Fisk said his do-it-all approach might be a holdover from youthful diffidence. He landed his first art-directing gig (on the 1971 bikersploitation film Angels Hard as They Come) without a clear sense of the job description. "I was so scared of not doing what I was supposed to do that I did everything," he said.
It was Lynch who got Fisk his first job on a movie. Lynch, by then enrolled at the American Film Institute, had a job casting gold bricks from plaster on a western that was shooting in Utah. The work was so tedious that after a while he asked if his friend Jack could take over.
Recalling his first impression of Fisk at 14, Lynch said, "I thought he was a loser." But they soon struck up a friendship. "In the whole high school we were basically the only artists," Lynch recalled. "In this conservative world all we wanted to do was paint and live the art life."
The two men have remained close through the years. They were even brothers-in-law. (Lynch was once married to Fisk's sister, Mary.) But it was Malick, a film institute classmate of Lynch's, who sparked Fisk's love of movies. Badlands, Fisk said, was "the film that changed my life," and not just because he married its lead actress. "That's the first time I realized film could be a fine art, equal to painting or sculpture," he said.
Fisk's career is still about the continuing relationships with directors he admires. He and Anderson have talked about teaming up again.
"I'm the luckiest designer I know," Fisk said. "I have an association with these great artists where I don't really question them, and they give me a lot of freedom. I get to hang out with friends and I get to build stuff."
Anderson put it even more succinctly. "Jack likes to hit nails into wood," he said. "And he likes a good adventure."
RSS