Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/834282
P E R S P E C T I V E | J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 1 7 77 Then Ryan said he wanted to do a long Steadicam shot of Joan going offstage and through the backstage area and out the other side. I knew the auditorium had a backstage, but not all the rooms he wanted, so part of what was there was used, and then the rest of the rooms and hallways were created: the pressroom, the kitchen (a fun nod to Goodfellas), the green "green" room and the backstage photo opportunity room. There are a lot of reference photographs for these from that Oscars year, and we just took liberties with where everything was. It was a really fun combination of research, reality and artistic license. Planning the sets for this beautiful Steadicam shot with Ryan and cinematographer Nelson Cragg was one of my favorite parts of the process. Getting to design the restaurant set was a highlight of my work on Feud. My chief inspiration was Perino's on Wilshire Boulevard, its second location, designed by architect Paul Williams. There are many different kinds of sets in Feud, but perhaps the most important ones are the beautiful haunts of movie stars, the out-in-public, glamorous world people see in photographs. Perino's was the most glamorous looking restaurant from that era (with the exception of the late Four Seasons restaurant in New York's Seagram Building, of course). Joan really went to Perino's, as did Hedda Hopper. They have many scenes together in the series so it seemed the right coice. Most of the other restaurants had a lot of wood, and they had the typical red-leather banquettes. I had reproduced Chasen's at Musso & Frank for Hitchcock, Left: Floor plan and elevations of Joan Crawford's New York City apartment, drawn by Joseph Feld. Below: A white model of the apartment by Alec Contestabile. Bottom: A production photograph in the completed set on Stage 16 at Fox shows Ms. Crawford's Margaret Keane portrait and her ubiquitous plastic furniture covers.