Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 6 99 as the conference room of the Fairfield Greenwich Group where executives Walter Noel and Jeffrey Tucker watch Bernie's arrest on television. They lost $7 billion. The villa's dining room just down the hall became the living room of Carl Shapiro, a man who considered Bernie Madoff a son. He lost $500 million. A stained-glass-pattern vinyl appliqué designed by Graphic Designer Max Bode turned six existing steel casement doors into windows for a rabbi's office. And the grassy knoll just outside became a cemetery for the funeral of Rodger, Peter Madoff 's son. Stylistically, the greatest challenge posed by the thirty-mile rule was finding a beach house upscale enough to play as Bernie and Ruth's Hampton beach house. Hurricane Sandy had devastated Long Island and left in its wake McMansions and ranch houses on stilts. Bernie and Ruth were not ostentatious people. Despite the fact that they owned houses all over the world, the interiors were modest and understated relative to the magnitude of their wealth. Decorator Susan Bode and I had to consider how loyal did we want to be to the actual residences. In the end, we turned up the volume to make the interiors more interesting for the audience. Location managers Eddy Collyns and Trish Gray found a house in East Atlantic Beach whose massing and grey- colored vertical wood tongue and groove siding was dead- on Hamptons. It had one of those classic split-level living rooms with a tube railing snaking around a mezzanine balcony where back in the '70s you could imagine finding someone like Patty Hearst with a glass of wine and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth saying, "Hey guys, the party's up here..." The house was by no means perfect with its rotting balconies and saltwater damage but it had several things going for it. For one, it was in the process of being sold Left: Photo looking from the trading area toward the conference room of the 19th floor offices. Below: The rabbi's office set, filmed on location at the Village of Sands Point, Long Island. A stained-glass-pattern vinyl appliqué designed by Max Bode turned six existing steel casement doors into windows for the set. Bottom: Mr. Sorcio drew this director's plan of Sands Point, an Italian Renaissance villa built by Isaac Guggenheim. On the villa's ground floor, a paneled room played nicely as the conference room of the Fairfield Greenwich Group where executives Walter Noel and Jeffrey Tucker watch Bernie's arrest on television.