Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542693
Palace, along with Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK and the main terminal at Dulles, became the tonal foundation for Reed's influence. Those buildings share a remarkable quality: Their curves accelerate. They don't feel like arcs carved from a circle. They feel parabolic—imbued with motion, aspiration and uplift. These shapes became Reed's fingerprints across the cityscape. Matt and I were also aligned on how the world needed to be built. He wanted the movie to feel as though it could plausibly have been made in the 1960s—shot largely on real sets, with practical lights and textures. For a film about a man whose ideas reshape reality, that reality needed to be tangible. Physical environments don't just help actors; they change the emotional temperature of the entire film. The light behaves differently. The air behaves differently. The camera behaves differently. The Retro-Future City: Times Square Times Square was the Art Department's first major test. It needed to tell the audience everything in seconds: you know this New York, but from your dreams, not your memories. We set ourselves a ratio that governed the skyline: two-thirds period- accurate 1960s Manhattan, one-third Reed- influenced retro-future. Time Square's anchors remained the same: the RKO Palace Theatre, the Horn & Hardart automat, the Forum Theatre. Those rooted us firmly in a recognizable city. But threaded through them were the new shapes—Dom's Diner, a saucer-like eatery hovering over the sidewalk; a redesigned ABC building inspired by the sculptural optimism of the 1964 World's Fair; and overhead, a streamlined monorail zipped through the square on massive parabolic supports that echo Niemeyer's monumental curves. The whole environment had to feel simultaneously nostalgic and wondrously impossible. B A C D E