Sandy Reynolds-Wasco is one of the most prolific, accomplished, and well-liked set decorators in Hollywood. Over the years, and nearly always in collaboration with her husband, the renowned art director and production designer David Wasco, she has worked on a long list of A-list, iconic films, including nearly everything Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino have done. She is also one of the leading experts on postwar modernism in Los Angeles, and an avid art collector. I spoke with her at the Casa del Mar Hotel in Santa Monica (once the Pritikin Institute) about her working process, her creative inspirations, her extracurricular passions, and the unexpected ways that marquee directors like David Mamet and Michael Mann keep the doors open to creative interpretation.

—Shana Nys Dambrot

THE BELIEVER: You’ve worked with some of the biggest directors in the world—cinematic icons like David Mamet, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino….

SANDY REYNOLDS-WASCO: Well, all three of those that you’ve just mentioned are writer/directors, so they have more of a handle on the vision for the story. And while you might think that would make them more controlling, they are all very generous, and very different from each other. With Quentin, the inner life of his actors is his priority, and except for a few recommendations from a specific film or an old TV show for visual clues, he left us pretty much alone to develop a style while he concentrated on working with the actors. David Mamet, on the other hand, is hyperaware of every detail of the formal environment. Every little thing is important to him in moving the story, so that a pen or a blazer button is chosen as carefully as a location or the larger elements. Once the set is set he’ll let the actors find their way around inside of it and use it to flesh out a deeper understanding of their characters.

BLVR: Do you find that you and your husband get typecast as much as actors do, in terms of being associated with a certain period or style?

SRW: We probably do, inasmuch as we might have a “signature style.” After Pulp Fiction or The Royal Tenenbaums we had a lot of momentum with this kind of hybrid modern-Victorian pop-culture thing—a dense, concentrated kind of sensibility that producers and directors responded to when we interviewed. And having done Reservoir Dogs and Collateral we were called for a lot of “shoot ’em ups”—but like a typecast actor, you always remind people that you can do anything, can do period work. In fact we started out doing period films. My particular love is for environments of the early 1800s, pre-electricity, where there’s such mystery in the use of shadow,...