Indie filmmakers paint it brown for dark comedy
By Borys Kit
SANTA CLARITA, California (Hollywood Reporter) - The triple-digit heat hitting you in the face is like opening the door to hell and getting slapped.
But it's nothing like the heat inside the tin-can oven called a soundstage at Melody Ranch Studios here in Santa Clarita, about 35 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.
It's here, on the former site of Gene Autry's ranch and home to hundreds of Westerns, that brothers Michael and Mark Polish are hard at work on their latest movie, "Manure." The comedy, set in 1960s Kansas, revolves around two men -- played by Billy Bob Thornton and Kyle MacLachlan -- fighting over the pooh-pooh business.
And everything, from the suits to the leaves to the sky, is brown.
"It's a s--t world," Michael Polish says.
The brothers (Michael directs, Mark acts, both write) wanted to shoot "Manure" inside a studio from the start. Going on location to Bakersfield or Salinas "would have played the comedy more desperate," Mark says.
It also would not have given them control over the color palette. Art direction is something the two take seriously, and they looked at countless brown varieties, narrowing the scale to 10 browns and using a system of color chips to achieve the film's desired look.
"You wouldn't be able to find that control on location," Michael says. "You might be able to do that digitally if you were to color-enhance the movie, and even then you'd still be limited. And it would be quite expensive to change every element, from the costumes to the sky to the ground to the cars."
Exploring the sets, it's not only the browns one notices but also that everything is handcrafted, an entirely painted film on painted stages, something not seen much anymore these days.
"It really recalls a bygone era where everything was done by hand," says Jonathan Sheldon, a partner with the brothers at their Prohibition Pictures banner. "It's going to have a look of an epic '50s film, something not seen since the MGM era."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
