Designing For Hollywood: It's A Strange Career

Bowing Down to An Almighty Theme And My Stay At The Great Northern Lodge

When I moved to Los Angeles I attempted many avenues to earn a living. I was a restaurant manager, a caterer, and a telemarketing scam artist. I’m not proud of the last one, but I did quit when it got too easy and I was making a large amount of money because of the guilt. I was taking classes at Cal-State University Northridge, and I needed a job that I could check in and check out of when needed. I became involved in background acting. I signed up with the various companies that cast extras large and small and was soon making almost enough money to live on. My entire experience with being an extra is a whole article itself, but one of my favorite jobs was a great example of theme decorating for television.

Theme decorating is always dicey. While your cabin in the woods or your surf shack at the beach begs for this kind of thing, you must be careful. Incorporating an overarching theme into a design may seem less difficult since you have a clear place to start, but it’s just the opposite. It is very easy to fall into a what I call a “catalogue trap.” It easy to find stores that specialize in various decorating themes, and a good deal of them have unique and stylish items. However it’s a trap. It may seem like a lot of your work has been done for you, but the basic principles of design still must be served. For your cabin at the woods you may find a set of bear silhouette sconces that are quite adorable, but you still must look at the placement and the scale. You can’t let its dead on theme value override what looks good in the space. This is the trap. With all the cute catalogue touches in place you may stand back and realize that the cozy home you are trying to create looks a lot like clumsy merchandising.

One of the best examples of theme decorating on a television show was in the original broadcast run of ABC’s “Twin Peaks.” Even though there was a fair amount of kitsch in the featured Great Northern Hotel, there was still a design philosophy that superseded the ordinary. Although two different hotels were used for the pilot, the built sets that were created in a small studio in Van Nuys California were the real stars. The design took its basic visual cues from the Kiana Lodge in Washington State which had a beautiful wood tone and native American Art that was deep in spiritualism and heritage. This spiritualism was extended to all aspects of the show in benevolence as well as evil. Starting from an authentic decorating style even though there will be the addition of a layer of kitsch at once grounded the design and elevated it. The lobby of the Great Northern set was filled with the obvious deep woods motifs; bark covered pillars, camp lantern fixtures and deer horn chandeliers, but those things didn’t detract from its serious take on style and regard for the spiritualism of the place it was fictionally located.

This strategy can be applied to any room that you want to take to an obvious theme. Before you run out and buy used surfboards to make into a chair or line up against a wall on your surf shack, think about the location. That may seem obvious, but if you are not being specific enough your design will come off ill informed. A hip surf shack is going to be different in Malibu, Hawaii and the Jersey Shore even though you will be using a lot of the same tropes. I was tasked with a surf themed show where the direction was, “a cool place for surfers to hang that could be anywhere.” This of course gave me a great deal of latitude, but nothing could be simple or generic. The set decorating team created most of the dressing from scratch in order to keep an organic philosophy to the vibe, with elements from all different international surf locations. The hangout then transformed into a perceived space that existed in a void that the surfers themselves decorated from what they made and could procure. The design came together beautifully and fulfilled the prompt.

Back at The Great Northern I was working as a an extra. “Twin Peaks” was shot at a forgotten studio in the middle of the San Fernando Valley. It had a real independent film quality even though it was a network show. There were no fancy dressing rooms, and it had a very blue collar work ethic that felt quite authentic. I was a fan of the show and when I got the call to work on it, so I was thrilled. I wasn’t hired through one of the big agencies. It was from a somewhat sketchy guy with a small office up on a high floor of a building in Hollywood. Not a fancy building, but an old school nineteen-forties spot at half occupancy. There were budget concerns on the show, but it was refreshing to be on a set that immediately felt like a community. Although I worked several episodes the first season, my initial assignment was as a court reporter. There were monitors outside the set in a lot of strange places. Not a “video village” as it is called where the executives watch the filming. I was standing outside of one of the sets watching what was being done on one of the monitors when Sheryl Lee who played the iconic Laura Palmer appeared behind me. At this point in the show she was playing her look alike cousin and had a dark wig on. I didn’t know the actress was coming back as another character and the whole aura of the death of Laura Palmer was so creepy I jumped when I saw her.

“Isn’t this fun?” she said with a giant smile. It was of those rare sets where the actors weren’t terribly famous and didn’t throw up boundaries toward the crew.

“It’s really amazing,” I replied. Knowing that her character was dead and she was still filming flashbacks, I asked her about the wig. She said she was playing a different character, but had no idea where it was going within storyline. It turns out that the cast was kept in the dark about all the plot twists and most times only were given the section of the script they were in for each episode.

After chatting with Sheryl, I got called to the set which was a bar converted into a makeshift courtroom. “The Roadhouse” carried the deep wood’s theme but added an air of danger. The sign outside says, “The Bang Bang Bar,” but it was always referred to as, “The Roadhouse.” It was simple and non-cluttered, but that open space made it quite eerie in the dim lights and constant smokey haze. I sat taking notes like a reporter behind Madchen Amick who was playing one of the lead characters. She turned around several times to talk, again with a big smile. For as serious as the tone in the script was, the cast seemed to be always having fun with it. Before we started shooting, David Lynch himself came up to me with a bit of direction. Usually a second or third assistant director does this for the extras, so it was a bit out of the ordinary.I had a great deal of respect for him as I was a huge fan of his work, and I was quite nervous when he addressed me.

Lynch leans in close and says, “You’re here taking notes, but you’re not who you say you are.” Then he walked away. It was his way of involving the background so they were invested in the show even though they were a very small part of it. Great directors will do that and it was certainly unforgettable.

I appeared later in one of the most pivotal scenes in the first season back at The Roadhouse as a patron watching a musical performance. I am stage right as Julie Cruise sings a particularly haunting song. The cool thing was Dave Alvin from The Blasters, a band I loved in the eighties, was the guitarist and we got to talk for a little bit. At some point in the scene we had to freeze while the band was cleared, and the mythical Giant character took the stage. All the extras got a fifteen dollar bump for holding our positions for twenty minutes. The scene on the stage became an iconic television still and I can be forever seen stage right staring into the abyss. Believe me, being an extra is the easiest job you can get in Hollywood, so I always consider not so much an achievement, but a great story for parties.

The most memorable part of the entire experience besides the creativity and integrity of the design, was that I got to go into Agent Dale Cooper’s hotel room. Cooper was played by Kyle MacLachlan and he stayed at The Great Northern for the entirety of the series. His bed was constructed out of real pine logs, and all the furniture was custom made in the same material. The walls were half logs partially covered with bark. All the fixtures in the bathroom were made of wood and faux animal skin. There was a lamp with a horse’s yoke on it a few taxidermy ducks and a rifle over the bed. It had a serene vibe, but there were several return walls that always felt like there was someone lurking behind them. I found the room when we broke for lunch. It wasn’t being shot that day, so no one was around. I had gotten to the set very early and I was quite tired. Being a fan of the show, I had lain down in Cooper’s bed just to say I did it. I fell asleep. I didn’t dream of liminal spaces with chevron carpets, red curtains and strange characters whispering secrets, but I do remember feeling like I was part of something very special. Luckily things got loud when the crew came back from lunch, so I was saved the embarrassment of being found asleep in a hot set and sullying all the good well I just described.

P.S.

In my current position if I found an extra sleeping in one my sets I would lose my mind.