Citrin started honing her story-grounding skills early in her
career, as location manager for Barry Levinson's 1988 road trip
dramedy Rain Man. "It was filmed in story order as a cross-
country road trip. We shot in four different states, so we pieced
together iconic symbols like the John A. Roebling Suspension
Bridge in Cincinnati, oil fields in Oklahoma, Las Vegas casinos
and bright sunshine and palm trees in Los Angeles. Coupled
with the tremendous acting, we knew we were making a great
film."
Citrin went on to transform Alabama into a surreal
dreamscape for Tim Burton's 2002 fantasy adventure Big Fish,
building the sweeping truth-or-fiction tale into locations that
blended gloomy southern gothic features with the warmth of
SLM ROBIN CITRIN/LMGI
While Barbie's aspirational origins and the existential messiness
of the 21st century plays out in her journey between real and
idealized spaces, Citrin's professional origins are similarly
aspirational: with a formal media education in radio, television
and film, she's built a widely lauded 38-year career. Her interest in
location-based production was sparked by a post-college job that
sent her around the country in search of content for a national
lifestyle series on PBS.
"That was my foray into location scouting, as it were," Citrin
recalls. "I was scouting for people, not locations per se, but I
developed that sense of travel and being able to go anywhere and
figure out what I had to do in order to bring the story back."
When college friend and location manager Mike Meehan/LMGI
invited her to assist on a movie in San Francisco, the locations
bug bit hard and within six months, she had moved to Los Angeles
to work on films. Like Ruth Handler, Citrin had wisely positioned
herself to ride a cresting wave as location work became a distinct
production role. "It was at a time when location managers had just
been accepted into the Teamsters union in Hollywood," she says.
Citrin embraced location management as an art form and
a creative outlet, developing a talent for finding ways to meld
practical venues on heavily art-directed and concept-driven
films. She worked closely with production designers to translate
creative ideas into actionable filming sites. "As a location manager,
I feel the relationship with the production designer is extremely
important. We spend a lot of time together and they are usually
the conduit of information for the director."
Robin Citrin and trusty companion, Bodie
