Production designer J. Michael Riva (who most recently designed the fantasy-themed sets for Zathura and has just finished Spider-Man® 3), costume designer Sharen Davis (who was nominated for an Academy Award® for designing the period wardrobe for Ray and most recently designed the upcoming Dreamgirls), and director of photography Phedon Papamichael, ASC (who shot Walk the Line and The Weather Man) teamed to re-create the early 1980s for The Pursuit of Happyness.

“The biggest challenge for me was to re-create the period authentically without getting fancy,” admits Riva. “The look of the 1980s is not a particularly memorable time in our culture. It’s a difficult time to mimic in any city, let alone San Francisco, because it wasn’t extraordinarily definable visually. We were all still reeling from Vietnam. The country was weary. Our reactions were more innocent, there was a self-imposed unconsciousness. It was the kind of time when a homeless guy with a 5-year-old could quietly fall between the cracks. The remaining iconography of the time is Michael Douglas with a lot of hair on TV in the “Streets of San Francisco.” To re-create a more mindless and definable look was the challenge for this picture and we chose our subtle markers carefully. Imperceptibility was the benchmark. In the ‘80s everyone smoked, advertising and billboards were naïve, innocent, there were buttoned down shirt collars and bad cars and Raging Bull was playing at the local cinema. Our work was to inject all the little things that people might not have noticed rather than blunder in with some huge iconography of the period.”

Executive producer Louis D’Esposito, who was in charge of logistics for the production of this ‘80s era film, reveals, “We bought fifty vehicles to have with us all the time so that they could be parked to add texture to the shot. We also had four period buses — one dedicated for interiors, one for exteriors, and two as ‘passer-by’ vehicles. Plus, we would ask extras to bring any cars they might have that were from the 1960s or 1970s.”

In addition, says Riva, “We used a lot of old ads and signs, which we put up on billboards and buses. One of my favorites is a billboard of Angie Dickinson, with that great body, lounging on the side of a bus ad selling avocados, which was great.”

Another painstaking task, according to Riva, was creating the Dean Witter brokerage offices. “Building a set would have been the normal way to go, but Gabriele and I were committed to shooting this movie on location and taking our chances with the weather. It was all very exciting and I love working with that kind of confidence. Other challenges involved a crucial piece of equipment called a ‘Quotron’ — a prehistoric version of our current-day computers, which was the predominant stockbrokers’ tool in those days. They all had to work with screens in black with the old-style green cursors and letters. And we had to build 70 of them.”

Costume designer Sharen Davis also strove for subtlety in creating the film’s wardrobe. “We didn’t want anything to stand out,” says Davis. “We basically took the silhouette of the ‘80s and then understated the wardrobe. Fortunately, suits were very basic in 1981 — they almost look the same as today — which is tight-fitting with a flat front.”

Dressing Will and Jaden Smith was complicated by the fact that their characters don’t have money for food and shelter, much less wardrobe. “Will got that a hundred percent,” says Davis. “He didn’t care that he had to wear the same tie three days in a row or that his suit didn’t fit correctly. As for Jaden, he wore the most popular item for kids at the time, Osh Kosh B’gosh overalls, which they don’t even make anymore. A lot of his clothing we bought from eBay. I actually designed the little jacket that he wears throughout the movie.”

In fashioning a look for Thandie Newton’s character, Linda, Davis explains, “Linda is a throwback to the ‘70s — she looks great but you can tell she’s dated. She wears wide, bell-bottom jeans and her clothing is faded and old. You can still see why Chris is attracted to her, she’s still sexy, but her wardrobe is dated.”

The Pursuit of Happyness was shot primarily in San Francisco with a few days in downtown Oakland — the rich residential communities of Piedmont and Hayward where BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has its training facilities and warehouses. D’Esposito oversaw the logistics of filming the movie in just 60 days. “San Francisco is a small city—absolutely beautiful — but small and difficult to move around in,” he contends. “We had approximately 242 scenes to shoot, so we tried to ‘hub’ the scenes together so there weren’t so many company moves.”

Continue: 1 2