The Furniture: The Best of Absolutely Fabulous

Daniel Walber's series looks at Production Design in contemporary and classic movies

This, week, in honor of the most fabulous sitcom in the history of television, I’m going to try something a bit different. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, expanding toward world domination as we speak, is a booze-soaked-cherry on top of a quarter-century-aged fruitcake. It also does more than well by the show’s strongest points, bringing back not only its beloved characters but also its crazed sense of fashion.

And as you can tell by its choice use of an underwater exercise bike, the movie renews the TV show’s flare for production design as a comic tool. Jennifer Saunders and the show's design team, which only varied a bit over the years, have always used excess to their advantage. To prove my point, here are five favorite design moments from the many seasons of Absolutely Fabulous...

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The Furniture: The Color of Beaches

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber... 

Beaches, despite its enormous and enduring cultural imprint, still retains some surprises. It’s not subtle at all, yet it also contains countless little details, both of performance and design. It’s a melodrama that rewards rewatching, not only for the ritual of crying along with a beloved tearjerker, but also for the charismatic density of its images. And so, heeding the call of Nathaniel’s obituary and reappraisal of Garry Marshall’s long career (and a comment from Craver), here’s a look at the Oscar-nominated production design of Beaches.

The color palette of the film is almost schematic. That’s not a slight against production designer Albert Brenner and set decorator Garrett Lewis, either. It works, this insistence on pinks and greens reaching its emotional pinnacle along with the characters.

To be sure, Oscar nomination is probably owed specifically to the two fabulous production numbers, “Industry” and “Otto Titsling.” But rather than praise two isolated scenes, I’d like to take a look at this insistent thread of color...

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The Furniture: The '70s Sitcom Style of Everybody Wants Some!!

Daniel Walber's series looks at Production Design in contemporary and classic movies

A very loud lamp from Everybody Wants Some!!College freshmen are usually a bit confused. Sometimes they even have trouble figuring out what kind of movie they’re in. But not Jake (Blake Jenner), the well-adjusted protagonist of Everybody Wants Some!! He’s got it all figured out by the film’s second half, when which he lets out the following pearl of wisdom: “Like most things with these guys, it’s total bullshit. It’s more about seeing how witty they can be.”

And he’s dead right. This movie is about a bunch of dudes who live from joke to joke, bouncing around town with an unceasing attitude of breezy, sex-charged humor. This isn’t one of those Linklater movies with big, yet simultaneously narrow ideas about what it means to be human (or married, or young, or male). Instead, like most of his best work, it’s content to soak in the sun and have a good time.

Now, if Jake had been paying attention to the production design, he probably would have picked up on this vibe even faster. Every set could be from a 1970s sitcom. Production designer Bruce Curtis and art director Rodney Becker, both of them Linklater regulars, and set decorator Gabriella Villarreal (American Crime) have crafted a perfectly playful atmosphere out of a silly, occasionally garish interpretation of the period.

It kicks off in the kitchen of the “baseball houses,” the team’s unconventional dorm...

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The Furniture: The Spy Who Loved My Supertanker

1977 is our "Year of the Month" for July. So we'll be celebrating its films randomly throughout the month. Here's Daniel Walber...

Looking back at the films of '77, the clear production design stand-out is Star Wars. It won the Oscar and changed the world, though not necessarily in that order. Science fiction was crossing over, pushed even further by fellow nominee Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But why talk about harder sci-fi when you could focus on the futuristic gadgetry and technological excess of the James Bond franchise?

The Spy Who Loved Me is a remarkable showcase for legendary production designer Ken Adam, who passed away earlier this year. He built models of the Pyramids, a cavernous office for the head of the KGB and a decadent underwater lair for nefarious shipping magnate Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens). But the real showstopper is the interior of the Liparus supertanker, the site of the film’s climax. Or, rather, the liveliest of its many climaxes. This is a Bond film, after all.

This was Adam's sixth contribution to the franchise, and he made a point of outdoing his prior work. The set for the Liparus was to be an entirely new sound stage, among the largest ever constructed. 

The final product was gigantic, 334ft by 136ft. Cinematographer Claude Renoir couldn’t actually see from one end to the other. Adam had to call in Stanley Kubrick, with whom he had worked on Dr. Strangelove and Barry Lyndon, just to figure out the lighting...

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ICYMI: The Furniture

Our new contributor Daniel Walber is taking the 4th of July off but I wanted to take this wee break from his column "The Furniture," to sing its praises. When he first pitched the series I requested only that it be really focused, not solely Oscar-nominated specific (so much brilliant work isn't honored each year, after all), and that we alternate contemporary and classic cinema so there's something for everyone. But the series is all him. It's been a joy to read each week and the exact type of thing I've long wanted to do for my favorite craft category costume design. He beat me to it but I find it inspiring and am looking forward anew to our coverage of the below-the-line Oscar categories this year. 

If you haven't yet read any of these episodes, I think you'll learn something about the cinema and the power of production design to enhance a theme, sell a heightened reality, and underline character arcs.

The episodes to date: The Witch (2016), Hail Caesar! (2016), Deadpool (2016), Lady in the Van (2015), Joy (2015), The Force Awakens (2015), Embrace of the Serpent (2015), Carol and Brooklyn (2015), Orlando (1992), Batman (1989), The Exorcist (1973), Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Black Narcissus (1947), That Hamilton Woman (1941)