Monday, May 18, 2020 at 12:00PM Costume Designer Daniel Orlandi is guest-blogging all day!
I thought I'd share a few random sketches from past movies and TV specials.
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Busty Rusty in Flawless
Director Joel Schumacher was a former costume designer. So he was great to work with. He gave me a lot of confidence as a designer. Robert DeNiro recommended me for the job...
Monday, May 18, 2020 at 8:48AM SPECIAL GUEST STAR DAY. Please welcome Costume Designer Daniel Orlandi (Ford V Ferrari, Trumbo) who has taken over the blog for the day -- Editor
Bob Mackie (left) and me at the 1981 Oscars
Let's start at the beginning! About a year after graduating from Carnegie Mellon a couple of college friends and I drove to LA from NYC because it seemed like our friends in LA were working a lot more than we were. A month later I got a call to work in Bob Mackie's shop for two days to help with a Las Vegas show. I ended up making G strings! After I finished, the head of his workroom asked me to organize all of Bob's trims and fabrics that had been neglected for awhile. I guess Bob was impressed. He was looking for an assistant on Pennies From Heaven (1981) and he hired me with no film experience at all. I ended up staying for 8 years. To watch he and his partner Ray Aghayan work was an invaluable education. It seemed like every star walked through the doors of their studio.
Here are five things I learned in those earliest years of my career that are my best advice for young professionals...
Sunday, May 10, 2020 at 7:39PM Before we close the book on our big 1981 event we thought we'd discuss a few of the leading ladies of the year. Please welcome guest contributor Gabriel Mayora !
In 1981, Meryl Streep was a breakout star, a buzzy and reputable theater actress who in only four years since making the transition from Broadway to Hollywood had garnered an Emmy for a hit miniseries and two back-to-back Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations in ’78 and ’79 (both for Best Picture winners), winning the second time. It was time for her to turn into a full-fledged leading lady. Enter Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the film that marks Streep’s first Best Actress nomination. Over the decades, this performance has gained a reputation for belonging in the “overrated” category. Was this nomination more of a symbolic gesture to solidify her status as Hollywood’s new leading star or appreciation of the performance itself?
A key scene in the last 10 minutes of the movie makes a convincing argument for why voters would have felt genuinely compelled to single out Streep’s dual turn among the top five lead performances of 1981...
Wednesday, April 29, 2020 at 12:00PM As a sequel to our recent look-back at the 42nd Oscars , please welcome guest contributor Orrin Konheim...
Fifty years ago, the Academy Awards marked an odd milestone when they awarded a Best Supporting Actor Oscar to Gig Young for They Shoot Horses Don’t They (1969) although they didn’t know history was being made at the time. Eight years later, Gig Young would shoot his wife of three weeks (and then himself) in the only known instance of an Oscar-winning actor committing murder.
His tale is a disturbing one with few answers...
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 1:00PM Please welcome guest contributor Mark Blankenship, who you've previously heard from as a guest panelist on the Smackdown...
Even while getting rightfully criticized by presenters who mocked the mostly-white acting line-up and the all-male slate of directors, the Academy still managed to deliver an Oscar ceremony this year that was full of historically inclusive winners. All of those victories are exciting on their own, and some even point to larger trends that suggest there's hope for this awards body yet. If the patterns hold, then the Oscars just might become prizes for all artists, no matter who they are.
For instance, Parasite's historic Best Picture triumph is even more encouraging when you consider it alongside Moonlight's win (about queer black men and boys)...
