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"View Slideshow\n\nRoman Polanski's latest film, his first since his house arrest in Switzerland ended 18 months ago, is titled, bluntly (revealingly?), Carnage. There's certainly a lot of pent-up anger that comes out in this dark comedy, which is based on Yasmina Reza's Tony-winning play God of Carnage and stars Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz. Foster and Winslet received Golden Globe nominations for their portrayals of the female halves of two Brooklyn couples who get together to civilly discuss a violent incident between their young sons that involved a stick smashing into teeth. But things get messy\u2014literally.\n\nNearly the entire movie takes place in the living room of a Brooklyn apartment, which had to be invented on a soundstage on the outskirts of Paris. To create this sleight of hand, Polanski enlisted veteran production designer Dean Tavoularis, who essentially began his storied Hollywood career as the art director on Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Tavoularis went on to work with other such greats as Michelangelo Antonioni, William Friedkin, and Wim Wenders, and, most famously, he designed nearly all of Francis Ford Coppola's best-known films\u2014taking home an Oscar for The Godfather Part II in 1975.\n\nTavoularis had collaborated with Polanski on The Ninth Gate in 1999, but he hadn't done a film in nearly a decade when the director contacted him about working on Carnage. Recently the designer, who turns 80 next year, spoke with Architectural Digest about bringing authentic Brooklyness to Paris, about the challenges of working with small spaces (and vomit), and why he'll never retire.\n\nCarnage is now playing in theaters in L.A. and New York.\n\nARCHITECTURAL DIGEST: When you agreed to design the sets for Carnage, it had been nine years since your last movie, Luis Mandoki's Angel Eyes.\n\nDEAN TAVOULARIS: At a certain point, the films became sort of repetitive. So I said I'll do one if there's something interesting, if Francis [Ford Coppola] is doing something. But I was always trying to find time to paint, and I got to a point where I could focus on my artwork full time, more or less. In fact, I had a show in Paris during the filming of Carnage, at the Catherine Houard Gallery.\n\nAD: Did Roman Polanski give specific reasons why he wanted you for the job?\n\nDT: He wanted me because I'm American. He had done his last few movies with Europeans, including the Polish production designer Allan Starski [Oliver Twist, The Pianist]. And he really wanted the set and the shooting to feel like they were in Brooklyn. I'd been living half in L.A. and half in Paris, so the convenience of being able to do a film at home made it appealing to me. Plus, the important thing was working with Roman. I knew him socially from the '70s, on and off, and then I did The Ninth Gate with him about ten years ago. Roman is a master filmmaker. Technically, he knows everything about filmmaking\u2014in addition to being a great artist.\n\nAD: What was Yasmina Reza's input?\n\nDT: I leaned on her a great deal. She was very helpful\u2014not in terms of saying what she might want or think would be proper\u2014but in talking about the characters and the way they live.\n\nAD: Most of the film is just four characters in a room. How did dealing with such a self-contained space make your job easier or harder\u2014what were the challenges?\n\nDT: They talk about Roman being a director who loves to work in little spaces\u2014Knife in the Water, The Tenant. I thought right away of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, films like that. But it was quite daunting to design a film with one set. I just thought, What are people going to look at? Is it one angle? Are people going to look at this one wall, with a picture on it, for an hour and a half? I always like to work with changes between scenes, when you cut from, let's say, a sun-drenched exterior to an interior and play with those contrasts. In this film it's just cutting from the same room to the same room. I talked to Roman about my concerns and he said to me, \"Don't forget, we have four very talented actors. I don't think people are going to be looking at the set for an hour and a half\u2014they're going to be looking at the actors.\" And I think he was right.\n\nAD: Your first priority was creating an authentic Brooklyn interior?\n\nDT: As usual, my aim was that it be real. Normally I'm not concerned about accommodating the crew and the camera. I kind of make it difficult, actually. For this set, I wanted to keep the ceilings in place, which makes it harder to shoot, but I wanted to have that realism. Of course, on the soundstage, we didn't have real views out the windows, just these bright green backings, and the views were added in later using CGI.\n\nAD: You had American food, objects, and appliances shipped from New York?\n\nDT: I enlisted the help of a couple of friends, one of whom lives in Brooklyn and has a little boy and girl, just like Jodie Foster's character. She pretty much photographed her entire townhouse, and there were many details that were very fruitful. Then I gave another friend a huge shopping list for the kitchen and bathroom\u2014we had all of these American products and appliances sent over. Even all of the hardware was American, which was very costly\u2014the locks and hinges alone were tens of thousands of dollars to rent. We got them from a very nice hardware guy in New York who is actually named Rhett Butler.\n\nAD: But you found a lot of the furniture in France?\n\nDT: I had good fortune. I'd lost my decorator and this friend of mine, Franckie Diago, lives in Paris and is a production designer. So I asked her if she wanted to do this film as a decorator, and she happily agreed. She speaks French, knows the French crews, knows the French markets. Plus, she had two children who grew up in New York and knew what a Brooklyn home with kids would have.\n\nAD: Tell me about the fireplace, which is very much a focal point of the living room.\n\nDT: This is a very typical Brooklyn fireplace, and there was nothing like it in France. Zero. I'd been to England where there were several, but they were always the wrong size, the wrong proportion, the wrong something. Then my art director suggested that we could build one. I was worried it would never look right. The hearth at the bottom is real marble, but the rest is made of wood and plaster. The carpenters and painters actually did a terrific job\u2014they were marvelous.\n\nAD: There's a well-known scene [spoiler alert!] when Kate Winslet's character retches all over the cocktail table and everything on it. How did you deal with that?\n\nDT: They shot probably a dozen, two-dozen takes of the big vomit scene. It was difficult because of all of the stuff in the living room. We had to have duplicates and triplicates of the books, and we had two coffee tables. Then we were worried about the carpet, the throw pillows. We'd find something really great for the room and then think, Well, we have to make a copy of this\u2014it was limiting.\n\nAD: Is there another movie in your future?\n\nDT: Yes, maybe. Francis might have something. And I think I'll be doing a commercial with Roman.\n\nAD: No thoughts of retiring?\n\nDT: I consider myself an artist, and I don't think an artist can retire. I've never heard of that.\n\nClick here to tour the set."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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