APRIL 1ST NEWS - (NO KIDDING!)

Helen at her desk..caught by surprise!

The New York production industry is worried about projects leaving us since the demise of the New York Tax Credit program, but we hope the small, capped reprieve we just got will be further extended and lure shows back to our great city!

Our projects:

Currently, we are renting 1950’s clothes to a docudrama called “Howl”, about the 1957 trial dealing with Allen Ginsberg’s poem

Our two Kristens drinking Mexican refrescas

of the same name. Originally a performance piece, it was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (another well-known “beat poet”) of City Lights Books, who was arrested and charged with obscenity for its publication.

We are just finishing up on the film “Extra Man”, based on the Jonathan Ames book of the same name and costumed by Suttirat Larbarb (who designed “Slumdog Millionaire”). It is a contemporary film with an “elderly eccentric” (played by Kevin Kline) who escorts wealthy Upper East Side women to society events, and his young disciple who fancies himself a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ergo our 1920’s through 1950’s rented clothes! Our photography and costume design clients need to keep in touch with their productions....thank goodness for the cell phone!

We are also doing a contemporary movie in Mississippi, providing distressed workmen clothes to the two actors who came in for fittings. The movie is yet unnamed. As an aside, Woody Allen’s early films were also never named until the last minute, so all our work on them was invoiced with “Fall Project 1988”,” Fall Project 1999”, etc. We call this current film “Untitled Mississippi Project”….we will let you know the true title as soon as we discover it!

In March we did a Saturday Night Live Seabiscuit skit starring the guest host, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who played an enormous jockey!

The Irene Sharaff award winners

We are readying ourselves for some large period projects: a 1911 film to be shot in Cape Cod and a huge HBO mini-series taking place around the time of the early 1920’s of Atlantic City.

Helen also went to the annual Theater Development Fund Irene Sharaff Awards, which brought costume designers from all over to honor their own. William Ivey Long was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by director Jerry Zaks. “Lifetime Achievement” seems to imply that one has finished accomplishing all that one can……but since William is still young and still designing prolifically, we prefer to think of the award as a “½-lifetime achievement”!

Welcome back from Russia, Masha!!! ( and thank you for the yummy chocolates!)