For “Kinds of Kindness,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ twisted three-part anthology film set in alternate realities with a cast led by Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, and Willem Dafoe, production designer Anthony Gasparro (“First Cow”) was tasked with transforming New Orleans into a nameless city by avoiding any iconic references to the Big Easy. That meant going on the outskirts — uptown, in the suburbs, or on the lakefront — to create an eccentric vibe.
In “The Death of R.M.F.,” Robert (Plemons) endures daily abuse from his boss, Raymond (Dafoe); in “R.M.F. Is Flying,” distraught policeman Daniel (Plemons) welcomes the miraculous return of his marine researcher wife, Liz (Stone), lost at sea on an expedition and presumed dead, but then suspects that she’s an impostor; and in “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons), who belong to a sex cult run by Omi (Dafoe), are on a mission to find a woman who can resurrect the dead.
In fact, the cult became crucial in the selection of New Orleans; it was the only city that offered the kind of secluded lakefront house that the director desired for a cult devoted to water. “That was the most difficult location to find,” Gasparro told IndieWire. “But once we first saw that house, we decided that we were going to film in New Orleans. I always felt we were shooting on the edge of New Orleans, which I quite like in general as a way to shoot a city.
“Because it was so location dependent, it was really about just discovering and connecting with the locations that were going to anchor each story and then working around the satellite ones, and then figuring out how that all works story by story. We shot it first story, second story, third story because it really came down to people’s haircuts because we didn’t want to use wigs.”
‘The Death of R.M.F.’
Raymond needed a large modernist house in keeping with his eccentric and controlling nature, but there were few to be found and none of the homeowners were cooperative. “So we pivoted to a great manor house,” Gasparro said. “And we took that and completely redressed it and kind of made it something that would be worthy of a person that takes themselves quite seriously with their art and ambitions.
“And that really came together when Amy Silver, the set decorator, found that incredible 18-foot Meyer couch, and then we kind of anchored all those antiquities and Julian Schnabel paintings and all the other stuff around that.”
For Robert, who has made a Faustian pact with Raymond in exchange for a comfortable house, they channeled what the control freak deemed suitable for him. “It was just a strange house on a defunct golf course,” added Gasparro. “I wasn’t initially that crazy about that house. We had actually prepped another house that I would have also loved to shot in. But, at the last minute, the homeowner kind of got a little sleazy on us and demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“But the house we chose had such a peculiar aesthetic to it,” he continued. “And we intentionally made all the furnishings and everything in that house a little bit off. The utensils, the art gallery paintings, the injured sports memorabilia that Raymond gave Robert [particularly John McEnroe’s torn racket and Ayrton Senna’s charred racing helmet]. I thought not only it served the first story, it served the three other stories by setting up the tone of these peculiar alternate realities.”
‘R.M.F. Is Flying’
For Daniel and Liz, they found a cottage in a woods environment. At first, Gasparro thought the location was too small, but they made it work to their advantage. “They did shoot there for five days, and I think the footprint was about the size of a dollar bill,” the production designer said. “But somehow, we made everything look fantastic with the amount of space I had to work with.
“And I love it because I was imagining that Liz perhaps inherited it from her family and became a second home where she and Dan lived,” he added. “And it became a great backdrop for all the strangeness that was about to unfold.” This was due to Dan’s paranoia that Liz was not his wife but some sort of bizarre twin. Daniel cruelly forces Liz to prove her devotion through self-mutilation.
“The aesthetic had a lot of bamboo roller shades that we put up that also made the light kind of warm and strange,” said Gasparro. “And I think it worked perfectly for who those characters were. She’s a marine biologist who didn’t make a ton of money, and he’s a cop. So I think financially it made sense they would live somewhere like that. And she obviously liked the outdoors, so it lent itself to that. And also what I liked quite a bit was that it was such a different interior and exterior than anything else that we’ve seen in the film.”
‘R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich’
When it came to the crucial house for Omi’s cult, the production designer found a remote, large-scale structure on a lake with a unique aesthetic quality. “We really got to go in there and do so much work on the exterior of the house,” Gasparro said. “We built the cistern over the pool. That was Yorgos’ idea to put it there. And we were able to build a sauna.”
Inside, they removed all the furnishings and created a restaurant-style cooking area, as well as a military barracks-type area for fellow cult members. Omi’s bedroom also stood out for its accordion doors, which the director was a fan of. “I got to do just like a ton of work to create this water cult,” continued Gasparro. “And that was one of the more enjoyable locations for the art department.”
Meanwhile, the motel where Stone’s Emily and Plemons’ Andrew stay was not an easy find, but it stood out as part of the strange suburbia. “We must have scouted 20 motels and none of them felt right,” Gasparro added. “Somehow we found that last one and it feels like the edge of the city, kind of a remote part of New Orleans. And once we found it, it was absolutely perfect. We cleared out the parking lot and we brought in the boat that was on a trailer. We did some modification inside the motel rooms, but, for the most part, it was ready to go.” It was yet another reason why this was the production designer’s favorite story in terms of aesthetics.
