Meet Me at Crafty

The big, sexy story about Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman is that production designer Inbal Weinberg recreated an entire, period-accurate, seasonally appropriate Toys “R” Us for Channing Tatum’s Jeff to hide in. But it’s the small apartment that Kirsten Dunst’s character has made into a home for her two daughters that is sneakily more impressive.

The entire home (from the sheetrock walls to the carpeting) is so redolent of a specific era and socio-economic bracket that I can’t help myself; I tell Weinberg it gave me a little bit of PTSD. “What a compliment!” she says with absolute sincerity. And that’s how I meant it, because you immediately know who this divorced mother of two is from Weinberg’s design, finished off with enthusiastic DIY optimism from a parent determined to make the best of a not-great situation.

Weinberg approached that space the way most people approach their own homes: one tiny, occasionally questionable but deeply heartfelt project at a time.

“It felt like Leigh would want her daughters to feel at home,” Weinberg says. “In my backstory, she really put a lot of effort into making the apartment inviting because she’s a crafty person.” To achieve that, Weinberg and her team dove into actual 1990s home décorDIY books, the kind where every other project feels like a dare someone lost.

“ Some of those projects are horrible!” Weinberg says with a laugh. “I don’t know why anyone would purchase those books. And then some are really touching. So our department started making a lot of really cute DIY things. We literally made a pen holder out of toilet rolls, I mean, we really went for it. And the thing about Derek’s sets is that they have to be extremely layered, and they have to feel functional. You can’t open the third drawer on the bottom and have it be empty. It’s a no-no.”

Meanwhile, Across Town, a 2004 Toys “R” Us Had to Exist

The apartment may have required emotional sensitivity, but the Toys “R” Us—the one where Jeff secretly lives for months—required logistical math, industrial archaeology, and what sounds like a small miracle.

For one thing, the store had to change decorations for multiple holidays, and fast. Thanksgiving displays, Christmas displays, toy rotation displays, all for an indie movie on a tight schedule and a tighter budget.

“I sat down with the AD, Mariela Comitini, and really broke down every scene,” Weinberg says. “And some days we had just a couple of hours for the crew to switch over the display.”

When I joke that I picture the AD running from Weinberg at a certain point during film, she laughingly adds, “It wasn’t just her running from me!” But even with meticulous planning, things come up. And that’s when Weinberg got creative. “We actually made a few shelving units on wheels as a modular system, and we had all the period displays on that,” she says. “I think we did one or two shots like that, where we had five minutes to figure it out so we rolled this huge shelving unit in and we just styled the shot in a way that worked. You definitely have to be open.”

If that weren’t enough, the floor had to be smoothed to such a degree that the DP, Andrij Parekh, could glide a dolly over it with no track. The reason? Cianfrance likes shooting loose, unplanned blocking — meaning the camera must go anywhere at any time.

So Weinberg’s team installed 23,000 VCT tiles, then buffed them until the surface was as glossy as a mall at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.

“We bought up all of the American stock,” she says. “We couldn’t walk on the set for three days, but it worked.”

And Then There Was The Hideout

Jeff’s secret “nest” behind a display wall originally didn’t have a roof, the better for a top-down shot. But then, when filming a police sweep scene, Weinberg and Cianfrance realized something alarming: If the cops looked up, Jeff’s cover would be blown.

So Weinberg improvised what Jeff would improvise: a DIY roof made from leftover store promotional graphics. They built it, shot him making it, and problem solved. Except.

With a roof, the nest was now dark. So Weinberg and Turpin smartly added Christmas lights. “So the last phase of his living in Toys ‘R’ Us has this warm, beautiful, holiday glow from all of these little, sparkling Christmas lights,” Weinberg says. “And all of that just came from how we work with Derek, which is just, things happen and you have to react to them.”

Inbal Weinberg is a two-time ADG Award nominee whose production design credits include some all-time Crafty faves: The Room Next Door, The Lost Daughter, Blue Valentine, and Frozen River. Her go-to at craft services? “I’m gonna have to say M&Ms. No spoilers, but it is an important part of our movie, so I’m just gonna be Method about it and think like Jeff and say M&Ms.”