There is an interesting article on NewYorker.com (LINK) discussing set dressing on the new Indiana Jones film, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. This article talks not only about set dressing the upcoming Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel, but the company Strand Books (StrandBooks.com) in New York, and their work on other films as well as services offered to anyone who might be interested in building their own personal library, including their “Books by the Foot” program. Sounds like a very interesting and unique business, and using their services in films is, I think, reflective of the thought, work, and resources employed in film and television, paying such great attention to background details.
Books in Bulk
by Austin Kelley
October 1, 2007Between digging for artifacts and dangling from cliffs, Indiana Jones must have very little time to read, never mind to buy books. Luckily, he has a team of people to do it for him. Dr. Jones—as represented by the set decorators for the forthcoming film “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”—recently engaged the Strand Bookstore’s Books-by-the-Foot service, which provides ready-made libraries for private homes, stores, and movie sets.
Although prop books are meant to be seen and not read, they have to evoke a mise en scène, inside and out. For Indiana Jones, the filmmakers specified that the books cover such topics as paleontology, marine biology, and pre-Columbian society. They had to be in muted colors and predate 1957. “People have gotten so character-specific nowadays,” Jenny McKibben, a manager at the store, said. “It can’t just be color anymore. With high-def, they can just freeze the film and say, ‘Oh, that’s so inappropriate.’ ”
Since the program’s inception, in 1986, the Strand has built scores of imaginary reading rooms, from the prison library in “Oz” to the Barnes & Noble clone in “You’ve Got Mail.” Clients also include window dressers, commercial architects (the Strand furnished each floor in the Library Hotel with a different Dewey decimal category), and people with more shelf space than leisure time. Kelsey Grammer requested all hardback fiction in two of his homes, while Steven Spielberg, who, incidentally, is the director of the new Indiana Jones movie, allowed a wider range (cookbooks, children’s books, volumes on art and film) to penetrate his Hamptons estate. “There have been a lot of biographies on him, so I put those in there, too,” Nancy Bass Wyden, a co-owner of the store, said.
Customers can choose from eighteen basic library styles, for purchase or rental. “Bargain books,” a random selection of hardbacks, is the cheapest, at ten dollars per foot of shelf space. For thirty dollars, clients can customize the color. For seventy-five, they can get a “leather-looking” library, which, as the Strand’s Web site puts it, “is often mistaken for leather.”
Despite this emphasis on form over content, McKibben approaches her job more like a librarian than like a decorator. “It’s really just knowing books and knowing what people read,” she said, as she sorted through stacks in her third-floor office. In front of her, a shelf held volumes reserved for a wedding centerpiece (Russell Banks’s “The Darling,” A. N. Wilson’s “The Victorians”).
To her left was a rolling cart on which she was building a personal library. “The designers or the clients tell me a little about themselves,” McKibben said, dragging the cart toward her. “This one is for a family.” She pointed out “kid-friendly” books on the Beatles and Charlie Chaplin, and a Dave Eggers volume (“because there are teen-agers in the house”). McKibben spun the cart around to the father’s section. “We’re kind of guessing the character,” she said. “The husband is in finance. He likes the History Channel, the Biography Channel. It’s like my dad, and I know what’s in my dad’s library.” The selections included a biography of John Quincy Adams and a hulking gold volume called “India After Gandhi.”
Downstairs on the shopping floor, Bibbi Taylor, a Strand manager, perused the Africa aisle for Indiana Jones material. Taylor has a discerning eye for historical-looking history books. She quickly eliminated a rust-colored Paul Theroux and a baby-blue Alexandra Fuller (both were too recent), and zeroed in on a beat-up orange hardback. “This looks good,” she said, pulling out “The White Nile,” Alan Moorehead’s classic history of Egyptian exploration. “It has that older worn look, which makes sense, because Indy’s on the road all the time.” When Taylor saw the copyright date, 1960, she recanted. “That’s pushing it,” she said.
Taylor weaved around some undergraduates and shifted two bookcases to the left. “Indy’s a philosopher of sorts, so I’d want some ancient-Greek stuff,” she said. She leaned down to a lower shelf and pulled out a green book with a faded spine. “Oh, yes! A ’39 ‘Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture,’ ” she said. “This could be something that he’s read many times.”
“Paideia” in hand, Taylor recalled other recent projects. For a drug dealer in “American Gangster,” she gathered leather-looking books. For the gym-trainer character that Frances McDormand plays in an upcoming Coen brothers film, she collected self-help titles and romance novels (“a lot of Fabio”). Indiana Jones, though, was clearly her favorite client. “Dr. Jones, he’s my hero,” Taylor said. “I get to get inside his mind, touch the books that Harrison Ford will touch.” ♦
Jason De Bord