Regrets, Hollywood

We just had a wonderful meeting of most of the miniaturists who will be designing exhibits for the 2015 Flower Show. They each talked about their plans and showed mockups and images of their work. Very impressive with some really innovative approaches. We will be sharing each of the 10 projects as they develop here in the next few weeks.

Until we get that material, I will share a comment I made during our discussions. When I showed my work so far on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, someone commented, “That’s ambitious.” I agreed and told them I regretted picking it because it is going to be so difficult (the problem is trying to squish an entire city courtyard into a space 36 inches wide and 24 inches deep).

So I started thinking about what I wished I had chosen. Here are a few of the fun possibilities in the face of the panic of the impending Rear Window construction.

1. Green Card (1990) This is the apartment I wish I had in New York, with a greenhouse and roof garden attached. Sigh. Since I will never have the real thing, I would have settled for a miniature of it.

The greenhouse is a wreck when she first gets the apartment.

2. Brigadoon (1954) I would love to create the magical village that only reappears once every 100 years. With heather everywhere.

3. Avatar (2009) It would be fun to try and create a world where plants look nothing like ours, using lighting and other effects.

4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) The scene in the greenhouse, when they discover the plant pods growing replicas of their own bodies, is one of my favorite.

5. Just Like Heaven (2005) This is a delightful movie about a woman whose spirit haunts her old apartment and the landscape gardener who eventually builds her dream rooftop garden. In San Francisco.

Which, oddly, gets depicted at the end as a miniature garden! I never figured out why.

6. The Wolf Man (1941) The scene when Larry Talbot is taking the two women to have their fortunes told by the gypsies. I also want to replicate the inside of Gwen’s shop but it doesn’t have plants in it.