“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
Costume designer Jenny Beavan joins hosts Andy Nelson and Pete Wright to discuss The Leopard, directed by Luchino Visconti—the landmark 1963 epic that showed her what period design could be.
A three-time Oscar winner whose career spans A Room with a View, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Cruella, Beavan traces The Leopard back to a Soho cinema in the late sixties and the influence of a mentor who kept returning to what Piero Tosi achieved there. "He was obsessive, Piero Tosi. I don't think he was happy because it was never perfect enough. But he was one of the most incredible costume designers ever." The conversation also moves through her recent Nicholas Hytner film The Choral and the challenge of building an authentic world on nearly nothing—which turns out to be its own kind of craft lesson.
Watch the conversation on YouTube
Watch & Stream The Leopard — Apple TV · Amazon · Letterboxd · Trailer
About Jenny Beavan IMDb · Instagram
Referenced in This Episode Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius — 1968 recording, Adrian Boult, Coventry Cathedral
Source Material The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa — Amazon
If You Enjoyed This Conversation 
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The Film Board — Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Movies We Like — Costume Designer Deborah L. Scott on The Mission
Movies We Like — Costume Designer Alana Morshead on Never Let Me Go

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