Latest / The Art of Costume Podcast / Oppenheimer with Costume Designer, Ellen Mirojnick

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Oppenheimer with Costume Designer, Ellen Mirojnick · The Art of Costume Podcast

• 0:11
  He was a ladies man and he liked very fine things, so I don't
• 0:16
  really think that we played that down in any way.
• 0:20
  I remember seeing him at one of the first, you know, parties,
• 0:23
  and I think it's when he meets Gene and I'm just like, wow,
• 0:26
  this man has style and a swag. Like I I get it, you know?
• 0:32
  He purposely has to have it. Hello and welcome to the Art of
• 0:44
  Costume podcast. I'm Elizabeth Joy Glass.
• 0:46
  And I'm Spencer Williams. Elizabeth, good to see you 2
• 0:50
  times. In one week, I know how.
• 0:54
  How lucky are we? I know.
• 0:56
  How was your past two days? Great.
• 0:59
  I took myself to breakfast. It was actually quite good.
• 1:03
  Yeah, so you were. You're like a diner person now.
• 1:06
  Yeah, go sit with the old men at the counter.
• 1:09
  Read my news app. I won't be getting a a paper.
• 1:14
  That's too much work. Yeah, that's that's a bit over
• 1:17
  the top. Yeah, it's, it's been good over
• 1:21
  here. Just enjoying some iced coffee.
• 1:24
  I'm back in my video game phase. What are you?
• 1:28
  Playing. Well, of course I fell back into
• 1:30
  The Sims over vacation, so that that will probably fizzle out
• 1:35
  any day now because we've talked about this.
• 1:38
  Once you start, you just get hooked for like a couple weeks
• 1:41
  and then you fall off. I I deleted The Sims, but I
• 1:47
  think I'm just gonna wait for whatever their next edition.
• 1:50
  Yeah, they're whatever. It'll be Sims 5 next, I think.
• 1:54
  Sims 5 is in the works. They just came out with that
• 1:58
  like new expansion pack though where you you could be like a a
• 2:03
  landlord and own like apartment building.
• 2:06
  Have you seen that? No, that's how long I've been
• 2:09
  out of this since. Well, it's like pretty new.
• 2:11
  I think I might get that, honestly.
• 2:14
  OK, that actually sounds fun. Aspirations.
• 2:18
  You know, I've been playing Dream Light, which I need a
• 2:20
  Dream Light update from you. And also I've been playing God
• 2:24
  of War. I know you probably like, but
• 2:26
  oh. OK.
• 2:27
  Yeah. That's fun.
• 2:28
  I I know some people who play that.
• 2:30
  My brother who is a video game designer, like gets me all these
• 2:34
  video games like every Christmas and like I just have like a
• 2:38
  stack of like unopened video games.
• 2:40
  So I'm like, OK, I gotta start cracking these open because pile
• 2:44
  keeps getting bigger and. Bigger and so that's fun.
• 2:46
  Yeah, it's cool. Yeah.
• 2:47
  Did you get the Dream Light expansion yet?
• 2:50
  No, not yet. But I'm dying to.
• 2:53
  I will be very shortly. Have you?
• 2:56
  No. Do you love?
• 2:59
  It yeah, I. Do.
• 3:02
  How is the the little controversy in your village
• 3:05
  going? Oh, you know, spicier by the
• 3:09
  minute. Yeah.
• 3:11
  I see Prince Eric and Belle just, you know, often at Remy's,
• 3:17
  just just sitting there like like nothing's wrong.
• 3:22
  Never with their spouses. Never with their spouses.
• 3:26
  I never literally never see Eric and Ariel together.
• 3:30
  Never. Occasionally Belle and Beast.
• 3:35
  I'll see them like outside their home.
• 3:37
  But never Eric and Ariel. Because Belle's always on the
• 3:40
  move to go meet up with Eric and they're kind of giving like a
• 3:45
  Oppenheimer and Jean Tatlock type vibe.
• 3:49
  Yes, absolutely. Because that's.
• 3:54
  That's a comparison that makes sense.
• 3:59
  Yeah, Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
• 4:04
  I finished A Gilded Age last night.
• 4:09
  So good, Elizabeth. Oh my God, I can't believe.
• 4:14
  You didn't tell me this before. We start at this and now I.
• 4:18
  Now you can't talk about spoilers.
• 4:23
  We will. Come back to this discussion.
• 4:26
  OK, yeah, But yeah, it was off the chain.
• 4:29
  I I'm sorry, but but the Gilded Age is one of the best shows on
• 4:32
  TV right now, and you can't convince me otherwise.
• 4:35
  It's just it's not happening. Like, if you need just like an
• 4:40
  excellent TV show that's dramatic but doesn't like stress
• 4:45
  you out, the Gilded Age is the way to go.
• 4:49
  Yeah 'cause you're like somehow you root for every character.
• 4:53
  Yeah. You know, you're like, oh, I
• 4:55
  like, I mean, I won't get to Season 2, but it's so much of it
• 4:58
  is about like a conflict between like two major characters and
• 5:02
  you don't really care who wins. Like.
• 5:05
  I want them both to win or none of them win.
• 5:07
  I don't know. Yeah.
• 5:09
  Yeah, even the people that are supposed to be like the bad
• 5:11
  guys, you're like. They're also the good guys.
• 5:18
  But we'll we're gonna put a cork in it because I don't want to
• 5:22
  blow it for all of you. Plus, we plan on doing a Gilded
• 5:24
  Age episode probably very soon. This is true.
• 5:26
  This. Is true, Yeah.
• 5:28
  In the meantime, we watched Oppenheimer.
• 5:32
  Yeah, We are continuing our Barbenheimer week with
• 5:36
  Oppenheimer and Elizabeth, you just saw it.
• 5:38
  So what did you think? This was wild.
• 5:43
  This was wild. Especially 'cause I feel like
• 5:47
  our generation, like a lot of the controversy around the
• 5:54
  atomic bomb and Oppenheimer had, like, completely died out.
• 5:58
  And 'cause I'm like, I don't think I even learned about him
• 6:00
  in like a history class at. School.
• 6:03
  I don't think I did either when I heard the name Oppenheimer and
• 6:07
  it rang 0 bells. Same.
• 6:11
  So I was like, oh, OK, Like, I knew like the names of the
• 6:15
  places and like, I was like, Oh yeah, that's like where all of
• 6:19
  that happened. But like the people involved, I
• 6:23
  didn't know. I I knew about the Manhattan
• 6:27
  Project from playing the video game Civilization, which
• 6:32
  probably speaks to the the deep sickness that the story is
• 6:37
  about. I I did know about the Manhattan
• 6:41
  Project from watching, like, World War 2 documentaries, but I
• 6:45
  don't think I'd ever watched one specifically about it, so I just
• 6:50
  didn't know any of the names. Yeah, I mean, I do have my basic
• 6:54
  World War 2 history. I'm not going to sell myself
• 6:56
  that short, but like, it's a lot of the specifics of the story I
• 7:00
  was not very familiar with. So I was.
• 7:03
  I even going into this film, I really didn't know what I was
• 7:06
  expecting. I knew involved, you know, the
• 7:08
  atomic bomb whatnot. But I love this film.
• 7:12
  I It was good, for lack of a better word.
• 7:15
  Blew me away. Yeah, and good job, Christopher
• 7:18
  Nolan. This is the first thing I
• 7:20
  watched in a very long time without multitasking, so.
• 7:24
  Oh, hello, that's. That's high praise for me if I
• 7:28
  didn't multitask. Yeah, that is a lot from
• 7:32
  Elizabeth. Yeah, it was so good.
• 7:33
  It was so cinematic. And I saw this in IMAX, and that
• 7:38
  was an experience, the music by Ludwig Ranson.
• 7:42
  Oh, so good. So good.
• 7:44
  Oh my gosh. And the cast.
• 7:46
  And we're going to get into the costumes.
• 7:48
  But the costume designs are. Costume design is really it's a
• 7:52
  masterpiece. And it's like, it's three hours.
• 7:54
  But I wasn't. I wasn't ever bored.
• 7:56
  And like, we were kind of talking about this beforehand.
• 7:59
  Like, Christopher Nolan could have easily made two movies out
• 8:03
  of this story. But having it be just one big
• 8:07
  movie, it just the story is so much more concise and like,
• 8:11
  moves so well that you're like, yeah, 22 movies of this would
• 8:15
  have been too much. Yeah, that's the thing.
• 8:17
  A lot of people, I mean, we hear to complain all the time about,
• 8:20
  like movies are too long these days.
• 8:22
  But I think a longer movie is fine if you could keep us, you
• 8:26
  know, interested throughout the whole thing.
• 8:28
  And Christopher Nolan achieved that with this film.
• 8:31
  I would say, you know, sometimes, you know, big films
• 8:33
  like that don't do it. And then the complaint, you
• 8:36
  know, feels necessary. A little bit like that was 45
• 8:39
  minutes too long. I think Oppenheimer was just
• 8:42
  right. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:43
  There wasn't anything unnecessary, like story wise in
• 8:47
  it. Everything made sense.
• 8:50
  It was just it was a great movie.
• 8:52
  Yeah, I agree. And I think we should get into
• 8:55
  it. So I will start us off with a
• 8:57
  summary. During World War 2, Lieutenant
• 9:02
  General Leslie Groves, junior appoints physicist J Robert
• 9:06
  Oppenheimer to work on the top secret Manhattan Project.
• 9:10
  Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years
• 9:13
  developing and designing the atomic bomb.
• 9:16
  Their work comes to fruition on July 16th, 1945 as they
• 9:20
  witnessed the world's first nuclear explosion, forever
• 9:24
  changing the course of history. And that is Oppenheimer.
• 9:28
  That is Oppenheimer. Quite the change of pace from
• 9:32
  Barbie. Oh yeah.
• 9:35
  Oh yeah. I've been reading so like
• 9:37
  articles about like how the two of them premiering on the same
• 9:42
  day, like is what made them both so like successful and I'm like.
• 9:47
  Yeah, it was. It was like, true.
• 9:49
  It was. And I'm like, I know there are
• 9:51
  so many people I know who went to go see Oppenheimer, who did
• 9:55
  the whole like Barbenheimer experience, who absolutely would
• 9:59
  not have seen Oppenheimer and like otherwise they wouldn't
• 10:04
  have done it. They just, they wanted to be
• 10:06
  part of this experience. And I'm like, you know what?
• 10:10
  Good for them. Yeah, it's like a story of like
• 10:12
  2 enemies coming together and becoming like close allies and
• 10:15
  friends, you know? Yeah, because they both carried
• 10:18
  each other to the top in 2023. They really did.
• 10:23
  Going behind the costumes, we have director Christopher Nolan
• 10:27
  and costume designer Ellen Mirajnik.
• 10:29
  You will know her work from Fatal Attraction, Wall Street
• 10:34
  Basic Instinct. Chaplain Rodger Hammerstein,
• 10:38
  Cinderella from 1997, for which she got an Emmy nomination.
• 10:43
  Starship Troopers. The Chronicles of Riddick Behind
• 10:48
  the Candelabra, for which she got an Emmy Win The Nick, the
• 10:55
  Greatest Showman, Maleficent Mistress of Evil Bridgerton
• 10:59
  Season one, for which she got an Emmy nomination. 2021 Cinderella
• 11:05
  and this year for Oppenheimer. She has received a Costume
• 11:09
  Designer Guild nomination. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for
• 11:15
  Ellen. This is so fun.
• 11:17
  I mean, Ellen Mirajnik is is incredible.
• 11:21
  I love all of her work and she's such a great person and very
• 11:25
  inspiring and I love talking to her.
• 11:27
  And I'm so happy that Oppenheimer has gained all the
• 11:31
  recognition. She got a Costume Designer's
• 11:33
  Guild Award, and I think she deserves an Academy Award also.
• 11:38
  You know, time will tell on that.
• 11:40
  But I'm just so happy for Ellen. I'm so excited.
• 11:43
  This film was really beautiful and like the centerpiece.
• 11:49
  What I do like about this is like, the centerpiece is
• 11:52
  Oppenheimer himself, and with like between her costume,
• 11:56
  Cillian Murphy's performance, and Christopher Nolan's
• 11:59
  direction, just everything always zeroes in on him.
• 12:03
  And it just like it's it's perfect.
• 12:06
  Yeah, it's so good. And actually more on that later,
• 12:09
  'cause I think you kind of touched on my one costume to
• 12:12
  rule them all. But before we get into that, we
• 12:16
  have a exciting, I guess it's not really a surprise, but
• 12:20
  surprise for you all. Costume designer Alan Mirajnik
• 12:25
  is here for a interview about her work on Oppenheimer.
• 12:31
  So we're going to take a little break and when we come back,
• 12:33
  you'll be hearing my interview with Alan Mirajnik.
• 12:36
  So excited. I am so excited to introduce
• 13:06
  costume designer Ellen Mirajnik. Hey, Ellen.
• 13:10
  Hey, Spencer. Good morning.
• 13:11
  How are you? Good morning.
• 13:13
  I'm so excited to finally be talking to you.
• 13:15
  I'm such a fan of your work going all the way back to
• 13:17
  Cinderella, so this is a big privilege.
• 13:21
  Oh, it's my. Well, let's dive into
• 13:26
  Oppenheimer. What a huge film.
• 13:28
  I admit when I first heard about it, I was a little like on the
• 13:31
  fence. But as the tension built and got
• 13:34
  closer and closer, I'm obsessed with this movie.
• 13:36
  Now. I've seen it twice already and
• 13:38
  going in for a third, I feel it. I actually I am also going in to
• 13:42
  see it again. Nice.
• 13:44
  Sweet. I hadn't seen it till it was all
• 13:48
  together the the night of the 17th in New York and it was a
• 13:55
  magnificent IMAX screen and 70mm IMAX and I was overwhelmed.
• 14:05
  I was overwhelmed by the whole entire film.
• 14:09
  I It took about a week to digest.
• 14:12
  I feel like I'm still in that period.
• 14:14
  Oh. OK, it is really quite quite a a
• 14:19
  layered, magnificent portrait and it is it.
• 14:24
  There's so much that and the listen, it's it's Chris Nolan's
• 14:30
  genius. I mean he is magnificent artist.
• 14:34
  He is a genius. He's I think #1 filmmaker that I
• 14:40
  have really ever known and worked with and it's quite
• 14:45
  extraordinary how he weaves this magic together in into a
• 14:52
  masterpiece of of a film. Yeah, I've.
• 14:57
  I couldn't agree more. And for everyone who's
• 14:59
  listening, definitely go see an IMAX like as soon as possible
• 15:02
  because it was such an experience.
• 15:04
  I was. I was overwhelmed.
• 15:05
  It's it's overwhelming but not in a bad way.
• 15:08
  And it's not a way that when in previous IMAX films, if you sit
• 15:13
  through them and if it, particularly if it's an action
• 15:16
  film and it's quite intense and it's quite frenetic and quite
• 15:21
  you're not quite sure if you're in the midst of it and you're
• 15:24
  being tousled and so on and so forth.
• 15:26
  But this film is so intimate in an IMAX experience that there's
• 15:34
  nothing like it. I felt it was actually a very
• 15:38
  original experience. Right.
• 15:40
  It was a Symphony of imagery, I would say.
• 15:44
  Talk about the music. The music is just the.
• 15:46
  Most It's so good. Very score that you'll ever
• 15:50
  hear. And yeah, every single element
• 15:54
  and and it's done so seamlessly. I was listening to the score in
• 15:58
  the car yesterday. It's so good, I I don't even
• 16:04
  think that good is the right adjective.
• 16:07
  I mean, I don't. I have stopped trying to
• 16:09
  describe the film using adjectives because I don't think
• 16:13
  that there aren't enough to accommodate it.
• 16:17
  I really don't and I'm quite proud of of this film.
• 16:21
  It's it is, it's once in a lifetime.
• 16:25
  I feel blessed. Wow.
• 16:26
  Well, that leads me to my first question.
• 16:28
  You know, this is such a powerful cinematic story.
• 16:31
  So what originally drew you to this story and the project?
• 16:36
  Chris Nolan asking to meet me. That'll do it.
• 16:41
  I mean it's it's when I met Chris and Emma.
• 16:45
  Emma Thomas, he you don't you don't read anything you just go
• 16:51
  on a meet and greet like everybody every actor ever goes
• 16:56
  on a meet and greet, you know, that kind of thing.
• 16:58
  Designers don't necessarily go on meet and greet, so usually
• 17:01
  know what it what it is really. Well, I knew what it was, but I
• 17:06
  didn't read anything. I did.
• 17:09
  However, I did. However, in all fairness listen
• 17:13
  to as much as the book as I could before the book that it's
• 17:17
  based on, American Prometheus. Before meeting, just to have an
• 17:22
  idea and just to have a a meet and greet.
• 17:28
  I was bald. They said Chris Nolan wants to
• 17:31
  meet you for this film. Would you when On this date or
• 17:36
  what have you and be there basically not something that you
• 17:43
  say no to or you just like say really OK.
• 17:48
  But I had known that Jeffrey Curland, who has done Chris's
• 17:53
  last previous, the last couple of previous films that Chris
• 17:58
  made, was not available. I know that this film was
• 18:02
  happening on a particular at a particular time and he was still
• 18:06
  involved in a project. Nice opening.
• 18:09
  There it was an opening and I feel blessed that I was.
• 18:15
  I was asked to to meet the Nolans and it became the most
• 18:20
  extraordinary experience that I have ever had.
• 18:23
  And I really say that, and I don't know if this was the 80th
• 18:27
  film that I did. I don't know if it was the set
• 18:30
  or the project that was, that's including some television.
• 18:35
  But there was nothing like this experience in my entire career.
• 18:43
  That's incredible. Especially, I mean with the crew
• 18:45
  that you've had to keep topping yourself like this is.
• 18:48
  I mean, it's incredible. I don't know many people that
• 18:52
  have had that experience. So it's really, really, really
• 18:54
  incredible. It's, it's it.
• 18:56
  It is real. I mean, this is in hindsight
• 18:59
  now, you know, I mean no matter what the outcome of the film was
• 19:05
  to be, the experience of it was by far the most exceptional and
• 19:14
  interesting and new. I do emphasize new because you
• 19:20
  know, there's a formula in which we work and so on, but and each
• 19:24
  experience is different depending on who you're working
• 19:26
  with and what the vision is. But this was, it was actually
• 19:33
  very new from the beginning, actually, from meeting them and
• 19:36
  not knowing what the material was and not being able to read
• 19:41
  the text until you were hired and said yes, you could.
• 19:47
  And I mean, so that in itself is an entirely new approach.
• 19:53
  I don't really think of it, Spencer, as topping myself as
• 19:58
  much as as much as experiencing yet another way of telling a
• 20:07
  story in a way that it was a compelling story beyond and.
• 20:14
  Chris Nolan is a master you know and and he is a legend.
• 20:20
  He is a master and there's nobody better and there's nobody
• 20:23
  in that category. Unfortunately in our in our day
• 20:26
  and age maybe two, I mean maybe three, right.
• 20:30
  I don't know. But I was very, very I In
• 20:33
  hindsight though, in in Full disclosure and hindsight, I I do
• 20:40
  feel quite blessed that over the course of my career I have
• 20:46
  worked with some of the greats in the in modern cinema I have
• 20:51
  worked with some of the greats and even one that has passed.
• 20:56
  That was the end of his his career and that was Sir Dickie
• 21:02
  Attenborough. But otherwise I have worked with
• 21:05
  some of the greats and I feel quite fortunate about that.
• 21:10
  Right. Well, speaking to, we talked a
• 21:13
  little bit about the book which based on 2005 biography titled
• 21:18
  American Prometheus, The Triumphant Tragedy of J Robert
• 21:22
  Oppenheimer. It details his extraordinary
• 21:25
  life and also deep tragedy as we've seen.
• 21:28
  I've spoken to you before about your research process when back
• 21:32
  when you did Bridgerton. I remember back then being like,
• 21:34
  wow, you laid out all these mood boards and it's just such
• 21:37
  detail. So I know going into this film,
• 21:41
  I bet you it was not any different.
• 21:42
  I'm sure there's tons of research.
• 21:44
  What was your process like in preparing for this?
• 21:47
  Well, it's funny you say that, but it's two entirely different
• 21:51
  things for. Sure.
• 21:53
  And the details and and and the the details are there.
• 21:59
  However, in on Oppenheimer, it's starting Oppenheimer, the amount
• 22:05
  of visual material was vast. OK, so it was not.
• 22:10
  We didn't have to make it up. That's good and.
• 22:14
  So you there are obviously certain photographs would be
• 22:19
  more inspirational than others or when you put the when you
• 22:23
  collage it together it would be a very, very emotional
• 22:28
  experience of what your research needs to accomplish being that
• 22:33
  you're going over from 25 to 62. So there's quite a lot of
• 22:42
  information that you have to pack into.
• 22:45
  I always, I don't necessarily I call them like little story
• 22:49
  booklets I put together. So that's what.
• 22:53
  So in in selecting photos that would best represent each decade
• 23:00
  or each each character in each decade or the feeling of each
• 23:04
  decade, there was a vast amount to choose from.
• 23:07
  So that was it. It I drawing on other
• 23:11
  inspiration would be just like kind of tones for example during
• 23:19
  Los Alamos or at the beginning of Los Alamos and building us
• 23:23
  Los Los Alamos and and and how that comes to pass.
• 23:29
  It was very, very much the feeling of a western.
• 23:34
  OK. So, yeah, that was I I did sneak
• 23:39
  in some Western research in there and some Eastwood and and
• 23:45
  just what that kind of camaraderie and what it felt
• 23:51
  like in that environment, in that type of environment where
• 23:56
  it wasn't, you know, it was rough and tumble and not
• 24:00
  sophisticated and where we were at.
• 24:04
  So I just needed to feel that although the the photographs,
• 24:09
  the real photographs from Los Alamos at that time did feel
• 24:12
  like that, but I just needed a little bit more visceral
• 24:14
  experience to be able to get into Los Alamos and so on.
• 24:20
  And the rest of it was very well there was a point of view
• 24:25
  actually that we were after because knowing that we were
• 24:29
  going to shoot black and white and color what we were after was
• 24:36
  not making a precious. I'm going to try to be like as
• 24:41
  clear as I can about this precious period film.
• 24:47
  And what I mean by that is, is that although I've worked in a
• 24:54
  lot of a lot of genres that have been period in the past, I've
• 25:00
  actually not been really given the opportunity to make a
• 25:02
  precious period film. I really haven't in all fair
• 25:07
  how? Did this happen?
• 25:08
  I don't know. But it's really true.
• 25:11
  And I thought that, oh, I'm going to make a period Chris
• 25:14
  Nolan film, but that wasn't the case.
• 25:16
  We were not after a precious film.
• 25:20
  So close. So close, but not not on the
• 25:25
  nose. And so when we began the film,
• 25:29
  it was very, Chris was very clear in what his vision was and
• 25:34
  that it was from and it's written of course, and being
• 25:38
  done from Oppenheimer's point of view.
• 25:42
  So when you do that type of work, how, how do you allow
• 25:49
  enough precise but not obvious leeway in the periods to be able
• 25:57
  to have everything slide from decade to decade to decade
• 26:02
  without taking anybody out of the story?
• 26:05
  Does that make sense to you? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
• 26:09
  OK. So that's basically the
• 26:11
  challenge, right. And it it's a very, it's an
• 26:16
  interesting challenge to have because in the very, very
• 26:20
  beginning I've said this before in a couple of interviews, but I
• 26:24
  will say it again it was clear because I mean I mean this is at
• 26:28
  the at the core. It was clear from the research
• 26:31
  and looking at it with Chris and Emma that Oppenheimer, when laid
• 26:36
  out across the decades from the beginning to the end of his
• 26:41
  life, his silhouette basically never changed.
• 26:45
  And that was very clear to me from the get go.
• 26:49
  The one thing that wasn't clear, obviously, is that they were
• 26:53
  black and white photos, right, right.
• 26:56
  So what you felt with textures and kind of what you know to be
• 27:01
  colors that would be relevant and so on.
• 27:05
  And at one point during this meeting, Chris had turned and
• 27:08
  asked, he said, well, what should we do with the shirts?
• 27:12
  And I remember just saying they're blue.
• 27:16
  They said great. I mean, now I didn't know that
• 27:19
  they were blue, but I thought it would be blue and shades of
• 27:23
  blue. Certainly it's the Killian and
• 27:27
  the color of his eyes are clear, but so were Oppenheimer's eyes.
• 27:32
  They were also blue. So it was very, it was somewhat
• 27:38
  of a very organic, very, very quick study, if you would.
• 27:43
  There was nothing precious about the study.
• 27:45
  It was where his his silhouette was the same.
• 27:48
  It changed with the fabrication. He came from a wealthy, he came
• 27:53
  from a wealthy home. His father was a I think he.
• 27:59
  I don't know if he had a fabric company or he imported fabric.
• 28:05
  I wasn't quite sure, don't really remember.
• 28:07
  But he was exposed to the finer things in life at a very, very
• 28:12
  early age. Subsequently, he would he would
• 28:16
  know. Good from bad, you know, no,
• 28:18
  cheap from from fine, right? And so he was he.
• 28:26
  Even though his silhouette never changed, he was expressive in
• 28:30
  the way he he presented himself. If that leads me to my next
• 28:36
  question, because when you first see him, when I think about
• 28:38
  physicists, you know, you think of lab coats and kind of a nerdy
• 28:41
  guy, which, you know, that's fair.
• 28:43
  But the way that he presents himself, especially before Los
• 28:47
  Alamos, is just very, I don't know, there's a little bit of a
• 28:49
  style there, even if his silhouette never changes.
• 28:52
  So that makes a lot of sense. Yes, they definitely, definitely
• 28:56
  is a style to it. Yeah, he's.
• 28:57
  I think he's very stylish. I agree.
• 28:59
  I agree. I think he's very stylish.
• 29:01
  He's very conscious of how he presents himself.
• 29:04
  Remember, there's so he's a genius and there's so much
• 29:07
  turmoil inside that nervous system of his and his brain and
• 29:14
  there's an explosiveness inside of it an an unharnessed
• 29:20
  explosiveness inside of him. And so I feel that in in
• 29:25
  creating an idea of showing yourself or presenting A
• 29:30
  silhouette that is is I would say a bit in part in some ways
• 29:39
  unconventional for a physicist. And very I hesitate to use the
• 29:47
  word dapper, dapper in a way, but he's very presentational.
• 29:53
  However, he was very, you know, he was a ladies man and he liked
• 29:58
  very fine things and had very, very fine things and we're
• 30:01
  accustomed to that. So I don't really think that we
• 30:07
  played that down in any way. You know, we just, we played
• 30:11
  down a pallet, but that's basically because it that's what
• 30:15
  we felt it needed to be. I remember seeing him at one of
• 30:18
  the first, you know, parties, and I think it's when he meets
• 30:22
  Gene and I'm just like, wow, this man has style and a swag.
• 30:27
  Like I I get it, you know? Purposely has to have it, but I
• 30:32
  think that it was part. I mean the collaboration between
• 30:37
  Killian, myself and Chris was exceptional.
• 30:40
  You know, I mean Killian is the most collaborative and committed
• 30:46
  actor that you could find. And because Oppenheimer had a
• 30:52
  particular feel to him, which we feel at its, I would say
• 30:57
  biggest, biggest time during Los Alamos, I mean he was empowered.
• 31:02
  He was the leader, he was the head of the, he was everything.
• 31:07
  And that's where he's most empowered.
• 31:10
  I think to build to that and to build to exhibiting that
• 31:15
  silhouette was something that was we worked on and was we were
• 31:21
  very careful about how do you lead up to that and does that
• 31:26
  making sure once again that it doesn't look forced.
• 31:30
  So typically when I talk to costume designers I always hear
• 31:34
  about productions and their fear of hats.
• 31:37
  But this is a movie full of, I should say, hat moments on
• 31:41
  Oppenheimer. One of the first notes that
• 31:44
  Chris actually just said point blank, Nobody's to wear hats.
• 31:50
  Oppenheimer's the only one that wears a hat.
• 31:53
  And why is that? He has a particular, I call it
• 31:57
  mythic image, iconic image and it always includes this hat.
• 32:04
  And so to highlight that at a very at the at a pinnacle moment
• 32:13
  was quite important in the story and for the evolution of the
• 32:18
  character. And if do not this is the hats
• 32:22
  are part of the preciousness that I was talking about before.
• 32:26
  Clearly we know in period films, most period films, if not 100%,
• 32:32
  certainly 90% will always includes men and women's hats.
• 32:38
  OK, granted I didn't have hats in in really in in Bridgeton, so
• 32:43
  I won't take this back. I don't want to get known for
• 32:46
  that. But it's true.
• 32:49
  This is really true. A good hairstyle will always,
• 32:55
  always be fabulous or or necessary when there are no hats
• 33:01
  and we had the best on Oppenheimer.
• 33:04
  That being said, one of the things he Chris said no hats.
• 33:09
  So when you don't obviously in the army Matt Damon wears a hat
• 33:16
  etcetera. There was a hat because of
• 33:20
  two-story points that needed to be had and and we needed to do
• 33:26
  for Einstein and which we did. One of which is a story point.
• 33:35
  It flies away. The other one is an image that
• 33:39
  we loved of Einstein when when come upon in a knit hat.
• 33:45
  When he's come upon in a knit hat.
• 33:47
  But aside from that there are no hats.
• 33:50
  I think that I can't I I don't have a psychology for it or what
• 33:55
  have you. It is.
• 33:57
  I mean, I I remember discussing with Chris a couple of times.
• 34:01
  Are you sure? No hats, because I won't have
• 34:03
  them. Like you don't have to tell me
• 34:06
  twice. I mean I'm not going to have
• 34:09
  them. You sure.
• 34:10
  And he was 100% sure and I think that it was perfect for the
• 34:14
  vision and I think it was perfect for the vision in this
• 34:17
  in this respect and and and what and I I I never questioned it
• 34:23
  after like the last time he said no.
• 34:25
  No hats. No hats.
• 34:26
  I never questioned it from that point forward.
• 34:28
  I never looked at everybody and said, oh, I wish I had a hat.
• 34:32
  Never. No, Oppenheimer has his hat.
• 34:37
  It's the most important thing that we had to get right for
• 34:42
  him. And we did.
• 34:44
  And I was thrilled to death about that.
• 34:48
  And that being said is when you watch the film, The one thing I
• 34:54
  came away with a week later after digesting the film,
• 34:57
  truthfully is, is that this isn't a biopic to me.
• 35:03
  This is all my words and thoughts.
• 35:07
  It's not a biopic. It is really a portrait.
• 35:09
  It's a for me, I think of it as a work of art, the whole piece,
• 35:15
  and it is a portrait. It is the portrait of this man
• 35:18
  in in throughout his Life, OK. And with that, in how Chris
• 35:25
  tells the story, it is not necessarily a period piece.
• 35:29
  So I'm taking that word away and it really is a time piece.
• 35:34
  And why I say that is simply because it slides from time to
• 35:42
  time. You always know when you're in
• 35:45
  another time, but it's not hit over your head.
• 35:48
  It's not precious. It's not dated underneath,
• 35:52
  nothing happens. It is from he.
• 35:55
  He is telling his story from his point of view, and so that
• 36:00
  portrait slides from the beginning of his life to the end
• 36:04
  of his life. But it slides in lots of
• 36:07
  different ways. And if in fact there were hats,
• 36:12
  it could. I don't know that it would, but
• 36:15
  I'm just suggesting that it could take you out of the story
• 36:20
  and the intimacy of the story. OK, yes, they wore hats inside
• 36:26
  in the in in those periods of time and so on.
• 36:29
  That wasn't only an, you know, exterior moment, But I think
• 36:35
  that if I reflect on the story being up close and personal, if
• 36:42
  you will, a hat potentially would have taken you out of the
• 36:48
  story just a smidge. And it would.
• 36:51
  It would have not allowed for the intimacy that was created
• 36:58
  throughout this this tale. That's so interesting.
• 37:02
  I totally get what you mean. Actually, now they, I think of
• 37:05
  it just I could imagine just that small little detail and
• 37:08
  just what's on their heads could really pull you out.
• 37:11
  That's really interesting. And I'm not saying that another
• 37:14
  period pictures you. You look at it from, you know,
• 37:17
  the balcony, so to speak. You know you don't.
• 37:20
  There are different, you know, portraits in different in
• 37:23
  different ways in which period films are expressed.
• 37:27
  But I don't really think, I don't think of this film as a
• 37:32
  period film. I think of it as a portrait
• 37:35
  through time. And it's like a timepiece.
• 37:40
  It's not. That's why I said in the
• 37:42
  beginning, it really, really feels quite original to me.
• 37:47
  It doesn't feel like anything else that I have seen anything
• 37:51
  anywhere at any time. And not just because I was part
• 37:56
  of it just as the audience. I mean, when I watched it for
• 38:00
  the first time, I was like an audience member.
• 38:02
  I wasn't watching it for any of the work that, you know, we did.
• 38:08
  I think on that in that way it adds to the exceptionality of
• 38:14
  this experience. Right.
• 38:16
  I totally agree with you. It just feels so original and
• 38:19
  new. Watch it.
• 38:20
  Something that you know is a story that's been, you know,
• 38:24
  happened quite a few years ago but still feel so new and fresh
• 38:29
  all of a sudden. Yes, I feel the same way.
• 38:32
  Yeah. So now that we have the hat on
• 38:36
  Oppenheimer and talking about a silhouette when we're in Los
• 38:39
  Alamos, we you touch a little bit on the Western inspiration,
• 38:42
  the very slight Western inspiration.
• 38:44
  I could help but feel like he was almost like a sheriff in
• 38:47
  this town. When he was walking around it,
• 38:49
  he felt like the man. Yes.
• 38:52
  Intentional. Yes, it was very intentional and
• 38:55
  and it was very intentional and that's where he he really
• 38:59
  blossoms. He has the power and he exhibits
• 39:04
  it as, I mean there's a, you know, a great line that Robbie
• 39:08
  says to him. We'd get that uniform off and
• 39:11
  the next shot you see is the hat, the pipe, him staring out
• 39:15
  the out the window with those magnificent blue eyes that like
• 39:19
  kind of just shoots through his eyes, puts the hat on, takes the
• 39:23
  pipe and here we are as he as he walks out and clearly he's
• 39:31
  become the man, the man. And I think that I I mean I I
• 39:38
  love this picture. I do love this picture because
• 39:41
  the colors is so, so perfect. I think that he is just that
• 39:47
  hat, which is somewhat of a hybrid.
• 39:49
  I think it's a hybrid. I don't know what to call it,
• 39:53
  but it's a hybrid of a pork pie with an extended brim that looks
• 39:58
  to me that. You know, this takes place in
• 40:02
  New Mexico, and he loved New Mexico and loved he lived above
• 40:07
  Santa Fe and so on. He loved being in that
• 40:11
  environment and stuff. And I don't know, it has a
• 40:14
  little bit of more of an extended brim.
• 40:16
  It's not a fedora brim. It's not that, but it's not a
• 40:19
  cowboy brim, but it's a kind of a combo plate, I think.
• 40:24
  I don't know. That's why I say I don't know
• 40:26
  what I would call it, but it's certainly not a typical pork pie
• 40:29
  hat. Yeah, and Oppenheimer wasn't the
• 40:34
  only character in this film. There were tons of costumes and
• 40:37
  I kept thinking Ellen must have had like the most brilliant
• 40:41
  massive team to put this together.
• 40:43
  I had the most brilliant team. Yes, they were.
• 40:46
  Specifically if the hearings and in Los Alamos.
• 40:49
  So how? How did this collaboration come
• 40:51
  together? What was it like working with
• 40:53
  your team? It was hectic as hell, hectic as
• 40:57
  hell. It's just the truth.
• 41:00
  It was that was the truth. It was hectic as hell.
• 41:04
  We were constantly on the go and constantly fitting and
• 41:08
  constantly producing and constantly going where are we
• 41:12
  going to get more clothes and constantly saying well can we
• 41:16
  use that instead of that and so on.
• 41:19
  Because because we did cover so, so much ground and and actually
• 41:27
  the amount of people said seem to us that they kept on growing
• 41:30
  and growing and growing. But I don't know that it really
• 41:34
  did but it felt like that and we were constantly fitting.
• 41:38
  So you know it's I I really think without the brilliance of
• 41:44
  the team as I would like look at what they were doing.
• 41:50
  I don't. I somehow, I don't know how I
• 41:54
  how I retain my objectivity but I did and maybe sometimes I
• 42:00
  would admit maybe I was sometimes too harsh and say no
• 42:04
  that tie's not right. No.
• 42:06
  I hate that suit and and I don't, you know that's what
• 42:09
  happens during during the process I think.
• 42:12
  But they were an amazing, very patient, very productive team.
• 42:19
  That work, the worked and worked and worked.
• 42:23
  There was not one minute that that wasn't somebody wasn't
• 42:28
  working. I mean, it just happened
• 42:31
  continually. The scene that you see with the
• 42:35
  students and in the auditorium when he comes in that we're
• 42:40
  looking at in color. That scene actually was that
• 42:45
  scene was never actually in the beginning in pre production
• 42:50
  thought to be one that would be very colorful.
• 42:54
  And Chris and Emma asked a couple of days before we shot it
• 42:59
  to can we do it very colorfully, you know, in bold color and
• 43:03
  something that maybe we haven't seen before.
• 43:06
  And fortunately, because of the brilliance of this team, they
• 43:10
  pulled it together, sent it up to New Mexico and we fit it the
• 43:14
  next day. So was that type of.
• 43:17
  There was nothing that was preset.
• 43:19
  There was. Everything was on the run, on
• 43:20
  the go. We got tired.
• 43:23
  We ran out of fitters, We ran out of fitters.
• 43:26
  In fact, Jeffrey Curling, God bless his soul and God bless our
• 43:30
  friendship, he came and fit the two parties that took place.
• 43:37
  The one where where Oppenheimer meets Kitty.
• 43:40
  Not the one in what's supposed to be the Plaza Hotel when
• 43:47
  Straws introduces his son-in-law and daughter to So Jeffrey fit
• 43:54
  all the women. Oh wow.
• 43:57
  Sometimes he got to phone a friend.
• 44:00
  Phone a friend, anybody. Are you sure you want to help?
• 44:02
  I'll give you a few hours. I mean, I I would.
• 44:05
  We were ready to take everything and and he did such a stupendous
• 44:08
  job, along with all the rest of my team.
• 44:12
  And so you know, with a little help from your friends, you go a
• 44:16
  long way because you can't do it by yourself.
• 44:20
  Right, you just. Can't do it by yourself.
• 44:22
  It's never a one man team. One of my one of my favorite
• 44:28
  moments was actually the black and white scenes and I it's just
• 44:32
  poses to me such an interesting conversation when it comes to
• 44:35
  design the costumes, how does that translate when they're
• 44:39
  filming in black and white? Like how are you deciding?
• 44:42
  Like what colors and how? How does that work?
• 44:44
  Well, we looked at black and white footage before we began.
• 44:48
  OK. And.
• 44:50
  And that helped, of course, You know, it gives you a bit of a
• 44:54
  ground, a foundation of from where to work in the case of
• 44:59
  this film, what it appeared to be.
• 45:01
  And and knowing the environments that we were in and and the
• 45:05
  population of the film, the one thing that you had to work with
• 45:09
  for the most part and the time periods.
• 45:11
  OK, is that. So if you're painting a
• 45:14
  painting, you know the people in the that move in and around the
• 45:20
  foreground, right? Could take on shapes.
• 45:24
  OK. So because it's the late 40s and
• 45:28
  and early 50s into the latter part of the 50s, you are faced
• 45:34
  with a lot of flat fabric. So those are flat shapes.
• 45:41
  So that's what you're dealing with, that you're dealing with
• 45:43
  shapes. You're not dealing with color.
• 45:46
  You'd light meet, you're looking at a grayscale more or less, you
• 45:50
  know. So what you try to do, what we
• 45:53
  try to do was really balance that grayscale in that type of
• 45:59
  in, in the in the background world and in some of our our,
• 46:03
  our, our, our secondary players. But for the most part, what we
• 46:08
  really try to do with the principal players is have enough
• 46:13
  texture. Have enough texture in within
• 46:16
  the grayscale. And the one way of course, that
• 46:19
  we have modern technology to check it continually is with the
• 46:24
  iPhone and just turn it to black and white.
• 46:27
  Get you get the idea of the contrast.
• 46:29
  You get the idea of the contrast and the texture and the contrast
• 46:34
  and seeing what you can do with it or what you might need to do
• 46:38
  with it. And because on the film Chris
• 46:42
  works so fast, so fast that you really have to just be happy
• 46:50
  with all that you have because you're never going to know where
• 46:52
  it's going to wind up. Do you know what I mean?
• 46:55
  So, so it it's you are the brush, brush strokes and he's
• 47:00
  doing the painting. You know what I mean?
• 47:02
  And and Hoyta, of course brilliant, brilliant, brilliant
• 47:06
  cinematographer. So that's what you hoped for,
• 47:10
  but we did always talk about texture in the very beginning in
• 47:14
  the pre production of it and the importance of the texture and so
• 47:18
  on. And and the thing that we always
• 47:20
  did have a library to look back on were those black and white
• 47:27
  photos of the research. So it always played an important
• 47:30
  part that a reference that you could when you're blinded by
• 47:36
  thousands of suits. Right And you just wait a
• 47:40
  minute. Did I see that before or or
• 47:42
  you're questioning yourself? There was a library to look back
• 47:46
  at to say no, that that'll play. That'll be that'll be OK.
• 47:52
  It it maybe it's not enough texture.
• 47:54
  Maybe you need something else or it's plenty.
• 47:56
  Leave it alone, you know so it's a back and forth.
• 48:00
  That's so fascinating. It's like you're painting your
• 48:02
  own portrait, actually, with the costumes and this grayscale.
• 48:07
  Yeah, but you're giving the master what he needs to create
• 48:12
  the whole. So of course you're always an
• 48:15
  artist when always an artist through the process, you know.
• 48:18
  But you can be the artist that the master's assistant, if you
• 48:23
  will, or colleague would however you want to call it.
• 48:29
  It's just it's, you know, it's a it's a very, I think it's a very
• 48:34
  great way of working because you're always thinking nothing
• 48:38
  is ever absolute until it's absolute.
• 48:44
  There's some a challenge there, but it's great.
• 48:47
  Well, some other characters that I thought were just as fun.
• 48:51
  Kitty Oppenheimer, played by Emily Blunt.
• 48:53
  She goes through her own sets of challenges throughout the story
• 48:56
  alongside Oppenheimer. What did it?
• 48:59
  What did Kitty's costume say about her throughout her life?
• 49:03
  Well, I think that I hope that what you felt from Kitty was
• 49:09
  that she was an ambitious woman who transferred her ambition to
• 49:18
  her husband who never let ambition out of the marriage
• 49:24
  right and transferred it to the husband and lost herself along
• 49:30
  the herself along the way and became a bit unhappy.
• 49:36
  But she always had Kitty came from also A, a, a well bred
• 49:45
  background and had a sophistication about her.
• 49:49
  So Kitty, what was important about Kitty, and also because
• 49:55
  there was no women in the movie was that she also was not
• 50:01
  allowed to be precious. OK, precious in a period.
• 50:05
  I put quotes around the period way.
• 50:08
  You had to believe that it was, it just was OK And sometimes you
• 50:13
  don't believe that with women in period films, but in this case
• 50:18
  you really did have to believe it.
• 50:19
  And what was really important to me was that we created we
• 50:24
  created her character in a way that that the the costumes if
• 50:31
  you will, were somewhat they were natural and thrown away so
• 50:37
  they would never costumes if like if you look at the the
• 50:40
  photo of the her with the sheets OK it's a simple blouse a
• 50:47
  sweater I think she has jeans on at that time when when fitting
• 50:53
  Emily, she we always look to have in that Los Alamos time in
• 51:00
  leading up to that Los Alamos time and in that Los Alamos time
• 51:04
  when she really does get lost in she just gets lost in herself.
• 51:11
  We wanted to express it and we want to express it in a bit of a
• 51:14
  tomboy kind of way. There was nothing really.
• 51:19
  She lost her femininities. She lost something that she once
• 51:26
  had. But we but we certainly learn
• 51:31
  that she was a woman that stayed by Herman without a question and
• 51:36
  it was on the foundation of ambition and what she wanted him
• 51:42
  to accomplish as we see throughout the film when they
• 51:46
  are in fine form together and of course in the end but she's a
• 51:51
  very. I think that she is she becomes
• 51:54
  somewhat of a, somewhat of a tomboy maybe just a plain woman
• 52:02
  and and I say plain in the in the respect of not dowdy, not,
• 52:08
  not. She's lost a sophistication that
• 52:13
  she might have found in an urban environment or in in Europe or
• 52:20
  some other place. She's in a Western town and
• 52:25
  she's not wearing a skirt until you see her at the at the
• 52:29
  ceremony she wears a red skirt. She's very American and red,
• 52:33
  white and blue. There's, I mean she's quite the
• 52:37
  opposite of Florence because I always felt with his women,
• 52:41
  Florence represented the passion, a love, and the
• 52:46
  passion. Kitty represented the ambition
• 52:50
  that that how that ambition just circulates like it, like the
• 52:56
  atom, right? And it blows apart just like the
• 53:01
  atom, but then kind of comes back into a simple form.
• 53:06
  So is Kitty Florence, who plays Jean Tatlock.
• 53:11
  She is the passion she ignites. His passion I always felt in the
• 53:19
  Gita and that went where it is, you know, the famous saying.
• 53:28
  And I think that that ignited his life on that journey to get
• 53:33
  to Los Alamos. But I thought it was
• 53:36
  interesting. Jean's colors to me, like
• 53:38
  exactly what he said. There was passion to her.
• 53:40
  There's a little bit of, I want to say, a spice.
• 53:43
  But just like her colors were, you could tell that there was a
• 53:47
  fire between these two characters.
• 53:50
  Without a question. And I think it was really
• 53:51
  important because as a result, I mean there was nothing cut out
• 53:56
  of this film, nothing cut out of the the script.
• 53:59
  I thought, I thought that it was important that you know who you
• 54:02
  were looking at and and also, I mean it was not on.
• 54:08
  They were not unreal to the time that that we were working in.
• 54:14
  You know, there were other women at the party that they meet at
• 54:18
  and the colors were similar. But it was real important to
• 54:22
  understand Florence's body and how she moved and what she what
• 54:30
  would would say, what we were trying to say about her without,
• 54:35
  with keeping it subtle at the same time, right?
• 54:38
  Right. Especially because she didn't
• 54:39
  have too much time in the film, so it really those moments
• 54:43
  really counted. The little the kind of periods
• 54:46
  at the end of little, you know, of small sentences, but they
• 54:49
  pack a punch. And what we really the intention
• 54:55
  was, clearly, was to show her passion.
• 55:01
  Right. Well, so I find military
• 55:06
  uniforms and films very interesting because to me it
• 55:08
  seems like such a challenge with all the detail.
• 55:11
  And personally, I would let you know that I've, you know,
• 55:15
  studied a lot of, I've researched a lot of what John
• 55:18
  Marlow used to do as a military consultant on charge of a light
• 55:21
  brigade and according to Star Wars, an alien whom you actually
• 55:25
  also worked with. So I was curious, you know,
• 55:28
  what? What sort of challenges are
• 55:30
  there when creating military uniforms such as the one we see
• 55:34
  on Matt Damon and the people here surrounds himself with?
• 55:38
  Well, you don't. It's not creating them, you
• 55:41
  know, it's it's understanding what is the rank, who is it?
• 55:45
  What rank is he, what service is he in, etcetera, What time of
• 55:50
  year is it there? Are it?
• 55:52
  It exists so you have a good military advisor make sure to to
• 55:58
  bring the right pieces and and they could be the right pieces.
• 56:04
  But the challenge is, is that we don't have have at our disposal
• 56:10
  full, full, full full military every year, right.
• 56:16
  A a plethora of uniforms to choose from that are going to
• 56:21
  fit all of our actors that we have to recreate it.
• 56:25
  But it is all too precision that is 100% precise, right?
• 56:32
  Because that's not something you fool around with, in my opinion.
• 56:35
  Right, I would agree it has to be like, very dead on.
• 56:38
  Very, very dead on and and and you can't screw.
• 56:41
  You can't fool with it, you know.
• 56:44
  I mean, I don't even think that you could fool with.
• 56:48
  Would he be walking down the street and making this up?
• 56:53
  Would he be walking down the street and have his jacket open?
• 56:56
  You can't fool with that. That's not allowed.
• 57:00
  You know what I mean? You can take creative license in
• 57:03
  many different ways, but not that.
• 57:05
  Right. OK.
• 57:07
  That's kind of what I figured. It's very precise.
• 57:10
  Very. Precise.
• 57:12
  Well, Ellen, this has been so wonderful and I was just so
• 57:16
  blown away by this film. And like I said, I have to go
• 57:18
  back and see it. You really, you talked about
• 57:21
  this sort of beginning, but it's such a roaring success.
• 57:24
  So I was just curious, looking back on this project, like what
• 57:28
  did you take away from this project and what do you hope the
• 57:31
  audience takes away from the project?
• 57:33
  I I hope that the audience takes away the beauty of this
• 57:38
  masterpiece. I really do.
• 57:42
  The beauty of the story, the story in history that we all
• 57:47
  have lived to, where I think the film is very relevant today, as
• 57:51
  opposed to just being an historical reference, it is a
• 57:56
  story of of consequences, purpose, and then consequences
• 58:03
  and being its consequences continually.
• 58:06
  His life was filled with conflict and consequences all
• 58:11
  the way through. It is a very, very.
• 58:14
  It's a story that we all lived through today.
• 58:17
  And because of his action and the action that was so
• 58:23
  purposeful at that time, look what happened with the touch of
• 58:27
  a button, right? The world changed changed and
• 58:33
  the world changed in a way that we are still living.
• 58:36
  The consequence of and I think it begs to for you to question
• 58:43
  and what will what will you do? Not we only but what will you do
• 58:50
  to potentially change the world to make it better and not
• 58:55
  continually go down that path. But what I artistically, what I
• 59:00
  certainly hope that people take away from it is viscerally the
• 59:06
  magnificence of what is before them, physically, what's before
• 59:10
  them, the visceralness of the story and how it like lands in
• 59:15
  their heart and how it is. It captures a a a period of time
• 59:24
  in a way that hopefully will speak to you in a most modern
• 59:30
  way now. And that's where the
• 59:31
  consequences come come into play.
• 59:35
  I definitely the last I the last 2 minutes of the film.
• 59:39
  I just burst down tears at the end.
• 59:41
  I thought it was so. It is really a powerful story.
• 59:46
  It is a powerful story that we think we know the story but we
• 59:50
  don't know the story, right? We think we've learnt the story
• 59:55
  and know the story of the atom bomb and what happened to it and
• 59:58
  so on. But you don't know the story,
• 1:00:00
  and you don't know the story of the man who was the genius that
• 1:00:06
  actually. Was part of the team that made
• 1:00:10
  that happen. And then what happened to him?
• 1:00:15
  And that is purpose and consequence, you know.
• 1:00:20
  And so I think that the power behind it, really, the power
• 1:00:26
  behind this film, is so central to your heart, You know what I
• 1:00:31
  mean? It is so powerful in your that
• 1:00:35
  resonates so powerfully in your heart that you cannot help but
• 1:00:40
  become emotional from it. And I think that that is
• 1:00:45
  brilliance. I think that it it that's what
• 1:00:48
  makes a difference. That's what that's what happens
• 1:00:51
  when we when we are part of an experience sitting in that that
• 1:00:58
  in that movie theater in the dark, absorbing all of this.
• 1:01:05
  So what I took away from it is that all of that, and most
• 1:01:11
  importantly, there's nothing like working with the most
• 1:01:15
  magnificent team on the planet, OK?
• 1:01:18
  And as somebody shared with with myself and Josh Quinn, my
• 1:01:25
  assistant, one day on the set as we waited for dailies, his name
• 1:01:30
  is Adam. And he was the gaffer and he
• 1:01:34
  said you will never ever, ever. He said guys you're doing a good
• 1:01:38
  job but and I remember being very, very tired at that moment
• 1:01:43
  in time and we both were very tired at that moment in time and
• 1:01:49
  we were shooting at high altitudes as well.
• 1:01:51
  I mean so everything you get affected by everything and and
• 1:01:55
  we were waiting we were having dinner waiting to see dailies
• 1:01:58
  and and he said you'll never experience anything like this in
• 1:02:02
  your lives. This is this is once it's a it's
• 1:02:07
  it's once in a lifetime it's at the end of the film.
• 1:02:10
  By the end of the film you will feel like you worked on the
• 1:02:13
  Super Bowl. You played no not worked on the
• 1:02:15
  Super Bowl. You played the Super Bowl and
• 1:02:19
  you'll never experience anything like this ever again.
• 1:02:22
  You've played the Super Bowl and you won the Super Bowl.
• 1:02:26
  And we had. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:28
  We were all done like. Yeah, you're like I'm tired and
• 1:02:30
  you go to bed. No, no, no.
• 1:02:32
  We listened very, very It was quite uplifting.
• 1:02:35
  It was quite uplifting. It was really really so generous
• 1:02:38
  and sharing this and and we said OK but I we've worked on
• 1:02:45
  difficult things before and that wasn't and I'm thinking well how
• 1:02:51
  many films have I taken over and had to like go to shoot the next
• 1:02:54
  day kind of. I mean that's like I think
• 1:02:57
  that's pretty challenging And he said no, no no there's nothing
• 1:03:03
  like this that you will ever experience and he was 100%
• 1:03:08
  right. The last shot after the last
• 1:03:11
  shot in Berkeley on that day in May it and we were on a field no
• 1:03:17
  less we were on a football field I believe.
• 1:03:20
  I really did feel like I won the Super Bowl and that I will
• 1:03:26
  never, ever. That feeling I will never, ever,
• 1:03:29
  ever forget. But you can't do it alone.
• 1:03:32
  You have to have the most magnificent team because that's
• 1:03:39
  what it takes. That's really, really what it
• 1:03:42
  takes. And so I feel really, really
• 1:03:44
  blessed and and very honored to have been asked to be part of
• 1:03:48
  Chris Nolan and Emma Thomas's team.
• 1:03:51
  And I had. I won the Super Bowl.
• 1:03:56
  I won the. Super Bowl and it doesn't get
• 1:03:59
  really better, except, I mean, it really doesn't get any
• 1:04:02
  better. And I'm glad that what what's
• 1:04:05
  more rewarding about it is now that people have seen the film
• 1:04:12
  and are so moved by it and so love it and go wow and really
• 1:04:19
  are affected by it. And that's why we do what we do.
• 1:04:25
  Well, I mean, I you won a Super Bowl as such a triumph.
• 1:04:28
  Your team won the Super Bowl. It was just, yeah, this is a
• 1:04:32
  film team. Of the movie won the Super Bowl.
• 1:04:34
  Right, Yeah. In the movie, outside the movie,
• 1:04:38
  everyone won and it's just such a victory.
• 1:04:41
  And I I personally am going to rewatch this film and it's not a
• 1:04:45
  film that's going to be easily forgotten.
• 1:04:47
  I think people are going to be talking about this film for
• 1:04:49
  decades to come. So we'll.
• 1:04:51
  Go down in history as a as a masterpiece.
• 1:04:54
  I think that I think that it is truly an artistic endeavor that
• 1:05:00
  takes your breath away. It just takes your breath away
• 1:05:03
  on many different levels, on many different levels.
• 1:05:06
  Not just about what it looks like in scope and in each frame,
• 1:05:10
  but all of that together is totally seamless.
• 1:05:13
  Without Hoyt's genius, without Ruth's genius, without our team
• 1:05:19
  and the and all of what we put before the camera, without the
• 1:05:23
  landscape, without the magnificence of the actors,
• 1:05:30
  everything was just knitted together in a way that was the
• 1:05:33
  most seamless piece that you could watch.
• 1:05:37
  Remember, it's a timepiece, not a period piece.
• 1:05:41
  My opinion, but it also is part of it being very original.
• 1:05:45
  I I agree it's. One that certainly makes you
• 1:05:48
  feel it's a film that's is surprising how much it makes you
• 1:05:53
  feel. I think that's what I love most
• 1:05:55
  about it was that I walked out of here and I was like, wow,
• 1:05:57
  that was something, something that I didn't fully expect going
• 1:06:01
  in. And it's a profound effect.
• 1:06:04
  You know I have to. I have to just say, this was
• 1:06:06
  this quick little thing. I was, I don't know, I guess it
• 1:06:10
  was like maybe in May or whatever.
• 1:06:11
  I listened to a podcast called The Big Picture and do you
• 1:06:16
  listen to it? I haven't, but I've heard of it.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah. So I know it's a great podcast
• 1:06:20
  and and it's Sean and Amanda, OK.
• 1:06:23
  And they go through this, what do they call it?
• 1:06:26
  They call it the draft or something of that, that where
• 1:06:28
  they pick the films that are coming out and how they who
• 1:06:32
  wants to own them and who wants to, you know, rank them and so
• 1:06:35
  on and so forth. And I'll never forget this.
• 1:06:39
  When it came to Oppenheimer, Amanda placed it wherever she
• 1:06:44
  took it and want to and and she got it and placed it in whatever
• 1:06:48
  position she placed it in. And Sean said now and she said,
• 1:06:53
  well, why you like, not interested?
• 1:06:56
  Like why? Why didn't you like, fight me
• 1:06:58
  for it? It's Chris Nolan.
• 1:07:00
  What are you crazy? Chris Nolan is a star, a big
• 1:07:04
  star. He's the biggest that star is
• 1:07:08
  like like just radiating, radiating constantly Anyway, so
• 1:07:15
  he, she says why didn't you want?
• 1:07:17
  And he said, oh come on, it's the story of Oppenheimer.
• 1:07:20
  It's the story of Adam. We know the movie.
• 1:07:22
  We know that how it ends. Why do I need to know it?
• 1:07:25
  She said, well, you're going to need to know it.
• 1:07:27
  And he said whatever, you take it.
• 1:07:31
  And I'll never forget that because when it came out, he
• 1:07:35
  said just like what you said, just like what you said.
• 1:07:39
  I didn't expect it. Isn't that fabulous though?
• 1:07:43
  I mean, that's in that way. It's like the cherry on top of
• 1:07:45
  the whole thing, I would say. It is.
• 1:07:48
  It's this. Super Bowl ring.
• 1:07:51
  Yes, I love that With that costume designer Ellen Mirage.
• 1:07:55
  Like, thank you so much for joining.
• 1:07:57
  This has been such a pleasure and I'm just so happy for you.
• 1:08:01
  Oh, thank you. I'm so happy that you enjoyed
• 1:08:03
  it. And we'll go back again.
• 1:08:04
  Maybe I'll meet you in the theater.
• 1:08:06
  I'm going, yeah, We could share a large popcorn.
• 1:08:10
  Absolutely. Thank you.
• 1:08:12
  Thank you. Hi, this is Dan, audio engineer
• 1:08:30
  of the podcast here to let you know that if you wanted to
• 1:08:34
  support the show, you can head over to The Art of
• 1:08:37
  costume.com/podstore. There you can buy some awesome T
• 1:08:42
  public merch with the podcast logo such as a shirt, coffee
• 1:08:47
  mug, stickers and of course a baby onesie.
• 1:08:51
  Thanks for all your support. Spencer I love that interview.
• 1:09:17
  I love it. She's, she's.
• 1:09:19
  Fantastic. Thank you.
• 1:09:20
  I I could listen to Ellen forever.
• 1:09:21
  She's just such a wealth of knowledge and the dedication and
• 1:09:27
  work that her entire team put into this, which it sounds like
• 1:09:30
  it was not an easy project whatsoever, is a lot of hard
• 1:09:34
  work, 'cause it's a lot of costumes, a lot of suits.
• 1:09:38
  Military uniforms have like decades and decades of work and
• 1:09:44
  trial scenes. It's so much, and she and her
• 1:09:48
  team just absolutely killed it, and I'm just so happy for her.
• 1:09:51
  I could listen to her forever. It was incredible and I don't
• 1:09:56
  know about you, but I'm ready to play our favorite game.
• 1:09:59
  Are you? Let's do it.
• 1:10:02
  The one costume to rule them all, Spencer, what's your one
• 1:10:11
  costume to roll them all? So my favorite costume, it was a
• 1:10:15
  hard one because there was just so many costumes.
• 1:10:18
  But after talking to Ellen, I think my favorite costume has
• 1:10:22
  been one of the suits that Oppenheimer wears when he's
• 1:10:27
  walking around Los Alamos. Because as she says, he's like
• 1:10:31
  the man of the hour. He's kind of like the sheriff of
• 1:10:34
  the town because Oppenheimer's such like A at this time.
• 1:10:38
  Like he's such a cool guy. You know he's like the leader on
• 1:10:40
  his secret project and everyone's like, oh that's
• 1:10:43
  that's the guy. So he kind of has like this like
• 1:10:46
  Western kind of sheriff vibe to him.
• 1:10:49
  He's the only one that wears a hat and he just has this like
• 1:10:53
  tailored fitted suit. He just, he just looks like such
• 1:10:57
  this a star, you know, at this moment and which is interesting
• 1:11:02
  because of course he's working on this really serious project
• 1:11:05
  that means a lot. Of.
• 1:11:06
  Horrible things for our planet. But in this moment, like, he is
• 1:11:10
  like the man of the hour, kind of like the the myth and the
• 1:11:13
  legend as he's walking around Los Alamos.
• 1:11:15
  So I'm picking like that, that it's kind of like a Gray, maybe
• 1:11:20
  brownish suit where he has like the blue shirt and the short tie
• 1:11:25
  and the hat like the sheriff look.
• 1:11:28
  Yeah, that is a great look. I just a character that's was
• 1:11:35
  not in it as much as I would have liked, but I loved his
• 1:11:39
  look. I just Einstein by the Pond.
• 1:11:46
  I I liked it because I would say a lot.
• 1:11:52
  Obviously all the characters are distinct and have their own
• 1:11:55
  personalities, but when it came to like specific looks, I felt
• 1:12:00
  like Oppenheimer and Einstein. They had the most like specific
• 1:12:04
  like character looks because Oppenheimer doesn't look like
• 1:12:10
  all the other scientists and neither does Einstein.
• 1:12:14
  And Einstein's very much like who Oppenheimer will at one
• 1:12:18
  point become. And Einstein knows that He's
• 1:12:23
  like, hey, I'm just here to chill and like, I want to say
• 1:12:28
  feed the ducks, but I don't think there were any ducks on
• 1:12:31
  that pond just staring at the the pond and, like, chilling.
• 1:12:38
  And he's just like, very much this, like, also mythical
• 1:12:43
  figure, you know, just imparting his wisdom.
• 1:12:46
  And he has such, like, this cozy, like grandpa look where
• 1:12:51
  he's like, I'm done being, you know, the serious scientist.
• 1:12:56
  I know what I've done and like, that's OK and now I'm just going
• 1:13:00
  to live out my life in peace and try to enjoy it.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah, that's such a good one. And also I was kind of nervous
• 1:13:08
  about the Einstein character too, because I feel like that's
• 1:13:10
  a character that could go 'cause everyone has like an idea of
• 1:13:15
  Einstein. I feel like it could just went
• 1:13:16
  like campy, you know, if like when you see like Leonardo da
• 1:13:21
  Vinci in a movie or like any like any sort of like historical
• 1:13:24
  figure, that's like we actually do read about in textbooks.
• 1:13:28
  They tend to get very kind of campy.
• 1:13:30
  I feel like Einstein felt like, oh, like this is authentic like
• 1:13:33
  this. For the most part, it feels
• 1:13:35
  real, like Einstein is actually in the story.
• 1:13:38
  It was super grounded character because Einstein was a very
• 1:13:45
  eccentric person and they could have played that up, but they
• 1:13:50
  didn't like they took him as like this serious scientific
• 1:13:54
  figure that Oh my. Gosh, the end of this movie.
• 1:13:57
  I mean, he he has like the 1-2 punch at the end of this.
• 1:14:01
  Yeah, that put like actual chills down my spine.
• 1:14:06
  I lost sleep over the end of this movie.
• 1:14:08
  'Cause like when Oppenheimer like says that to him and it's
• 1:14:12
  like he's one of the few people who, especially at the time,
• 1:14:16
  could understand what what he's saying.
• 1:14:20
  Yeah, Well, oh, by the way, we should mention that this is
• 1:14:26
  probably your direction, Elizabeth, if you keep enjoying
• 1:14:28
  your Sunday brunches at the diners reading newspapers, Yeah.
• 1:14:32
  Yeah, maybe that's why I chose. And with that, that is the end
• 1:14:39
  of our Barbenheimer week of thank you all so much for
• 1:14:42
  listening to both Barbie and Oppenheimer.
• 1:14:45
  It this was fun. I'm, I'm glad we got to do this.
• 1:14:48
  It worked out. You know, we wanted to do this
• 1:14:51
  differently last year, but this was meant to be, I feel like,
• 1:14:54
  having both Barbie and Oppenheimer in the same week.
• 1:14:57
  I I agree. I agree.
• 1:14:59
  I feel like it was a great, great start to Season 4 and I
• 1:15:03
  just, I can't wait for the rest of the season.
• 1:15:05
  Spencer What are we watching next?
• 1:15:09
  Next episode, Elizabeth, I am very excited.
• 1:15:13
  So we're getting back into our every other week schedule.
• 1:15:16
  But of course, it's still hard for us to say that because we
• 1:15:19
  always end up putting out bonus episodes.
• 1:15:21
  So our schedule's a bit promiscuous.
• 1:15:27
  But for those of you that are new, we usually spend like the
• 1:15:29
  first half of the year kind of doing like every other week
• 1:15:32
  episode. And as we get closer to, you
• 1:15:34
  know, Halloween and the holidays, that means sort of
• 1:15:36
  ramp up a little bit. So our next episode on January
• 1:15:40
  30th, we are going to be watching poor things.
• 1:15:44
  And I am so excited. I love this movie.
• 1:15:48
  I've seen it twice already. Probably some of the most
• 1:15:52
  innovative creative costumes I've seen in a long time.
• 1:15:55
  Easily one of my favorite costume films currently out
• 1:15:59
  right now and possibly of all time.
• 1:16:01
  And I know Elizabeth is gonna love it just as much.
• 1:16:03
  I I can't wait to see it. I'm really excited.
• 1:16:07
  In the meantime, if you would like some content from us, you
• 1:16:11
  can follow us on Instagram at The Art of Costume Pod, on
• 1:16:15
  Tiktok at The Art of Costume or if you would like some Arctic
• 1:16:20
  Costume Podcast merch, you can visit
• 1:16:23
  ourstorethearcticcostume.com/pod Store.
• 1:16:28
  And if you liked what you heard, we would really, really
• 1:16:30
  appreciate it if you left us a five star text review on Apple
• 1:16:34
  Podcast. Well, Elizabeth, this has been
• 1:16:37
  fun. It's been a great week and I'm
• 1:16:41
  so excited for Season 4. Thank you all for listening.
• 1:16:44
  So excited. Y'all have a good two weeks.
• 1:16:50
  The Art of Costume podcast is hosted and produced by Elizabeth
• 1:16:54
  Joy Glass and Spencer Williams. Our audio engineering and
• 1:16:59
  editing is done by Dan White. Follow us on TikTok at The Art
• 1:17:04
  of Costume and Instagram at The Art of Costume Pod.
• 1:17:09
  If you want to support the show, go to
• 1:17:11
  theartofcostume.com/PODstore. For more podcast updates,
• 1:17:17
  costume reviews, deep dives and interviews, go to
• 1:17:21
  theartofcostume.com, A blog dedicated to highlighting the
• 1:17:26
  best in costume design. You can follow us on Instagram
• 1:17:50
  at the Arctic Costume Pod on Tic Tac Tic Tac.