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70 P E R S P E C T I V E | J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 1 6 milestones DOUGLAS KRANER 1951 – 2016 Production Designer Doug Kraner, nominated for both an Emmy ® and an ADG Award last year for his work on Gotham, and with a long list of credits that reaches back through the 1980s, including Lean on Me, the original Uncle Buck and Sleeping With the Enemy, died peacefully at his home in West Hollywood following a fifteen-month battle with cancer. Mr. Kraner began his career as a set decorator in 1981 on My Dinner With Andre, and soon moved into the design end of the Art Department as an assistant to Lifetime Achievement Award-winning Production Designer Patrizia von Brandenstein, with whom he worked on The Untouchables, Working Girl and The Money Pit, among others. He was first nominated for an Emmy as the set decorator of the American portion of the miniseries Little Gloria... Happy at Last, and he will be long remembered for the strikingly cold and forbidding beach house he built on the coast of North Carolina for Sleeping With the Enemy. Mr. Kraner first met director/producer Danny Cannon while working on I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. He then teamed up with Cannon on the pilots for The Forgotten, Nikita, The Tomorrow People and Gotham. Over his thirty-five-year career, he worked with many well-known directors, including Michael Apted, Brian DePalma, Louis Malle, Anthony Minghella, Mike Nichols and Dean Parisot. He also collaborated with John Hughes on Curly Sue and Uncle Buck. Despite the joy he had working on Gotham, his health forced the decision to return to his home after three years on the road, and he complimented the direction Richard Berg, the series current Production Designer, took the look. "He is a superb designer; it's so wonderful to see the respect he had for the original concepts, and the new ideas he's brought to his designs," said Mr. Kraner. "He's provided a new slant. That's what you would expect every good designer to do." Mr. Kraner is survived by his mother Harriet Kraner McElmurry, his sister Janet Shepard, a niece and nephew. His sister writes, "He was loved by all of his wonderful friends and well thought of. Doug was a wonderful brother and loved his family very much. I know he is with our dad and his nephew Brent (my son) now, watching over me and my mom." His friend Tom O'Leary wrote the morning he died: "I met my dear friend Doug Kraner in Provincetown in 1997. I had just given a sermon at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House. Doug was in Provincetown because a film he was making with Bruce Willis fell apart. It ended up Doug and I had a mutual friend: Rick Morin, who had passed away a few months before I met Doug. I will always believe wonderful Rick brought Doug and I together. When I moved to Los Angeles, Doug generously allowed me to live in his apartment two summers in a row. Doug and I shared many meals and cherished conversations over almost twenty years. It was an honor to be his friend. It was a special honor to be with him these last months and to be holding his hand as he passed from this earth today. Enjoy heaven, Doug. You so deserve to be there." Donations in Doug Kraner's memory may be made to Project Angel Food, one of the most effective grass-roots nonprofit agencies in the nation. Project Angel Food cooks and delivers over 500,000 nutritious meals each year, free of charge, to homes throughout Los Angeles County, to men, women and children affected by life-threatening illnesses. Contact: angelfood.org