CINEPUNK

Former Tulsan falls in with Hollywood’s hippest collective of talent

Let’s start with the names you know; Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, David O. Russell, Michel Gondry. All contemporary filmmakers, all contributing vital works to the world of cinema. Keith “K. K.” Barrett has worked with them all. While mostly known as a production designer, Barrett’s other credits include art director, cinematographer, and even actor (“I Heart Huckabees,” 2004). But his path to the movie business was anything but conventional.

Born in Omaha, the young Barrett and his family made several stops including the Ozarks (Missouri) and Oklahoma City before landing in Tulsa. With an interest in the visual arts, specifically painting, Barrett continued his exploration of Oklahoma towns and cities by moving to Stillwater in the 1970s and enrolling at Oklahoma State University. While not particularly known as a Mecca of cutting-edge culture, Barrett fell in with other creative types and eventually his interests shifted to music (drums). He and his cohorts began composing and recording at a breakneck pace. Punk was just about to take over the world.   In early 1977, Barrett moved to Los Angeles and soon joined the early punk pioneers, The Screamers, often referred to as one of the great “unrecorded” bands in rock history. The band never rose above cult status, but Barrett and his bandmates began to play with visual formats and videos prior to the MTV era. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Barrett worked in and out of the music video and commercial industries. It wasn’t until he met video impresario Spike Jonze, known mostly at the time for award-winning videos for Weezer, Beastie Boys, Bjork, and others, Barrett began forging a new path. Everything changed when he was offered the role of production designer for the film “Being John Malkovich,” an odd little indie that became a critical and commercial success and garnered multiple Academy Award nominations. From that once experience, Barrett met Gondry, Coppola (who was then married to Jonze), and David O. Russell. In the fifteen years since, Barrett has rarely worked outside of that original group, the lone exception being the 2011 adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” with director Stephen Daldry (“The Hours”).

Barrett’s latest collaboration with Jonez brings him full circle. “Her,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely writer who falls in love with his computer’s operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), was recently named the best film of 2013 by the National Board of Review and nominated for several Golden Globes. The film comes to Tulsa in early 2014. 

SETTING UP

Barrett worked with Sofia Coppola numerous times. Coppola lived in Tulsa as a child in the early 80s when her father (Francis Ford Coppola) made the film adaptations of S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish” back-to-back.

The logo for Barrett’s punk band The Screamers was created by fellow Oklahoman and legendary underground comics artist, Gary Panter (b. 1950, Durant). Panter is known most for his Emmy-winning set designs for “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”

One of Barrett’s early collaborators was artist Al Hansen, famous in his own right, but also grandfather of musician Beck (Hansen).

In 2006, Barrett worked as Production Designer on Coppola’s large-scale period piece, Marie Antoinette. The Costume Designer for that film was Academy Award-winner, Milena Canonero (“Chariots of Fire,” “Barry Lyndon”). Canonero is married to renowned character actor and native Tulsan Marshall Bell.

One of Jonze and Barrett’s earliest collaborations was the famous “It’s Wide Open” commercial for Levi’s. Doesn’t ring a bell? It’s the one with the guy on the stretcher where everyone breaks into song, singing Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” to the beeps and bumps of the medical machinery. Yeah, you know it.