Dashing, droll, and descended from Bohemian puppeteers, veteran Hollywood illustrator Carl Sprague could be a character in a Wes Anderson film. Instead, he conceives sets for the director’s many movies, including the new “Asteroid City,” which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and stars Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hanks.
WWD Weekend recently caught up with Sprague by phone from his home in the Berkshires.
WWD: Tell me what a “concept illustrator” does?
Carl Sprague: You know, it’s a funny description. What I really am is a designer.
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I was the art director [under production designer David Wasco] for “The Royal Tenenbaums.” For Wes’s next few films, they hired Adam Stockhausen for production design, with Mark Friedberg as art director. I wasn’t involved. Then “Moonrise Kingdom” came along, and they needed someone who knew a lot about New England. Mark said, “Well, Carl, of course. Call him.”
So that’s how I became an illustrator — which is actually a great job. For the first time, I wasn’t in charge of the [art department’s] schedule. I had nothing to do with the budget. I didn’t hire any crew. I was just off in a corner drinking coffee and drawing. It was lovely!
WWD: Your latest project is Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City.” When did you begin working on the film?
C.S.: During the pandemic. I did all of the art from home, which was perfect because one had to do something, somewhere. So for six or nine months, I drew little pictures of the five or six buildings in this nondescript little town.
The original fantasy was to shoot in Rome, even though it’s supposed to be, like, New Mexico or Arizona. Then things shifted. They ended up taking the project to Spain, outside of Madrid. I wasn’t invited [chuckles].
WWD: Are you usually on set?
C.S.: Oh, God, yes. With [Anderson’s 2021 film] “The French Dispatch,” I was there for, like, half a year — in New York before filming, then in Paris and Angoulême. I traveled to “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” When we did “Moonrise Kingdom,” I was out in Rhode Island. “The Royal Tenenbaums” shot in New York. I did that whole business.
WWD: What were some of your favorite experiences?
C.S.: I loved everything about “The French Dispatch,” although it was like shooting five films at once. There were so many storylines to follow. The new one, “Asteroid City,” tells a very straightforward story, in a very straightforward way. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. People will love it.
WWD: Are you typically brought in once there’s a finished script or before?
C.S.: Well, scripts are never finished. Usually there are storyboards. Someone will sketch out who’s in a scene, the general idea of the location. My job is to conceptualize the set, make a picture from which the crew will understand how to build it. Sometimes you’re drawing quite technical things, drafting dimensions and construction details, calling out moldings. Sometimes — like on “La La Land” — all they want is a suggestion.
WWD: Where did you learn to illustrate?
C.S.: Going back to my first major feature, [Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film] “The Age of Innocence,” watching production designer Dante Ferretti knock out these big, fantastic sketches of what a [Gilded Age] room might look like — he was an inspiration.
WWD: How much research is involved before you start rendering?
C.S.: As much as possible! Wes has a whole team. For “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” they must have handed me 500 images of grand, old, European hotels. I pinned them up on the wall, looked at them, thought about them. Then I sat down to draw.
With “12 Years A Slave,” it was set in the 1830s. There was no photography yet. That wasn’t common until the 1860s. So there were only steel engravings. And many things — like slave quarters — no one documented. So you have to carefully piece it all together. That’s one of the projects I’m proudest of.
WWD: You toggle between illustrating major Hollywood productions and designing sets for smaller, independent films. What draws you to the indies?
C.S.: I mean, this is art, right? You’re supposed to be telling a story. On the big productions, people get distracted by all the excitement — hundreds of crew, 50 campers, and just worrying about the parking.
WWD: How often does the finished movie align with your initial artwork?
C.S.: Generally speaking? Always. You draw it, they build it. Now, are there times when you arrive on set and decisions have already been made that you wish you could change? Yes. Unfortunately.
WWD: Wes Anderson films share a distinct look. Are there elements you lean on to deliver that aesthetic?
C.S.: Look, I get him. I’ve worked with him for a long time. His style has not changed but his way of working has. I think that has a lot to do with the animation projects. Like, oh, God, what was it called…
WWD: “Isle of Dogs?”
C.S.: Yes. I worked on that forever. The other one, I didn’t do.
WWD: “Fantastic Mr. Fox.“
C.S.: Thank you. You know, I don’t think it’s Alzheimer’s. Your brain just gets full.
For “Tenenbaums,” Wes’s brother [Eric Chase Anderson] did maybe half a dozen concept illustrations. I filled in a few sketches, just to move us along. That was it.
But animation has a much greater level of organization and planning. Wes has brought some of that technique into his more recent work. Now, everything is completely detailed and planned out beforehand. That’s been a big development. And his budgets have changed — just a bit.
WWD: “Asteroid City “looks a lot sleeker and more restrained than his other films.
C.S. It’s a simple story — not some kind of elaborate confection. And it’s set in the desert, in a little tin-pot town that’s basically just a diner, a gas station, a motel, and some mountains. I spent a lot of time drawing mountains.
WWD: In addition to Wes Anderson, you’ve worked with Scorsese, David Fincher on “The Social Network,“ and Steven Spielberg on “Amistad.” Who’s left on your bucket list?
C.S.: Anybody who wants to call me. Seriously. I almost never know what I’m doing next. Then, miraculously, the phone rings. Generally speaking, I get along with directors. Sometimes I have more interaction, sometimes less. I mean, Fincher, I never talked to him. Not even for a minute. I was just the Boston art director.
Spielberg was kind of a phenomenon. [As East Coast set designer,] I was just one of the flunkies in the art department who had done a year and a half of development research and concept art sketches. We’d spent all kinds of money. There were so many people on set. The scene was total chaos. And Spielberg helicopters in at the last possible minute, and in a serious dad kind of way, he pulls it all together and suddenly it’s a Norman Rockwell painting.
WWD: Norman Rockwell hails from your hometown, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. What have you learned from his work?
C.S.: Norman was my wife’s father-in-law so there’s a connection. My stepdaughter, Daisy, is his granddaughter. My wife’s first marriage was to his son, Jarvis.
But Norman’s ability to tell a story with a single picture was just incredible. He got a lot of flack for being an illustrator rather than an artist, but his research and photography crafted these images that speak to people, even now.
WWD: Since he painted many Stockbridge scenes, do you sometimes feel like you’re living inside a giant set?
C.S.: Excuse me, I am the chairman of the Stockbridge Historic Preservation Commission! Our greatest assets are his illustrations of Main Street because it’s all preserved in amber. It makes our job easier, like the reverse of what I was saying earlier. If you draw it, they will build it? Well, in this case, if Norman drew it, maybe they will keep it.
WWD: I’ve read that you got your start in puppetry and that your great-grandfather was a puppeteer from Bohemia.
C.S.: I’ve actually been thinking a lot about puppets lately. My current project is a retrospective about the fabulous Tony Sarg who, among many other things, invented the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade balloons. [The exhibit Sprague helped organize, “Tony Sarg: Genius at Play,” opens at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge on June 10.]
But my great-grandfather—my mother’s mother’s father—started a family marionette theater like 100 years ago in Czechoslovakia. We still have it. I put on shows. It’s long been a source of inspiration for me because it came with a huge collection of scenery that’s wonderfully Old World, like a little Eastern Europe in a box. I played with it as a child. It taught me so much. Although, when I told my grandmother I wanted to become a set designer, she was livid. She said, “I would have burned that puppet theater!”
She expected me to become a professor.
WWD: So she wasn’t a fan of show biz?
C.S.: It’s a terrible business! I get paid by the hour. There’s this fantasy people have about Hollywood. It may exist for a lucky few who get residuals and percentages and have agents who negotiate fantastic deals. But I’m basically a plumber.
WWD: How did marionettes and Punch & Judy prepare you for the personalities you encounter in the entertainment business?
C.S.: Oh, it’s all the same. One of my props friends likes to say, whenever the actors arrive on set, “Here come the meat puppets.” Which is very disrespectful. I didn’t say that.
I’ll paraphrase Bil Baird, a student of Tony Sarg’s: Human actors have egos. Puppets don’t. It gives them a clearer path to the truth.