Deborah Nadoolman Landis on Hollywood Costume: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful
In this illustrated talk, Landis discusses costume and storytelling in the context of the exhibition Hollywood Costume that she is curating for London's Victoria and
Albert Museum, scheduled to open in October. She also touches on her own work, both in feature films and groundbreaking music videos for Michael Jackson, whom she has called “one artist who understands the power of a costume.” Landis will be joined by her husband, director John Landis, to introduce their comedy, ¡Three Amigos!, which screens immediately after the talk and discussion, at 8:30.
Followed by:
¡Three Amigos!
John Landis (U.S., 1986)
Introduction: Director John Landis
Mistaking a plea to rescue a Mexican village for an offer to star in a new show, three washed-up silent-screen cowboys (Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short) steal their costumes from the studio and head south in this extravagantly silly, casually surreal spoof. Resplendent in intricately embroidered suits, enormous spangled sombreros, and blazing scarlet cummerbunds, the clueless caballeros dazzle the dusty locals—but can these exuberant idiots outwit the villainous El Guapo? Costume is central not just to the film’s cartoonlike style but to the climax of its plot: this must be the only Western ever to include the exhortation “Sew like the wind!” Juliet Clark
Written by Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Randy Newman. Photographed by Ronald W. Browne. Costume design by Deborah Nadoolman Landis. With Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, Alfonso Arau. (104 mins plus lecture, Color, Blu-ray, Permission MGM)
(In conjunction with) Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema
with Costume Designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis
The brown fedora and weathered leather jacket that transformed Harrison Ford into Indiana Jones. The angular red outfit a ghoulish Jackson wore in Michael Jackson’s Thriller. These and other iconic costumes designed by Deborah Nadoolman Landis have had an undeniable impact on both screen and street style. Yet Landis insists that her work has little to do with fashion. Instead, she has written, “a costume designer’s job is to discover who the people are in the screenplay”—costume is a means to evoke period, place, and personality, tailored to the shape of a film’s narrative and to the ever-changing composition on the screen.
Landis has worked with filmmakers as diverse as Steven Spielberg, Louis Malle, and Costa-Gavras, but her most frequent collaborator has been her husband, director John Landis. Along with Jackson’s famous red jacket, their work together has given us John Belushi in a toga (Animal House, 1978); Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in black hats and Ray-Bans (The Blues Brothers, 1980); Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short in sequined sombreros (¡Three Amigos!, 1986); and Eddie Murphy in African princely regalia (Coming to America, 1988, for which she garnered an Oscar nomination). Their most recent film, Burke and Hare, opened in 2010.
A respected scholar and educator as well as an active designer, Professor Landis is the David C. Copley Chair and founding director of the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at UCLA and the author of several books, including Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, the upcoming Filmcraft/Costume Design, and Divine Design: A Century of Motion Picture Costume Illustration. She joins us—accompanied on Friday by her distinguished colleague, costume designer Aggie Guerard Rodgers—to talk about how, if clothes make the man, costume makes the character.
Behind the Scenes is a collaboration between BAM/ PFA and the San Francisco Film Society. Major support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Behind the Scenes is made possible in part by the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees.
(In conjunction with The Library Lover: The Films of Raúl Ruiz)
The Return of a Library Lover is the title of an autobiographical short by Chilean director Ra.l Ruiz, and looking over his remarkable filmography it’s easy to see why: adaptations of Dante, Kafka, Proust, Calderón, Pierre Klossowski, Camilo Castelo Branco, and Sadegh Hedayat dot his career, while a list of citations could include Borges, Lacan, Le Petit Prince, and nineteenth-century Catholic thought—often in the same film. Intensely cerebral, his films are also highly entertaining, often hilarious, and always surprising. “The world of his movies . . . is at once soothingly, elegantly familiar and booby-trapped with surprises,” wrote A. O. Scott. “There are sudden disappearances, long-buried secrets coming to light, supernatural happenings and bizarre coincidences. In his universe, improbability is the rule.”
Born in Chile in 1941, Ruiz studied law and theology before attending film school in Argentina. Returning to Chile, he completed only a handful of works before the 1973 military coup forced him into exile in France, where he began a nearly forty-year career spanning several continents. Early successes funded by European television led to bigger budgets—by the mid-1990s Ruiz was able to work with such international stars as John Malkovich (Time Regained), Catherine Deneuve (Geneologies of a Crime), and Marcello Mastroianni (Three Lives and Only One Death).
Ruiz passed away in August of 2011, having completed one last film in his native Chile after the international success of Mysteries of Lisbon. His films embrace a “logic governed by miracles,” as he wrote, a “poetics of cinema” that remains unmatched in its freedom.
Theater Admission Prices
Single Feature
$5.50 BAM/PFA Members, UC Berkeley Students
$9.50 Adults (18-64)
$6.50 UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and retirees
Non-UC Berkeley students
Senior citizens (65 & over)
Disabled persons
Youth (17 & under
Additional Feature $4.00 All Patrons
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