/UunmiJ\fotes \
Bartholomew (’73)
leans against
the creation that
landed him the
job as “Dumb
and number’s”
production
designer with
the van’s model,
Bubba.
I
'■ % ^
%
Bartholomew gets “Clever and clever-er”
Chowan
graduate’s
creative
flair
keeps him
busy in
Hollywood’s
movie biz
By JOSHUA BOYER
Staff Writei; The Daily Southerner, Tarbon
Last spring, movie producer Charles Wessler
ran into a problem while working on the film
Dumb and Dumber. The movie just didn’t look
right.
Looking at the designs he had for the van the
two moron protagonists, Jim Carey and Jeff
Daniels, use for the “Mutt Cutts” dog grooming
service, Wessler could see they were too slick,
too boring, not nearly wacky enough for a Jim
Carey movie.
Then he remembered an old friend he had
met while working on music videos, Tarboro
native Sidney J. Bartholomew, Jr., a 1973
graduate of Chowan College who majored in
art, and called “the craziest designer in Holly
wood.”
Wessler called Bartholomew, told him of his
problem and sent him a sketch of the plain van.
When it came back just an hour later, it had
been transformed into a giant, furry, floppy
eared Airedale terrier.
“They loved it," Bartholomew later said of
the van covered in shag-carpet dog fur, with
ears flopping over the sides and a tail sticking
up in the back like the world’s dumbest spoiler.
They didn’t want something that “looked
like a car show-guy made it,” Bartholomew
said. They wanted “a van that two dumb guys
would build.”
An hour later, Bartholomew was at the New
Line Cinema office interviewing for the job of
production designer.
“Before I got home they called me and told
me to be at the airport the next morning, he
said. Bartholomew had the job.
As production designer, Bartholomew was
responsible for “the entire look of the movie,”
he said. “Basically, I sit down with a script and
highlight everything that is visual and come up
with an idea of what it’s going to be and how
it’s going to work.”
73 grad called ‘Volcano uncorked”
By JOSHUA BOYER
Staff Writei; The Tarbon Daily Southerner
Dumb and Dumber is hardly Sidney J.
Bartholomew Jr.’s first foray into Hollywood.
For the past seven years he has lived under
Tinsel Town’s big letters on the hill, working on
various wacky projects.
Bartholomew has designed and directed
music videos, commercial, TV shows and
helped design Six Flags/Magic Mountain’s
Batman attraction.
Two children’s videos won him a Parenting
magazine awards.
And Bartholomew owns a gold record for
music videos he made with Little Richard and
PAGE 10 — CHOWAN TODAY, Maich 1995
Disney to benefit the Pediatric AIDS Founda
tion.
He has even found time between his sundry
jobs to write about half a dozen film scripts.
But the artist’s first real break came when he
was living in New York trying to make ends
meet as an illustrator and he got the job of art
director for a show which won for him an
Emmy for the best art director in 1987.
The 41-year-old Bartholomew developed his
love for art early.
“As long as I can remember I was the class
artist. I was too small to play sports. I was a sickly,
asthmatic kid. I didn’t get dates. Art was all I could
See VOLCANO, Next Page
That includes coordinating the wardrobe, the
lighting, the props — “everything you see,”
Bartholomew said.
Bartholomew enjoys the problem-solving
aspects of production design. “It’s like doing
puzzles,” he said.
For instance, he had to figure out the puzzle
of how to film the dogs in the back of the van
as Jeff Daniels’ character careens around curves
like the idiot he is. You can’t simply take the
van and the dogs out on the road and film it,
Bartholomew said. “It would be too dangerous
and you couldn’t predict it.”
Instead he took an old van, cut it in half, and
mounted it on a ball bearing big enough to
support its weight — a bowling ball.
“Then we set the camera on a rig in the van
(with the dogs) and got four guys to rock the
van back and forth, giving you the illusion that
this guy is driving down the road, flying all
over the place.”
Movies are all about illusion, he said. The
script called for Daniels and Carey to drive a
moped through the cold winter air of the
Rockies to Aspen, but it was springtime by the
time they shot the movie.
No problem. Bartholomew took them to
Breckenridge and ordered up some fake snow
for the set.
The production designer also picked the
proper buildings in which to film each scene.
Wessler said he was looking for someone to
match the spirit of the movie and found that
person in Bartholomew. “The van was hysteri
cal. It was exactly what we needed,”
Wessler said he has several Bartholomew
drawings hanging on his walls at home. “When
I look at them, I smile.”
“Sidney’s a visual genius.
He s a wacko, but a wacko with a great
heart!”