bikini, shimmers in sequins on the island of Capri and titillates in nothing but the ecclesiastical treasures of a horny cardinal.
Quite the ask of any actor, but especially for a newcomer who would have to go toe-to-toe with heavyweight performers such as Gary Oldman, playing real-life writer John Cheever, who is sozzled and depressed on Capri and sees pure beauty in Parthenope. ‘I looked at many Italian actresses,’ Sorrentino admits. ‘In reality, I found her quite soon, because I had already met and worked with Celeste. She was in The Hand of God as an extra. It took me some time to understand whether she was going to be able to handle the role. She had never played a main character.’
Celeste Dalla Porta, a Milan-born actor whose scene as a background artist had ended up on the cutting room floor, was up for the challenge of conveying the intelligence of Parthenope (she’s a shrewd student anthropologist) as well as her sensuality. ‘I had no doubts, but I was a little bit scared,’ Dalla Porta says, twisting the mermaid ring on her finger that belonged to her character in the film. ‘Once I accepted it, I started questioning myself: will I be able to do it? But I never had a doubt about the project because it’s such a revolutionary thing.’ Her fears about the role also extended to the fame that will surely come with the release of the film, and how her life may change. ‘I don’t know what is in store for me ahead. I’m a little bit scared. But this is what I want to do, and what I always wanted to do, to be an actress.’
I have learned a lot with [Gary Oldman]. He is this huge actor that is so open and so attentive. He paid a lot of attention. He listens to you
The experience of working with Sorrentino was, she says, expansive and supportive. ‘He’s a 360-degrees person. He has a very authentic way of being on set. He knows exactly what he wants, and he guides you to that. But I felt free working with him. Paolo gives freedom to his actors. Of course, they cannot change the story, and they cannot change the text. But he is a man who is really able to listen to what other people have to say, and to see.’ Oldman was also something of an artistic reference point during the process despite only working for a few days together. ‘I have learned a lot with him. He is this huge actor that is so open and so attentive. He paid a lot of attention. He listens to you. So, on a human level, it was also such a great experience.’
The idea of weaponised beauty is explored in the film as Parthenope leaves a trail of broken hearts in her wake. Though Dalla Porta is shot in stunning light and via an appreciative lens she doesn’t consider herself a beauty. ‘I don’t think Paolo picked me or chose me because I’m beautiful. Beauty can also be something ugly and is subjective, and something that changes over time. In Parthenope beauty is a metaphor for youth. And youth – we all remember it as something very beautiful. We think about it as something very beautiful, and something that we idealise. But then Parthenope grows up. She moves into another phase of her life, and that’s when the movie changes. There is a different photography and different people around her, and a different way of looking at her.’
Celeste Dalla Porta says goodbye to Gary Oldman
Having been the toast of Cannes when the film premiered at the festival last year, Dalla Porta is now looking for future projects. ‘I love Alice Rohrwacher. I find her to be a great, great artist, and I like her poetic way to see the world, and to tell stories. Ruben Östlund, I admire very much. Valerio Mieli – he made just a few films, but all of them talk about love. I’m super-romantic, and I love romanticism, and I love films that talk about love.’ As she navigates her way through her career she is also adhering to the advice Oldman gave to her about the business. As he tells Hollywood Authentic, their off-set relationship somewhat mirrored the one between their two characters, a mentor and a student. ‘The dynamic was very much like that with me and Celeste, because I’ve had this career, and I’m older. This is her first job, and she’s naïve. For Cheever, I think there’s an innocence and a purity that he can’t have back, that he can’t reclaim. Celeste will have an innocence and a purity that she will not be able to ever get back after this film comes out.’
Dalla Porta smiles as she recalls their chats on-set. ’He said that I have to protect what I have inside myself. I have to protect the beauty of simple things. That is something that we all have, and that we need to protect. It was very simple advice, but very important. If fame comes because you have made something that makes you feel happy inside, and it’s something you are happy with – why not? That’s what I want. And then people talk about the fame that is this kind of monster that is waiting…’ She shrugs. ‘I try to stay in the present, and to live in this moment.’
Written and directed by Academy Award Winner Paolo Sorrentino Starring, in alphabetical order: Dario Aita, Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvia Degrandi, Isabella Ferrari, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Biagio Izzo, Marlon Joubert, Peppe Lanzetta, Nello Mascia, Gary Oldman, Silvio Orlando, Luisa Ranieri, Daniele Rienzo, Stefania Sandrelli and Alfonso Santagata. A Fremantle film, an Italian-French co-production The Apartment – Pathé in association with Numero 10, in association with PiperFilm and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello with Logical Content Ventures with the support of Canal+ with the participation of Cine+. Produced by Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment, a Fremantle Group company, Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent, Paolo Sorrentino for Numero 10, Ardavan Safaee for Pathé. International Distribution: Pathé, Northern US Distribution: A24, Italian distribution: PiperFilm.
The Disclaimer actor tells Hollywood Authentic about her appreciation for specific Skittles, magicians, puppies and pina coladas.
How important is a little bit of nonsense now and then to you? It’s vital for survival. Oxygen… water… food… NONSENSE.
What, if anything, makes you believe in magic? Science. The computer chip. Evolution. Warm summer nights. Love. Really good magicians.
What was your last act of true cowardice? Probably a situation where I was caring too much about what other people think… but I’m quite brave.
What single thing do you miss most when you’re away from home? My shepherd dog Sky. She’s a little weirdo, too.
Do you have any odd habits or rituals? I have to sleep on the side of the bed furthest from the door. I only eat red and purple skittles. The volume on the TV must be a multiple of 5 or 10. I like to race against my car navigation app. Always singing and dancing around the house.
What is your party trick? I can set my hand on fire with a lighter… briefly.
What is your mantra? Don’t overshare, retain mystery. But 99.9% of the time I do the opposite.
What is your favourite smell? My mum.
What do you always carry with you? An uncontrollable need for approval.
What is your guilty pleasure? Reality TV. Especially the shows that unstable people go on to find someone to marry! In front of the world! It’s nuts, and I’m totally here for it. I don’t like drama in my life but I’m addicted to watching other people’s.
Who is the silliest person you know? My best friend Tarik. The most uniquely entertaining human, he will make any time or topic hilarious. He told me a story about someone stealing his lunch the other day, and, well, I guess you kind of had to be there…
What would be your least favourite way to die? Medieval stretch rack.
What’s your idea of heaven? Sun, sand, sea, pina coladas and puppies.
Australian actor Leila George has appeared onstage in Chekhov’s The Seagull at The Perth Theatre with her mother, Greta Scacchi, and made her feature debut in Mortal Engines. She impressed in The Kid, Gonzo Girl, He Ain’t Heavy and playing Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody in limited TV show Animal Kingdom. Last year, she dazzled at Venice Film Festival with her key role in Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer. She’s just completed Netflix’s upcoming series The Beast in Me with Matthew Rhys and Claire Danes, and is currently shooting opposite Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson in Scott Waugh’s film Runner.
Photograph by GREG WILLIAMS The Beast in Me is out on Netflix later this year
*Arguably one of the most memorable (and quotable) scenes in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is when Mr Salt mumbles, ‘It’s a lot of nonsense,’ to which Wonka replies, in a sing-song voice, ‘A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.’
The trailblazing, award-winning costume designer, who has worked with filmmakers from Spike Lee and John Singleton to Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler, tells Arianne Phillips about being a ‘first’ in Oscar history and how community has shaped her career.
Ruth E. Carter is a costume designer extraordinaire and her body of work speaks for itself. She has designed costumes for beloved and game-changing films such as Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Amistad, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, What’s Love Got to Do with It?, Selma, Dolemite Is My Name, Coming 2 America 2, Black Panther and Wakanda Forever. She’s been nominated four times for an Academy Award, of which she won twice – making history as the first African-American costume designer to win an Oscar, as well as the first African-American woman to win multiple Oscars in any given category. In 2019, she received the Costume Designer Guild’s career achievement award and is the second costume designer to ever have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (after Edith Head). Not only a prolific artist, she’s also a leader in the costume community, serving as a governor of the costume designers’ branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her book, The Art of Ruth Carter, was published in 2023 and her latest project, Sinners, is currently in cinemas.
AP: Let’s talk a little bit about your origin story. Where did you grow up, and what brought you to costume design?
RC: I grew up in Massachusetts in a little town called Springfield, the home of the Basketball Hall of Fame. My mother was a psychologist for the city – and I say that because my mom was the first person who actually taught me how to see people, and see the stories behind the people. I had two brothers who were visual artists – my brother who’s closest to me in age really loved to sketch. He loved pencil and graphite. We would sketch faces. We had a little mouse that we drew. He wore a tam [hat], and had the Black Power fist up all the time. It was fun! My oldest brother, Robert, did fine painting, oils and portraits. We all looked up to him. So my family was artistic but I tried to divert away from it when I went to college and majored in education. I decided to change my major to theatre arts, and very soon was known on campus as the costume designer. My main focus was to get theatre projects done, whether it was the music department doing a musical, or a fraternity doing some special step show, or Black theatre. They weren’t teaching costume design in the theatre department at the time. I went into a little costume shop that was in the theatre department. It was uninhabited. No one was using it. But when I opened up that door, it became my learning lab.
Malcom X, 1992. AJ Pics/Alamy
AP: I relate to that as a theatre kid. In your career you’ve really touched on every genre from historical pieces to biopics to comedies. What informs your choices?
RC: I would love to be the person who chooses, who goes out into the backyard to my film tree, and I pick: ‘Oh, I love this one, and then I love that one.’ But I feel like I have a certain reputation, and the films that are being offered to me, they’re in my wheelhouse. It doesn’t mean that you’re typecast, just that people think that this is something that you would be inspired to do. I’m always given the challenge. I’d love to do something one day with one person in it – you know, Krapp’s Last Tape. But I get the ones with the armies and the battles, with a cast of hundreds. I’ve been really fortunate to have offers that are really juicy, that are interesting and challenging. And that’s what I look for. I really love when I admire the filmmaker, but I also love to support young filmmakers that have promise, and I really want a good experience – for them to learn as well. When I first met Ryan [Coogler] at Marvel, I sat across a young filmmaker that admired Spike Lee, and told me that he was happy that I came in to interview. He admired my work as a student of film. So when that happens, it charges you up, and you go, ‘I am going to do the best I can for this young filmmaker, because it’s really about being part of a film family, and really liking the person you’re working for.’
Black Panther, 2018. Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy
AP: You created a travelling exhibition – Afrofuturism in Costume Design – your book also touched on this. I wondered if you could just illuminate a little for our audience about your relationship to Afrofuturism?
RC: I feel that my whole career has encapsulated Afrofuture. What we know of Afrofuture is taking culture and infusing it with technology, and presenting it in a way that, you know… What would things be like without colonisation? How would this technology have been advanced by these different cultures? I take Afrofuturism a step further. When I’m on the set with Spike Lee and he’s envisioning the story of Do the Right Thing, he is bringing in prose and political statements. He’s creating a protest film. I feel that Spike is embodying his own Afrofuturism, his view of a better tomorrow where we see ourselves on screen in a way that is much more realistic to what we know, and how we see our community, and how we know beauty. It’s retraining the eye, not only to see costumes in a new lens, or through beauty, but also to retrain the eye to see beauty standards differently. I think that those kinds of edicts are the things that I grew in this industry to embody and embrace, because I had a mission. I had a responsibility to that, because I was blazing a trail for the future costume designers who looked like me, and I wanted them to feel not pigeonholed or in a box to do things a certain way. When we crafted Mo’ Better Blues, we showed Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes on stage in the jazz club. These were the images that we weren’t seeing in cinema. Also, Ava DuVernay on the set of Selma, directing. You know, we’re not only teaching through the medium of film and storytelling – we’re also teaching by example. Now our community could see a woman directing. Or a story being told about your neighbourhood. That, for me, is Afrofuture. That’s how you groom the Afrofuture for yourself and for your community.
AP: You designed films with Spike Lee and John Singleton…
RC: I met John Singleton at a panel where Spike was speaking. It was such a tight, little network in the ’90s that you might be out partying with John Singleton, having never worked with him, but we were a little film tribe.
AP: I think that one of the attractive aspects for me as a young person coming into filmmaking was the collaborative, communal idea. As artists, when we have a director, or even an actor, with the same vision and purpose, we can really be creative.
RC: And sometimes it’s just about helping them find the creativity. A lot of times, our actors will come to us from another set with very little prep, and you’ve been on it for weeks, just delving into research, and you’ve collected all kinds of things that you’re excited to show them and share with them. I’ve had someone like Forest Whitaker ask to see more of my research so that he could spend some time with it in his hotel. When they are like that, you know that they are committed to creating a great character.
AP: I’ve had that happen when they come into the fitting room, and they say, ‘Thank you. I didn’t know who I was.’ A director that I’ve worked with says that the fitting room is the most important because it’s the portal into the film. And oftentimes we’re talking to an actor, or maybe a day player, that hasn’t even got to set to sit down with the director.
RC: I’ve had an actor say his first sitting is his first rehearsal. It’s really beautiful.
Selma, 2014. Maximum Film/AlamySelma, 2014. Maximum Film/Alamy
AP: Can you talk a little bit about biographies versus dramas? And the challenges of dressing historical figures?
RC: Fortunately, with someone like Malcolm X, there were quite a few photographs of him, but not enough of him as he was a young boy in the dance hall years, and all of the years where he hustled in New York City. It becomes a relationship you have with the character or the person, gathering what you can see of them, and also imagining during the times what they would be challenged with. No one’s life that we portray in biopics is exactly the way that it was in their real life, even though we attempt to get as close as we can, because we only have two hours to tell their whole life. And we have to make it cinematic, and make you feel empathy, and make you cry, and make you laugh. I research a lot and that tells you things that you wouldn’t know. Like they built stoves in Detroit, so that informs ageing of the costumes – that these people who are workers coming down the street to eat, or were coming home, they could have worked at the furnace supply factory.
AP: Do you have any career highlights that stand out for you?
RC: First, I have to say that those years in the ’90s, bouncing back and forth between LA and New York every year, going to New York to work with Spike, and then coming back to California to work with Robert Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans – I really got both sides of the coin. I was able to do comedies like I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and B*A*P*S and understand their perspective – and then to go back and work with Spike on something rich like Do the Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues and Crooklyn and Clockers. Really just the experience of both the East Coast and the West Coast in that way, every year for 14 years, was an incredible experience for me. But I would say that the one experience that stands out the most is being in Egypt, shooting Malcom X’s hajj to Mecca, having built the hajj in the desert, because we couldn’t go into the Holy City and shoot there. We rebuilt it. Our first day of shooting, we were shooting at the pyramids, and we left the hotel – it was still dark out – because we wanted to shoot a priest singing the morning prayer at the pyramids. I’m standing in the desert with Denzel Washington, on a Spike Lee joint, looking at the pyramids with a Muslim priest singing the prayer – it was so spiritual and so meaningful. It was an experience that you seldom see anymore, because movies will put a green screen around the whole set, and be in Egypt. But we were actually there.
AP: In terms of being the first Black woman to win an Oscar, and the second time in the same category – how does that resonate for you, not only in your accomplishment but in general?
RC: In 1993 I was nominated for Malcolm X. I was the first Black woman to be nominated for costume design. I was like, ‘Wow.’ But then I thought, you know, ‘Wow, it’s 1993. In this day and age, we’re still examining firsts.’ So that told me that the film industry was not wide open. I was able to do something that could open a door. And so my accomplishment then formed what this is going to mean for the culture. As time went on, Amistad happened, and meeting Steven Spielberg, and working on set with Steven, was another highlight. And then I was nominated. It was the loneliest nomination ever because the film didn’t get the nomination. But I was reminded that this is not the reason you’re doing this; it isn’t the crux of what makes this experience so impactful and so important for you.
And then Black Panther happened. It was incredibly hard. It was really immersive. I look at pictures of myself, and I’m like, ‘Oof, there’s another bad hair day!’ But you had to give it your all. So to win for Black Panther, it was bigger than anything. To stand on that stage, and look out and see Spike sitting there, to see Chadwick Boseman, just smiling big and bright – it felt like I was still doing this for the culture; still achieving these goals for the community; still being an example for the next young girl coming in behind me, to show that they can, too. And that’s really what I was overwhelmed with joy about. And social media made it undeniable, because now you see the audience. You see what they want, and you’re able to actually give it to them, and talk about it. When the trailer for Black Panther dropped, I’m sitting at home, and I saw something come over my phone on Twitter. It was a question about the Himba tribe. I answered the question, and then it blew up.
Black Panther, 2018. Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
AP: Can you tell us about Ryan Coogler’s latest film, Sinners, with Michael B Jordan – a departure for you because it’s a horror film?
RC: I had to get used to putting blood all over the costumes! We had to have things built in multiples because it was the 1920s, Mississippi Delta. And then, all of a sudden, here comes the vampires. It was a lot of fun. It was really wonderful to paint that landscape, to get that richness of time and place and people, and then depart from it, and have the fighting off of vampires, and stakes, and bites, and blood. Yeah, it got pretty messy [laughs].
AP: And now you are producing a film with Serena Williams…
RC: We are telling the story of Ann Lowe, who was a fashion designer. She was the first Black woman to have a shop on Madison Avenue. Her clientele were all of the high upper-class families in New York. She did a lot of debutantes, and Jackie Kennedy’s mom brought Jackie to Ann Lowe to have her wedding dress designed. When it was reported in the New York Times about Jackie Kennedy’s beautiful dress, she was listed as the ‘Negro Seamstress’. This was 1953. The Civil Rights Movement was just coming in. So to navigate these rich families, she had to kind of code switch. She had 35 people working for her. She wasn’t sewing on a sewing machine at home. She had a business. Her work is amazing, and it’s at the African American Museum in DC. It’s at the Met. People have collected her pieces in museums, but nobody knows, still, very much about her. So we are hellbent on giving her her flowers, and also showing how she was navigating the times, and how she was this genius of a woman who was doing all of these beautiful dresses.
AP: What advice would you give to a young person who wants to be a filmmaker?
RC: I think a young person who wants to become a costume designer, really needs to be committed to it. It’s a whole life experience when you’re doing costumes, and it’s not always glamorous. Come into this knowing that this is something that you really want to do, and you’re always going to be a student of it. The minute you think you know, then you’re only scratching the surface.
Created for work but famed for film flights of fancy, Hollywood Authentic celebrates downtown LA’s Bradbury Building, a storied location fit for a Blade Runner.
When Victorian millionaire Lewis Bradbury decided to build an office for him to commute to, he didn’t want to travel far. His lavish 50-room mansion on Bunker Hill in Downtown LA looked over real estate on 3rd Street, and Bradbury bought land to create a magnificent office block a 10-minute walk from his front door. (From 1901, he might have used the Angel’s Flight funicular railway to glide up and down the hill.) He died in 1892, just months before the build was completed, so he never saw the finished magnificence of the ornate wrought-iron railings and birdcage elevators, soaring skylights and gorgeous tilework that make this La-La landmark a regular stop for gawking walking tours and ensure it is now a part of cinematic history.
Bradbury wanted to exhibit the wealth he had amassed from gold and silver mining and, after a false start with an architect he lost faith in, he commissioned a young draftsman, George Wyman, to design his monument. Wyman, for his part, was unsure of taking on such a huge project as a first gig, but took the job despite his inexperience after he consulted his dead brother via Ouija board. The fledgling architect had his eye on the future when he conceived the building – taking inspiration from an 1888 time travel sci-fi novel by Edward Bellamy. In Looking Backward, the year 2000 was envisaged as a Socialist Utopian society where buildings were high rises with glass roofs. In Wyman’s futuristic interpretation, he designed a huge glass atrium under which wrought-iron railings hung like vegetation, and marble staircases and detailed elevators transported workers up and down the five floors – run on a counterweighted water system that came from a natural spring discovered under the site during construction. (They were later converted to hydraulic power.)
During its construction, Wyman imported Italian marble, Mexican tiles and French wrought iron (which was shown at the Chicago World’s Fair as new-fangled before being installed in the atrium). It cost Bradbury half a million dollars – a huge amount even for a millionaire who liked to flash his cash – and opened in 1893 to tenants such as Bradbury’s own legal team. It has maintained its use as a commercial building since then, one of the oldest in LA – though it had a period during the Prohibition era when a speakeasy was run out of the basement with booze distributed via a network of tunnels. It’s now the only commercial office building in Los Angeles to be designated as a National Historic Landmark. And though it has had a recent period-sympathetic restoration courtesy of the ownership team, Downtown Properties (who also look after The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel), now boasting a co-working office, gallery space and a buzzy members-only bar; the lure of many visiting the building is the chance to walk in the rain-drenched footsteps of replicant hunter, Deckard.
Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s trailblazing 1982 neo-noir sci-fi, was shot here when the production was looking for a location to play the home of replicant godfather, Tyrell, who LAPD’s Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) pays a visit to – only to find Daryl Hannah’s backflipping Pris and a much-quoted denouement on the roof with Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty. Deckard peers out of his car window at the stone-carved Bradbury sign from 3rd Street, before making his way into a lobby dressed for the 21st century (2017) – an advertising blimp floating above in a neon sky, casting light into the darkness of the distinct balconies and elevator shafts. Scott’s cyberpunk vibe nodded to Old Hollywood, and the Bradbury certainly matched that aesthetic – not only in its looming shadows but the fact that noirs such as 1944’s Double Indemnity, 1949’s D.O.A. and 1951’s M had also used the place as a location. Later, the building would be Jack Nicholson’s offices in Wolf, and the workspace of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s romantic greetings card writer in 500 Days of Summer. In The Artist, Jean Dujardin’s silent era star passes Bérénice Bejo’s ingenue on the recognisable stairs, representing the trajectory of their characters’ careers as he walks down and she skips up. And Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation music video also used the dry-ice swirled elevators and plant room. The Bradbury is also a literary inspiration: it’s the stand-in for the Belmont in Raymond Chandler’s The High Window, described by his PI Marlowe as ‘eight stories of nothing’ with a ‘dark narrow lobby… as dirty as a chicken yard’.
For Scott’s story, the building was set-dressed to look dilapidated, with lights rigged to track across the staircases. The nearby Grand Union train station stood in for Police HQ, while Frank Lloyd Wright’s distinctive Ennis House in Los Feliz was Deckard’s home. The use of real buildings was a deliberate choice for Scott who said ‘if the future is one you can see and touch, it makes you a little uneasier because you feel it’s just round the corner’. It worked for the celebrated author of the short story, Do Android Dream Of Electric Sheep?, on which the film is based, Philip K Dick. ‘It’s like being transported to the ultimate city of the future, with all the good things and all the bad things about it,’ he enthused after seeing Scott’s slick, neon-drenched vision for his tale in a pre-visualisation reel.
Hollywood Authentic couldn’t resist using our own theatrics during our shoot, getting permission to use smoke in the listed building to replicate a Blade Runner vibe
Though the offices above the lobby are not open to visitors (so no looking for Pris in the rooms above), the Bradbury understands the interest in its architectural and cinematic legacy. The impressive lobby is open to the public throughout the working day in the week and over lunch at the weekend when the bustling Central Market opposite is a hive of activity. Anyone can take a detour to crane their neck at the Victorian glazing overhead, the manned elevators and lacework bannisters. There is a way to earn the privilege of climbing the stairs like the LAPD’s finest Blade Runner: the work and desk spaces are available to rent and Wyman’s Bar – where a lifesized Deckard print decorates the wall – offers ‘social memberships’.
