Anora is one of the most celebrated films of 2024. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, has stellar reviews, and good box office receipts, and is now one of the most honored films on the end-of-year lists and awards. There is a lot to admire about this film, including the fabulous production design by ace designer Stephen Phelps who helped craft the look of this memorable film. He recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
How did you first get involved with this project?
Through Alex Coco. I had done The Sweet East with him… So Alex introduced me to Sean Baker and yeah, it worked out…
Tell me a little bit about working with Sean. He’s a pretty incredible filmmaker, and has quietly racked up an impressive resume of very humanistic films, that observe everyday people with respect.
Sean was great to work with. It was kind of a lot of fun, our offices were down in Brighton Beach, so we were just kind of scouting every day and I kind of got an idea of what worked for him and what didn’t very quickly. He was always open to ideas, I was just like, “I think we should have this funny ice sculpture at the party.” and he was like, “That’s amazing.”
Are you based in New York?
I’ve been living in New York for 15 years, so it was good that they were doing it here. And yeah, it was interesting to see because like I said, our offices were in Brighton Beach, so it was kind of down there every day, which is a part of New York, I don’t get to see. So it was, especially in the winter, it was great to see that side of things.
I think the movie kind of neatly breaks up in sort of three segments: the strip club, the luxury house, and the search… Talk a little bit about setting up these different three distinct moods starting with the strip club.
Sean told me he wanted to do this movie like, black and white and gray and muted tones. Then with pops of red, which is very much a New York winter kind of fits that. It’s kind of just the concrete. This space is very devoid of color in that way then makes it easy to have those flashes of red throughout.
I feel like the strip club and the Vegas segments have a different color scheme and are quite different with their purples and the blues as well. I felt like those vibrant hues were nice to showcase the fantasy version of reality, whereas then all the colder stuff is kind of stark real New York.
It was shot in a real place. So how much did you do to dress it up?
It’s a real place but we did quite a bit. It was definitely about setting up the different zones they’d sit in and then we’d do all the mylar curtains that you see behind all the booths of the girls.
There are things like the entrance, we lined it with red LED lights and I had the HQ Neon designed and made real neon for, the name of the place was HQ, but we we made our own signs. So just kind of elevating what was there…
And the house…
The house is a palace. When I first talked to Sean, he was sending me pictures of this place, and definitely a little intimidating how much space we had to work with. We cleared a lot of the furniture out to show the big open space opulence through just the size of the space. It was a great location to shoot in.
There’s the struggle scene. There were a lot of objects there that were breakable.
That was something we had to bring in a lot of to make sure was ready to happen. The lamp and Sean wanted a red light to shatter on the marble floors, making sure to protect those floors so they’re not getting damaged from it. I did a real lamp instead of a breakaway just because it’s a lot more affordable.
The candy store was great…
That was scripted as a vape shop and Sean wanted it to be one of these narrow gift shops along the boardwalk. I was designing buildings in these walls to give it this kind of narrow shape and I had ordered pieces of glass that were going to be shattering out of the shelves with bongs on it and everything.
Then Sean and Alex called me and they’re like, “Hey, you’re probably going to kill us, but what if we change it to a candy shop?” I thought that sounded funnier. I’m like, we should do that. So I kind of took the pieces of the glass I had already ordered and built little candy display things out of those and I had to order more glass for the popcorn machine. I think that ended up being a great find to just kind of work all that stuff into what was already a beautiful-looking space. I’m thinking about it’s perfect that it’s a candy shop.
Were there any film influences on the look of the movie? Any particular touch points?
We discussed all this a long time ago, so there was lots of stuff that Sean would bring up, but the one that stands out is Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt specifically. I feel like there are a couple of different reasons for that in that movie there’s a 40-minute-long almost argument between the two characters and they’re just kind of going throughout the house, there are mostly cold colors aside from the pops of red and everything.
I like when Toros is brought in and I thought that church was a very interesting location. It really took you to another place. What was it dressing that space?
Yeah, that church was beautiful and those people were super accommodating. They had their congregation show up and so that was fun. In the back room, they had all these great robes, you couldn’t see any of it before I got there.
Everything’s was in these white cupboards, so we removed the doors off and set ’em up for the shot and they had these beautiful little crowns. That was a fun room to play with because I’m just kind of dressing it to the frame. That church was fantastic.
Anora is still playing in theaters. It’s an indie hit, which is so rare nowadays. What’s it like being on the other end of something like this that’s worked out?
I’m really happy that people like it as much as they do. I was excited to be working with Sean because I love his movies and having a great time on set. It’s nice to have it pay off where people enjoy the film. I’m really happy to see people’s responses.
Anora is now playing in theaters.
