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      How Hans Zimmer Conjured the Otherworldly Sounds of ‘Dune’

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      The composer worked with a far-flung “band” of collaborators who sung, scraped metal, invented instruments and more for the score.When the composer Hans Zimmer was approached to score “Dune,” the new movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel, he knew one thing absolutely: It would not sound like “Star Wars.” Musically, those films drew on influences that ranged from Holst and Stravinsky to classic movie scores of the ’30s and ’40s. Even the rollicking tune performed by the bug-eyed creatures in the Cantina was inspired by Benny Goodman.For “Dune,” by contrast, Zimmer wanted to conjure sounds that nobody had ever heard before.“I felt like there was a freedom to get away from a Western orchestra,” he said recently, speaking in the Warner Bros. offices overlooking Hudson Yards in New York. “I can spend days making up sounds.”The resulting soundtrack might be one of Zimmer’s most unorthodox and most provocative. Along with synthesizers, you can hear scraping metal, Indian bamboo flutes, Irish whistles, a juddering drum phrase that Zimmer calls an “anti-groove,” seismic rumbles of distorted guitar, a war horn that is actually a cello and singing that defies Western musical notation — just to name a few of its disparate elements.The score combines the gigantic, chest-thumping sound of Zimmer’s best known work of the last decade with the spirit of radical sonic experimentation. The weirdness is entirely befitting the saga of a futuristic, intergalactic civilization whose denizens are stalked by giant sandworms and revere a hallucinogenic substance called spice.Timothée Chalamet stars in the latest film version of ‘Dune,’ directed by Denis Villeneuve.Warner Bros.No hallucinogens were imbibed as part of the composing process though: “Weirdly, I’m the only rock ’n’ roller who never did any drugs,” said Zimmer, who has a wide, boyish grin that belies his 64 years, particularly when discussing his more outrageous musical endeavors.Some time after his stint with the band the Buggles, the German-born, California-based composer made his name with scores for “Rain Man,” “The Lion King” and “The Thin Red Line.” More recently he scored the latest Bond outing, “No Time to Die.” But to many he is perhaps best known for his work on Christopher Nolan movies, including “Interstellar,” “Inception” and his Batman series.In fact, Zimmer turned down an offer to work on Nolan’s last film, “Tenet,” to focus his energies on “Dune.” In a way, the composer said, he has been working on this soundtrack ever since he first read the novel as a teenager. “I’ve been thinking about ‘Dune’ for nearly 50 years. So I took it very seriously.” He avoided seeing the 1984 movie adaptation, directed by David Lynch — featuring music by Toto — to preserve the vision of the movie in his head.As part of his creative process, Zimmer spent a week in Utah tuning in to the sound of the desert. “I wanted to hear the wind howling,” he said.Zimmer’s score is so prominent in “Dune” that at times the movie feels like an otherworldly equivalent of a “Planet Earth”-style nature spectacular. “‘Dune’ is by far my most musical film,” said the director Denis Villeneuve, who also hired Zimmer for “Blade Runner 2049.” “The score is almost ubiquitous, participating directly in the narrative of the film. It’s spiritual.”In fact, Zimmer wrote more music than could fit in the film. In addition to the original soundtrack, there’s “The Dune Sketchbook (Music From the Soundtrack),” comprising extended sonic explorations, and “The Art and Soul of Dune,” a companion soundtrack to the book of the same title that goes behind the scenes of the film. (There’s still more written for the hoped-for sequel.)It’s Zimmer’s name in the credits and on the soundtrack releases, but he prefers to think of himself as a member of an unusual band that includes a select group of composer-collaborators: “If someone has a great idea, I’m the first one to say, yes. Let’s go on that adventure.”The composer David Fleming, who gets an “additional music” credit for his contributions to the score, explained, “We create and collaborate on ideas, experimenting as long as the filmmakers will allow us to before we finally start applying those ideas to picture.” He described “band meetings” as an open forum, adding, “More than anyone else, you can count on Hans to push a bold idea one step further than you think it could possibly go, and then push some more.”Guthrie Govan, a slide guitarist whom Zimmer discovered on YouTube, described the process: “He’ll outline the desired end result rather than prescribing a specific means of getting there. For one cue, he just said, ‘This needs to sound like sand.’”To create the unorthodox score, Zimmer gave his collaborators cues like “This needs to sound like sand.”Warner Bros.Entirely new instruments ended up being created from scratch. (With pandemic-era travel restrictions in place, many of these elements were recorded separately in different parts of the world.) Winds player Pedro Eustache built a 21-foot horn and a “contrabass duduk,” a supersized version of the ancient Armenian woodwind instrument. Chas Smith, working in isolation in his barn in rural California, struck, scraped and scratched various metallic instruments of his own invention, including one made from springs and saw blades, and another made of Inconel 718, a superalloy used in cryogenic storage tanks and SpaceX engines. In the film, Smith’s complex, resonant tonal textures accompany visuals of desert sands and windblown spice.One of the major and more surprising musical moments in “Dune” occurs during a ceremonious arrival on the desert planet Arrakis. The scene is announced with the portentous drone of bagpipes, an aural assault generated by a battalion of 30 highland pipers playing in a converted church in Scotland. Ear protection had to be worn: the volume reached 130 decibels, the equivalent of an air-raid siren..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That unholy din in particular permeated Zimmer’s home during his late-night work sessions. “My daughter told me the other day she has bagpipe PTSD.”But perhaps the most mystical presence in the score is a choir of female voices, singing, whispering and chanting in an invented language. “The true driving force of this novel is always the female characters,” Zimmer said. “It’s really the women that craft the destiny of everybody.”One arresting voice comes through like a war cry, all ancient, melismatic syllables in unsettled rhythms. These vocals were recorded in a closet in Brooklyn, the makeshift studio of the music therapist and singer Loire Cotler. In that space, sitting on the floor, with clothes dangling above her head and her laptop perched on a cardboard box, Cotler sang for hours a day, emerging when it was dark. “It became a sacred musical laboratory,” Cotler told me.Stylistically, Cotler drew on everything from Jewish niggun (wordless song) to South Indian vocal percussion, Celtic lament to Tuvan overtone singing. Even the sound of John Coltrane’s saxophone was an influence, she said. “When you start to hybridize these far-flung influences and techniques, interesting sounds start to happen,” she said. “It’s a vocal technique called ‘Hans Zimmer.’”Villeneuve has made headlines for insisting that “Dune” is the kind of multisensory experience that demands to be seen on a big screen in a cinema. In the same way, Zimmer’s score is one that demands to be experienced via a good cinema sound system.“I write in surround sound — but it’s not just about the big sound and big screen,” Zimmer said. “It’s about sharing something together. Shared dreaming.” More

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      Indian Film Is Being Adapted Into a Broadway Musical

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      “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” a popular Hindi-language movie from 1995, will debut during the 2022-23 season.Bollywood is coming to Broadway.“Come Fall in Love — The DDLJ Musical,” based on the Indian filmmaker Aditya Chopra’s 1995 hit “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” which has become a cultural touchstone of contemporary Bollywood, will open during the 2022-23 season, producers announced on Friday.The film, which was Chopra’s directorial debut at age 23, is a romantic comedy that tells the story of Simran, a young Indian American woman who is arranged to be married to a family friend who convinces her strict father that she should have a summer adventure in Europe first. (A charming American throws a wrench into her logical plans.)Chopra, who also wrote the movie, commonly referred to as “DDLJ” and whose title is translated as “The Braveheart Will Take the Bride,” said in a statement on Friday that he was excited to marry the worlds of theater and film in the project, which he will direct.“Twenty-six years later, I’m going back to my original vision of the story of ‘DDLJ,’” he said, “a love story of two cultures … two worlds.” He added, “I’m terribly nervous and incredibly excited.”The show will be produced by Yash Raj Films, India’s largest film studio, and it will be a collaboration between an American and Indian creative team. Nell Benjamin (“Legally Blonde,” “Mean Girls”) will write the book and lyrics, and the Indian songwriters Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani will compose the music. Choreography will be by Rob Ashford, who won a Tony Award for “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and Derek McLane (“Moulin Rouge!,” “Hairspray Live!”) will design the set.The musical will have its world premiere at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego in September 2022, with Broadway dates to be announced later.“DDLJ,” one of the highest-grossing Indian movies of all time, was a success with critics as well as at the box office and placed 12th on the British Film Institute’s list of the top Indian films of all time.Writing for RogerEbert.com in 2012, Omer M. Mozaffar characterized the film as a Bollywood version of a Disney princess story, with a young woman “feeling trapped by the traditional patriarchy, seeking freedom through discovering the world, but finally finding it through silent, but inappropriate love.”A global casting search is underway. More

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      ‘Dune’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      Halyna Hutchins, Cinematographer of 'Rust,' Was Talented and Spirited

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      Halyna Hutchins, the director of photography for the film “Rust,” was killed when the actor Alec Baldwin discharged a firearm being used as a prop.Shortly before the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on a film set in the foothills of New Mexico, she smiled at the camera as she recorded herself riding a chestnut horse through the desert brush.“One of the perks of shooting a western is you get to ride horses on your day off,” Ms. Hutchins wrote this week in an Instagram post.On Thursday, Ms. Hutchins, 42, was killed when the actor Alec Baldwin discharged a firearm being used as a prop on the set of “Rust,” a western about a teenage boy who goes on the run with his grandfather after the accidental killing of a local rancher. Ms. Hutchins, the film’s director of photography, died after being flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. The film’s director, Joel Souza, was injured in the shooting and was released from a hospital.Friends in Ukraine, where Ms. Hutchins is originally from, described her as spirited, and said she never forgot her home. She was proud of her heritage.Instagram/Halynahutchins/@Halynahutchins Via ReutersFriends in Ukraine, where Ms. Hutchins is originally from, described her as spirited, someone whose talents had propelled her from that country to success in Hollywood but who never forgot her home. She was proud of her heritage, they said, and returned regularly to visit.Yana Nestoliy, a friend from college, described her as an ambitious, focused woman with intelligent eyes and a sincere smile.“She could have been among the top Hollywood stars on camera, not behind it,” Ms. Nestoliy said.Ms. Hutchins grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle, where, according to her personal website, she was “surrounded by reindeer and nuclear submarines.” She studied economics at the Agrarian University in Ukraine before switching to a journalism program at Kyiv National University. She later attended the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles.Andriy Semenyuk, a friend and fellow Ukrainian cinematographer, said in an interview with Detector Media, a media organization in Ukraine, that even as her career blossomed in Hollywood, she made a point of embracing her background, making an effort to help fellow Ukrainians in California. He called her death a “stupid, shocking loss.”The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the country’s consulate in Los Angeles was trying to contact Ms. Hutchins’s relatives.Also on Friday, Mr. Baldwin released a statement on social media saying, “There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours.” He said that he is in contact with Ms. Hutchins’s husband, adding, “My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”Among filmmakers in the United States, Ms. Hutchins was remembered as a skilled cinematographer with an artistic vision who was deeply committed to her work.Adam Egypt Mortimer, the director of a 2020 superhero action movie “Archenemy,” on which Ms. Hutchins worked as director of photography, wrote on Twitter that Ms. Hutchins was a “brilliant talent,” pointing to a series of posts he made last year about Ms. Hutchins’s work. He had written that Ms. Hutchins’s “tastes and sensibility of what is cinematic were a huge asset for executing our style” and that she had been visually inspired by Jim Steranko comics.“She was a true wartime sister,” Mr. Mortimer wrote, “fighting the battles to make this thing look amazing despite the unrelenting limitations and catastrophes.” More

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      Alec Baldwin Fatally Shoots Crew Member on 'Rust' Set, Authorities Say

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      The movie’s director of photography was killed and the director was injured on the set of “Rust,” a Western, a sheriff’s office in New Mexico said.Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputies investigated the set of “Rust” in New Mexico after the actor discharged a prop firearm, killing the film’s director of photography and wounding the director.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlec Baldwin discharged a prop firearm on the set of a Western he was making in New Mexico on Thursday, killing the film’s director of photography and wounding the movie’s director, the authorities said.The cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, was killed, and the director, Joel Souza, 48, was injured around 1:50 p.m. on the set of “Rust,” which is being filmed in Santa Fe County, said Juan Rios, a spokesman for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. The circumstances of the shooting are under investigation.Mr. Rios said the shooting at Bonanza Creek Ranch happened in the middle of a scene that was either being rehearsed or filmed. He said the Sheriff’s Office was interviewing people on the set to determine how the two had been shot.“We’re trying to determine right now how and what type of projectile was used in the firearm,” he said.Halyna Hutchins was killed and the director Joel Souza was injured on set of the movie “Rust” in Santa Fe on Thursday.Fred Hayes/Getty Images For SAGIndieMr. Rios said on Thursday night that the Sheriff’s Office had not filed charges against anyone in connection with the shooting.Ms. Hutchins was flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where she later died, Mr. Rios said. Mr. Souza was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe. Mr. Souza’s condition was not immediately available.The film’s producers and a representative for Mr. Baldwin, 63, did not immediately respond to emails or phone calls on Thursday night.In a statement, the movie’s production company, Rust Movie Productions LLC, said: “The entire cast and crew has been absolutely devastated by today’s tragedy, and we send our deepest condolences to Halyna’s family and loved ones. We have halted production on the film for an undetermined period of time and are fully cooperating with the Santa Fe Police Department’s investigation. We will be providing counseling services to everyone connected to the film as we work to process this awful event.”On Thursday morning, Mr. Baldwin posted a photo on Instagram in his film costume, which included what appeared to be a prosthetic wound on his torso.According to Ms. Hutchins’s website, she was originally from Ukraine and grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle. She studied journalism in Ukraine and film in Los Angeles.She called herself a “restless dreamer” and an “adrenaline junkie” on her Instagram profile. She posted multiple images this month from the set of “Rust,” including a video on Tuesday of her riding a horse on her day off.In a statement, John Lindley, the national president of the International Cinematographers Guild, and Rebecca Rhine, the organization’s national executive director, called Ms. Hutchins’s death “devastating news.”“The details are unclear at this moment, but we are working to learn more, and we support a full investigation into this tragic event,” their statement said. “This is a terrible loss, and we mourn the passing of a member of our Guild’s family.”A statement from the New Mexico Film Office on Oct. 6 said Rust Movie Productions would employ 75 crew members, 22 actors and 230 “background talent.”Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputies responding to the scene of a fatal shooting on a movie set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe County, N.M., on Thursday.KOAT 7 News, via Associated Press“Rust” is a movie about a 13-year-old boy who goes on the run with his estranged grandfather after the accidental killing of a local rancher, according to IMDb. The movie, which was set to be filmed this month and next month, is directed by Mr. Souza and stars Frances Fisher and Mr. Baldwin, who is also producing the film.The shooting echoed an accident on a movie set in 1993 in which the actor Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, was shot and killed during a scene when a bullet that was lodged in the barrel of a gun was discharged along with a blank cartridge. “Our hearts go out to the family of Halyna Hutchins and to Joel Souza,” Brandon Lee’s sister Shannon Lee tweeted late Thursday.In 1984, the actor Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally shot himself in the head and died when he was playing Russian roulette on set.Mr. Baldwin, an Emmy Award-winning actor, has had a long career in movies, plays and television. In one of his best known roles, he played Jack Donaghy, an oblivious, domineering TV executive on the sitcom “30 Rock,” which ran on NBC from 2006 to 2013.He also portrayed Donald J. Trump on “Saturday Night Live” with a custom-made wig, glued-on eyebrows and puckered lips. He and Mr. Trump sometimes sparred on social media.Mr. Baldwin also has a history of run-ins with the police.In 2014, he was arrested after he rode his bicycle the wrong way on Fifth Avenue near 16th Street in Manhattan. Officers charged him with disorderly conduct after they said he became belligerent.In 2019, Mr. Baldwin pleaded guilty to harassment in Manhattan Criminal Court and agreed to take an anger management course in a deal with prosecutors to dispose of charges that he had assaulted a man during a dispute over a parking spot.Nicole Sperling More

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      Renato Casaro’s Posters Capture Films’ Essential Moments

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      Renato Casaro’s hand-drawn art has hooked movie audiences around the world since the 1950s. Tarantino and Stallone are big fans. One secret to his success? “You can’t cheat.”TREVISO, Italy — Renato Casaro was taking a trip down memory lane, a long journey in a career that extends from the 1950s, when Rome was known as Hollywood on the Tiber, to the last decade when Quentin Tarantino asked for his help on the 2019 film “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”“I constantly adapted,” said Mr. Casaro, who is a few days short of his 86th birthday. “That’s why I kept working when others stopped.”Over more than six decades, his hand-drawn movie posters have hooked audiences into theaters, acting as abridged portends of the delights to come.“The important thing was to capture the essential: that moment, that glance, that attitude, that movement that says everything and condenses the entire story. That’s the hard part,” Mr. Casaro said, adding an admonishment: “You can’t cheat. You can’t promise something that isn’t there.”The essential might translate into the tender embrace he depicted on the poster for a 1955 Russian ballet version of “Romeo and Juliet.” Or it could be a terrified eye lit by a candle for the 1969 thriller “The Haunted House of Horror.” Or maybe an impossibly brawny Arnold Schwarzenegger brandishing a sword as “Conan the Barbarian” in 1982.Although his art has been seen by untold millions, Mr. Casaro himself is mostly invisible, his work largely uncredited (save for his neatly printed signature discreetly tucked in a margin). He is known primarily to collectors, and to the many producers and directors who sought him out to plug their pictures.The Santa Caterina complex in Treviso, one of the venues for the exhibition of Mr. Casaro’s work.Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times“It’s a bit of a sore spot,” Mr. Casaro said during a recent interview in Treviso, the northeastern Italian city where he was born and where he returned to live a few years ago. As far as he knew, he said, he’d been credited in the end titles just once, in 1984, by Sergio Leone for his work on “Once Upon a Time in America.”But now Mr. Casaro is getting his moment in the limelight as Treviso celebrates his art through an ambitious retrospective: “Renato Casaro. Cinema’s Last Poster Designer. Treviso, Rome, Hollywood.”“We’re very proud to celebrate the maestro who gave emotions to so many people,” said Treviso’s mayor, Mario Conte. Many of Mr. Casaro’s posters had become icons, “forever lodged in our memories,” he said.The show’s title traces the trajectory of Mr. Casaro’s career — from crafting movie posters as a teenager in exchange for free tickets to Treviso’s Garibaldi Theater, to the days when extravagant sword-and-sandal films set in ancient Rome were shot in the modern Italian capital, to his brushes with A-list Hollywood actors.Mr. Casaro said he’d been “born with a paintbrush in my hand,” a natural talent who got better “with a lot of experience.”He moved to Rome in 1954, just as it was becoming a favorite of international filmmakers, who took advantage of the city for its unparalleled setting, the production expertise at Cinecittà Studios and the allure of rising local stars like Sophia Loren.He found work at a well-known advertising design studio specializing in movie posters.Mr. Casaro, who is about to turn 86, working in his studio this month in Treviso.Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times“You learn on the job,” said Mr. Casaro, who eventually went out on his own. “You have to be able to draw everything, from a portrait to a horse to a lion.”It really was la dolce vita, he recalled.“We’d come out of the trauma of the war, and Rome was full of life,” he said, with movie stars and tourists swelling the swanky restaurants of Via Veneto. He was out of that league, but he tried to sneak into the hottest places.“We lived on the margins, but come on, it was marvelous to be young and go to Rome and discover this world,” he said in the deconsecrated church of Santa Margherita, one of the venues for his exhibition. His mother, he noted, was less thrilled with his vocation and location. Growing up in provincial Treviso, Rome might as well have been on another planet. “She thought Rome was the city of perdition,” he said. “She cried, she fretted, ‘I’ve lost my son.’”In Rome, he worked constantly. Roberto Festi, the curator of the exhibition, estimated that during this first phase of his career, he was making about 100 posters a year.To better understand the mood of a film, Mr. Casaro often went on the set. Sergio Leone wanted him in New York to witness a key moment in “Once Upon a Time in America.”“They were filming the scene where the youngest boy gets killed,” Mr. Casaro recalled, an image that eventually evolved into the movie poster. “It was stunning, and the highlight of the first part of the film.”At the exhibition in Treviso. Conan and Bond were among Mr. Casaro’s subjects. Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesThe turning point in his career, which brought attention outside Italy, came when Dino De Laurentiis hired him to make the poster for the 1966 blockbuster “The Bible: In the Beginning…” It was the start of a long-lasting collaboration with Mr. De Laurentiis, and the friendship helped put him in Hollywood’s sights.Mr. Casaro drew the posters for the Conan trilogy, breakthrough films for Mr. Schwarzenegger, who in 1982 was known mostly as a bodybuilder. For the first film, Mr. De Laurentiis, one of the producers, told Mr. Casaro to focus on the actor’s face, not just his muscles. “Dino wanted to launch him,” Mr. Casaro said. “He knew that Schwarzenegger would explode as an actor.”Another big star of the day, Sylvester Stallone, loved how Mr. Casaro had depicted him in his role as the troubled Vietnam vet Rambo. “Stallone said that I had entered into his soul,” Mr. Casaro said.Mr. Casaro’s early style, which he described as “impressionistic,” became increasingly realistic in the 1980s when he began using an airbrush. That made his technique more photographic but also “more magical,” he said.A poster for Rambo III. Mr. Casaro said Sylvester Stallone told him he had “entered into his soul.”Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times“When he began working in hyper-realism, that was the big change,” said Nicoletta Pacini, the head of posters and movie memorabilia at Italy’s National Museum of Cinema. “That was pure Casaro, and others began to copy him.”The artist isn’t sure how many movie posters he created in total but estimates it’s close to 2,000.“He always understood the spirit of the film” creating images that were “special and distinctive,” said Carlo Verdone, one of Italy’s most famous comedic actors and directors who hired Mr. Casaro to make posters for several films. Mr. Casaro stopped making posters in 1998, when the taste for hand-drawn images had waned in favor of digital and photoshopped renderings. Not for him, he said.He shifted his focus to African wildlife drawings — and elaborate re-workings of famous Renaissance paintings populated with movie stars.In a reimagining of Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” Marilyn Monroe holds court. “She’s always been the ultimate myth for me,” Mr. Casaro said. “With all her weaknesses, she still represents a special moment in the history of cinema.”Mr. Casaro showing a drawing of Marilyn Monroe. “With all her weaknesses, she still represents a special moment in the history of cinema,” he said of her.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesThen, out of the blue, Mr. Tarantino called, asking for posters in a vintage spaghetti-western style for “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” the director’s love letter to 1960s Los Angeles.He designed two posters featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays an on-the-way-out actor who goes to Italy to make spaghetti westerns and revive his career. One of the posters is for a fictional film called “Kill Me Now Ringo, Said the Gringo.”“Those films always had incredible titles,” Mr. Casaro laughed.Mr. Tarantino sent him a signed photo of Mr. DiCaprio posing for the poster with a message that reads: “Thanks so much for your art gracing my picture. You’ve always been my favorite.”For Mr. Casaro’s admirers, the Treviso exhibition is long overdue.“The history of art has tended to marginalize posters because they were conceived for the masses, and the illustrators were seen more as craftsmen,” said Walter Bencini, who made a documentary about Mr. Casaro. “But movie posters can be popular art in the true sense of the word, because they’re part of the collective imagination but also evoke so many personal feelings tied to specific moments.”The feelings evoked in his poster for “The Sheltering Sky,” lushly filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1990, make it one of Mr. Casaro’s personal favorites. “It captures the mystery,” he said, “the notion of immersing oneself in the desert.”If movies are primarily about entertainment, then Mr. Casaro’s summary of his career is apt.“I had fun,” he said. “A lot of fun.”Mr. Casaro in his studio. “I constantly adapted,” he said of his long career.Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times More

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      Diane Weyermann, Executive Who Championed ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ Dies at 66

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      A former public interest lawyer, she oversaw this and many other documentaries that addressed urgent social issues.Diane Weyermann, who oversaw the making of potent documentaries like “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Citizenfour” and “Food Inc.,” and in so doing helped change the documentary world from an earnest and underfunded backwater of the movie industry into a vibrant must-see category, died on Oct. 14 at a hospice facility in Manhattan. She was 66.Her sister Andrea Weyermann said the cause was lung cancer.“Diane was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever known,” Al Gore, the former vice president and presidential candidate whose seemingly quixotic mission to educate the world about climate change through a decades-long traveling slide show became an unlikely hit film with an odd title, “An Inconvenient Truth,” said in an interview. “She was enormously skilled at her craft and filled with empathy,” he added. “It is not an exaggeration to say she really did change the world.”So did his movie. “An Inconvenient Truth” earned an Oscar in 2007, and Mr. Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize that same year, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The film, which became one of the highest-earning documentaries ever made, was the second documentary made by the activist film company Participant, where Ms. Weyermann was a longtime executive, and hardly anyone in Hollywood thought it was a good idea. It was a movie about a slide show, after all.When the filmmakers screened it for a major studio in hopes of getting distribution, some of the executives fell asleep. “There was audible snoring,” recalled Davis Guggenheim, the director, “and when it was over one of them said, ‘No one is going to pay a babysitter so they can go to a theater and see this movie, but we’ll help you make 10,000 CDs for free that you can give to science teachers.’”Dejected, Mr. Guggenheim, Mr. Gore, Ms. Weyermann and others repaired to a steakhouse in Burbank, Calif., to brood, but Ms. Weyermann refused to be cowed.“Just wait till Sundance,” she said.“An Inconvenient Truth” received four standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival, and Paramount bought the distribution rights.No one thought that a movie about a former vice president and his slide show about the dangers of climate change would make for great cinema. But “An Inconvenient Truth,” starring Al Gore, was a hit, and Ms. Weyermann was one of its early boosters.Eric Lee/Paramount ClassicsParticipant had been started in 2004 by Jeff Skoll, a social entrepreneur and the first president of eBay, with its own mission: to make movies about urgent social issues. A former public interest lawyer, Ms. Weyermann was running the documentary program at the Sundance Institute when Mr. Skoll hired her in 2005, though he was worried that Robert Redford, a friend and the founder of the institute, would be irked. (He wasn’t, and blessed the move).“From the start, Diane brought knowledge, relationships, context and industry insights into our team,” Mr. Skoll said in an email. “Participant was a small, burgeoning company at the time, direct film industry expertise was limited, and we had very little documentary experience.”Participant would go on to make over 100 films, including the features “Spotlight,” “Contagion” and “Roma” and the documentaries “My Name Is Pauli Murray” and “The Great Invisible.”“Diane built an incredible slate of films that have made a difference in everything from nuclear weapons to education to the environment and so much more,” Mr. Skoll added. “She was the heart and soul of Participant.”It was Ms. Weyermann’s job to find, fund, form and promote documentaries from all over the world, and she traveled constantly doing so.In 2013, Laura Poitras, the director of “Citizenfour” — the Oscar-winning tale of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who exposed the government’s widespread surveillance programs — was holed up in Berlin when Ms. Weyermann came to see her.“Diane knew I couldn’t travel to the U.S.,” Ms. Poitras said, because she was worried that she might be detained or arrested; during the course of her reporting, Mr. Snowden had become a fugitive and a cause célèbre. “She wanted to make sure I was OK, and I wanted her to see the cuts. I had hundreds of hours of film, and I told her right off, ‘I’m not going to be able provide any documentation’” — film studios typically require detailed written proposals — “and she immediately said, ‘We’re going to do this and I’ve got your back.’”“She loved being in the editing room,” Ms. Poitras added. “She had an amazing ability to see a film when it was really raw and be in tune with it and what the filmmaker needed. You wanted her notes; she always made the work better.”“A director’s whisperer” is how Mr. Guggenheim described her.The former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, left, and the journalist Glenn Greenwald in Laura Poitras’s documentary “Citizenfour” (2014). Ms. Weyermann, Ms. Poitras said, “had an amazing ability to see a film when it was really raw and be in tune with it and what the filmmaker needed.”Laura Poitras/Praxis FilmsIt wasn’t just the big box-office movies she supported, said Ally Derks, the founder of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. “It was the small, fragile films she nurtured too. She was in India with Rahul Jain, whose movie about pollution in New Delhi just screened at Cannes. She was in Siberia with Victor Kossakovsky” — the Russian filmmaker whose 2018 film, “Aquarela,” has barely any dialogue or human beings and takes an immersive look at water, from a frozen Siberian lake to a waterfall in Venezuela to glaciers crumbling in Greenland.In her New York Times review, Jeannette Catsoulis called “Aquarela” a “stunning, occasionally numbing, sensory symphony,” and took note of the film’s ending: a rainbow over the world’s tallest waterfall. “It feels,” she wrote, “a little bit like hope.”Diane Hope Weyermann was born on Sept. 22, 1955, in St. Louis. Her father, Andrew, was a Lutheran minister; her mother, Wilma (Tietjen) Weyermann, was a homemaker and later worked for a glassware company.Diane studied public affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, graduating in 1977, and four years later earned a law degree from the Saint Louis University School of Law. She worked as a legal aid lawyer before attending film school at Columbia College Chicago, graduating in 1992 with an M.F.A. in film and video.That same year, “Moscow Women — Echoes of Yaroslavna,” her short documentary film about seven Russian women, filmed by a Russian and Estonian crew, was screened at Ms. Derks’s festival in Amsterdam. She also made a short film about her father’s hands.Ms. Weyermann turned from making movies herself to helping others make them in 1996, when she became director of the Open Society Institute’s Arts and Culture Program, one of the billionaire investor George Soros’s philanthropies, now known as the Open Society Foundation. She started the Soros Documentary Fund, which supported international documentaries that focused on social justice issues. When she was hired by the Sundance Institute to set up its documentary film program in 2002, she brought the Soros Fund with her. There she set up annual labs for documentary makers, where they could work on their films with others, creating the sort of community that documentarians craved.Ms. Weyermann, left, with Ally Derks, center, the founder of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the movie producer Elise Pearlstein at the Women’s March at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. Laura KimIn addition to her sister Andrea, Ms. Weyermann is survived by a brother, James. Another sister, Debra Weyermann, an investigative journalist, died in 2013.When Ms. Weyermann became co-chair, with the screenwriter and producer Larry Karaszewski, of the foreign-language film category for the Academy Awards in 2018, they promptly changed the name of the category to “international feature film,” pointing out that the word “foreign” was not exactly inclusive. “Diane had a way of cutting through everyday nonsense,” Mr. Karaszewski said.In a 2008 interview, Ms. Weyermann was asked if she thought it was asking too much for a film to make a change in society.“When films are made solely for that purpose they fall like a lead balloon,” she replied. “What I love about film is it’s a creative medium. It’s not just ‘Let’s focus on an issue and educate,’ but ‘Lets tell a story, let’s tell it beautifully, let’s tell it poetically. Let’s tell it in a way that isn’t so obvious.’” More

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      ‘Becoming Cousteau’ Review: The Old Man and the Sea

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      Liz Garbus’s new documentary is about the life of the French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the fate of the oceans he loved.Jacques-Yves Cousteau died in 1997, and it may be hard for people who came of age in the years that followed to grasp the extent of his fame, or even recognize the category of celebrity to which he belonged.A former French naval officer with an unquenchable love of the sea, he combined the dash of an old-fashioned adventurer with the technocratic discipline of the first astronauts. He was an inventor as well an explorer, a filmmaker who became an environmentalist and, thanks to his natural charisma and his signature red watch cap, a universally recognized pop-cultural figure.“Becoming Cousteau,” Liz Garbus’s new National Geographic documentary, succeeds in restoring some of Cousteau’s luster, and also his relevance. It’s a swift-moving, detailed biography, recounting a life that was long, eventful and stippled with tragedy and regret.The archival footage is enthralling, whether it is tracking coral reefs and shoals of fish or glancing the remarkable history of French men’s swimwear. Cousteau’s ship, a decommissioned minesweeper named the Calypso, appears as a place of swashbuckling, macho high spirits — Simone Cousteau, the captain’s wife, insisted on being the only woman aboard — and rigorous scientific inquiry.But Garbus (whose recent documentaries include “Love, Marilyn” and “What Happened, Miss Simone?”) is after more than poignant nostalgia or a lost sense of wonder. The story of Cousteau as she tells it — aided by narration culled from interviews with Cousteau’s colleagues and children, as well as audio from the man himself — is about the awakening of his conscience, about how his fascination with Earth’s oceans turned into a crusade to save them.From the perspective of the present, it seems intuitive that someone devoted to exploring the oceans would also be committed to their preservation. “Becoming Cousteau” suggests something close to the opposite. In the annals of human exploration, curiosity is often a prelude to and enabler of conquest. And so it was, at least at first, with Cousteau.After injuries suffered in a car crash put an end to his dream of becoming a pilot, Cousteau turned to spearfishing off France’s Mediterranean coast. With his friends Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, he developed new diving techniques and underwater breathing machines that opened new vistas.After World War II, his ambitions expanded. “The Silent World,” Cousteau’s 1956 feature film — which won both the Palme d’Or in Cannes and the Oscar for best documentary — offered “an hour and twenty-six minutes of pictorial (and piscatorial) thrills,” according to The New York Times’s critic. Like many explorers, Cousteau viewed this newly charted world as something to be exploited, even colonized. He looked forward to permanent undersea human settlements, and the rise of “homo aquaticus,” a new type of human habituated to life in the water.He also accepted money and commissions from the petroleum industry, which was eager to find offshore sources of oil. Much of Cousteau’s later activism was frank penance for this work, and for his role in hastening the fouling of the oceans he cherished. His ecological warnings were prescient, and not without cost. American television executives stopped broadcasting his documentaries, finding them too “dark,” “strident” and “cynical.”Garbus’s film takes account of the personal losses that shadowed Cousteau’s later years, including the death of Simone and of their son Philippe. But like most documentaries about environmental and social issues — and about well-known, well-regarded people — it accentuates the positive.Cousteau provides an inspirational example of passion harnessed to a noble purpose, becoming an ambassador on behalf of beleaguered and fragile ecosystems. He is determined in his optimism, even as he worries — in the 1980s and 90s — that it may be too late to save the whales, the coral, the glaciers and the fish. “Becoming Cousteau” clings to that optimism, perhaps because the alternative is too worrisome to contemplate.Becoming CousteauRated PG-13 for personal tragedy, environmental peril and smoking. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More