About a month prior to the Hillbilly Elegy‘s release, I interviewed the film’s production designer, Molly Hughes. She happens to be from Glendale, WV—not far from where I grew up in Wheeling. We talked for almost an hour and a half about the research behind the film, our opinions of the book, challenges in making the film, and more. Below are some of the highlights of our long conversation. With this post, I hope to recount my discussion with Molly to shed light on some of the intentions behind the film.
An account of my conversation with Molly Hughes on November 6, 2020:
I first asked her to explain her job and responsibilities. She stated that, “As a production designer your whole responsibility is to help the director create the visual world of the film… Often you give yourself restrictions of color. You might decide on certain photographers that really inspire you. You are responsible for finding the locations and altering them and overseeing a team that draw all the sets and build all the sets.” She also works in coordination with the costume designers and makeup artists to create a cohesive visual picture.
I was very interested in the research behind the project and how Molly approached creating a world that actually exists (as opposed to a fictional world). Molly explained that the greatest source was J.D. and his family. J.D. was a producer on the film and was available for the team to ask questions. Molly said, “People are critical because he gets paid quite a bit of money for the film, but he gives us access to him, his personal life, everything about him, what’s his favorite color, what’s his favorite book, what was your favorite Christmas toy when you were 14.” Molly expressed the team’s interest in making the family’s depiction as authentic as possible. “The biggest gift we had was access to his Aunt,his Aunt Wee, his sister, and his mother. They gave us so much time, and family photos and family stories so that there really isn’t anything in the film that isn’t real. The costume designer of the clothing Mamaw is wearing is identical to her clothing. They gave us her glasses.”
When I asked about the political leaning of the film, Molly explained that, “We didn’t take a political point of view. We thought that was very important to not take a political point of view but to just tell the story as it is.”
As the book came out around the 2016 election, I asked if this film had been intended to be released around election time as well. Molly said, “It is a coincidence. It just so happens that the times when the film started being made. It usually takes about a year to finish a film, and we had reshoots in February, but then got stalled in March, but Netflix, and you’ll probably notice all film studios like to release their dramatic films around November, December. So that’s the reason.”
Talking to Molly took me back to my Intro to Film class about “mise en scene,” which is a fancy way to say basically everything you see on screen. She emphasized the importance of color in this film. The inspiration for the color scheme was photographer Niko Kallianiotis’s book, America in a Trance. Kallianiotis emigrated from Greece and traveled around the states taking photos of his surroundings. Molly explained, “…this photographer traveled around America and was really fascinated by the colors of things in the Rust Belt in particular. Ironically calling it the Rust Belt, but actually lots of beautiful color. All of his photographs are really bright, and they have really bright, beautiful colors in them. And he said it reminded him of Greece. I loved that. Because I know that for me and you probably will feel this way the older you get, there is like a deep attachment to this part of the country if you grow up there. Most people probably feel that if they move away. It might take a while, but I feel very rooted to it. And when I go back home, you really try to focus on the beauty of everything there.”
Addiction is one of the central themes of this film. I asked Molly how she designed the aesthetic of addiction—something that seemed like a daunting task to me. She explained that the film’s depiction of addiction focused on the contrast of stability with Mamaw and unpredictability with Bev. After moving in with Mamaw, “What J.D. finds in her house is refuge and solace. And I think when people see the house, they’ll think ‘oh that’s just like my grandma’s house.'” She elaborated that, “The opposite of what you’re asking is Mamaw’s house—this is a house of stability. And then with Bev that was constant unpredictability. I think that’s how we designed addiction, her struggle with addiction. She kept moving. She kept having different husbands… But I think from a design aesthetic, it’s transient—a look of transient living.” She explained that the addiction is also depicted through Bev’s deterioration in the film. “There are levels too. By the time, in the last scene, she’s living with a heroin addict. She’s hit rock bottom. She’s living with her boyfriend who’s a heroin addict, and they’re living in a very bad part of town. And so that’s another way we showed it. Showing her downward spiral to where she finally hits bottom.”
Molly also noted that, “It’s important to stipulate the difference between it being present day and 2012 because when he [J.D.] heads back to Middletown in 2012, it’s right after the crash—economic crash. And at that point, addiction is rampant, and Middletown is having a bit of –like Wheeling—loss of small companies and restaurants, and things are moving into Middletown now, but in that period it was not there yet. You see in the film that it’s not heading in that direction yet.”
I asked if there’s anything viewers should look for in the visual landscape of the film that might not be obvious to the untrained eye. She responded, “It’s nice to pick up on this color aspect that we’re trying to lift that up. If anyone finds any of Glenn Close’s dialogue or her clothing shocking, it is Mamaw exactly. I mean in fact, we had to pull it back a little bit because some of the things she says were hilarious. So she was a character, a real rock in their family character.”