PG: I was working for House & Garden and they were doing a series of stories on men’s influence in the kitchen. They asked me to photograph Alexander Calder’s kitchen. I knew that most magazines will use photographs only if they can take the photographs that will be in the article and show them to an advertiser and say, How would you like to advertise in the issue because we are showing this kitchen that has a GE stove or refrigerators? I went into Calder’s kitchen and he had three stoves, one was 30 years old, one was not operating at all, it was a wood stove with a gas burner. He had made the kitchen and he had made all of Louisa Calder’s implements. House & Garden turned it down, and I knew they would. I asked them if I could have the photographs for myself. I called Calder and asked if I could elaborate on what I had already done.
AL: I assume it wasn’t just the kitchen he made himself.
PG: Oh no, everything. He might have bought a few things. He really hadn’t been successful financially until he was in his 60s. But even after he was able to afford to buy things, he still preferred to flatten out an olive oil can and put a frame on it to make a tray out of it.
PG: Joe Salerno designed my house in New Canaan, and I became his photographer. I did six or seven of his projects, but the church he designed in Rowayton was by far the most spectacular. He was inspired a little bit by Mr. Wright’s handling of materials. Looking at the photographs now all these years later, I was stunned by how beautifully had had designed it, how every inch seemed to have come out of his own hand and his own pencil.
AL: It sounds like your relationship with the architect was very important.
PG: I’ve only turned one job down. Somebody asked me to photograph some architecture and when they asked me why not I told him it looked like a parking lot full of Winnebegos.
AL: Do you remember who that architect was?
PG: I do but don’t want to mention his name.
AL: I think so. The opening scenes in District 12 are atmospheric and period precise. The bleached-out blue palette, the wooden shacks, the muddy roads—you know you are in the 1930s of the Farm Services Administration photographers. There were a couple of moments, like the line of cabins going down into the hollow, or the two scrawny kids looking out of a hole in the wall, that I could almost swear were direct imitations of a photograph. I found out after I saw the movie that those scenes were filmed in Henry River, North Carolina, an abandoned mill town from the 1920s. In District 12, it is coal. In North Carolina, it was yarn.
AR: The set for the Reaping was in fact an old cotton gin in Shelby, North Carolina, where we get the first visual clue hinting at the hideousness to come. The softly draped, drab cotton clothing (defenseless, helpless, defeated) worn by the District 12 kids contrasts very sharply with the architectural, brightly colored clothing (aggression, assault, dominance) worn by Effie Trinket. Her clothes are cruel. Like armor that uses harsh color and shape to intimidate.
AL: The only other design note I have from the arena was the glass-tipped arrows Katniss picked up. The other weapons and windbreakers looked like they could have come from REI. It would have been more realistic if she'd had trouble using these arrows at first, or taken a moment to notice the glittering ends. You would think her homemade feathered arrows would shoot differently.
AR: There are many extremely hi-tech bows for hunters already on the market, with crazy futuristic designs. I was surprised not to see more of this kind of stuff. It would have been interesting to see that Darwinian angle come into play: Can Katniss and the others adapt quickly enough to the new equipment to survive? I also wish there'd been tech-geeky stuff for the tributes to use, for instance a laptop that would 3-D print advanced weaponry—just as the people in the control room could create scary dogs on a moment's notice. The weapons for combat were almost medieval.