The James Bond production design giants
Below is some background that was provided on the James Bond
franchise’s key production designers, who will receive the Cinematic Imagery Award at
the Feb. 2 Art Directors Guild Excellence in Production Design Awards. (Note: The Adams typo above came with the photo.)
Production Designer, Sir Ken Adam, set the standard for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s. Adam made his name with his innovative, semi-futuristic sets for the James Bond films such as Dr. No (1962), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), whose supertanker set required the building of the largest sound stage in the world. His last Bond film was Moonraker (1979). In 1964, Adam won the British Film Academy Award® for Dr. Strangelove. In 1975, he won the Academy Award® for Best Art Direction for his re-creation of 18th century England in the non-Bond film Barry Lyndon. In 1994, he won the Academy Award® for Best Art Direction for the second time with The Madness of King George.
PETER LAMONT
Production
Designer, Peter Lamont, is most famous for working on eighteen James Bond
films. Throughout his nearly 60-year career, he has worked as an Art Director,
Set Designer, as well as Set Decorator. Lamont has been nominated for three
Academy Awards® for his work on Fiddler
on the Roof (1971), The Spy Who Loved
Me (1977), and Aliens (1986).
He was nominated a fourth time and won for Titanic (1997). The Bond films he has worked on include Goldfinger (1964) – uncredited
draftsman; Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) as
Assistant Art Director; On Her Majesty’s
Secret Service (1969) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971) as the Set
Decorator; Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) as Co-Art Director; The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979) as Visual Effects and Art Director; For Your Eyes Only (1981),
Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985), The Living Daylights (1987), Licence To Kill (1989), Golden Eye (1995), The World Is Not Enough (1999), Die Another Day (2002), and
Casino Royale (2006) as the Production
Designer.
ALLAN CAMERON
Production Designer, Allan
Cameron, designed the eighteenth spy film in the James Bond series, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), which was the
second to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Cameron’s
credits include The Mummy (1999), The Da Vinci Code (2006), Van Helsing (2004), and Angels & Demons
(2009). He was nominated for the Art
Directors Guild Award in 2007 for The Da
Vinci Code and again in 2010 for
Angels & Demons. He was
also nominated for a BAFTA Award for his work as the Production Designer for
the film 1984.
DENNIS
GASSNER
Dennis
Gassner is one of cinema’s foremost Production Designers boasting a career
spanning over 25 years. Gassner started his career working in the art
department on Apocalypse Now (1979),
he was fortunate enough to work closely with Francis Ford Coppola and
Production Designer Dean Tavoularis at Zoetrope Studios. Today,
Gassner’s creative abilities are consistently applauded by both the American
Academy® and the British Association of Film and Television Arts. In
1991, he won the Oscar® for ‘Best Production Design’ on Bugsy starring Warren Beatty and Annette
Bening and was nominated the same year for his work on the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink. He also won BAFTA awards
for Sam Mendes’ Road To Perdition
(2002) and Peter Weir’s The Truman Show
(1998) and was BAFTA nominated for Production Design on Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003). His work on
the fantasy thriller The Golden
Compass (2007) earned him an Oscar® nomination. Gassner returns to the Bond
team after having worked on Quantum
Of Solace in 2008.
A native of Los Angeles raised by two parents and "Hill Street Blues," Jon Weisman ankled his scriptwriting career and began working for Variety in 2004, subsequently serving as associate editor of features and television reporter before becoming awards editor. He promises not to use this platform to retroactively campaign for Oscars for “The Misfits,” though he’d feel justified in doing so.
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