Since he is neither an actor, nor a director, nor even a producer, the name of Dean Tavoularis is not known. His surname has remained hidden behind the immensity of his decorations. However, it is impossible to miss the different worlds that the nonagenarian designed as official artistic director of Francis Ford Coppola between 1972 and 1996, from Godfather at Jack, Passing by secret talk (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), Heart stroke (1981), and which can also be found behind the sets of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Little Big Man (1970), Arthur Penn, Zabriskie Point (1970), by Michelangelo Antonioni, or The Ninth Gate (1999), by Roman Polanski.
The richly illustrated interview book Conversations with Dean Tavoularis (Synecdoche, 351 pages, 69 euros), which has just been published, is intended to mark a milestone. Finally, it allows, with all the necessary scope, to grasp the particular nature of the profession of production designer, as well as the special place occupied by Dean Tavoularis in the panorama of American cinema.
“I celebrated three birthdays on the set of Coppola’s film. It is not an experience that can easily be forgotten. » Dean Tavoularis
After many years as an assistant, he became production designer in the mid-1960s on Bonnie and Clyde, film that shook up old Hollywood. In the process, he became the official collaborator of Francis Ford Coppola, the emblematic director of the new Hollywood, participating in the distinctive visual signature of his films. Dean Tavoularis fully grasps the freedom offered to him by this particular moment in the history of cinema, when the authors take power over the studios. To Coppola, we must add the collaborations with two European authors, Michelangelo Antonioni and Roman Polanski.
He now lives in Paris with his wife, actress Aurore Clément, whom he met on the set ofApocalypse Now, where she appeared in the scene of the French plantation, with this colonial residence reinvented by the decorator – a scene cut from the original version and restored by the American director in his version “Redux”, in 2001.
The film took years to shoot. “I celebrated three birthdays on the set of Coppola’s film. It’s not an experience you can easily forget.” says the decorator, today in his Parisian studio where some of his paintings are hung, which will be exhibited at the Galerie Louis Gendre in Chamalières (Puy-de-Dôme), from November 24.
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