By James Mottram
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: production designer Rick Carter, who worked on Back To The Future II and III, Jurassic Park and The Lost World, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Forrest Gump, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avatar.
Pretty much all of the behind-the-scenes players on a film set could be classed as under-celebrated and not receiving of the credit that they deserve, but this is particularly so of the production designer, who creates the entire look and feel of a film. Unquestionably, Rick Carter is one of the most significant production designers Hollywood has ever known, and there is a strong, auteurist line that runs through his work. A list of Rick Carter’s credits reads like a journey through pop culture. Working with Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis exclusively for years, the two-time Oscar-winner put his stamp on films like Back To The Future II and III, Jurassic Park and The Lost World, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Forrest Gump. More recently, he came into the Star Wars universe for J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, and James Cameron’s Avatar.
Rick Carter recently attended The Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta, not only serving as a jury member but participating in a fascinating, career-wide masterclass at the stunning Fort Ricaosli. Intriguingly, it was just a few hundred metres away from Malta Film Studios, with its enormous water tanks that last year housed the production for Jurassic World: Rebirth, designed by Carter’s protégé, James Clyne. The day before the class, Carter sat down exclusively with FilmInk to discuss his remarkable career.
You were involved early on with Jurassic World. Did you get to pass comment on Jurassic World Rebirth too?
“The production designer [James Clyne] is one of my protégés. I worked with him quite a bit on A.I. and Star Wars and things and so, in a way, I think, he came through me to get the job. He already knew the director [Gareth Edwards] too. He was on Lincoln and fell in love with the art department coordinator, and they now have two kids. My art department became a breeding ground! So we’re kind of connected, and I did see him. We talked during that process. He was just starting the job, and I think I was helpful. Also, I knew the line producer right from having worked with him. I told the line producer, ‘This is not a flaky production designer who is going to cause you problems.’ And he had a lot of really good ideas.”
With Steven Spielberg and David Koepp behind the story, it feels like there are a lot of tangential connections to the first movie…
“I think that’s the idea. They tried to expand it [in Jurassic World], and they did an okay version in that first one. But the further they got from that idea, it maybe was trying to be a metaphor for too much. You gotta remember, Jurassic Park had this wonderful, serendipitous metaphor that came to it, which was about genetic engineering on the literal surface level, but it was actually a metaphor for the digital revolution. The Pandora’s Box that was coming out was the digital revolution, even though, on the surface of the plot, it was about genetics.”
Jurassic World: Rebirth also features the river raft sequence from the original Michael Crichton novel, a scene that was due to be in Jurassic Park…
“I’m the one who took it out! It was a $10 million sequence! We had to get the budget from the nineties down to $55 million. Steven, the way he got the deal that he got on the first film…you can look up how much money he made! He was responsible for all the money that went over $55 million in the first movie. It wasn’t very far over. That’s because he kept the budget very tight. He always does. But in particular on that one, he was really changing his methodology to be much more lean and responsible to the budget, because it was his own involvement.”
Outside of the Jurassic movies, was A.I. Artificial Intelligence one of your most beloved projects with Steven? Taking on a Stanley Kubrick idea was quite something…
“Absolutely. To get to be in the midst of Stanley’s story and Steven’s execution, and Chris Baker, who did so many great illustrations with Stanley…I brought him over to be a collaborator. And I love the movie too. And the whole concept of the fourth act. It’s a four-act structure. It’s about the fourth act. Just like in 2001. It’s about the legacy of the first three acts. That makes sense. You tell your story, now what? What happens in the future? 2001 is to infinity and beyond. You tell what happened. And then same thing with A.I. You go 2000 years in the future.”
Robert Zemeckis has also been a huge part of your working life…
“It was just Steven and Bob for twenty years. One’s an older brother, one’s a younger brother. They’re very precocious!”
What is it you liked about working with him?
“You can never tell what genre Bob will do. It’s always this and that. Doc and Marty, Tom Hanks and the volleyball. Forrest…is he smart or is he stupid? Those are the levels you get into.”
Could there ever be a fourth Back To The Future?
“I don’t think it’d be very likely. Bob did what he needed to do. It was his expression as an artist, and I think that’s been important for him to keep moving on, which he’s always done. He loves time travel and he loves playing with time. You can imagine trying to age Forrest Gump into the way Tom Hanks looks now…you couldn’t do it. And in a way he did that with Here.”
You reset the Star Wars universe on The Force Awakens. What was that like?
“I think we did well, to answer the question of, ‘How strong is the Force? What’s its purpose?’ I think the initial foray was very genuine, and I certainly was thrilled to come in, before J.J. came in, before the scripts were written, and explore visually where could we go. What would it be like? What would its point be? We had a lot of contributions that we made that were not just illustrations of ideas that the script writers had, but they were the ideas. I asked, ‘What would actually frighten you in the Star Wars universe?’ And everybody was talking about things. And Dennis Muren said, ‘If The Dark Side could take the light out of a star, that would be pretty threatening.’ Wow. In a metaphor, you can’t get more basic than that.”
Did it give you chills to see Han Solo and Chewbacca back in The Millennium Falcon?
“First of all, the answer is yes. To have Harrison Ford back…I had worked with him on a movie earlier, What Lies Beneath. But I think it was his first day, almost, when that door came down on him [and broke his ankle], and set back the production by three months. That was a shock. And he was so good about it, a trooper. Just carrying on and not making a thing about it.”
Do you think they were wise to step back from making Star Wars movies?
“I think they run out of ideas and juice on the movie level, and even on the TV level, I’d say it’s got kind of thin.”
Were you a fan of The Mandalorian?
“The Mandalorian is the western version…The Force has almost no bearing. I think it works well. That one worked very well, obviously, for getting the audience it needed. Now, they’ll do the movie. I’m sure it’ll be good. Jon Favreau is a good director.”
How was it working with James Cameron on Avatar?
“Jim is a production designer, and an art director. He worked with Roger Corman, so he can do a lot, and he brings a lot. That’s why, when I got the Oscar with Rob Stromberg, I just said, ‘Jim, this Oscar sees you’, because he needed to be acknowledged for his part in that, the production side, let alone the directing, the writing, everything else. He’s a consummate filmmaker who gives so much to it. That doesn’t diminish what I did or Rob did, but it took all three of us to build up that much of it and have it realised. I have great respect for it. He was very developed. But luckily, so was I, because if I hadn’t had twenty years with Steven and Bob Zemeckis, I wouldn’t have been able to go in and survive that. It was three years; that’s a long time to be in a very intense situation.”
How do you feel about budgets now in modern-day Hollywood?
“Remember, I was part of the group that did push them. I’m very responsible. But if it’s going to go where it’s going to go…when Jim saw the budget for Avatar was going to go over $200 million, his response was ‘Well, the mission expanded.’ He believes that he needs to make the movie he needs to make, and that the finances will come. No one can say he’s wrong. I mean, he is right. Once you’re in business with him, you do what he wants to do. You get it right.”
Are you working on anything new at the moment?
“Not really. I think I may be retired. We’ll see.”
Jurassic World Rebirth is in cinemas now.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
