The wonderful world of Adam Stockhausen

by Cláudio Alves

Over the past decade, Adam Stockhausen has become one of Hollywood's most formidable production designers. Working his way up as an art director, the first movies he got to design weren't the most prestigious fair. Indeed, Wes Craven's late-career horrors didn't give him much opportunity to show off. That all changed when Wes Anderson, Steve McQueen, and Steven Spielberg all started to go to him as their preferred designer, relying on Stockhausen to create whole worlds from scratch, whether within a realistic milieu or total fantasy. Back in 2014, Grand Budapest Hotel earned him an Oscar, and Stockhausen is back on the hunt for more gold. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch just arrived in American theaters, and the new West Side Story is on the horizon. Could he even nab an elusive double nomination?

Here are some highlights from Adam Stockhausen's filmography as production designer, from Anderson's whimsy to Spielberg's glitz…

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Over & Overs: Moonrise Kingdom

TFE is kicking off a new series. We began, unofficially with Julie & Julia and now each week a Team Member will share a movie they can't help but watch frequently, whenever it comes up. Here's Ginny O'Keefe...

-What kind of bird are you?”

-I’m a Raven”

And that kids, is how I met your mother. One of my sweetest “Over and Over” movies is the criminally underrated Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom. This 2012 gem follows two young kids in 1960’s New England who fall in love with each other and decide to run away into the wilderness so they can be together. One is a resourceful, kind orphan who’s been sent away to join the Khaki Scouts. The other is a troubled, solitary, creative bookworm feeling smothered by her overbearing family. The entire town goes on a manhunt for the two lovebirds before a massive storm hits and the Wes Anderson preciousness and hilarity ensues... 

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Blueprints: "Moonrise Kingdom"

With the release of Isle of Dogs, Jorge looks into an earlier Wes Anderson film...

While Wes Anderson’s characteristic and by now immediately recognizable cinematic style evokes mainly the images of perfectly centered frames, bright-color palettes, and characters covered in quirks and oddities, not everything about him is visual. The patterns of speech from his characters are almost lyrical, and his stories are filled with strong undercurrents of nostalgia, melancholy, and growing pains. 

All of his worlds evoke a kind of diorama construction. Though the production design on most movies only happens just before principal photography, Anderson paints an image of what he wants his frames to look like right from the first pages of each script. Let’s take a look at a highly stylized (yes, even more than usual) sequence from Moonrise Kingdom too see how painstakingly meticulous the details are from the very start...

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Adam Stockhausen: From a Budapest hotel to a "Bridge of Spies"

Adam Stockhausen won the Oscar on his first nomination for GRAND BUDAPEST HOTELEmmanuel Lubezki (who keeps winning prizes) isn't the only craft superstar repeating the Oscar rounds this year. Last year's winner for Production Design Adam Stockhausen (Grand Budapest Hotel), a 43 year old powerhouse who's amassed a very impressive resume in just a doesn't years, is back in the mix this season with the Cold War drama Bridge of Spies.

That Best Picture nominee is his first movie with Steven Spielberg but he's already worked with auteurs like Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) on terrific projects, too. 

Here's our interview:

NATHANIEL: From Wes Anderson to Steven Spielberg! These auteurs seem very different. I imagine Wes Anderson making his own dioramas, and being like "Recreate this. Adam!". Whereas Spielberg, I don’t think of him in that 'this is what the set looks like' way at all!

ADAM STOCKHAUSEN: They have more similarities than you think. I don’t know if I want to get too deeply into what they do, because I’ll leave that for more esteemed people than myself, but I certainly see similarities. There are differences in the day to day: Wes pre plans shots and they’re carefully choreographed, Steven is slightly different in that the shots aren’t planned in advance, but the choreography is very similar. 

more after the jump...

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Interview: The Discipline and Humanity of "Bridge of Spies" Costume Design

Mark Rylance and Spielberg on the set of "Bridge of Spies"Costume Designers are among the great unsung heroes of the cinema, regularly helping actors to define their characters and directors to create those images audiences get lost in. The latter achievement comes in tandem with the other creatives most connected to the mise-en-scène, the cinematographers and the production designers. It's perhaps not surprising that when you sit down with the behind-the-scenes professional they are often disarmingly modest, used to serving and enhancing the vision of the director. General moviegoers might not know their names but cinephiles, critics, and industry professionals are wise to learn and love them for the unique contributions they make to fine movies. 

I recently had the opportunity to speak with the Polish designer Kasia Walicka-Maimone, who designed two high profile projects this year: Scott Cooper's gangster drama Black Mass and Steven Spielberg's cold war drama Bridge of Spies. The latter was her first collaboration with Spielberg but the designer is no stranger to auteurs. She's worked with Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) and Mira Nair (Amelia) and is best known for her work with Oscar fixture Bennett Miller having costumed all three of his narrative features (Capote, Moneyball, Foxcatcher).

It's perhaps unsurprising, given the temperament of Miller's filmography, to find her disarmingly modest and low key and not all that excited about the more glamorous aspects of costume design. At one point she even gave your host, a self-confessed costume nut, a coronary with a casually dropped "I don't care about the costumes" though she quickly revived me with an interesting explanation of what she really meant.

See for yourself in our interview after the jump...

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