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Experienced feature heads tend to be tight-lipped about productions they’ve worked on before their world premieres out of respect for directors, let alone NDAs.
The Revenanand Dune: part one Costume designer Jacqueline West couldn’t help but hail Martin Scorsese’s upcoming feature The Moonflower Slayershowever, at the end of a masterclass for Qatar’s Doha Film Institute on Tuesday.
Moderator Richard Peña, a professor of film studies at Columbia University, was about to answer questions from the room when West chimed in, asking for a final word on his career trajectory.
“After Dune: part one, I had the most incredible experience of my film career. I went to work with Martin Scorsese. I can’t talk about this movie yet because nothing has come out but I just have to say it’s the combination of someone I’ve always wanted to work with and my absolute dream project. It’s called The Moonflower Slayers and it was brilliantly done not only by me but by everyone.
Asked by Deadline afterward what made her scream, West said: “My husband said after I worked with Scorsese, ‘Okay, now you can quit. This is the ultimate.
“It follows the book, and the book was totally captivating. The native cast was amazing and the acting, Lily Gladstone is amazing. The images were thrilling. He looks amazing. I saw it all being shot, but I didn’t see any of it,” she said.
West revealed that the film’s star Leonardo DiCaprio saw it, however, and told him it was a masterpiece.
“I was talking to Leo about it. We had lunch before we came here. He said, ‘Jackie, I think we’ve been working on a masterpiece’. I thought Leo was saying that, it was something . He doesn’t say that lightly. He’s been in the business since he was a little boy,” said West, who has been close with DiCaprio since they worked together in sub-zero temperatures. The ghost.
Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Flower Moon Killers”
Apple TV+ /Courtesy of Everett Collection
West is one of the most respected costume designers in the industry. As well as scoring Oscar nominations for Philip Kaufman quillsby David Fincher The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonAlejandro G. Iñárritu’s Returning and Denis Villeneuve Dune: part onehis credits include Stephen Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemenby Ben Affleck Argoand Terrence Malick The tree of life, Towards the Wonder And Knight of Cups.
His comments will further fuel anticipation around Scorsese’s $200 million, Apple-backed adaptation of David Grann’s bestselling book illustrating the serial murder of members of the oil-rich Osage nation in Oklahoma from the 1960s. 1920.
Expectations are high for the film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, but West said she doesn’t know if “Marty released the film at the festival.”
West during the masterclass also talked about Villeneuve Dune: part twowhich is now in post-production.
She revealed she originally turned Villeneuve down when he first contacted her agent Dune: part oneon the back of his work on The ghost.
“I said, ‘I don’t do science fiction. That’s not my thing.’ I said no. He hired someone else, and I guess he wasn’t happy because he called my agent a second time and said, ‘Can I just talk to him.’ Mary Parent, who produced The ghost and produced Dunescalled me into his office and FaceTimed me with him on the big screen,” West recounted.
“He was so convincing. He said, “I want you because I don’t want it to look like science fiction.” I want it to be classic. I don’t want it to look like a video game. ”
West revealed that she felt she had a personal connection to the Dunes novels related to her living on a houseboat with her first husband in the port of Sausalito in Northern California, near the houseboat of English writer and philosopher Alan Watts, where Dunes creator Frank Herbert would sometimes write.
“I’m showing my age,” she said. “Our houseboat was about 30 feet from Alan Watts’ boat. He was having psychedelic parties all weekend…it was quite a scene at the time in the Bay Area.
west said Dune: part two required a lot more work than Dune: part one.
“We did a lot of costumes,” she said.
“In Second partyou really immerse yourself in the different worlds of Dunes. We see what the Emperor’s world looks like. We are going to his planet. We spend a lot of time on Giedi Prime, the planet Harkonnen. We spend a lot of time at Stellan Skarsgård [Vladimir Harkonnen] world. Feyd Rautha [Harkonnen] also enters this one, brilliantly played by Austin ButlerElvis. He’s pretty fabulous in it,” she said.
“All the worlds are expanded. It was about creating three distinct and different worlds but also revisiting the Bene Gesserits, the old ones with these costumes that almost look like Egyptian mummies. I think it’s visually stunning, the sets , cinematography and concepts.
