“One Battle After Another” Production Designer Florencia Martin on Building PTA’s Three-Hour Action Thriller from the Ground Up
Paul Thomas Anderson’s action thriller One Battle After Another is loosely inspired by a section of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” but this three-hour epic is rooted in the present, a contemporary vision of a heightened clash between far-left and far-right, and, more intimately, a story about vengeance, desire, and family.
Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are partners and active members of a far-left militant group, the French 75. While planting a bomb, Perfidia is caught by Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), whom she previously sexually humiliated during a successful raid on an immigrant detention center. Perfidia sleeps with the obsessed Lockjaw, who lets her go. Nine months later, Perfidia gives birth to Charlene, and while Pat takes to family life, Perfidia can’t settle down. The family breaks apart, Perfidia is captured, and in exchange for ratting out the other French 75 members, Lockjaw lets her enter witness protection. Pat and Charlene go into hiding in sanctuary city Baktan Cross as Bob and Willa Ferguson. Perfidia eventually escapes the clutches of Lockjaw and goes on the lam outside the country.
Sixteen years later, Bob’s revolutionary skills are dangerously rusty when Lockjaw starts his hunt for Willa, hellbent on concealing his interracial relationship from the Christmas Adventurers Club, a white supremacist secret society he desperately wants to join. Former French 75 member Deandra (Regina Hall) flees with Willa, while Willa’s karate teacher, Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro) helps Bob go after Lockjaw. The film unfolds in chapters, starting with the thrilling prologue that captures the French 75’s exploits, moving to Bob and Willa’s tiny off-grid house in Baktan Cross, and then into the desert, where Willa shelters in a convent, of sorts, and takes on the men who want to see her dead, in a three-car chase unlike any chase scene film has ever scene.
With scouting a primary directive, production designer Florencia Martin (Licorice Pizza, Babylon) built many of these sets practically, and frequently from the ground up, on locations across California and the American West. The rest was built on stage and shot at Los Angeles’s LA North Studios. We had the chance to speak with Martin about constructing entire buildings, setting up practical explosions, and creating escape hatches and secret society lairs across a range of locations to come together in one coherent vision.
Were there any specific directives going in from Paul Thomas Anderson?
Our process is really boots on the ground. We began scouting in 2022 and knew from the script the arc of Bob’s journey. We knew he was starting in the redwoods, going to the sanctuary mission, and ending up in the desert. The directive was really to scout as much as possible and gather all these pieces that became a visual tapestry, grounding these characters in the reality of their circumstances.
That really shines in Sensei Sergio’s apartment building. How did you achieve that?
It was all practical. It was one of the biggest gifts of my career, probably. We ended up going to El Paso, and one of the first locations we walked into was Dennis’s Perfumeria, a perfume gift shop two blocks from the border. We knew that location was perfect and not to touch a thing. Through a lot of effort from our local experts, Jacob Cena and architect Phil Helm, we were able to practically build Sensei’s apartment upstairs, which I lined up with the existing trap door that led to the neighboring bag store. It was all inspired by locations we had scouted. The hallway was the Gateway Hotel. It had been built and modified through time and was so perfect, a visual anchor. Paul wanted for Sensei to live in this community with his family, and he had this idea that the walls would be open, so you could pass through each apartment. Since we built it, I was able to make it look like exposed framing, and as if the floorboards had been ripped out, because we installed everything from the ground up. Our set decorator, Anthony Carlino, sourced everything locally.
How did you find and then set up the convent? Was that all in the script?
It was really challenging, because Paul had an image of an old Spanish mission that was pretty derelict. We couldn’t find it. All the missions had been restored. This one was one on the mission trail, but it’s run by California Parks, so it gave us that pastoral setting. We wanted it to feel like it was hidden and believable that this group of women would have found this property. A lot of the characters in this film have a double side to them. It was fun to build that into that space, and let it breathe, too, and see the space for what it was, especially when Willa meets Lockjaw for the first time. You have to understand the story very clearly in that moment.
What was the approach for the Christmas Adventurer’s Club underground lair?
Paul had it in his mind that it was these underground tunnels that led to a meeting space or a clubhouse. I came across a Midwestern company that refurbishes basements, and they had all this wild, elegant molding and coffered ceilings with artificial light, so that became a visual element of what the space could look like. Somewhere along the journey, we had the idea, wouldn’t it be funny and great if what they looked at during these meetings was the perfect representation of the American West? It was just carving out the story behind this, and then the rest was practical. We went through a house in Sacramento that had stairs that led through a mural into their own secret bunker, and then that then led us to a tunnel that we found and loved as a location in Stockton. Then we built the set on stage at LA North Studios.
Was Bob’s escape hatch practical?
We built that whole thing. Bob’s in his one-bedroom cabin in the woods. He’s been there for the last 16 years. That house was too small, which was great, because that became part of the story. We built Willa’s bedroom and recreated his bedroom on a stage in order to build the beginning of the tunnel shaft. And then a 60 foot tunnel to make it look like he’d built it himself over time, so a hand-hewn tunnel on LA North stages. He pops out of a redwood stump, which are very typical of the area. Historically, all the redwoods were lumber for wood, so a ten-foot section of the tree would remain, and they’d turn them into outhouses and showers, sometimes bedrooms. He’s hiding his backpack there. We brought in a redwood stump and dressed it into a location. We carved in a tank for him to be able to emerge safely.
Speaking of practical, were the French 75’s explosive exploits done practically?
They were practical, and very much so, from the explosions to the car crashes. We actually studied a lot of YouTube videos and what we found was stuff that wasn’t very exciting. It was pretty banal. The way that the French 75 sequence ends where they’re smashing the cars and get fishboned, that was based on real crashes we would see. The arch rockets that Bob sets off, I think Paul had found these images at night. It was just about taking all of that information and sharing it with our effects team. The bank explosion was practical, in a closed down bank in Sacramento. We got permits through our team and worked closely with Jeremy Hayes [the special effects supervisor] replacing glass, creating furniture that would hide debris. It was all a multiple-step process but really fulfilling work.
How did you pull off the final three-car chase scene?
We knew we were ending in the desert. We were always gathering locations as we went. We’d just left 1776 camp in Blythe, which is the end of California at the border of Arizona. We got on the road and just collectively felt this incredible experience being in the car, dipping in and out. Paul ended up writing that sequence of the chase scene, and then it was going back five or six times and camera testing, talking about time of day. That road runs north-south and east-west. The dips are different in different sections. Marrying that all together, they did a stunning job in the edit. That sequence was a huge team effort of safety, permissions to shut down a real highway, it was just incredible what we got to do there.
Featured image: Caption: CHASE INFINITI as Willa Ferguson in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
