Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512164
O P P E N H E I M E R | P E R S P E C T I V E 1 3 7 across multiple cities, states and time periods. With researcher Lauren Sandoval, the first thing I did was cover the office walls—room by room, floor to ceiling—with historical imagery spanning every decade, event and location scripted. Lauren was our sounding board for historical accuracy and was pivotal in locating references of the actual bomb, declassified U.S. government manuscripts covering the Manhattan Project, and architectural plans on any given location in which we needed to build and/or shoot. We pored over this imagery, laying out guidelines for the look and feel of the film. Chris was clear we were not making a documentary, yet we still wanted to be diligent in our historical accuracy. The first and most important thing Chris and I discussed was the natural, uninhabited landscape where Los Alamos was originally built, high atop a plateau. Early on, while Chris was writing the script, he had taken a trip to Los Alamos with his son but had given up the idea of filming there due to the town's modernization over the years; a particularly offensive Starbucks now sits on what would have been Oppenheimer's Main Street. Chris wanted three hundred sixty degrees of epic natural backdrops to surround "our" Los Alamos; that it be located in New Mexico wasn't essential. I began referencing classic Westerns and the relationships their towns had to their surrounding vistas, including The Searchers, Heaven's Gate, Once Upon a Time in the West, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Executive producer Tom Hayslip and I widened the search and brought film commissions and scouts across New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Montana up to speed on what we were looking for. While they continued the hunt for the town site, Chris and I headed to the East Coast to walk Oppenheimer's old stomping grounds. A C h r o n i c l e o f A m e r i c a n P o w e r O P P E N H E I M E R B Y R U T H D E J O N G , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. LOS ALAMOS MAIN GATE. INT./EXT. BUILT ON LOCATION AT GHOST RANCH, NEW MEXICO. SET PHOTO. B. T-SECTION OF LOS ALAMOS. INT./EXT. BUILT ON LOCATION AT GHOST RANCH, NEW MEXICO. SET PHOTO.