Even in more temperate, controlled environments, the director gets active, digging into scenes with their actors. Imagine John Woo wearing shirtsleeves up on the Bullet in the Head set. Though he’s one of cinema’s most celebrated and influential action filmmakers, known for his intricately choreographed shoot- outs and set pieces, Woo turns up on set almost exclusively in business casual garb—button- up shirts, typically white, tucked into chinos or generously cut dress pants. He would feel at home in a regional bank branch’s counter. Woo’s might not be the most durable garments, but they’re flexible enough, and, hey, similar slacks- and- shirt ensembles worked for many of his gunslinging protagonists, like Chow Yun- fat’s hero cop “Tequila” Yuen in Woo’s 1992 classic, Hard Boiled. How white- collar workaday both Woo and his characters dress appeals to me. It somehow makes these akimbo-style fantasies about pistols feel relatable. When Woo made the leap to American cinema, his wardrobe almost seemed to change— Woo went Hollywood in the least possible way.
There are items for both the workwear and the clothing, which are typically used to describe a group of items made specifically for physically demanding jobs. The commingling of these two categories hasn’t slowed in the slightest; one of the most important stories in popular culture over the past fifty years is this. Some of the most recognizable and anonymous clothing items we have today are made of materials and cuts originally meant for manual blue-collar labor. Denim is probably the best example of this phenomenon.
Workers like miners and cowboys wore modern blue jeans for their durability before catching on with civilians. They were created in the late 19th century by tailor Jacob Davis and businessman Levi Strauss. The T-shirt was adopted by laborers as well as a storied history as a military wear.
Its material quality and seismic semiosis contributed to the inclusion of jeans and tees in the global style movement; it’s a very functional ensemble, whether for work or play. Directors do it for the same reasons that the rest of us do.
The baseball cap fits right next to the canvas folding chair with the name printed on the back in the pantheon of directorially coded implements. For filmmakers, the appeal of the ball cap is easy to grasp. A brimmed cap provides shade and protection in bright or rainy environments, and directoring is a profession that depends on clarity of vision. It soaks up sweat. On a chilly day, it offers a bit of warmth.
A Dry White Season ( 1989 ), Euzhan Palcy’s second film, is set in apartheid South Africa and is based on an Afrikaner André Brink novel that was temporarily prohibited after its publication in that country in 1979. It is a complex tale of racial injustice, a turbulent society, and the terrible consequences a schoolteacher played by Donald Sutherland faces for standing up for a victim of violent abuse. Many of its principals worked for much less than their regular wages to make the production possible, including Marlon Brando, who retired from acting in a supporting role.
A tiny fan that protrudes inward onto the wearer’s face is mounted on a brim of a baseball hat on set, which Palcy occasionally wore. On most, this contraption would look ridiculous, but Palcy’s aura—an all- white ensemble accented with cherry red and gold, T- shirt sleeves precisely cut to ever so slightly broaden the silhouette of her shoulders—incorporated it with ease. In an interview with The New York Times following A Dry White Season‘s debut, while she was touring the film to festivals and galas, Palcy said:” In the days when I was n’t being taken seriously, I wore long skirts—very conservative. But now, I dress any way I want to.’ ‘
Here is Palcy, elegant in the extreme, on the set of Siméon, the 1992 follow- up to A Dry White Season. When your job is directing a film, if it works for you, it’s workwear.
Most of these images were taken by unit photographers. They have been using stills for documentation and promotion for about as long as film sets have been around. Unit photography catches a particular kind of rupture: our world invading the world of a movie. There, in the rift, we find absurd tableaux like Scott and his tiger. Photos like these are often referred to a s”behind the scenes,” which sells them a bit short—they are above, beneath, and between them too. The director is usually the primary interloper, and their tell is typically their street clothes, often at odds with their film’s wardrobe.
I think these photos appeal to us because they freeze- frame the creative act—a new world half- wrought, all potentiality, its impact yet to be felt. The utilitarian attire worn by directors and their crews can help us understand the work that went into creating these fictional worlds because we are drawn to it. Our perceptions of the people who wear them, the circumstances in which they are worn, and what we currently know about the movies they helped make contribute to the appeal of the individual outfits. These images show movies being produced. That is to say, they are images of people working.