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by Cláudio Alves
Jack Fisk as "Man in the Planet" in David Lynch's ERASERHEAD.
From Malick to PTA, going through De Palma and Lynch, Jack Fisk's contributions to American cinema are enough to take one's breath away. This year, he collaborated with Martin Scorsese for the first time and earned his third Oscar nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon. According to the designer, his director wanted his film to be "wide, big, like a western," and Fisk delivered.
Working primarily from historical documents, he dove deep into Osage country records to figure out the reality of the characters' lives, including which houses they once inhabited. He also dug through old buildings in search of period foundations and used original plans of buildings like the train station to recreate them as faithfully as possible. For the oil derricks, he recycled research he'd done for There Will Be Blood. In total, Fisk and his team built over forty interior sets, plus entire houses like Hale's ranch, and two blocks of Pawhuska restyled to represent the town of Fairfax across a decade of bloodshed. It's impossible to overstate the scale of his achievement. And yet, what would be other artists' crowning glory is just one among many such triumphs in Fisk's career…
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