"Hi, Honey, I'm at the Airport"

Sunday, May 9, 2004

Hi, Honey, I'm at the Airport
By JULIE V. IOVINE
The New York (NY) Times


THE great 18th-century architectural engraver Piranesi didn't have John F.
Kennedy International Airport in mind when he drew his famous,
dread-inducing sketches of gaping halls, dark chambers and narrow stairs
sweeping nowhere. But he probably would have recognized the purgatories that
are today's international airports.

And so did Steven Spielberg. In the director's new film, "The Terminal"
(June 18), Tom Hanks plays an Eastern European whose country evaporates in a
coup while he's in midflight - leaving him without a valid passport, unable
to enter the United States or return home. Stranded at J.F.K., he's forced
to endure 11 months of airport vendor food and other modern trials.

It was up to the production designer, Alex McDowell, to create a full-scale
airport-style limbo - in what's being billed as the largest architectural
interior ever built for a film. Imaginary realms are no sweat for the
designer, who has envisioned sets both hyperfuturistic and surreally
unhinged for "Minority Report" and "The Cat in the Hat." But for "The
Terminal," Mr. McDowell said in a telephone interview, he was aiming for "a
realistic space with metaphoric meaning, an airport that you would think
you've been in before."

Mr. McDowell's airport amalgam, built in Palmdale, Calif., was inspired by
his own extensive travels. Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, Montreal's Mirabel
(where some scenes were actually shot) and Kansai International, in Osaka,
Japan, are all represented in the design. The high-tech steel frame and
white tree-branching columns beneath vast expanses of light-filled glass -
not to mention the flowers for sale at a newsstand - may not ring true to
travelers familiar with the hunkered-down look of most of J.F.K. But Mr.
McDowell does capture the shiny functionality of contemporary airports.

When it came to security, however, the filmmakers were stricter about
accuracy. A consultant from the Department of Homeland Security offered a
range of tips, Mr. McDowell said. Among them: up-to-the-minute new designs
for uniforms, insignias and badges provided, he said, "a few days after
being blessed by the president."


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