“The women,” she continues, “are romantic straight through, which meant lots of soft, feminine dresses for Sandra, both in the ‘50s and the present day.” For the scenes in Spectre, Atwood wanted to convey a romanticized, impressionistic nature of the idealized town. “That’s why we used light colors and soft fabrics. The citizens of the town are very pale, kind of ethereal. The costumes for young Jenny are made of light-colored vintage fabric because Jenny belongs to Spectre.”
In the sprawling former Cloverdale Junior High School where the Big Fish production workshops were housed, the Costume Department consumed the most space. Classrooms and hallways overflowed with racks of crinolines, girdles, bras and waist cinchers, the devices that made it possible for female extras to squeeze into the mid-century form-fitting fashions. The Alabama teenagers who played extras learned that the effortless look of the cool contained 50s was achieved through use of foundation garments, hair curlers and false eyelashes.
For the film’s circus scenes, Atwood did research at the Midwest Circus Museum, which has a small but detailed library. “After that, my main reference was the Mary Ellen Marks’ photo book Indian Circus, which Tim and I love for its feeling.”
The job of rounding up the circus acts and animals fell to Stunt Coordinator Charlie Croughwell, who recently worked with Burton to teach actors to move like primates in Planet of the Apes. “As a stunt coordinator, I already knew a lot of circus people, but this was a very specific search. We didn’t want Cirque de Soleil types. The performers and the equipment had to be authentic and they had to look like they came out of American circus and carnival life circa 1950 – which was not easy to find,” observes Croughwell.
For five months Croughwell and one of his stunt women Mika Saito, traveled the circus circuit through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, Indiana, Nevada and Idaho looking for performers and period equipment. “I watched and met with every available traditional circus performer I could find. I also scoped out lion tamers, elephant tamers, dog trainers, fireeaters, fire tumblers, jugglers, unicyclists, trapeze artists, high wire acts and clowns, because we needed sideshow talent as well.”
Croughwell and Saito then presented photos of what they’d found to Burton. One of Croughwell’s discoveries truly enchanted the director was a suicidal cat who jumped from the high wire onto a pillow. “For a cat,” says Croughwell, “that’s unbelievable.”
Cats were also needed for the character of Jenny, played by Bonham Carter. Jenny lives in a house with dozens of cats, all of which were supervised by Atlanta-based animal trainer Seina Phillips. “Controlling cats is entirely different from dogs,” observes Phillips. “Cats have no use for the word ‘no,’ so I had to furnish Jenny’s house with every other kind of cat - ‘hold’ cats, and ‘stay’ cats, ‘go to’ cats and ‘go with’ cats. There was even a ‘go crazy’ cat - but we didn’t use him.”
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