Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1433736
4 8 P E R S P E C T I V E | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 1 Thomas Savage's book, The Power of the Dog, is a dramatic story of masculinity with vivid internal struggles of blood, anger and passion (and it's suppression), all playing out on a 1920s Montana cattle ranch with wide landscapes of dust, smell, snow and isolation. I was really honoured to be asked by Jane Campion to design her muscular and nuanced adaption of the story. She and I worked together for the first time thirty years ago and even then, I was thrown in the shade of her incredible talents and intelligence, it's no surprise she has become one of the world's best writer/directors. Living as a distant observer of Hollywood and America experienced through movies, books and the newspaper, the research of the rural north- western period was a journey of discovery for me. Thankfully, there was a lot of rich photographic imagery from this time and place, including the extraordinary images of country life by Evelyn Cameron. There were several meaningful ones Jane homed in on as being moments from her film that were scrutinized the most—weathered calloused hands, cowhands posing for the camera in their personalized dusty working clothes, farm utility buildings standing starkly against open Montana grasslands. B r i n g i n g M o n t a n a t o N e w Z e a l a n d T H E P O W E R O F T H E D O G B Y G R A N T M A J O R , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A