Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1349602
7 2 P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 2 1 Come with me and remember a simpler time when a Florida vacation could mean an easy restart to your life. Come with me to March 2019 as I sat with director Josh Greenbaum and producer Jonathan McCoy to explore this ambitious feature script written by and starring Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. It veered from pee-in-your-pants slapstick to lump-in-your-throat heartbreak as two forty-something Nebraska ladies named Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar, in hopes that one or two of their dreams might still come true. I had just spent a year building a glamorous Miami resort on sound stages in LA for Grand Hotel. But Vista del Mar would be a folksier corner of Florida boasting seashell stands and seafood festivals, amingo-themed hotel bars, customers in culottes and tube-tops, and color-soaked hotel lobbies where a Busby Berkeley musical number might greet you at check-in. The design team figured Vista del Mar was on the Gulf Coast maybe up past Tampa, and there must be a factory nearby making all those fiberglass pelicans, mermaids, dolphins and lobsters that dotted the public spaces around town. We would be fearless with our color palettes, liberal with references to old Florida and embrace the sea in all our decor choices. Barb and Star weren't sophisticated gals, but if something E v e r y o n e D e s e r v e s T h e i r O w n L i t t l e V I S T A D E L M A R B Y S T E V E S A K L A D , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. HOTEL ROOM SKETCH BY STEVE SAKLAD, INK AND MARKER ON ONIONSKIN. THE HOTEL SUITE STAGE SET WAS BASED ON THE SWIM-UP ROOMS AT THE EXTERIOR LOCATION, TAKEN TO BAROQUE EXTREMES. THAT SILLY WINDOW STUCK MID- ROOM WAS WISELY CUT. A