Excerpt from Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies
Sidney Lumet:
In The Morning After, we looked for exapnses of high color. No color was excluded, but we wanted one color to dominate each scene. Jane Fonda’s rooms were various shades of pink… For the title sequence, I found a series of walls, yellow, red, brown, blue, and just had Fonda walking dejectedly past them. Buildings were deep blue, baby pink, any strong color. Los Angeles can provide an endless supply of that kind of color.
On other pictures, I’ve wanted a hodgepodge. For Q & A and Dog Day Afternoon, everything had to feel accidental — no planning, no color control. On both pictures, I told the art director and the costume designer not to consult with each other. I wanted no relationship between the sets and the costumes. Whatever happened happened.
