David Wasco

Movies

Wisdom Gone Wild
Production Designer
Ever since the onset of her dementia, reality, dream and nightmare have become intertwined for Rose, making her something like a maverick time traveler. Her filmmaker daughter Rea Tajiri is also her caregiver. In this fond portrait, she visualizes Rose’s spiritual, philosophical and sometimes surprisingly specific stories in the order they come: a non-linear sequence illustrated by her own footage shot over many years, accompanied by snatches of conversations and images from the family archive. Rose’s eventful journey through time is rich with memories and sensitively accompanied by a fitting soundtrack.
Molly's Game
Production Design
Molly Bloom, a young skier and former Olympic hopeful becomes a successful entrepreneur (and a target of an FBI investigation) when she establishes a high-stakes, international poker game.
La La Land
Production Design
Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
Fifty Shades of Grey
Production Design
When college senior Anastasia Steele steps in for her sick roommate to interview prominent businessman Christian Grey for their campus paper, little does she realize the path her life will take. Christian, as enigmatic as he is rich and powerful, finds himself strangely drawn to Ana, and she to him. Though sexually inexperienced, Ana plunges headlong into an affair -- and learns that Christian's true sexual proclivities push the boundaries of pain and pleasure.
Seven Psychopaths
Production Design
A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu.
Rampart
Production Design
Follows veteran police officer Dave Brown, the last of the renegade cops, as he struggles to take care of his family, and fights for his own survival.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
Production Design
An assassin is shot and almost killed by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is a complete edit of the two-part martial arts action films Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2. The film was originally scheduled to be released as one part. However, due to the film's over 4 hour running time, it was split into two parts.
Inglourious Basterds
Production Design
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner
Himself
Infinite Space, a documentary feature film, traces the lifelong quest of visionary genius John Lautner to create “architecture that has no beginning and no end.” It is the story of brilliance and of a complicated life – and the most sensual architecture of the 20th century.
Redbelt
Production Design
Is there room for principle in Los Angeles? Mike Terry teaches jujitsu and barely makes ends meet. His Brazilian wife, whose family promotes fights, wants to see Mike in the ring making money, but to him competition is degrading. A woman sideswipes Mike's car and then, after an odd sequence of events, shoots out the studio's window. Later that evening, Mike rescues an action movie star in a fistfight at a bar. In return, the actor befriends Mike, gives him a gift, offers him work on his newest film, and introduces Mike's wife to his own - the women initiate business dealings. Then, things go sour all at once, Mike's debts mount, and going into the ring may be his only option.
Stop-Loss
Production Design
A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.
Freedomland
Production Design
A black police detective must solve a strange case of a kidnapped boy and deal with a big racial protest.
Collateral
Production Design
Cab driver Max picks up a man who offers him $600 to drive him around. But the promise of easy money sours when Max realizes his fare is an assassin.
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Production Design
The Bride unwaveringly continues on her roaring rampage of revenge against the band of assassins who had tried to kill her and her unborn child. She visits each of her former associates one-by-one, checking off the victims on her Death List Five until there's nothing left to do … but kill Bill.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Production Design
An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance.
With the Filmmaker: Wes Anderson
Self
TV documentary about American film director Wes Anderson.
Heist
Production Design
Joe Moore has a job he loves. He's a thief. His job goes sour when he gets caught on security camera tape. His fence, Bergman, reneges on the money he's owed, and his wife may be betraying him with the fence's young lieutenant. Moore and his partner, Bobby Blane, and their utility man, Pinky Pincus, find themselves broke, betrayed, and blackmailed. Moore is forced to commit his crew to do one last big job.
The Royal Tenenbaums
Production Design
Royal Tenenbaum and his wife Etheline had three children and then they separated. All three children are extraordinary --- all geniuses. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. Most of this was generally considered to be their father's fault. "The Royal Tenenbaums" is the story of the family's sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) With the Filmmaker Wes Anderson
Self
TV documentary about American film director Wes Anderson during the time he was making The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
Bounce
Production Design
A man switches plane tickets with another man who dies in that plane in a crash. The man falls in love with the deceased one's wife.
Rushmore
Production Design
When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.
Jackie Brown
Production Design
Jackie Brown is a flight attendant who gets caught in the middle of smuggling cash into the country for her gunrunner boss. When the cops try to use Jackie to get to her boss, she hatches a plan — with help from a bail bondsman — to keep the money for herself.
She's So Lovely
Production Design
After being released from a psychiatric institution, a man tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his now-ex wife from the events that led up to his incarceration.
Touch
Production Design
Down-and-out former preacher Bill Hill witnesses stranger Juvenal save a woman from her abusive husband by defusing the latter's anger — and ending his wife's blindness. Determined to profit from Juvenal's mystical powers, Bill asks an old friend, Lynn Faulkner, to sneak into the Alcoholics Anonymous facility where Juvenal works as a counselor, but she finds herself falling for the healer.
Touch
Production Designer
Down-and-out former preacher Bill Hill witnesses stranger Juvenal save a woman from her abusive husband by defusing the latter's anger — and ending his wife's blindness. Determined to profit from Juvenal's mystical powers, Bill asks an old friend, Lynn Faulkner, to sneak into the Alcoholics Anonymous facility where Juvenal works as a counselor, but she finds herself falling for the healer.
Bottle Rocket
Production Design
Upon his release from a mental hospital following a nervous breakdown, the directionless Anthony joins his friend Dignan, who seems far less sane than the former. Dignan has hatched a hair-brained scheme for an as-yet-unspecified crime spree that somehow involves his former boss, the (supposedly) legendary Mr. Henry.
Oleanna
Production Design
Carol, a college student, comes to John's office, her professor, to discuss the grade she has received for one of her papers.
Pulp Fiction
Production Design
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
A Life in the Theatre
Production Design
A veteran actor and a young up-and-comer join for a season of reparatory theatre.
Killing Zoe
Production Design
Zed is an American vault-cracker who travels to Paris to meet up with his old friend Eric. Eric and his gang have planned to raid the only bank in the city which is open on Bastille day. After offering his services, Zed soon finds himself trapped in a situation beyond his control when heroin abuse, poor planning and a call-girl named Zoe all conspire to turn the robbery into a very bloody siege.
Reservoir Dogs
Production Design
A botched robbery indicates a police informant, and the pressure mounts in the aftermath at a warehouse. Crime begets violence as the survivors -- veteran Mr. White, newcomer Mr. Orange, psychopathic parolee Mr. Blonde, bickering weasel Mr. Pink and Nice Guy Eddie -- unravel.
Twister
Production Design
An oddball family on a Kansas farm are trapped in their farmhouse by an impending storm. The patriarch of the clan is a retired soda pop tycoon. He is currently dating a children's TV evangelist. Also living at the farm is his layabout daughter and her precocious 8 year old daughter, his would-be artist son, the son's fiancée, and the black maid. Also thrown into the mix is the daughter's ex-husband, a ne-er-do-well who is seeking to get back in his ex-wife's good graces.
Rachel River
Production Design
A divorced mother pursues her career as a radio personality in rural Minnesota.
Stacking
Production Design
After her father is injured, a teenager and an alcoholic employee struggle to save their financially troubled farm in 1954 Montana.
Smooth Talk
Production Design
Based on the short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", by Joyce Carol Oates, this film chronicles 15-year-old Connie's sexual awakening in the Northern California suburbs. Her experimentation gets out of hand when the mysterious Arnold Friend takes an interest in her.
Night of the Comet
Set Decoration
Two girls from the Valley wake up to find that a passing comet has eradicated their world and left behind a mysterious red-dust and a pack of cannibal mutants. With the help of a friendly truck driver, the girls save the earth from a villainous "think tank," karate chop their way through flesh-eating zombies, and, of course, find time to go to the mall.
Goldy: The Last of the Golden Bears
Deputy
Ned Rivers loses his ranch to the railroad and returns to prospecting. In the wild he meets and befriends Jessie who has been wandering in the mountains since her father died. They take care of an orphaned grizzly cub, Goldy, a "Golden Bear," whose mother has been killed by a circus owner looking for a new circus attraction. When the circus owner, Boss Cooperman, arrives Ned and Jessie try to save her with the help of new friends.
El Norte
Set Designer
Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.
El Norte
Set Dresser
Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.