Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 6 95 Main image: A high- dynamic-range photograph of the conference room set on the TV-24 Stage at ABC's West 66th Street facility. A colorful version of Bernard Madoff's collection of Roy Lichtenstein bull prints designed by Graphic Designer Max Bode, played in contrast to the office's dark charcoal walls. Bottom, left to right: A ceiling piece above the reception desk that construction coordinator Charlie Cecil called the donut, was meant to evoke the oval shape of the Lipstick Building and include practical lighting. A SketchUp ® model by Art Director Raphael Sorcio of the 19th floor reception desk and its donut ceiling piece. The Lipstick Building by architect Philip Johnson. The exterior wall's polished and rough pink granite panels and stainless steel banding became a motif for the set interior. DIENTS In his book, The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth, ABC News correspondent Brian Ross describes a remarkable series of events. At 10:30 AM on December 10, 2008, Bernard L. Madoff asks his two sons, Mark and Andrew, to come into his glass-walled office on the nineteenth floor of New York City's Lipstick Building. He has something to tell them. Madoff 's longtime secretary, Eleanor Squillari, senses that something is wrong and assumes it is family-related. After a brief conversation, Bernie, Mark and Andrew leave the office. Mark tells Eleanor, they're going Christmas shopping. Instead, all three get into a black town car and head uptown to the Madoff penthouse at 64th and Lexington. In the living room of apartment 12A, Bernie tells his family that his whole life has been a lie. "I'm finished," Madoff says, "I have absolutely nothing." The Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC firm on the nineteenth floor had been a fraud, a front operation for a $50 billion Ponzi scheme operated two floors below on the seventeeth floor. Madoff tells his family that he needs a week to wind up his affairs before turning himself in. Mark and Andrew leave the apartment and immediately call a lawyer. By 4:00 PM, they are in the law office of Martin Flumenbaum reiterating what their father just told them. When Flumenbaum learns that Bernie has asked his two sons to give him a week, he advises them that waiting would make them complicit in the crime. About an hour later, Mark and Andrew are giving statements to federal prosecutors and the SEC. Bernard Madoff has perpetrated the greatest fraud in US financial history. Back at the penthouse apartment, Bernie and Ruth rush to get ready. Leaving the country you might ask? No, it's the night of the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities yearly Christmas party at Rosa Mexicano. We all love Mexican food but how disassociated must one be to confess that your life has been a lie, a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, and then go to a party and eat a chalupa? Brian Ross's book was a page turner and I had two words to describe it: Holy Mole. Now let's stay with food for a moment because for a Production Designer, taking on a movie can be like being a contestant on Chopped. You are given a basket with five impossible ingredients and half an hour to cook up something good or be chopped. The ingredients can be as disparate as chicken in a can, cactus buds, dulce de leche, Tabiche peppers, gummy snakes. "Contestants, are you good?" you hear the host say. "Great! Because the clock starts now!" Of all the ingredients in the basket, by far the most challenging was finding sixty-three locations within a thirty-mile radius of New York that looked like the hangouts of a globe-trotting billionaire. While it was © ABC