Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
Some walls were constructed and I used red sea grass wallpaper to give the room some color. Another challenge was looking at a city I grew up in, in a completely different way. It's easier for me to shoot away from home, where I can see a city with fresh eyes. At home, I don't walk around looking at the city as if I'm living in a 1930s/'50s/'70s movie. So much has changed over these decades: the appliances, doorknobs, furniture, telephones. Couple that with having to turn Toronto into the much-filmed city of New York. Interiors were going to be easier to control than exteriors so, on tech scouts, Anton would map out the edge of frame so that my team and I could concentrate on the details within that frame. For the barbershop, I looked for a store with a large window and a door on the left side (like in the photo) that was situated on a stretch of street where we could take over several storefronts. We settled on a mattress store with exposed brick walls and wood floors and completely built the barbershop within it—new walls, new ceiling, cabinetry, tile floor printed on vinyl, gold leaf lettering on the front window. The Victorian exterior was completely recovered with plexiglass to create the art deco Dumont's Barber Shop. On the street, strategically hung period signs visually obstructed the other signs we couldn't afford to cover. Time and money are always constraints, but with a five-week shooting schedule and so many sets, many of the locations needed to be close to each other to be able to fit them into the shooting day. For the Actors Studio set, I found a church basement with oak floors and a small stage. Set walls were constructed and painted built all around the stage, plastering them so they weren't smooth and painting them with a sheen to catch the unevenness and give them a period feel. I've been lucky to work with construction coordinator Ian Fraser for over thirteen years and that relationship was even more indispensable on this movie. We almost don't even need to talk anymore. He knows what I want before I say it, which saves a lot of time and money just on its own. Russell Aaronson, the person living in James Dean's apartment in New York since 1974, let me in to see it so that I could take measurements. For the set, I decided to keep the wall with the famous windows and shelving the same measurements as the real apartment but made the overall wall longer to accommodate shooting. I removed the staircase just outside of that door for both ease of shooting and budgetary reasons and replaced it with a tight, angled hallway to emphasize the smallness and modesty of the apartment. A platform was a luxury this project couldn't afford. I had started purchasing set dressing smalls at the beginning of December, things that stood out to me in Above: Dennis Stock in front of the Winslow family home of Dean's aunt and uncle with whom he grew up, filmed outside of Toronto. In front of the house is the go-kart detailed at left. Left: James Dean pushed his young cousin Markie in this go-kart in one of Dennis Stock's more famous photographs. The prop was hand-drawn here by Mr. Deros. Below: James Dean standing before the Winslow barn.