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LMGI COMPASS
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Winter 2023
At the behest of the cast, the shoot relocated to Los Angeles.
Production designer Judy Becker says, "My first thought was
'Oh, no,' because I think the exterior light is a dead giveaway that
it's Los Angeles and not the East Coast. I think most people who
work in a visual field can see it."
Nonetheless, Becker immediately reached out to her go-to L.A.
location professional, Robert Foulkes.
"They all knew there was a finite number of period
neighborhoods or buildings that would work," shares Foulkes
about L.A.'s limited inventory. "It wasn't constantly like, find
more, find more, which happens on some movies and it's fine if
you have the time. This was just getting the decisions made on
which ones we wanted to go with," says Foulkes.
A PASSION FOR CINEMA
In talking with Foulkes, you quickly learn that he is a fortuitous
combination of location professional and cinephile.
Foulkes first started falling in love with movies of the 1970's—
he says he's more of a Close Encounters guy than a Star Wars
guy—but it was the mid-1980's when locations made a formidable
impression on the L.A. native who was raised in a showbiz family.
Foulkes first felt the palpable use of locations with Wim Wenders'
Palme d'Or-winning 1984 road movie Paris, Texas, his favorite
film of all time.
Foulkes says, "It's one of the greatest location movies ever—
using locations to tell your story." The film brought out the
locations fan in the cinephile. Fifteen years ago, he went on his
own journey tracking down the movie's L.A. locations.
Palace Theatre, DTLA
