With creative collaborators Brian Fuller (writer/producer) and David Slade (director) I developed the look for the series “Hannibal.” Designing the home and psychiatric office for perverse legend Hannibal Lector was a splendid task, and the death tableau of the impaled woman a favorite project.

The project budget would not allow me to recreate the Loud’s house and furnishings verbatim.  My intention was to make their way of life and fabulous style comprehensible to the audience.  Santa Barbara has outgrown its persona of the 70s (which was a town of surfers and conservatives) so reproducing that atmosphere was key to the design of the film.  Our Santa Barbara was found on the outskirts of Los Angeles in Alta Dena and Tarzana, San Pedro, Santa Anita, Upland and Santa Monica.

We recreated the Chelsea Hotel on stage in Los Angeles, and closed down 23^rd Street in NYC to shoot the exteriors.  These scenes are a synthesis of production photography and VFX which I supervised through post production.

Juxtaposing documentary sequences with our footage was not part of the plan for the film during production.  Would I have tried to literally match their house if I’d known this would come about?  While it’s satisfying to get it all exactly right,  I’m of the mind that producing an exact copy makes a rather dead film.

The artist walks on transom windows accompanied by Nico’s rendition of the German National Anthem. Stepping is an expression of loss of fear: to distinguish and employ a continual transgressive state. The discipline of risk is to be aware of the implications and consequences and to proceed (amour fati.)

A performance video with the body as particle,  colliding with a wall, accompanied by variable frequency oscillator tones.

A performance video in segments with text and actions proposing relations between particle physics and erotic daydreaming.

A performance for which I cored through the concrete wall of the University of Irvine gallery; the intervals of the holes demonstrate perceptual phasing.   This phenomena was used to contextualize a conversation about astronomical time, sound and human temporality.

A Glory is an investigation of being, of being in nature and then of the displacement and transfiguration of these qualities in the cinematic form.  The title refers to a meteorological phenomena in which the image of man is projected to gigantic proportion on a fog bank.  This ancient perception is posed as an analogy to Video and to our raw fascination with image. The images here are from the 2^nd section.
1987 20 minutes

A Short Conversation From The Grave With Joan Burroughs is a fictive work examining the persona of Joan Vollmer, the common-law wife of William Burroughs, whom he shot and killed during a game of “William Tell” while the two were living in Mexico.

The narrative style shifts: we witness a conversation about the couple’s spiraling life as they sit on the front porch;   Joan presents prose-poem monologues in a surreal limbo.  These are linked by a visit to a Beat cantina where the shooting is retold as a musical number.

The work was shot on Super 8 and edited on video.  Original text by Jim Krusoe, adapted by Patti Podesta, with Elizabeth Ruscio as Joan and Ebbe Roe Smith as Burroughs.
1990 20 minutes

The centerpiece of the film is Maggie’s loft space, the set and roofscape built on stage. It allowed me to draw on my background as an artist for its conception, finish details and décor.

All the medical offices are sets, built into a vacant building outside Pittsburgh. Much attention was paid to research for their design – keeping them real and yet glossy enough for this romantic dramedy was key. Jamie Reidy, author of the film’s source material and a drug rep of many years commented, “The production design of the medical offices was spot-on.”

The pharmaceutical convention was created in its entirety; every booth designed by myself with graphic designer Martin Charles, and our Art Department.

Leonard’s tattoos were my first design assignment, the diversity of style and language constructing a record of his pursuit.  A limited palette permeates the film, mimicking the main character’s POV:  unstable, claustrophobic, and imagistic.

The Ambassador Hotel – an infamous property and scene of the tragic events of June 5, 1968 – was the setting for our film.  Unfortunately, it was being demolished to make way for a new school.  We were the last company to shoot there, restoring its facade and Coffee Shop while the wrecking ball worked nearby.  Director Emilio Estevez and I wanted to suggest the hotel as both past and present, with its flamboyant history and fading persona as mise en scene.  Our Ambassador is made from buildings around Southern California built within a few years of the hotel:  the kitchen of the Santa Anita Racetrack; the lobby created in the Park Plaza Hotel with much work; the Cocoanut Grove and Pool are reworked locations in Agora, CA.  Much of the film was shot on stage sets: the Ballroom and Pantry, Hotel Rooms, Offices and Beauty Parlour.

Emilio wanted the audience to feel ‘in the moment’ and not like they were looking at an historical document.  I wanted to evoke the qualities of light and color that make images from that time unforgettable.

Set in Arizona in the 30s,40s and50s, this aviation-themed film demanded much beyond its small budget, including the installation of a runway and hanger at a local ranch (which became the film’s main location) as well as reworking a city block for the 50s. This was director James Redford’s first feature film and my first period film.

When the Department of the Navy decided they could not support this script, we moved production from Annapolis, MD to Philadelphia and created the Navel Academy on stage and at historic locations around the city. The Academy entrance was built at the edge of a park, the ship interiors built on stage and the ship exteriors were completed via CGI from my designs. We transformed Philly’s famous Blue Horizon boxing venue for the Navy Brigade Championships.

Two films designed for Gregg Araki

Homeland was an excellent piece of material from the start and I was eager to set the look for the show – having done extensive research for a film set in Iraq and Afghanistan, which never came about. My second collaboration with Michael Cuesta, we wanted to keep it real. Building Afghanistan in North Carolina was a challenge…we shipped in palm trees from L.A.. The Philip Morris plant outside the city was closing and we talked our way in, the first to film in the Marcel Breuer-designed facility; the location makes a fabulous CIA (oddly matching Langley in many respects.) The strange hominess of the Brody family home counterpoints these dramatic settings and the triangulation of dangerous-exotic/institution of power/private domicile became a template for the series.

I designed the permanent sets for the Brody Home and for Carrie’s apartment and am delighted to see locations I discovered in the second season.