When “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson introduced the new season at its Hollywood premiere, he acknowledged the influence of several directors from the studio era’s golden age. Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Don Siegel were all referenced, as was Levinson’s father Barry, a Hollywood classicist from a later era. The most obvious influence right from the Season 3 opening, in which drug mule Rue (Zendaya) struggles to make her way across the border, is the American Western, a reference point that greatly excited production designer François Audouy.
“I thought there was a really interesting opportunity, and a challenge, in thinking of present-day Southern California as the setting for a Western,” Audouy told IndieWire. “I was very excited to show the audience a fractured landscape, a fractured version of the American West. When you watch the first episode in particular, the DNA of the Western is very evident in the vibe of the show.”
The influence of Westerns and other films from classical Hollywood is pervasive throughout the new season, even in locations that might not seem to lend themselves to such an approach. On the second episode of Season 3, for example, the audience is introduced to the Silver Slipper strip club where Rue takes a job — not as a dancer, but as a manager helping owner Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) run the place. The bar embodies the new season’s unusual tension between the spiritual and the profane, jutting out into the desert as an establishment devoted to sin that Rue sees as her salvation.
“She ends up meeting this guy, Alamo, who she really connects with, and she thinks, ‘Well, this would be my dream working here,’” Levinson told IndieWire on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “I like the idea that the superficial aspects of this strip club, like this giant leg stretching out into the sky, make it an oasis for her, and slowly she begins to uncover the darkness inside of it. And also learns what happens when you just follow your desire as opposed to your sense of right and wrong.”
The giant leg, which, along with the rest of the Silver Slipper exterior, was built in Lancaster, was part of Levinson’s concept from the start. “ In my first interview, Sam expressed to me this vision that he had of a giant leg sticking out into the sky in the desert,” Audouy said. “It came from this great book he had of black and white photography, with a giant leg at a nightclub in 1930s Hollywood. It was great to be able to build this giant leg that looked like a roadside attraction you’d have on Route 66 — we had so many locals come by just because you could see this leg sticking up from miles away in the desert.”
For the interior, which was built on a stage, Audouy chose to emphasize the dark side of the Silver Slipper via taxidermy brought in by his set decorator, Anthony Carlino. “I thought it would be interesting if all the taxidermy was predatory animals,” Audouy said. “The entire place is full of predators, the humans included.” Although Audouy saw the Silver Slipper as something like a saloon from a Western and brought that influence to the design, he wanted to keep from getting too one-note or adhering to one overall guiding principle.
“It also has a little bit of a funky 1970s and 1980s vibe, which was fun to play with,” Audouy said. “It’s a blend of different ideas.” Levinson noted that some of the Western influence came not from movies, but unexpected reference points. “We were looking at Mike Tyson’s old house in Ohio for this idea of mixing zebra print and cheetah print,” Levinson said. “We wanted to bring in some of that Western spirit that Alamo seems to idolize — it should feel like a place that he hand-designed himself.”
For Audouy, the key was making sure the Silver Slipper provided a lot of visual opportunities for Levinson and cinematographer Marcell Rév, because he knew the location would occupy a lot of screen time in Season 3. “We had that set up in the first week of filming, and it was still up the last week of filming,” Audouy said. “It was one of our star sets, so it was designed like Swiss cheese, with a lot of holes and angles Sam and Marcell could shoot through.”
“To have a location where you shoot for months and don’t get bored of it is rare,” Rév told IndieWire. “We just kept finding new angles there.” That’s because Audouy filled the set with two-way mirrors and other forms of glass that could be used to provide new perspectives. “You could have these really interesting angles through doorways and looking into other rooms,” Audouy said. “The challenge is to imbue the set with a lot of opportunities for composition, but also a lot of detail. I want the set to be completely interactive.”
To that end, Audouy and Carlino made sure the Silver Slipper felt fully functional and lived-in for the actors. “ Anthony made it so you could open every drawer, every door, and it was completely real,” Audouy said. “It’s not only great for camera, but the actors love it. It’s completely transformative for them, it’s like the whole set becomes a piece of wardrobe that helps them feel their characters.” For Levinson, the key was to make the strip club seem like it was a bit out of its time.
“We wanted to build a strip club that didn’t have any of the trappings of our modern sense of what that is,” Levinson said. “We didn’t want to deal with strobe lighting; we wanted it to feel more old school, almost like a burlesque house with beautiful tungsten lights.” Levinson said that building the Silver Slipper on a stage not only created enormous flexibility in terms of the camera but helped with the slightly retro vibe he was going for. “We wanted to create something that felt real, but could also evoke the spirit of the past — it’s our Rick’s Café, in a way.”
Ironically, the Silver Slipper was built on the same stage at Warner Bros. where Rick’s Café Américain was constructed for “Casablanca” — along with many other sets from the kinds of classic films Levinson, Audouy, and Rév aspired to emulate. “Every day before we walked in, we’d read all of the movies that were shot there,” Levinson said. “It was really special — a beautiful, beautiful experience.”
Additional reporting by Chris O’Falt. To hear the upcoming conversation with Sam Levinson and Marcel Rév and make sure you don’t miss a single episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
Source:
www.indiewire.com
