ADG Perspective

March-April 2018

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RENA DeANGELO, SET DECORATOR: I was thrilled to be called to do another Spielberg film, especially one so potentially culturally significant. I was on hold to do another film, which was having financing issues when Rick called me, so the timing was perfect. Rick assembled a fantastic team of ladies to tell this story of feminism. Rick told me at the beginning, he thought this was a decorator's movie, and he trusted my instincts and told me to have fun with it. It was a great collaboration between Art Directors, Production Designer and Decorator. After finding the perfect location to recreate the newsroom, I set about trying to find any images of what the offices looked like before they moved into their new building in the Watergate era. There were very few visuals to be found, and it was fortunate that when Deb and I traveled to DC to meet with Evelyn Small, she had a pile of photos from the time provided the answer. This older newsroom was gray and all business, not the brightly colored bullpen of All the President's Men. Everyone I spoke to from The Washington Post who worked there in the '70s, remembered GRAY. Gray desks and metal chairs and lots of paper and cigarettes, everyone smoked. So it was decided to make the room as monochromatic as possible, letting the actors and costumes add the life and color to the room. Both of the main characters' homes were built on stage. The families of Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee were a great help to us. There weren't any public images of Ben Bradlee's home at that time. When Deb and I were in DC, Ben's widow Sally shared her photos, and gave us great insight into who he was. His daughters also described what the house they grew up in looked like, they sent me family photos, and one of them even did a drawing from memory of the living room. I wanted the houses to be very different from each another. Bradlee's was a comfortable, family home, and Graham's was the formal, well-appointed home of a socialite. Katharine Graham's biography proved very helpful in deciding how her home and office should be decorated. ADG Rick Carter, Production Designer Kim Jennings, Deborah Jensen, Supervising Art Directors Michael Auszura, Aimee Dombo, W. Steven Graham, Hinju Kim, Assistant Art Directors Hugh Sicotte, Concept Artist Maximilian Bode, Edward A. Ioffreda, Graphic Designers Rena DeAngelo, Set Decorator F G

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