Gary Fettis Wiki: Everything To Know About The 'Gran Torino' Set Decorator

Gary Fettis was born in 1950. He is an American set decorator. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction. Fettis was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Godfather Part III. He has subsequently worked on Gran Torino and Changeling amongst others. He was nominated for Best Production Design for the film Dunkirk at Oscar 2018. Oscar 2018 will be held on March 4th this year. Dunkirk is a 2017 war film written, directed, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan that depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II. Fettis worked on the film 'The Longest Yard' in 2005. The Longest Yard is an American sports comedy film and a sequel of the 1974 film of the same name. The story revolves around a famous professional football player who lands up in jail where the warden is a football fan. He asks him to put a football team together consisting of prison inmates to challenge the prison guards. Fettis' work in the film 'Hereafter' as the set decorator was quite noteworthy. Hereafter is a 2010 American drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood, written by Peter Morgan, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg. The film was about a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London schoolboy who are touched by deathly experiences in similar ways. The 2008 film 'Changeling' also had Gary Fettis as it's set decorator. Changeling was about a grief-stricken mother who takes on the LAPD to her own detriment when it tries to pass off an obvious impostor as her missing child. Gary Fettis has another brilliant film to his repertoire and that is 'Letters From iwo jima'. Letters from Iwo Jima is a 2006 Japanese-American war film directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood. It is the story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it. A set decorator works in the entertainment field, creating background scenery for movies, plays, television shows and other artistic properties. Collaborating with production designers and directors, they use artwork, furnishings and other props to design rooms for television and movie productions. They have the profound ability to read the script writer's mind and recreate a realistic set of his imagination. Set decorators make the scriptwriter's visuals a reality. Their task is often very tough and requires a lot of perfectionism.

Gary Fettis has a net worth of $700,000.

Prison labor was used to make some of the fenders seen on ships in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. Last fall, Mike Elk of Paydayreport posted an excerpt from the 'Dunkirk' companion book that showed set decorator Gary Fettis bragging about saving the producers a lot of money thanks to the use of prison labor. Fettis cites prison labour among his "interesting collaborations" and says the prisoners are "first-time offenders, kids, they weren’t hard-core criminals" in the book. Gary Fettis wouldn't have even imagined that his revealing this bit of information could land him and the film in trouble. Human rights advocates created a problem by demanding 'Dunkirk' to be disqualified from the Oscar race due to human rights violations. Paul Wright of the Human Rights Defense Center appeared as a savior when he put across his opinion that he doesn't believe most people see a problem, as "pretty much everybody (in the USA) in a position of power is down with prison slavery". 'Dunkirk' has since been nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Production Design, and has become the highest grossing WWII movie of all time. Gary Fettis had written in a book, "The amount of work needed led to some interesting collaborations, ‘The big fenders on the ships, they use giant rubber balls nowadays, but back then they were made out of rope, woven in thick hemp. We had to make about ten of them.’ They found a Dunkirk man who had re-rigged a ship for a local museum. ‘He knew how to weave these bumpers. And he employed prison labour to make them. First-time offenders, kids, they weren’t hard-core criminals. I hope the producers know,’ Gary [Fettis] adds, ‘because we saved a lot of money that way.’” He added, "I hope the producers know, because we saved a lot of money that way"

Gary Fettis has done a wonderful job in the film 'Dunkirk' as a set decorator. Set decorators were initially not recognized much in the industry and their work in the film was often taken for granted, but it is these talented people who make the director or scriptwriter’s imagination come to reality. They create realistic sets for us to truly relate to the kind of film we watch. It is their sets that help us get totally engrossed into a movie as if it were happening in reality.