Spy Vibe continues its series on Spy TV/film production design and the influence of Art and design movements, Playboy, Hugh Hefner, adventure story conventions, and the Space Race.
Guest Set Lists: Lee Pfeiffer, Jeremy Duns, Armstrong Sabian, Steve Bissette, Roger Langley, Matthew Bradford, Wesley Britton, David Foster, Matt Kindt.
Spy Vibe's Set For Adventure here, Set Countdown #10, #9, #8 ,#7, #6, #5, #4, #3, #2, #1.
ARMSTRONG SABIAN: OUR MAN IN ALBANY
Agent ARMSTRONG is the creator of Mister 8, a spy blog and web comic site. If you have not discovered Mister 8, it is a fantastic place to explore scans of rare spy comics, music, and great coverage of classic spy literature, film, and television. Armstrong's Set List:
Like Jason, I'm a big fan of mid-century modern design and architecture, and, like him, I think that love will color my list. My wife and I have just purchased our first house, and wherever possible, I'm trying to let the designs of the Eameses, Saarinen, Knoll and others influence our decor (while at the same time avoiding Ikea). It's not easy, however, because those sorts of things are expensive, the ones that are affordable aren't comfortable, and the style didn't seem to be in vogue around here, judging from the number of colonial and mountain rustic furniture for sale on Craigslist.
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5. The President's Analyst (1967) - The Phone Company HQ [Production design: Pato Guzman; Art decoration: Hal Pereira, Al Roelofs; Set decoration: Robert R. Benton, Arthur Krams] SPOILER ALERT! The President's Analyst is a surprisingly biting, still relevant satire with visual design grounded in the psychedelic 60s. The set I've chosen from the film comes from the sort-of payoff scene, where the titular analyst, Dr. Sidney Schaefer (Coburn), learns that the shadowy organization responsible for his kidnapping is the The Phone Company. He's brought, phone booth and all, into the heart of TPC headquarters, an Adamsesque rotating room with blinking light panels, floating neon abstract symbols, and a man at a control panel who turns out to be, as Geoffrey Cambridge points out, a "recording." The set succeeds because it amplifies the satirical commentary that has transformed our utility company into a SPECTRE-esque evil cabal bent on taking over the world (Their plan? Inserting tiny phone receivers into the brain. One wonders if, after Schaefer stops this plot, the Phone Company robots got together and realized they needed an intermediary step: cell phones). This idea of the fear of foreign matters destroying the country, while bigger domestic problems were hiding was understandable in the context of the late 60s, with Vietnam and civil rights and protests in the streets, and with our current financial crisis, as I said, it remains relevant today.
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4. The Prisoner (1967) - Portmeirion / The Green Dome [Art direction: Jack Shampan; Art department: Ken Bridgeman, John Lageu; Portmeirion designed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis] There's something about the town of Portmeirion that makes it the perfect setting for the Village, the way it almost seems like a normal place, but the angles and curves, the bright colors, the arches, the miles of steps, the stone boat, and the way the buildings seem to rise from in between the foliage knock that view of normalcy askew. For the Prisoner to work, the Village must appear to be, on the surface, an ideal place to retire. Were it hell, then Number Six's refusal to play along would seem less heroic. But to be offered life in a beautiful Mediterranean villa, with food and tea, and music, and life-sized chess, without having to work to pay for it (why did some Villagers have jobs, for instance, the waitresses or the operator of the general store?)...and then to turn it down because of scruples? At this point in my life, I might abandon my scruples if it meant never having to shovel snow again.
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The interior sets of the Prisoner were equally interesting -- among my favorites are Number Six's cottage home, and the gymnasium where the trampoline-swordfight-over-the-swimming-pool game was played. By far, however, the best interior set is the inside of the Green Dome, both the minimalist office of Number Two, with its Aarnio-influenced egg chair and clinical lighting; and the control room, where unnamed watchers rotated on a giant industrial see-saw, constantly peering at monitoring equipment while the electronic eye, reminiscent of the CBS logo (which broadcast the Prisoner in the U.S.), revolves slowly around the room.
3. Danger Diabolik (1968, though I'm sure filming began in 1967) - The Diabolik Cave [Art Direction: Flavio Mogherini] Danger Diabolik set out to make the ultimate headquarters, and it would've succeeded too, if Ken Adams hadn't already achieved perfection with You Only Live Twice (see #2). Still, the Diabolik Cave is a wonder to behold. Batman would watch this film, as the Jaguar XKE pulls into the vastness of the underground lair, and feel as though the Batcave were a one-room flat. The Diabolik Cave, if Diabolik were ever captured, would become a national monument and visitors would flock to the gift shops to send their friends and family back home postcards of the experience.
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2. You Only Live Twice (1967) - Blofeld's Volcano Lair [Production design: Ken Adams; Art direction: Harry Pottle; Set Decoration: David Ffolkes] Only number two? I know, I know, I said this was my idea of Heaven, but the top spot on this list goes to a film whose sets, more than any other, define the ideal of the 60s-modern film set. Still: this film literally set the standard, so that the words "volcano lair" are understood universally, like the choking symbol or the double wink and the elbow nudge. And as I said before, there's plenty to love about this volcano lair, from the fake lava retractable roof, to the monorail system, to the potential for ninjas to swing down on ropes with machine guns. What works best here for me is the mix of the organic and the industrial, the bare rock face almost indistinguishably fading into the concrete and metal. Also: sometimes there's a rocket ship.
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Now jump to 1:05:24, to the school where Mata Hari developed her talents, with sharp angles and planes that evoke the best of German Expressionism. The school houses the monochromatic decoder room seen at 1:11:05, with that wonderful sharp sans serif A anchoring the set. There's plenty to be seen in between, but I also especially like the "fingerprint" room at 1:51:05; Dr. Noah's lair at 1:51:30, with its goldbrick chairs that evoke Goldfinger and the plastic-wrapped art pieces that line the area in front of the desk; his flesh-colored inner sanctum at 1:53:51, lined with shapes and objects with which Freudians could have a field day; and of course the closing sequence where the regal titular casino is home to an extended fistfight between cowboys, indians, paratroopers, gangsters and French policemen.
If you're watching Casino Royale for some sort of plot or characterization, you're going about things all wrong. This is pure visual spectacle, a satirical time capsule of an era now long gone... Or maybe I just like watching Ursula Andress do things in slow motion. Can you blame me?