Pieces of life from Penn Yan to Hollywood

It’s being billed as the biggest movie event of the year, and in 2009, there is a Penn Yan connection to the 81st Academy Awards.

Because of that connection, some of the vintage items sold at area antique shows and sales this summer might be seen in a whole different light.

Debra Schutt, a regular visitor to the area where her parents own a home on Keuka Lake, was nominated for an Oscar for her work as set decorator on Revolutionary Road, a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Some of the items she uses in the set decor came from an antique show and sale held annually at the Penn Yan Grange Hall.

Schutt, who lives in Manhattan but visits Keuka Lake a couple of times each year, advises interested audience members to keep an eye on a scene in Maureen’s apartment, where a bedspread she purchased in Penn Yan appears.

She’s not sure what other items that she purchased in Penn Yan last spring appear in the film, but she does remember buying a lot of items that day.
Her parents recall the shopping trip as well.
Her father, Charles Schutt, explains with a chuckle, “We got a whole carload. Her mother (Theresa) was kept busy carrying things out to the car all day.”

For  Schutt, the glory of achievement seems a little daunting. But that won’t keep her from attending the Academy Awards Ceremony on Feb. 22, where she just might have to step out from behind the cameras and crew to find herself in the spotlight.

“I think I’d just die if I had to get up on the stage. This is why I’m behind the scenes. This is torture. I have to get a dress, I have to get my hair done,” she joked during a telephone interview on Feb. 3. She was speaking from the Los Angeles airport after having attended a luncheon for all the Academy Award nominees.

While she seems a touch tentative about attending the ceremony, it’s pretty clear she wouldn’t miss this opportunity for anything. “I’m going to do it. It is exciting,” she said.
In fact, she had a chance this past weekend to get used to the whole awards ceremony scene when she attended the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards ceremony in England. There she also was a nominee, along with Art Director Kristi Zea, for the same film, but that award was won by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Although she’s worked on dozens of major motion pictures since the 1980s, this is the first time she’s been nominated for an Oscar.

In the film Revolutionary Road, Frank (DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Winslet) live a life of suburban plenty that seems on its surface to represent the essence of the post-World War II American dream. In reality, however, the pair are haunted by the thought that they have betrayed their youthful dreams and are trapped in a conventional lifestyle that falls far short of the more bohemian existence they had imagined for themselves, according to the studio’s summary of the movie.

Schutt’s job was to decorate the sets to reflect the lifestyle of the era.
“We dress the house from top to bottom,” she explains.

That called on her ability to pull together classic 1950s furnishings and appliances — the pieces of everyday life that serve as the background for the story.
In fact, she said she thought about borrowing a vintage stove from her uncle’s house near Webster, but she found something closer to the filming location.

She  also bought all the period blankets she could find, because in the movie, the characters go through the closets in the house, and another scene takes place on a beach, where the blankets could also be used.

She says it was not difficult to decorate for the 1950s because her parents built their own home in 1953 and she grew up then.

Understanding the type of items that would be relevant to a particular era comes from being close to her grandmother as a child, she says, explaining she listened to her grandmother’s memories — about going to school, learning to drive, and just growing up. “I feel it’s just osmosis,” she says, about understanding the look and feel of days before her time.

She also feels growing up on a farm — her brother still owns the family apple farm and cider mill in Webster — gave her a gift of understanding of other generations and a broader sense of the workings of the world.

When Debra Schutt completes a decorating job, it lives on, unchanged and perfect, captured forever on film. But each one is uniquely styled to the story and its characters, which makes her job even more challenging and interesting.

From the 1920s rural south of Fried Green Tomatoes to the 1960s streets of New York in A Bronx Tale or the high end homes in The Stepford Wives to the contemporary scenes in movies like Anger Management and Ghost Town, Schutt has worked with all kinds of designs, stories and stars.

She says that variety made her career choice even more appealing, and points out that it makes the work ideal for someone with a short attention pan.

A Webster native, Schutt attended college at SUNY Oswego, where, at her father’s insistence, she majored in education, but minored in theater. Her first job after college was an unpaid position at a Hartford theater, but she almost didn’t take it.

Her father explains, “I said, that’s enough. You’re going to work now!”
But, he says, a customer in the family’s cider mill store spoke up and said her mother lived in Hartford and would love to have a young woman live with her for a while.

Schutt took that job, and the rest of her story — so far — is immortalized in film, right along side the likes of Jack Nicholson, Nicole Kidman, Adam Sandler, Sidney Poitier, Robert DeNiro, Jeremy Irons Kathy Bates and more.