There's No Such Thing As... A Famous Set Decorator

Originally printed in Issue 73 - October/November 1999

Clodagh Deeney Looks at the career of one Ireland's few Oscar winners, Josie MacAvin.

Working on the film she lived in Africa for nine months, and found it 'So wonderful, and so special', while at the same time admitting it was, at times 'A pain in the neck'. It is a truly beautiful film, and it is apparent that everybody involved in the making of it fell in love with Kenya as much as Karen Blixen had. While the interiors were shot elsewhere, Blixen's house in Ngong was used for exteriors, and much of the set decoration comprised her original belongings. If it feels real, it is partly because cast and crew were steeped in Blixen's life throughout.

Eimer MacAvin, Assistant Art Director and Josie's niece, savs that she has learnt from working with her that it's not enough to simply fill a set with beautiful pieces. Every set tells its own story; every piece must have a background, a reason for existing. A character's identity, sense of place and of history are encompassed in their personal effects and how they are arranged. It is the tension between form and function that makes Josie's sets so appropriate and so intimate, with each choice of colour or shape another clue to a character's personality and aspirations.

It is difficult to identify a personal style in Josie's sets. More so, perhaps, than any other of the creative departments, set decorators require a chameleon-like ability. Even in the course of one film look will vary hugely. The Butcher Boy, for example, veers from a tawdry cosiness in Francie Brady's house to the fusty, false grandeur of Over The Waves Boarding House in Bundoran. If there is one common thread, it is a pathological attention to detail. That might mean sourcing pieces locally, as she did for Over The Waves (shot in Warrenpoint), or ensuring that the Brady's teapot is stained with tannin. It is the minutiae that give life to a set, make it palpable.

To describe something as a gift is, in a way, to demean the amount of work that exists as its corollary. Josie's talent is, however, a natural thing. Her education, her training has been on-the-job. She spent seven years touring with various theatre productions before working in film. Those years saw her involved in everything from Maureen Potter's Pantos, to touring Joan of Arc around Europe, to Michael Mac Líammoir's Playboy of the Western World in Edinburgh. When I asked her where she had studied, she laughed, and pooh-poohed the idea of 'College, or any of that stuff'.

Crew members have spoken about her 'Eye', an innate ability that has more to do with instinct than dry academia. She designs from her gut. Triona Coen, Props Matrix, talked about how Josie would change everything in a set, moments before its due to be shot on, if it didn't feel real to her. Rather than try to fudge it, by rearranging a piece of furniture, or by covering something with a cushion or a throw, she would strip everything back and start again.

The recurring theme that is collaboration gets another mention. The last time Triona worked with her it was as a trainee, but she says 'Josie wouldn't ask you to do anything unreasonable. She wouldn't get you to do something that she wouldn't do, and she really puts in the hours'.

This team work is the keystone of her continuing enjoyment of her job. The films that she has most enjoyed are those in which there is an ease of communication between Director, Production Designer, and Set Decorators. The most rewarding aspect of her job is the rapport that develops. It enables a degree of autonomy but also allows her to consult freely with the designer, go over drawings and ideas that she might have.

If all of this sounds cloying, unequivocally positive, it is perhaps because in the scramble for work, people tend to forget their manners, or get caught up in the politics of the industry. There is a danger, particularly when work is scarce, that we forget one of the most rewarding aspects of film-making: Namely, that a group of talented people work together to make something beautiful and real. If I have yet to hear a bad word said against Josie it is because she represents all that is good about film-making.

As helpful as she was when I was writing this, I'm not sure how comfortable she felt talking about herself. She concluded our conversation with a request that I spell her name properly (not unreasonable), then she said 'And can you please stress the collaborative nature of it all?'

FILMOGRAPHY - Josie MacAvin
The Butcher Boy (1997), Michael Collins (1996), The Field, Far and Away (1992), Da (1988), The Dead (1987), Lionheart (1987), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), Eat the Peach (1986), Out of Africa (1985), Cal (1984), Heaven's Gate (1980), Silver Bears (1977), Inserts (1975), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Wuthering Heights (1970), Hannibal Brooks (1969), Sinful Davey (1969), The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965), Loved One(1965) (locations), 7th Dawn (1964), Tom Jones (1963), The Mark (1961), A Terrible Beauty (1960), Shake Hands with the Devil (1959)