Oscars pit 2 Pittsburgh natives in production design race

In her long career, Diana Stoughton has worked on some 50 film and TV productions. With “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” she could tell it was special.

“I think it was something magical about this show,” said Stoughton, who lives in Bloomfield. “I think the Karma gods were with us, and it ended up being everything we wanted it to be.”

Set decorators Stoughton and Karen O’Hara joined production designer Mark Ricker as one of five design teams in the running for an Oscar April 25.

The 93rd presentation of the Academy Awards will be broadcast on ABC and stream via a number of online services.

By happy coincidence, another Pittsburgh native, Beechview’s Jan Pascale, will be going up against her old acquaintance, Stoughton in the same category.

“Diana and I go way back,” said Pascale,whose set decoration for another Netflix film, “Mank,” is with production design by Donald Graham Burt. The two are considered the Oscars frontrunner for an Old Hollywood history fable about Herman J. Mankiewicz, who is credited with writing “Citizen Kane.” Two particular set pieces — a party at the Hearst Castle and a GOP election night party — are stunning recreations in monochrome.

Four other Oscar nominees have Western Pennsylvania ties. Monessen High graduate Frances McDormand, already a two-time best actress winner for “Fargo” (1997) and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” (2018) has been praised as a woman embracing the untethered life in Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland.”

Mercer High grad Trent Reznor, with Nine Inch Nails bandmate Atticus Ross, is up for best score, twice: “Mank” and the animated Pixar movie, “Soul” (with Jon Batiste). Reznor and Ross previously won in 2011 for another film directed by David Fincher, “The Social Network.”

Carnegie Mellon University alum Ann Roth, who has captured numerous awards already in this very unusual Oscar season, is recognized for her “Ma Rainey” costume designs. And CMU grad Leslie Odom Jr. has a nomination for “Speak Now,” a song he wrote and performed in “One Night in Miami.”

As for nominees hoping to actually attend the Oscars ceremonies, well, that might be tricky. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will stage the awards at two locations. The first is the site of recent Oscars red carpet hoopla: the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood and Highland Center.

Then there is Union Station, where carefully distanced groups of nominees are expected to gather in person. Leading up to this week, strict quarantine and covid tests were expected to be de rigueur for anyone in attendance.

“I’m definitely going to attend,” said Stoughton, who bought a wine-colored “Downton Abbey-esque” beaded dress for the occasion. She’s going with her husband and former assistant, Ken Kellers.

The morning of the nominations, she and Kellers sat on the couch at home and “when they said it, we just simultaneously screamed.”

Pascale does not have as far to travel. She now lives in North Hollywood. Although she was an Oscar nominee in 2006 for “Good Night and Good Luck,” she’s been to the awards presentation several times as a member of the Academy’s board of governors.

Being an Oscar nominee in a “normal” year means attending numerous press events, doing interviews in roundtables. This spring, Pascale said “it’s been completely different. I was just texting Jay Hart (another Pittsburgh native/set decorator who won an Oscar two years ago for “Black Panther”) saying ‘Oh my god, it’s so different. It’s a lot of Zooms.’ ”

She said she would have been thrilled to do in-person events but given her latest project, might not have had much time anyway. Pascale is making daily 45-minute drives to the Manhattan Beach Studios, which turns out to be in a galaxy far, far away.

That’s where they’re shooting the Disney+ “Star Wars” series about Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“I keep clothes at work which are appropriate for a quick (Oscars press) Zoom, usually over my sweats and T-shirt,” she said.

Where it all started

Stoughton and Pascale got their starts in film through typically Pittsburgh fashion: they knew people who needed extra help on projects shooting around town and just showed up. Horror auteur George A. Romero was a common thread. Pascale worked on a number of his early films (including making fake guts with Hart for one of the zombie flicks) and Stoughton did a few as well.

From there, each did creative work in theater and on screens. Stoughton, a Murrysville native, was a theater major at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently an adjunct professor in design at Point Park University.

One of Stoughton’s early films shot in Pittsburgh was Kevin Smith’s “Dogma” (1999), in which an abandoned Burger King near the Dormont pool was painted psychedelic purple. Stoughton recalled “I had done ‘Mallrats’ with Kevin and at 2 in the morning we were all standing around waiting for the camera to get set up.

“Kevin was talking about this next project, and how he needed churches and needed it to look like New Jersey. And we were like ‘We have churches and we can look like New Jersey and you need to come to Pittsburgh.”

North Side transformation

For director George C. Wolfe’s “Ma Rainey,” there was a lot of history prep work. The film is based on August Wilson’s stage play, and set in Chicago, 1927. Famous blues singer Ma Rainey (played by Oscar winner Viola Davis) is in town for one hot summer day for a recording session.

Stoughton and the team transformed five blocks on the North Side, and digital enhancements added visual length to the street. The recording studio itself had to be era-appropriate.

Set decorators are pros at research and hunting down everything from lamps to paintings to sci-fi laser guns. But a whole studio’s worth of recording equipment? Yet in this case, finding it proved surprisingly simple, Stoughton said.

“There was (a three-part film) called ‘American Epic’ on PBS, and when I was researching that equipment, I stumbled upon a YouTube video,” Stoughton said.

An audio engineer had pieced together an original 1920s Western Electric recording system, which was featured in “American Epic.”

Within days, Stoughton and O’Hara arranged for the vintage electronics to be brought to Pittsburgh for “Ma Rainey.”

“What could have been a nightmare was instead one-stop shopping,” Stoughton said.

Stoughton said working with O’Hara again after two decades (Stoughton was her assistant on “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Lorenzo’s Oil”) was “just like slipping on a comfortable pair of shoes. We just went right back at it.”

Pascale came to show business in a roundabout way. She majored in psychology at what was then California State College before dropping out to pursue artistic endeavours. A last-minute opportunity to paint on the set of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” led to her wide-ranging career, and she moved to the west coast in the 1980s.

Another nomination in black and white

Pascale earned a 2006 Oscar nomination for “Good Night and Good Luck,” which, like “Mank,” was another project shot in black and white. Unlike set decoration for that George Clooney film, her design on “Mank” was helped by modern technology: she used the noir filter on her iPhone for instant feedback on how everything looked in monochrome.

Another Pascale movie coming up is “Top Gun: Maverick,” with Tom Cruise. The release date was pushed back a full year to July 3. Shooting on an active aircraft carrier was crazy-different from the sumptuous sets of “Mank” or the far-out worlds of her current Disney project.

Stoughton and Pascale have never worked together but, with Hart and others from the area they form a little contingent of Pittsburghers who get together when everyone happens to be in Los Angeles.

Stoughton said it was this kind of camaraderie that helped bring “Ma Rainey” production designer Ricker into the honorary club once he began working here.

“Pittsburghers love to work hard and we love to give each other grief,” Stoughton said. “Mark had been in town for (Showtime mini-series) ‘Escape At Dannemora’ so he was familiar with Pittsburgh and a lot of the crew had worked together (on ‘Ma Rainey’).”

So Sunday night will be yet another reunion, or so everyone hopes. And if not, there’s always Zoom.