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| An Interview with Costume Designer AGGIE RODGERS Pg. 2 |
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| Q: What can you tell me about Ron Howard's clothes? AR: His pants are from J. C. Penny. His pale blue and white shirt we had made. I gave the fabric to a professional seamstress and told her what to make. Q: Cindy William's character Laurie, wears a blue blouse, plaid skirt and a letterman's sweater. AR: Yes. The letterman's sweater she's wearing is actually from George Lucas' high school in Modesto. Before shooting, He phoned his dad and asked him to get the sweater from one of George's high school buddies. When we got the sweater we sewed a new patch on it. Q: Did you design the dress worn by Candy Clark (Debbie)? AR: That was a Lanz dress. I bought that at the Goodwill. I also remember we only had one bow for her hair so we had to make that last through the entire shoot. Q: Are those typical car club jackets worn by the Pharaohs gang? AR: Yes. We had those made. They were popular back then. I think a local sport shop made them, I'm not sure. Q: Even though Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids is a band that plays '50s music they normally didn't dress the way they were in the film did they? AR: No. They normally dressed like hoods or greasers. George wanted them to be more straight-laced so we put them in red jackets. We borrowed those from some other local band. I don't remember their name. Q: The carhops at Mel's normally didn't look quite as seductive as they do in the film. Did you come up with their new look? AR: No, that was George [Lucas]. He was very specific about what he wanted. Although many drive-ins had carhops with roller skates Mel's never did, to my knowledge. But for the film they wore roller-skates. It was also George's idea for the carhops to wear a bellboy cap. They also wore those tight ski pants. Which was very practical since San Francisco can be cold at night. Incidentally, one of the carhop extras in the film wound up being my assistant later. Her name is Judy Feil Q: Did you make those cute bellboy caps the waitesses wear? AR: The caps were specially made by a man that ran the ACT [American Conservatory Theater] costume shop. His name is Walter Watson. Q: Was that an original Dewey Webber surfboard shirt worn by Mackenzie Phillp's character, Carol? AR: The shirt was ordered from Dewey Webber down in Southern California. He makes great surf boards. And, it was a request from George [Lucas]. They originally printed on the back but she was to sit in the car all the time and so we had them printed on the front for the movie. Q: Sounds like it was a lot of fun working on the film AR: Everyone was great to work with: The cast, crew, everybody. It was a lot of fun. |
| (C.) 2008 Mark Groesbeck |
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