{{short description|American film art director (born 1946)}} {{Infobox person | name = Jeannine Oppewall | image = | image_size = 250px | caption = Oppewall during a 2006 interview with the [[Art Directors Guild]]. | birth_name = Jeannine Claudia Oppewall | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1946|11|28}} | birth_place = [[Uxbridge, Massachusetts]] | occupation = [[Film]] [[art director]] | years_active = 1973–present | spouse = {{marriage|[[Paul Schrader]]<br>|1969|1976|end=divorced}} }}
'''Jeannine Claudia Oppewall''' (born November 28, 1946) is an American [[film]] [[art director]]. She has worked on more than 30 movies in such roles as [[production designer]], [[set decorator]] and [[set designer]], and has four [[Academy Awards|Academy Award]] nominations for [[Academy Award for Best Production Design|Best Art Direction]] for ''[[L.A. Confidential (film)|L.A. Confidential]]'', ''[[Pleasantville (film)|Pleasantville]]'', ''[[Seabiscuit (film)|Seabiscuit]]'' and ''[[The Good Shepherd (film)|The Good Shepherd]]''. Many of her film sets represented different time periods within the 20th century, including the 1930s (''Seabiscuit)'', the 1950s (''L.A. Confidential'' and ''Pleasantville)'', and from the 1960s (''[[The Big Easy (film)|The Big Easy]]'', ''[[The Bridges of Madison County (film)|The Bridges of Madison County]]'' and ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]).''
==Biography== ===Early life=== Jeannine Oppewall was born on November 28, 1946, and was raised in [[Uxbridge, Massachusetts]], with a [[Calvinism|Calvinist]] upbringing.<ref name="NYT0731">{{Cite news | last = Diamond | first = Jamie | title = At Home With: Jeannie Oppewall; Thoroughbred Modern | newspaper = [[The New York Times]] | date = 2003-07-31 | url =https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E3D7173EF932A05754C0A9659C8B63}}</ref> Her father was a tool and die maker Garrett Oppewall and her mother was Eva Boutiler. According to ''[[The New York Times]]'', Oppewall was determined to be "the family intellectual."<ref name="NYT0731" /> Oppewall attended and graduated from [[Calvin College]] in [[Grand Rapids, Michigan]], where she met future husband, [[Paul Schrader]], who would go on to become a film director and screenwriter.<ref name="NYT0731" />
She then studied [[medieval history]] at [[Bryn Mawr College]] in [[Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania]].<ref name="BrynMawr">{{Cite news | title = Oscar-Nominated Jeannine Oppewall M.A. '69 To Discuss Work On Seabiscuit | newspaper = [[Bryn Mawr College|Bryn Mawr Now]] | date = 2004-03-18 | url = http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/2004-03-18/oppewall.shtml | access-date = 2009-02-08 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090408205528/http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/2004-03-18/oppewall.shtml | archive-date = 2009-04-08 | url-status = dead }}</ref> There she discovered the furniture of designers and filmmakers [[Charles and Ray Eames]], which inspired her to switch her focus to modern design. Oppewall said of the Eames designs, "I was so attracted by the contemporary feeling, the shapely sexy lines: totally different from the [[Sears, Roebuck and Company|Sears, Roebuck]] middle-class stuff I'd grown up with. I looked at it and said, 'This is me.'"<ref name="NYT0731" />
Oppewall obtained her [[master's degree]] from Bryn Mawr in 1969<ref name="BrynMawr" /> and moved to [[Los Angeles]], [[California]]. At age 22, she was given a job answering phones at the [[Venice, Los Angeles|Venice]] studio of Charles Eames. According to some sources, [[Paul Schrader]] arranged an interview between Oppewall and Eames when he was writing a magazine article about the Eameses.<ref name="NYT0731" /> Oppewall, however, has claimed she got the job while visiting the Charles Eames office as a guest and, upon leaving, casually asked a secretary whether there were any jobs available.<ref name="ADGGoodShep">{{cite video |people = Jeannine Oppewall (actor), Tom Walsh (host) |date = 2006 |title = The Good Shepherd, Art & Production Design Set Decoration, 2006 Oscar Nominees |url = http://www.artdirectors.org//?content=main&cm=home_page&article_id=1052160737&video=#top |medium = Documentary |publisher = [[Art Directors Guild]] |location = [[New York City]] |accessdate = 2009-02-07}}</ref> Upon taking the job, Charles Eames told Oppewall, "I can teach you how to draw, I cannot teach you how to think or see. If you can think and you can see, you can stay."<ref name="ADGGoodShep"/> Oppewall worked with him for eight years, during which time Eames, in Oppewall's words, "saw something in me I didn't know was there."<ref name="NYT0731" /> By the end of her time with Eames, she was helping design and organize Eames museum exhibits.<ref name="NYT0731" /> Eames made more than 100 small personal and educational films in that time and, as a result of her exposure to them, Oppewall said she got into the film business "by accident."<ref name="ADGGoodShep" />
===Film career=== Oppewall began her film career helping Paul Schrader on his 1979 film ''[[Hardcore (1979 film)|Hardcore]]'', for which she was credited as a "project consultant." Oppewall and Schrader were divorced sometime after the film's release. She began her career as a [[scenic designer|set]] and [[production designer]] in the early 1980s, with such films as the 1981 [[Brian De Palma]] thriller ''[[Blow Out]]''. Oppewall was responsible for overseeing the finding of locations for her films and the design and construction of sets and interiors; according to a profile in ''The New York Times'', she was "responsible for everything an actor walks in front of, sits on, drives through or picks up."<ref name="NYT0731" />
One of her earlier movies was ''[[Tender Mercies]]'', a 1983 film about an [[Alcoholism|alcoholic]] [[country music|country singer]] played by [[Robert Duvall]]. Director [[Bruce Beresford]] praised Oppewall as "absolutely brilliant," especially for her attention to very small details, "going from the curtains to the color of the quilts on the floors."<ref name="Miracles">{{cite video |people = [[Bruce Beresford]] (actor), Gary Hertz (director) |date = 2002-04-16 |title = Miracles & Mercies |url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383509/ |medium = Documentary |publisher = [[Blue Underground]] |location = [[West Hollywood, California|West Hollywood]], [[California]] |accessdate = 2009-02-07}}</ref> A large portion of the movie was filmed in the home of Duvall's character, which Beresford created from an old house that had been sitting abandoned by a highway in [[Waxahachie, Texas]], where the majority of the movie was filmed.<ref name="Miracles" />
Oppewall said of her career, "What I do for a living is not dissimilar from what an actor does. I have a different set of tools, but it's the same process. The reason that it's fun to design sets is that it allows you to try on personalities that you'd never otherwise experience."<ref name="NYT0731" /> [[Gary Ross]], director of ''[[Pleasantville (film)|Pleasantville]]'' and ''[[Seabiscuit (film)|Seabiscuit]]'', said of Oppewall, "Jeannine doesn't [[suffer fools gladly]], and she hasn't suffered me gladly when I've been a fool. She's fastidious, restrained and refined, and yet she has this impulsive side where she just takes off and chases butterflies."<ref name="NYT0731" /> Gary Hoblit, who directed the 1996 Oppewall-designed film ''[[Primal Fear (film)|Primal Fear]]'', said he particularly appreciated her flexibility and versatility: "While she may prefer a world in which less is more, she can still create an opulent and gooey world that is appropriate for someone unlike her."<ref name="NYT0731" />
Part of the set for ''Seabiscuit'' was set in [[Tijuana]] during the [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition era]], Oppewall and her staff consulting vintage postcards in order to create the set; she said this part of the film was especially difficult to research because, "A Tijuana Historical Society didn't exactly exist back then."<ref name="NYT0731" /> She also built a replica of the ranch owned by [[Charles S. Howard]], the owner of the racehorse [[Seabiscuit]], out of [[fir|fir planks]]. Actor [[Jeff Bridges]], who played Howard, was so impressed with the set that he made an unsuccessful attempt to buy it and have it shipped to his property in [[Montana]], despite Oppewall's assurances that it was just a set and was not built to last. In a similar episode, the owners of the [[Santa Anita Park|Santa Anita]] racetrack were so impressed with her design for a [[tote board]] that they wanted to keep it.<ref name="NYT0731" />
When Oppewall was assigned art director for the 2006 spy film ''[[The Good Shepherd (film)|The Good Shepherd]]'', it took her a week to organize the number of set locations due to the large amounts of settings in the script, which included [[Cuba]], [[Guatemala]], [[Kinshasa|Léopoldville]], [[London]], [[Moscow]], [[New York (state)|New York]] and [[New Haven, Connecticut]], among other places. Although the vast majority of the movie was filmed in New York, the only scenes that are actually set in New York take place in a house in [[Far Rockaway, Queens]]. As a result, many sets had to be constructed under Oppewall's direction, including a [[Skull and Bones]] headquarters and the Berlin set, which was built on the [[Brooklyn Navy Yard]]. Oppewall built sets based on Skull and Bones, [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and other clandestine organizations after she consulted with a former CIA operative and researched books of interviews with spy agency insiders. Since the lead character played by [[Matt Damon]] originally aspired to be a poet, Oppewall incorporated many visual poetic symbols into the film, including a large number of mirrors to represent the duplicity of the CIA, [[full-rigged ship]]s as symbols of the state and [[eagle]] symbols, which were used in ironic situations such as suspect interrogations.<ref name="ADGGoodShep" />
{{As of|2000}} she is a member of the Board of Governors of the [[Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences]]. She is also a world-traveled amateur [[lepidopterist]]. {{As of|2009}}, she also serves on the [[Art Directors Guild|Art Directors Guild's]] education<ref>[http://www.artdirectors.org//?art=edu_committees "Education Committee."] ''[http://www.artdirectors.org Art Directors Guild].'' Retrieved on 2009-02-07.</ref> and workplace issues committees.<ref>[http://www.artdirectors.org//?art=Workplace_Issues "Workplace Issues Committee."] ''[http://www.artdirectors.org Art Directors Guild].'' Retrieved on 2009-02-07.</ref> In 2000, Oppewall tore down the bungalow and built a larger modern house in the style of Charles and Ray Eames because she "did not want my house to conflict with my (Eames-designed) furniture," which she bought while working for the Eameses.<ref name="NYT0731" />
==Awards and nominations== Oppewall has been nominated for four [[Academy Awards]] for [[Academy Award for Best Production Design|Best Art Direction]] for ''[[L.A. Confidential (film)|L.A. Confidential]]'' in 1997, ''[[Pleasantville (film)|Pleasantville]]'' in 1998, ''[[Seabiscuit (film)|Seabiscuit]]'' in 2003 and ''[[The Good Shepherd (film)|The Good Shepherd]]'' in 2006.<ref>[http://www.oscars.org/academy/members/members.html "Members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences: Art Directors."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090214043027/http://www.oscars.org/academy/members/members.html |date=2009-02-14 }} ''[http://www.oscars.org Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences],'' 2009. Retrieved on 2009-02-07.</ref>
She was part of the team that won an Art Directors Guild [[ADG Excellence in Production Design Awards|Excellence in Production Design Award]] for the 2002 film ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]''; Oppewall also received nominations for the same award for the films ''L.A. Confidential'', ''Pleasantville'', ''[[Wonder Boys (film)|Wonder Boys]]'', ''Seabiscuit'' and ''The Good Shepherd''.<ref>[http://www.artdirectors.org//?art=adg_award_archive§ion=7 "Annual Excellence in Production Design Awards Archives."] ''[http://www.artdirectors.org Art Directors Guild].'' Retrieved on 2009-02-07.</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * {{IMDb name|id=0649223}} * [http://catalog.oscars.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=71689 Jeannine Oppewall production design drawings, circa 1983-2006], Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
{{Navboxes |title = Awards for Jeannine Oppewall |list = {{Art Directors Guild Award for Excellence in Production Design for a Feature Film}} {{Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Production Design}} }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Oppewall, Jeannine}} [[Category:1946 births]] [[Category:American art directors]] [[Category:Bryn Mawr College alumni]] [[Category:Calvin University alumni]] [[Category:American lepidopterists]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:People from Uxbridge, Massachusetts]] [[Category:American production designers]] [[Category:American set decorators]] [[Category:American Calvinist and Reformed Christians]]