The Look of The Nanny Diaries
It was important for the production team that The Nanny Diaries be filmed entirely in New York, and, as much as possible, on location. “We worked very hard to find great locations all over Manhattan,” says executive producer Dany Wolf. “We were lucky enough to film at the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum, Central Park, Bergdorf Goodman, among others. New York’s embraced our production with open arms.” “I think Shari and Bob are trying to make this film a real love letter to New York with all its eccentricities, wonderful locations, and amusing people,” says Linney. “There’s no place like New York.” “The notion of creating New York City, would be crazy,” says Gladstein.
Working with cinematographer Terry Stacey (who previously teamed with them on American Splendor), Springer Berman and Pulcini sought to photograph New York with a heightened sense of reality, like an urban fairy tale. “We were thinking about something a bit along the lines of a contemporary Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” says Springer Berman. “That’s the references we started with, and then Terry was the one who made it happen.”
Not all the grandeur of New York City was found outside. “We scouted some pretty incredible apartments,” says Pulcini. “You don’t realize what’s behind some of the doors in Manhattan. I remember we saw one apartment that was so big that I lost all the people we were scouting with—just wandering around.” “It gives you a really different perspective on your life and the place that you live,” says Springer Berman.
Most of the film’s interiors were shot on real locations all over New York, but production designer Mark Ricker created the X’s immense and opulent apartment at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn. Ricker emphasized the formality of the place by playing with symmetry. “It’s hard to look anywhere in the apartment without finding pairs of everything,” says Ricker. “There are pairs of mirrors, pairs of lamps, pairs of doors—there’s no place for anything to be out of place. If it is, you’d know right away, because the other thing is still where it was.”
Costume Designer Michael Wilkinson previously teamed with Springer Berman and Pulcini on American Splendor, where the attire tended to be on the grungy side. “We were really excited to present him with a film where he could really go to town,” says Pulcini. And boy did he!” Among other things, Wilkinson created a host of outfits for various high and low society characters, as well as Namibians, Samoans, Pierrot clowns, and a Betsy Ross costume for Scarlett. “Everything you could possibly imagine is represented in the wardrobe of this movie,” says Pulcini.
With the costumes for Annie and Mrs. X, Wilkinson, Springer Berman and Pulcini collaborated closely with the actors. “I think everything that Scarlett wore in the move—except the gray business suit, which she hated, but Annie hated as well—was something Scarlett would have worn in real life,” says Springer Berman. “We wanted Annie to be someone who had her own idiosyncratic style that was a little bit funky and unique to her. We wanted her to be as far as possible from Mrs. X who could buy the big designer outfit of the moment. Annie couldn’t afford to do that, but she could walk into a thrift shop and find an old dress for under a hundred dollars and look like she’s wearing some designer outfit.”
Mrs. X’s luxurious couture wasn’t seen only as an expression of her privileged world. “One of the things we talked about with Michael and Laura is there’s an element of insecurity with Mrs. X,” says Pulcini. “She’s from money, but she’s probably not from the kind of money that Mr. X and his family are from—so she overcompensates a little bit for that. We talked about her being the kind of person that’s always trying on a look and maybe going one step too far with it. She’s always trying to present some image of herself that may not necessarily be her.” “Laura’s character is like a peacock,” says Wilkinson. “She wants the other ladies to comment on how fabulous she looks. I said to Shari and Bob that when she comes into a room she should feel like a bouquet of flowers in the room. So we used lots of floral colors.”
“I think the movie has a lot to say about narcissism,” says Linney, “The thing about Mrs. X being so absent and yet so controlling is that in her mind she’s doing absolutely everything right. She’s basically terrified of her own child. She wants to love him but she really doesn’t know how.”
“A lot of people need nannies because they work,” says Pulcini. “It’s a rich topic and it’s a dilemma. Kids are always going to fall in love with someone they spend so much time with. And how do you balance that? This seems to hit a nerve with people, and maybe that’s why the book was such a phenomenon.”
“Grayer’s mother is not very happy, his father’s always gone, they make a lot of money, but there’s no unity, no family,” says Keys. “There’s always another nanny, another person to take him wherever he has to go. There are people that do grow up like that, and are just kind of shuffled from person to person and don’t have that base where they feel protected and loved.”
“I think the message of the movie is that it’s really important to take the time to know your child,” says Murphy. “And it’s true for my character as it is for Laura’s character. You need to nurture and love your child in the particular way that that child needs.”
“The Nanny Diaries is an exploration of the options of a woman in contemporary society,” says Springer Berman. “What kind of woman can you be? There’s motherhood, there’s career, there’s all sorts of examples of what it’s like to be a woman presented in this movie, and Annie is this young woman on the verge of her life, and she’s thrown into all these different circumstances and ultimately comes up with who she is. I hope that it shows one woman’s exploration into who she’s going to be as a woman, and finding herself.”
“The Nanny Diaries is about the pressure we put on our kids to have a passion and to succeed, and be adults when we’re still kids,” says Johansson. “You’re pushed out of the house and it’s like ‘Okay, what now?’ I think it’s very insightful about the kind of the crisis that young people go through in their twenties.”
“There’s a fairy tale quality to The Nanny Diaries,” says Giamatti. “Laura is a kind of evil stepmother as opposed to Donna, who is Scarlett’s good mother; I am a Big Bad Wolf type of guy, and Scarlett is a little like Cinderella. I think it has a fairy tale quality of someone becoming a better person after a lot of trials and tribulations. But hopefully, it’ll be a funny movie too.”
Music
The Nanny Diaries boasts an eclectic assortment of music from such diverse countries as Mali, Peru, Madagascar and France and includes original score inspired by these international sounds. “Being that Annie frames her whole nanny experience as an anthropological field diary, we decided to utilize world music throughout the film. It is a musical metaphor for our main character’s journey as an outside observer in a strange culture.” said Springer Berman.
Working with long time collaborator, composer Mark Suozzo (American Splendor), the filmmakers fashioned a score that blends influences from artists including Ali Farka Toure, Serge Gainsbourg, George Michael and Les Baxter. “We wanted the music in the film to reflect Annie’s perspective at this, pivotal moment in her life,” says Pulcini.
The Nanny Diaries (2007)
Directed by: Shari Springer Berman
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti, Donna Murphy, Alicia Keys, Chris Evans, Judith Roberts, Nicholas Reese Art, Julie White
Screenplay by: Robert Pulcini
Production Design by: Mark Ricker
Cinematography by: Terry Stacey
Costume Design by: Michael Wilkinson
Art Direction by: Ben Barraud
Music by: Mark Suozzo
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language.
Distributed by: Metro Goldwyn Mayer, The Weinstein Company
Release Date: September 7, 2007
Visits: 149
