Harold was storyboard artist on The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), an illustrator who helped visualize the look of Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and The Cotton Club (1984), and the art director of Pretty Poison (1968) and Dick Tracy (1990). He earned an Oscar nomination as production designer of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), earned Mel Brooks's gratitude for redesigning the helmets in Spaceballs (1987) and giving the film's title a visual echo, and designed the famous "leg shot" in The Graduate (1967). Lillian was the go-to resource for many of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, from Alfred Hitchcock to Stanley Kubrick. When Brian De Palma made Scarface (1983), Lillian flew to South America to photograph real cocaine labs and drug lord compounds for his production designer. And they were beloved in the Hollywood community, not just for their work, but as teachers, inspirations, and friends. The producers of Shrek 2 (2004) paid tribute by naming Fiona's royal parents King Harold and Queen Lillian.
Documentary filmmaker Daniel Raim had made a specialty of profiling the unsung heroes of Hollywood. He earned an Oscar nomination for his debut short The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000), a brief primer on production design featuring Robert Boyle and Henry Bumstead, and followed it up with Something's Gonna Live (2010), which focused on Boyle and his friendship with fellow art directors and other Hollywood artists. One of those fellows was Harold Michelson, who Raim first met while attending the American Film Institute in 1998. Michelson was a guest lecturer on storyboarding and he taught his technique for using geometry to previsualize scenes via different camera lenses years before digital tools were used in pre-production.
Raim filmed hours of interviews with Harold in 1999 and profiled Harold's technique in The Man on Lincoln's Nose. In 2013, a few years after Harold died, Raim decided to use those interviews as the foundation of a new film on Harold that would, in his words, "shine a light on his extraordinary 'cinema mind' and his ability to conceive shots and sequences that are now considered some of the most iconic in American film history." He envisioned a second film focused on Lillian and her research library but as he interviewed their friends and colleagues, "it became clear that Harold's story can't be told without Lillian, and her story can't be told without him." He wasn't just profiling two artists, he realized, but telling a profoundly moving love story, and the film evolved as he got Lillian to open up about their life in interviews conducted over the course of two years.
Since his subjects were visual storytellers, Raim wanted to tell their story in part through drawings that could also reflect their personalities. Patrick Mate, the lead animator and character designer at DreamWorks Animation Studios, was a friend of the Michelsons and offered to draw storyboard-like sketches to illustrate scenes from their early life. As Raim put it in a 2015 interview, "Patrick brought the film to another level with his witty, loving, and quirky drawings that underscore Lillian and Harold's witty and loving worldview."
The title Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story is a perfect encapsulation of the resulting film. While it celebrates the work of the two Hollywood professionals, the film is at heart the story of a lifelong love affair and Raim presents a complex and nuanced portrait of a marriage, both a personal and a professional partnership. "Neither Harold or Lillian wanted or cared for the spotlight," says Raim. "I hope this film will change our understanding of what they did, technically, and also their unique, unheralded contribution to the movies."
Sources:
"Harold and Lillian Is a Wonderful Paradox: An Educational Tearjerker," Glenn Kenny. Vanity Fair, November 17, 2015.
"Behind The Graduate's "Leg Shot": Daniel Raim on Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, Jim Hemphill. Filmmaker, April 28, 2017.
"Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story: How One of Hollywood's Unsung Heroes Made 'The Birds' Come Alive," Allison Picurro. Indiewire, March 28, 2017.
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By Sean Axmaker
