How detail-oriented was Dean?
Film set designer Dean Tavoularis took great pride in the many small details that create the illusion of reality in a movie. In an interview, he shared his conviction that if a film character lived in a real house (not a studio set), then real mail should be delivered to that house, addressed to the character who “lived” there. Tavoularis explained: “I remember we did that in The Conversation. We had this apartment in San Francisco and we knew months ahead of time that we were going to have it for the making of the film. The Gene Hackman character was supposed to be an electronics wiz, and it seemed rather obvious to me to subscribe to all those magazines which cater to this kind of person. So we mailed off 30 letters and started getting all this stuff with the real character’s name and address on it.
