Anton Furst was a cinematic visionary.
Thirty years ago today, the production designer tragically took his own life at the age of 47.
He’s one of my greatest influences, so I thought I’d write a brief history about him alongside some photos, drawings, and interview excerpts.
His production design for Tim Burton's Gotham City made an early and indelible impact on me.
"It was as if hell had erupted through the pavements and kept growing."
– Anton Furst
As a 10-year-old sitting in a suburban cinema, #Batman89 was my first introduction to the dark beauty of gothic, futurist, and brutalist architecture. Gotham was scarier than the Joker, more mysterious than Bruce Wayne, and more beguiling than Vicki Vale. I wanted to live there.
"I don't understand what reality is, to be honest. I don't know what it means."
– Anton Furst
Anton Furst was born in London, England. His family, descended from Latvian royalty, had fled to the city in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Towards the end of his life, Furst talked of returning to the family castle he was told of as a boy.
Shortly after applying to study medicine at King's College, he decided he wanted to draw for a living instead. So he went to the Royal College of Art. There he befriended architect Bernard Tschumi. "He builds buildings, I build illustrations"
"Then I saw Kubrick's 2001. I wanted that job."
Following his degree, he took two travelling scholarships to America, first with the Czech scenographer, Josef Svoboda (below), and then with designer Charles Eames. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Svo…
In March 1977, Furst created the Light Fantastic holography exhibition at the @royalacademy.
After it was nearly aborted due to a lighting blowout, @TheWho donated some funds to fix it and used the laser show for their own performances.
Furst also helped create the SFX for #StarWars, #Alien, #FlashGordon, #IndianaJones, and #Moonraker.
He was then introduced to the artist Nigel Phelps, who would become his primary draftsman. The debut of this partnership was Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves (1984)
"We were trying to develop something which was the fantasy of a child, a dreamworld with its own reality," Furst told Lynn Geller at @BOMBmagazine.
"The only point to this work was to create stuff that had never been done on film before. Anton's references were complex and hugely varied. He needed strong images that could be developed deeply."
– Eddie Butler, a sculptor who worked on all his films.
The film and its accompanying Bruegel-inspired charcoal set illustrations also caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick.
The ensuing collaboration was Full Metal Jacket (1987). Kubrick never travelled outside the UK, so Furst built Vietnam on the disused Beckton gasworks in London's East End. "Technically it was a nightmare. All the sets were on fire for 6 months because he takes a year to shoot."
"We didn’t want blue skies. If the sun came out, Stanley didn’t shoot. It was supposed to be the image of hell."
Another director who wanted to raise hell with Furst was Tim Burton. Fresh from the success of Beetlejuice, the 30-year-old director had signed on to direct Jon Peters and Peter Guber’s long-awaited Batman project. He needed someone who could match his gothic sensibility.
“A lot of people say to me, you must have been inspired by Metropolis. I've seen it but I've always thought that city was designed by one art director."
"To me, cities are designed by thousands of architects over hundreds of years.”
– Anton Furst
“I looked for different styles that I just thought felt right, like Brutalism, Antonio Sant’Elia’s Futurist designs, the Sagrada Familia, and Shin Takamatsu’s locomotive-influenced buildings.”
– Anton Furst
This nightmarish mishmash of oppressive construction techniques gave Burton’s inner-city its necessary claustrophobic ambience. Critics have since likened it to “Imaginary Prisons”, a series of 18th-century etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_…
In an interview with @TIME, Furst described his desire to “make Gotham City the ugliest and bleakest metropolis imaginable. New York City without a planning commission. A city run by crime, with a riot of architectural styles. An essay in ugliness.”
Furst and Burton also drew heavily on the low-lighting and shadows of German Expressionism and film noir. “We ended up with canyons, with cantilevered forward structures and bridges over. That way, there is just a little light. We’re condensing the city and stretching it higher.”
Filming at Pinewood took place between October 1988 and January 1989. 18 soundstages were used, and almost all of the 95 acres of the available backlot.
Furst also designed Batman’s logo. He changed the classic 60s yellow to a shiny bronze and extended the bat-outline to the oval’s edges while adding highlights to provide the illusion of depth.
And, of course, Furst created the never-bettered Batmobile. He combined the long, low, thin aesthetic of Bonneville Salt Flats racers, with the big fins and curves of a 50s luxury car, and then whacked a huge rocket engine down the middle.
“The car was more like a knight in armour, an expression of Batman’s costume – an intimidating, furious war machine. We didn’t spend much time looking at concept cars of the future. We went back in time.”
Furst won an Oscar for art direction, while Peter Young won for set decoration. “I also want to thank Peter Young, wherever he is,” Furst said on stage, squinting at the audience trying to locate him. Young was standing right next to him, close enough to tap him on the shoulder.
In 1990, Jon Peters convinced Furst to sign an exclusive contract with Columbia Pictures, promising him work as a director.
His directorial debut was to be MidKnight, a medieval musical fantasy starring #MichaelJackson.
The film never materialised.
Furst would walk around his LA house with Napoleon, a green parakeet on his shoulder. “In the end, he rolled over and smothered it in his sleep. Very Hollywood,” John McIlvride, his close friend, told The @Independent.
Napoleon's death devastated him. Furst's Columbia contract also prevented him and his employees from working on the Batman sequel. He did the interior design for @PlanetHollywood. All was not well.
Furst felt cut off from his friends, and his film design work had ground to a halt. He was drinking heavily. He also decided to stop taking the Valium he had relied upon since the death of his father 26 years earlier and the Halcion that had been prescribed for his insomnia.
On 24 November 1991, four weeks after the opening party for Planet Hollywood, Furst jumped to his death from the eighth floor of a Los Angeles car park.
His final credited film was Penny Marshall’s Awakenings.
At a memorial service on the Columbia lot that December, his first wife, Jane, said: “What killed Anton was probably a very old pain.”
At the ceremony, Penny Marshall said she was dumbfounded when she saw his work on Batman. She was dumbfounded again when they met for Awakenings, and finally dumbfounded when she learned he had killed himself.” He was a perplexing man,” she said.
Thirty years on from his tragic death, Anton Furst’s work continues to influence a new generation of artists, designers, directors and cinemagoers.
I will always be indebted to him for creating worlds that let my imagination run wild.
“It’s the power of the image that matters.”
– Anton Furst
To learn more about Anton Furst’s life and work, please read the pieces I have used and referenced in this #FilmTwitter thread:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Fur…
bombmagazine.org/articles/anton…
boldentrance.com/inside-the-min…
independent.co.uk/life-style/whe…
numberonebatfan.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/bat…
thedissolve.com/features/adven…
If anyone reading this is feeling low or experiencing suicidal thoughts and feelings, don’t keep it in.
Reach out to your friends, families or organisations like the @samaritans. You can call them any time of night or day on 116123.
samaritans.org/how-we-can-hel…
I’m going to leave you with this rare @sciarc archive interview with Anton Furst from March 7, 1990.
What is your favourite Anton Furst cinematic creation? Let me know!
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