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Home , 007 Stage, Ken Adam

Art Directors: interviewed by James Delson Author(s): Ken Adam and James Delson Source: Film Comment, Vol. 18, No. 1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1982), pp. 36-42 Published by: Film Society of Lincoln Center Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43452711 Accessed: 19-02-2020 15:28 UTC

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This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:28:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ■ I Klaus Adam. Born in , Ger- many February 1921. Educated Berlin: Le College Francais. : Craigend Park School. : St. Pauls School. Studied 1937-39 London University: Bartlett School of Architec- ture, receiving articles with firm of archi- tects and civil engineers: C.W. Glover & Partners. Upon outbreak of Second World War, joined Pioneer Corps, trans- ferred in 1941 to the R.A.F. Trained as pilot in U.S., seconded to U.S.A.F. and returned to U.K. in 1943 as an R.A.F. fighter pilot. Served in England and on Don Giovanni. the Continent in the 609th W.R. Squad- ron until October 1946. ladio, and that imposed a style. My job between Palladio's time and Mozart's, aAfter his demobilization from the was to complete them in the style of this century later? R.A.F. in 1946, Ken Adam obtained his frame. Thus, Don Giovanni's house is I don't think of eras in terms of chro- first job in film, working as a draughts- the "Rotonda." For instance, I always nology or exactitude. Palladio is the man. re- After two years he moved up to added elements - like stairs - to create turn to classicism - a certain dream.The assistant art director. Hollywood was continuous spaces. The scene of the regularity and rigidity of Palladio go verymaking films cheaply in Europe in the Commander was shot in different well with Mozart's musical organization. late Forties and early Fifties, and Adam places, which required that there always One can always interpret - as long found as continuous employment because be links. I used spots of color to recall there is a correspondence between theof his facility in several languages and for this scene. style and the spirit. his superb craftsmanship, especially Besides, much of the set did not exist Which was the hardest set for you where de- ships were concerned. Captain in the original architecture, like signthe in your career? Horatio Hornblower (1951) led to The cemetery and the beginning of hell.To Oh, it's never the big complicated Crimson Pirate ( 1 95 1 ), The Master ofBal- express all these locales, I thought ofsets, a but rather a hotel room - as lantrae in (1953), and Helen of Troy , for glass factory where fire is the main Carné's ele- Drôle de drame - because of its which he designed the Greek war fleet ment. This fire was the symbol of impersonality.Don Into someone's room, I and supervised the draughting depart- Giovanni's entry into the flames.We can bring a kind of description of the ment under art director Edward Carrere. used a transformed glass factory from character, his tastes, his social level. But Upon completion of Helen of Troy, Murano, which was reconstructed. there are so few elements in a hotel Adam stayed on in Italy in 1955 to do So you saw the film's style as traveling room! pre-production budgeting for William

Trauner's sketch for the kitchen in How to Steal a Million . . . and the set.

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This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:28:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Wyler's Ben-Hur (released in 1959). Re- cess to reference material. I knew noth- approach. It was the first time I got men- turning to England, he struggled ing about rockets, so out of desperation I tioned by the critics, and, to my sur- through the next few years, supple- went to Victoria Station and found some prise, I got the first prize for art direction menting his income as a full art director science-fiction magazines. That night, at the Moscow Film Festival that year." by designing London's first coffee bars. while Bill Menzies went through a bot- After Sodom and Gomorrah (1963) Then Mike Frankovich, head of Co- tle of my Scotch, I did a vague charcoal with , Adam began work lumbia, U.K., introduced him to Mike sketch of a three-stage rocket, which in his longest and most profitable part- Todd, who was preparing Around The Todd was delighted with." Adam re- nership: the pictures he World in 80 Days. ceived his first Academy Award nomina- would design for Albert "Cubby" Broc- "Mike Todd was very impressive, tion for his work on the film. coli (and, at first, ). Since enormously possessive, and incredibly Now he was a full art director, collabo- 1963 he has designed twenty completed frightening," Adam told FILM COM- rating with such directors as John Ford, pictures, including seven Bond films, MENT. "He had a suite in the Dorcester , Jack Cardiff, and Ro- two for (Dr. Stangelove where he conducted his business like a bert Aldrich. In 1959 he took his first and )> and five for Herbert king in his throne room, summoning credit as production designer on The Ross, including his latest, Pennies From people to meetings and dispensing or- Rough and the Smooth for Robert Siod- Heaven. ders at all hours and without warning. mak, and has retained the title ever The Bond films represent something One night, since. At this point he abandoned his unique in contemporary film: the pro- [for whom David O. Selznick devised strict architectural training, casting aside gression of one production designer's the term "production designer" to de- his hard pencil for felt-tipped "flo- work in an ongoing series of increasingly scribe his work on Gone With the Wind] master" pen for his sketches. The stage popular films, growing from a tentative came to me, shaking all over. He had was being set for his break into the world talent into a protean artistry. Pennies just come from a press conference Todd of big budgets and creative freedom that from Heaven , like Barry Lyndon and Dr. had called to announce that he [Todd] would make his name synonymous with Strangelove before it, proves that Adam's had thought of the space satellite before imaginative opulence and superb crafts- work cannot be measured exclusively by Eisenhower. The press said, 'All right, manship. "I did a little picture called which mad genius' lair will rise out of Mr. Todd. Now give us documentary The Trials of Oscar Wilde in 1960," Adam structural steel to threaten world peace. proof.' So Todd had turned to Bill Men- recalled, "in which my set budget was Like Menzies and every other great pro- zies and said, 'Get Ken Adam to design £15,000 from an overall cost of duction designer, Adam is a collabora- me a rocket by tomorrow.' It happened £250,000. But because of the budget tive craftsman, facing self-doubt, to be a bank holiday; all the stores and limitations, I was forced to do a lot ofsuper-budgets, creative battles, and the libraries were closed, giving me no ac- stylization, rather more of a theatrical chance of colossal failure - and emerg-

Ken Adam on the war room set for Dr. Strangelove.

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This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:28:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms I had a lot of fun on Goldfinger. I was allowed to look at Fort Knox from the outside, though not on the inside. But I knew, more or less, what bank vaults looked like and how gold is stacked be- cause of weight problems, and I didn't want that sort of realism. I felt the audi- ence had to feel they were behind bars and would want to see stacks of gold behind that enormous grill. It was com- pletely unrealistic and impractical, but it paid off - we got a lot of mail from peo- ple all over the world asking how we were allowed to shoot in Fort Knox. How accurate was the laser? Bond's climb to the Penthouse sketch. Pretty accurate for that period. When the time came to create the laser unit, I ing remarkably unscathed as he enters when it worked it became more impor- rang up the two technical advisors I'd his 36th year in the film business. tant from film to film. used on Dr. No, and they okayed what I • Did you use existing reactor plans for was doing. We couldn't use it for real, so You've designed seven of Cubby your Broc- nuclear control room? the actual laser beam had to be added coli 's twelve James Bond pictures: That Dr. was one of the biggest sets I had optically afterwards. No, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You done Onlyto that point, so I used two techni- I suppose the Aston Martin is the most Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, cal advisors to be sure it was accurate. I famous prop from the Bond series. People The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moon- also liked Dr. No's underground apart- still talk about it. raker. But in the beginning , what was the ment with the fish tank. But the set I I had great difficulties in talking As- feeling you had about the first little was keenest on was the big tarantula ton into letting me have one, which adventure film? room, with the circular opening in the eventually became two. The ideas for all In the first draft that I saw, Dr. No ceiling. Simple, but ominous. its gimmickry and gadgetry came quite was a monkey or an ape or something. It Your work on Goldfinger was a major easily to me, because I was a sports car wasn't very good, and I had serious trend-setter in the mid-Sixties. Aside from freak, and I could get rid of all my frus- doubts about whether I should be in- the gold girl , the golden Rolls Royce se- trations at once. The special effects by volved with it or not. I had read some of quence, and all the other delights , you John Stears were of great importance, the Fleming Books, which I had liked. broke new ground with the Fort Knox set , because it's one thing to come up with And Terence Young seemed to have the a laser, and, above all, with the Aston ideas, but it's another thing to make certain panache, identifying himself Martin. them work. with Bond. Harry [Saltzman] was brought up as a showman and started talking in those terms, so it became rather an exciting undertaking. From the first film, you manage to con- vey a futuristic feel to the villains' lairs. Did this arise out of the script? General discussions? When shooting Dr. No began in Ja- maica, Terence and I had some prelimi- nary discussions about how we visualized the film. He continued to shoot while I went back to Pinewood [Studio, outside London]. Because we were short of time, I had to design and start to build four or five stages full of sets before the unit came back. So when they arrived they were really faced with a fait accompli. But Terence really liked them, and Harry agreed. There seemed to be a lot of copper in Dr. No's underground house. Stylistically , that carried over to the other Bonds as well. We faked that with a process system, as well as a lot of other metal, which I'd never done before. I was trying for a slightly tongue-in-cheek, slightly The space ship in Moonraker. ahead -of- contemporary concept, and

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This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:28:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Did it ever occur to you that you might be taking things too far, or did you just let yourself go completely? Completely. I went through a crisis of wondering if I was going too far - or going mad altogether - when I de- signed the volcano on You Only Live Twice. But each film seemed to grow in propor- tion to the previous one's box office. We were very conscious of the fact that we had to keep up the spectacle of the visual effects. And on Thunderball you added the new dimension of underwater scenes, only The penthouse design for Diamonds are Forever. hinted at in Dr. No. That was in keeping with this specta- M's conference room, which I designed Live Twice? cle idea. We had the exotic Bahamas with tapestries that went up exposing Until that picture, we had stuck very locations, the Vulcan Bomber, the charts underneath and the close to the original Fleming stories. But underwater scenes, the hydrofoil "Disco S.P.E.C.T.R.E. conference room, when we went to Japan to scout loca- Volante," and the bomb carrier. The where the seat disappears tions he talked about, we couldn't find only two sets I tried to go bigger on were What was the crisis during You Only them. So we began to improvise, which became standard operating procedure ever afterwards - and which I some- times regret. After covering two-thirds of Japan by helicopter, we found a vol- cano on Kyushu and thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to have our villain inside a volcano?" So that became the most important and most expensive set we've ever had. I'd always assumed it was an indoor set, aided by glass shots or mattes. It was all real! Roughly 400 feet in diameter, 120 feet high, with a 70-foot diameter sliding door set at an angle at the top. Too big for any sound stage in the world. So we built it free-standing, and waterproofed it as best we could. I suddenly broke out in eczema all over the place. All I could think was, "Am I going crazy to take on a million-dollar set?" I must have used 700 tons of struc- tural steel.With that much effort we should have built a soundstage and put the set inside it so it wouldn't have been such a total loss after the picture was finished. But it was so tall, and had such an odd shape, and it had never been done before. We built it to be shot from the inside only, with the steelwork fol- lowing the contours of the set. I covered myself by calling in firms of structural engineers, but it was still experimental. When the real helicopter came through the roof door for the first time, neither the pilot nor we knew whether there might be updraft, downdrafts, or some- thing else to wreck him. It was nerve- racking, but ended up working extremely well. Were most of the interiors for You Only Ken Adam in the massive soundstage for The Spy Who Loved Me. Live Twice shot at Pinewood? All but two, the sumo wrestling and

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This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:28:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms different "look" in mind. My Bond designs and all my other ahead-of-modern designs were always very linear; simple but efficient, with a bareness of line. But on Spy I also went into curved shapes. The combination excited me, and that excitement re- flected on some of the other designs I did. Something just clicked, and I knew I'd done it right. There was more of an overall feel to the picture, reflected in another Oscar nomi- nation following your win for Barry Lyn- don two years before. I was functioning not just by creating individual sets, but by having a produc- tion-design progression. I did go through a slight insecurity period again, however, because although it's an ad- vantage to get as much freedom as I have in designing the Bond films it's an immense responsibility. Especially when you're building a sound stage to hold just one set, and that sound stage costs $1,800,000 in 1976 cur- rency. I had to design and build the inside of a supertanker which would accommo- date three submarines and a control room. And having no desire to repeat the workable but ultimately wasteful free- standing set idea we did in You Only Live Twice, I designed the supertanker inte- rior in terms of what could remain for use after the film was finished. And that's how the James Bond at Pine- wood came into being. Instead of build- ing the set inside an existing stage, none From sketch to set : the bank sequence from Pennies From Heaven. of which were big enough anyway, we built the stage over and around the set. Everything in Spy was big. From the the scene where Bond meets his bride- There was a basis in reality for a lot realityof of the pyramids and temples of to-be. Two of the Pinewood sets - what I did, for example, Willard Whyte's Egypt to the villain's submersible lair, Osato's office and Tanaka's office, penthouse.with Cubby Broccoli had been Atlantis. a its two copper television monitors -friend are of Howard Hughes, so I based the It was contagious. I even scaled up among my personal favorites. penthouse on his, but more operatic, Anya's bedroom, making it big and pala- Did you have any involvement with less On realistic. I was trying to carry a mood tial to play against the usual concept of Her Majesty's Secret Service? of absurdist reality in the moonscape Russia. And I did the same thing with I did some initial location work in and lunar-vehicle chase sequences - al- Gogol's office - in part inspired by Switzerland, but then the picture wasthough, again, I used N.A.S.A. photo- Eisenstein, though no one may have no- postponed, so I did Chitty Chitty Bang graphs for the moonscrape. The ticed - to counterpoint M's office, Bang instead. I was glad to skip that diamond satellite I designed to look like which is so typically English. Bond, because it gave me a chance, after a cross between a mobile and a radar On Moonraker the plot was dictated, Chitty y to do some smaller, low-key films dish, collapsible so it could be carried more or less, by a series of location hunts with Herb Ross, Goodbye , Mr. Chips andunderwater. and brainstorming sessions, rather than The Owl and the Pussycat. That way, I You skipped the next two Bonds as well. coming from the book. Were you comfort- was all pepped up again when Diamonds I went straight from Diamonds into able working that way? Are Forever came along. Sleuth , with Joe Mankiewicz, then di- Spy had been conceived and shot in " Pepped up" ? How about "off the deep rectly on to with Herb much more controlled circumstances end"? From this picture onward, there Ross and Barry Lyndon with Stanley than Moonraker, so I was happier on seemed to be very little contact with real- [Kubrick], so I couldn't do Live and Letthat. And for $13.5 million against $30 ity , or with the original Fleming plotlines. Die or The Man With the Golden Gun. million for Moonraker, we reaHy got our Everything had become bigger than But you returned for The Spy Who money's worth on screen. But Moon- life, though still tongue-in-cheek. Loved Me. And you seemed to have raker a was the biggest, most complex

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This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:28:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms film I've ever worked on, with up to four and that really appealed to me. think will be wonderful. I think the separate units shooting all over the world This seems very much a studio picture, dance numbers will provide a relief, at once, plus all those special effects! We like Scorsese's New York, New York. It's when we open up the sets both physi- shot combinations of real locations, full- the style which will carry the audience cally and through lighting. scale mockups, partial mockups, and through, more than the story. The bank set is Bondian in proportions. miniatures in a number of sequences, It wasn't originally intended to be and they cut together quite well. But it shot entirely at the studio, but that's the Its size was a big bone of contention. was a logistics nightmare. For tax rea- way it worked out. Because of severe In the BBC series the film is based on, sons we had to shoot most of our inte- budgetary restrictions, all the scenes we the scene took place in the manager's riors in Paris where there wasn't very were going to shoot on location in Chi- office of a small provincial bank in Eng- much stage space. As soon as we'd finish cago were brought back to MGM. I built land. For the film, the story was re-set in on a set it would have to be struck and a part of the Loop area on a sound stage, Chicago, though it was still kept in the new one built in its place. This meant and though I questioned having to do Thirties, so I went there looking for lo- having to go on location a lot. In fact, on that at first, I'm convinced now it was cations and photographed a number of Moonraker we shot more location inte- the right choice. In the end, having to banks from the period. They were enor- riors than on any previous Bond. shoot everything at Metro was stylisti- mous, neo-classic palaces. I finally made We found the chateaux in and around cally correct. my point when I showed the photos I Paris, and used the Pompidou Center We had innumerable battles because I had taken to Herb and for part of the Drax Complex, including strongly believed all the time that we [author of both miniseries and film]. Holly's office. We shot locations in Bra- had to start off with a big number, to set They agreed that it was the right sort of zil, Egypt, and Venice, and used various the tone up a few notches from the de- concept. boats and gondolas I designed for the pressing mood the film sets during the I designed a bank, then we had argu- chase through the canals. Interiors for first few minutes. So we start off with a ments over whether it should be bigger many locations were precise, including big dance number in the bank, which I or smaller, but I stuck to my original the Vennini Glass Museum; but, obvi- ously, the key to the whole picture was the space station. The copy line everyone was using around the time of Moonraker'^ release was , "This film isn't science fiction, it's science fact." How does that apply to- wards a space station? Before I designed our space station, I spent some time at N. A.S. A. , looking at their conceptual designs for real ones. But when I actually designed our sta- tion, I departed sharply from their futur- istic concepts, because Stanley Kubrick had already used the wheel in 2001 . I thought it would be a difficult thing for interior settings because it's rather like shooting inside a bicycle tire. N.A.S.A. had another concept, a series of cylin- ders which would be bolted together in space. But that was rather boring, visu- ally. So I compromised. I still used the cylinder idea, but I designed the space station like a mobile, in a completely irregular form, so that once it begins to rotate the audience gets a different com- position from each angle. Was Pennies From Heaven your next project after Moonraker? No, I worked on three other films, all of which fell through: The Aquarius Mis- sion, an underwater adventure picture; Destiny , a John Frankenheimer picture about the Cuban resistance movement and the Bay of Pigs; and Dress Gray , a picture about West Point that Herb Ross was going to direct. I was very demoral- ized, because I'd never had that happen before. But then Pennies From Heaven Top , the sketch for the el Street; bottom , as it appears in Pennies From Heaven. came along, which Herb was also doing,

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This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:28:17 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The volcano set from You Only Live Twice. concept again. I also wanted to intro- couldn't do the hooker number, because the back or side, with a long, narrow duce an Art-Deco element into the film, that would have been very interesting barcounter. Not all that interesting. So I rather than going for the neo-classic style visually. came up with the idea of doing it like a I had seen. The Board of Trade Building Was the street done as a straight set , or speakeasy in the film. You went down in Chicago has a lovely Art-Deco feel- using forced perspective? into the basement, and it has the same ing, so I used that for our bank exterior, The hooker street would have been cramped, dark mood until the dance and the whole thing became a marble done with forced perspective, but the number begins. Then it opens up and cathedral to the power of money. I actual el street wasn't. Instead, I re- becomes livelier. thought it was important to see the con- duced it in scale, having found, on my With the possible exceprìon of Sleuth, trast of the Depression and this monu- trip to Chicago, that it was very difficult your finest work in the past two decades in ment. to see the el in 1.85 Panavision unless the non-Bond world has been for Herbert There are a number of smaller ,you more were very far away or tilted the cam- Ross and Stanley Kubrick. Could y ou com- intimate sets in the picture , like the era flopup or down for each shot. I simply pare the two directors? house y the movie theater interior , andreduced the the height of the el to make it Herb, having been brought up in the hotel bedroom with its imaginary elevatorwork for the film. theatre and ballet, is much more actor- for lovemaking. The bar sequence , when Chris Walken oriented. He's very literal in explaining Those were designed for dual dances pur- for Bernadette Peters , seems to the actor the way he sees a role, and poses, fantasy and reality, as was illustrate the what you were saying about very often has to go through innumera- major set we built, the "el" street. opening We up the sets. When I saw the pre- ble permutations to get that right. Stan- shot a number of scenes there with our dance stills, it looked very small , but it's ley will also permutate through an actor's characters and planned to do a big huge during the dance. performance to the nth degree in order hooker number, but the transformation I had looked at a lot of the bars in to get what he thinks is right - but I of the el to the hooker street and the Chicago, and they were all about the sometimes feel that if Stanley could number itself were cut for budgetary same: street level, long, reasonably nar- make motion pictures without actors, he reasons. row rooms, maybe with a poolroom atwould be happier. The street looks very real , not as stylized as the rest of the major sets. That was a major concern to every- one. No one thought it would be possi- ble to obtain a believable exterior feeling on a sound stage. The reality of an actual street was elusive, but with our superb craftsmen and painters I think we managed to get it. The street was designed for interiors and exteriors, and included Arthur's record shop, the Nighthawk café, and the cinema. Herb was particularly keen on some of the painters of that period, like Reginald Marsh and Edward Hopper. So I incor- porated Marsh's "A Movie Theater" and Hopper's "Nighthawk Cafe" into the street. The employment agency and the pawnshop came from photographs by Walker Evans, and a second-floor fur shop was also included. It became a jig- saw puzzle of varying artists of the pe- Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. riod. It was just unfortunate that we

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