Richard Sylbert

Birth : 1928-04-16,

Death : 2002-03-23

Movies

Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
Himself
Working largely uncredited in the Hollywood system, storyboard artist Harold and film researcher Lillian left an indelible mark on classics by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and many more.
Masters of Production: The Hidden Art of Hollywood Film
Self
Using interviews with top designers, art and plans from their workshops, and the films themselves this documentary explores the influence of these artists on the iconography of our culture.
Unconditional Love
Production Design
After her husband leaves her, a woman travels to London for the funeral of the pop star, Victor Fox, she's adored all her life. There, she meets the lover of the dead pop star, and convinces him to come back to Chicago with her to figure out who killed the singer.
Polanski y los ojos del mal
Himself
A Hollywood Life: Remembering Frances
Himself
The making of FRANCES, a retrospective documentary.
Rosemary's Baby: A Retrospective
Self
Straight-forward production stories from the Hollywood players who made the movie happen.
Red Corner
Production Design
An American attorney on business in China, ends up wrongfully on trial for murder and his only key to innocence is a female defense lawyer from the country.
My Best Friend's Wedding
Production Design
When she receives word that her longtime platonic pal Michael O'Neal is getting married to debutante Kimberly Wallace, food critic Julianne Potter realizes her true feelings for Michael -- and sets out to sabotage the wedding.
Blood and Wine
Production Design
A man who has failed as a father and husband commits a heist to make money for his fledging business, but things become complicated when his wife interferes.
Mulholland Falls
Production Design
In 1950s Los Angeles, a special crime squad of the LAPD investigates the murder of a young woman.
Carlito's Way
Production Design
A Puerto-Rican ex-con, just released from prison, pledges to stay away from drugs and violence despite the pressure around him, and lead a better life outside NYC.
Ruby Cairo
Production Design
Baseball cards and a food-aid worker help a woman follow her shady husband's money trail around the world.
Mobsters
Production Design
The story of a group of friends in turn of the century New York, from their early days as street hoods to their rise in the world of organized crime...
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Production Design
After his mistress runs over a black teen, a Wall Street hotshot sees his life unravel in the spotlight; A down-and-out reporter breaks the story and opportunists clamber to use it to their advantage.
Dick Tracy: Behind the Badge, Behind the Scenes
Self
The making of the film Dick Tracy (1990).
Dick Tracy
Production Design
The comic strip detective finds his life vastly complicated when Breathless Mahoney makes advances towards him while he is trying to battle Big Boy Caprice's united mob.
Tequila Sunrise
Production Design
In a seaside California town, best friends Mac and Nick are on opposite sides of the law. Mac is a former drug dealer trying to clean up his act, while Nick is a high-profile detective trying to take down a Mexican drug lord named Carlos. Soon Nick's loyalties are put to the test when he begins an affair with restaurateur Jo Ann -- a love interest of Mac's -- unwittingly leading his friend into a police-orchestrated trap.
Shoot to Kill
Production Design
When a cunning murderer vanishes into the rugged mountains of the Pacific Northwest, pursuing FBI agent Warren Stantin must exchange familiar city streets for unknown wilderness trails. Completely out of his element, Stantin is forced to enlist the aid of expert tracker Jonathan Knox. It's a turbulent yet vital relationship they must maintain in order to survive... and one that becomes increasingly desperate when Knox's girlfriend Sarah becomes the killer's latest hostage!
Heartbeat
Production Design
A surrealistic journey into the experiences and reflections of a documentary filmmaker as he evaluates the people and places that have made up his life. Alternatively, a 65 minute feature made up of songs from Don Johnson's record of the same name.
Under the Cherry Moon
Production Design
Two friends from Miami are in the French Riviera enjoying life by scamming money off of rich women. One day, they read about a young woman set to inherit $50 million from her father. At first, Tricky has Christopher Tracy talked into romancing her for her money, but in getting to know her, Christopher falls in love with her. This love comes between the brothers, and Tricky tells about the plan.
The Cotton Club
Production Design
Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.
Breathless
Production Design
Jesse has to get out of Las Vegas quickly and steals a car to drive to L.A. On the way, he shoots a police officer. When he makes it to L.A. he stays with Monica, a girl he has only known for a few days. As the film progresses, the police get closer to him, and the crimes escalate.
Frances
Production Design
The true story of Frances Farmer's meteoric rise to fame in Hollywood and the tragic turn her life took when she was blacklisted.
Partners
Production Design
Benson is a police detective. After a series of murders in the Gay community he is ordered to go undercover with a gay police clerk named Kerwin as his partner. In order to be noticed they have to be flamboyant enough to attract attention which Benson finds rather disturbing. Can an uptight heterosexual and a mousey homosexual form a meaningful relationship?
Reds
Production Design
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
Players
Production Design
A rising tennis star falls for an older woman engaged with a wealthy man she doesn't love.
Partners
Production Design
When a business competitor assassinates her father when the father refuses to sell his firm, young woman takes over her father's paper company and with the help of her gangster boyfriend learns how to fight back against competitors.
The Fortune
Production Design
Two bumbling hustlers in the 1920s attempt to gain the fortune of an heiress. Nothing will stop them, not even murder.
Shampoo
Production Design
George Roundy is a Beverly Hills hairstylist whose uncontrolled libido stands between him and his ambitions. He wants the security of a relationship. He wants to be a hairdressing "star" and open his own salon. But the fact that he beds down with the wife, daughter and mistress of a potential backer doesn't help. It also does little for his relationship with his current girlfriend.
Chinatown
Production Design
Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.
The Day of the Dolphin
Production Design
Dr. Jake Terrell, who has been training a pair of dolphins for many years, has had a breakthrough. He has taught his dolphins to speak and understand English, although they do have a limited vocabulary. When the dolphins are stolen, he discovers they're to be used in an assassination attempt. Now he is in a race to discover who is the target, and where the dolphins are, before the attempt is carried out.
The Heartbreak Kid
Art Direction
Three days into his Miami honeymoon, Lenny meets tall, blonde Kelly. This confirms his fear that he has made a serious mistake and he decides he wants Kelly instead.
Fat City
Production Design
Two men, working as professional boxers, come to blows when their careers each begin to take opposite momentum.
Carnal Knowledge
Production Design
The concurrent sexual lives of best friends Jonathan and Sandy are presented, those lives which are affected by the sexual mores of the time and their own temperament, especially in relation to the respective women who end up in their lives.
Catch-22
Production Design
A bombardier in World War II tries desperately to escape the insanity of the war. However, sometimes insanity is the only sane way to cope with a crazy situation.
The April Fools
Production Design
Newly-promoted if none too happily married Howard Brubaker leaves a rowdy company party early with the stunning Catherine, whom it turns out is herself unhappily married — to the boss. They spend an innocent night in New York becoming more and more attracted to each other, so that when Catherine announces she intends to leave her husband and return to Paris Howard asks to go along too.
Rosemary's Baby
Production Design
A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, moves into an infamous New York apartment building, known by frightening legends and mysterious events, with the purpose of starting a family.
The Graduate
Production Design
Benjamin, a recent college graduate very worried about his future, finds himself in a love triangle with an older woman and her daughter.
Grand Prix
Production Design
The story tells about the confrontation of four first-class racers of Formula 1. Each of the competitors had their own additional motivation to become a champion. Their world is a risk and extreme, fast driving on the highway. The taste of adrenaline is what race lovers live. Outside of competition, they all experience personal dramas and upheavals, and the more important the desired title becomes for them.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Production Design
A history professor and his wife entertain a young couple who are new to the university's faculty. As the drinks flow, secrets come to light, and the middle-aged couple unload onto their guests the full force of the bitterness, dysfunction, and animosity that defines their marriage.
What's New Pussycat?
Associate Producer
A playboy who refuses to give up his hedonistic lifestyle to settle down and marry his true love seeks help from a demented psychoanalyst who is having romantic problems of his own.
The Pawnbroker
Production Design
A Jewish pawnbroker, a victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.
How to Murder Your Wife
Production Design
Stanley Ford leads an idyllic bachelor life. He is a nationally syndicated cartoonist whose Bash Brannigan series provides him with a luxury townhouse and a full-time valet, Charles. When he wakes up the morning after the night before - he had attended a friend's stag party - he finds that he is married to the very beautiful woman who popped out of the cake - and who doesn't speak a word of English. Despite his initial protestations, he comes to like married life and even changes his cartoon character from a super spy to a somewhat harried husband.
Lilith
Production Design
Vincent Bruce, a war veteran, begins working as an occupational therapist at Poplar Lodge, a private psychiatric facility for wealthy people where he meets Lilith Arthur, a charming young woman suffering from schizophrenia, whose fragile beauty captivates all who meet her.
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Production Design
Over the course of one day in August 1912, the family of retired actor James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of his wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund and the alcoholism and debauchery of their older son Jamie. As day turns into night, guilt, anger, despair, and regret threaten to destroy the family.
The Manchurian Candidate
Production Design
Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.
Walk on the Wild Side
Production Design
At the Doll House, a 1930s New Orleans bordello, Hallie is the main attraction both for clients and for Jo, the madame. Her comfortable if tedious life is disrupted by the arrival in town of Dove Linkhorn, her true love of three years before who is now searching for her. When Linkhorn learns the truth of her profession he triggers a chain of events involving a number of people, including the young Kitty with whom he travelled from Texas and who is now the Doll House newest recruit.
Splendor in the Grass
Production Design
A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.
The Young Doctors
Production Design
An aging doctor's resentment of his young assistant could lead to tragedy.
Mad Dog Coll
Art Direction
Killer Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll moves in on gangster Dutch Schultz in 1920s New York.
The Connection
Production Design
A title card announces that the film is a result of found footage assembled by cameraman J.J. Burden working for the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jim Dunn, who has disappeared. Leach, a heroin addict, introduces the audience to his apartment where other heroin addicts, a mix of current and former jazz musicians, are waiting for Cowboy, their drug connection, to appear. Things go out of control as the men grow increasingly nervous and the cameraman keeps recording.
Murder, Inc.
Art Direction
Chronicles the rise and fall of the organised crime syndicate known as Murder, Incorporated, focusing on powerful boss Lepke and violent hit man Reles.
The Fugitive Kind
Art Direction
Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins, arrives at a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence. Her husband, Jabe M. Torrance, is dying of cancer. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, the enigmatic local tramp-of-good-family.
Wind Across the Everglades
Art Direction
An ornithologist battles a family of bird poachers in the Florida Everglades.
A Face in the Crowd
Art Direction
The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.
Edge of the City
Art Direction
An army deserter and a black dock worker join forces against a corrupt manager.
Baby Doll
Art Direction
Archie Lee Meighan is a failing cotton gin owner who is married to Baby Doll, a 19-year old childlike beauty whose father arranged the marriage for financial reasons. As Archie awaits the arrival of Baby Doll's 20th birthday, the day that they are supposed to consummate their marriage, he faces interference from business rival Silva Vacarro, who plots to seduce Baby Doll away from Meighan.
Crowded Paradise
Art Direction
A Puerto Rican immigrant anxiously awaits his wedding day, but his fiancé's racist landlord intervenes.
Crowded Paradise
Production Design
A Puerto Rican immigrant anxiously awaits his wedding day, but his fiancé's racist landlord intervenes.
Patterns
Art Direction
Staples, a successful plant operator, is brought in from Ohio to take an executive position at Ramsey & Co. in New York. He forms a friendship with Briggs, the long-time vice president, but it soon becomes apparent that Walter Ramsey, who has inherited the position of CEO, is grooming Staples to replace Briggs. Ramsey will not fire Briggs, instead doing everything he can to humiliate and sabotage Briggs until he resigns.
Inner Sanctum: Port of Regrets
Art Direction
A distinguished judge who feels that no leniency is deserved in crimes of passion finds himself involved in a crime of passion.
Mandrake the Magician
Art Direction
Mandrake and Lothar battle enemy agents who have kidnapped the beautiful Princess Narda to force the magician to assist them locate a counter-intelligence agent who possess vital information.