{"id":3649,"date":"2026-07-11T12:15:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=3649"},"modified":"2026-07-11T12:15:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:15:35","slug":"once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-production-designer-was-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=3649","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Once Upon a Time in Hollywood\u2019 Production Designer Was 73"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBarbara Ling, the production designer who turned back time and won an Oscar for re-creating 1969 Los Angeles for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/quentin-tarantino\/\" id=\"auto-tag_quentin-tarantino_1\" data-tag=\"quentin-tarantino\">Quentin Tarantino<\/a>\u2019s acclaimed <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/once-a-time-hollywood\/\" id=\"auto-tag_once-a-time-hollywood_1\" data-tag=\"once-a-time-hollywood\">Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/a><\/em>, has died. She was 73.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLing died Thursday in Santa Barbara after a battle with cancer, a spokesperson for WME announced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA Los Angeles native, Ling also tooled around her hometown for the present-day, Michael Douglas-starring <em>Falling Down<\/em> (1993), then reteamed with director Joel Schumacher to set up the fictional Gotham City for <em>Batman Forever<\/em> (1995) and <em>Batman &amp; Robin<\/em> (1997).<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tIn a career that spanned more than four decades, Ling served as the production designer on two 1991 classics, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/oliver-stone\/\" id=\"auto-tag_oliver-stone_1\" data-tag=\"oliver-stone\">Oliver Stone<\/a>\u2019s <em>The Doors<\/em> and Jon Avnet\u2019s <em>Fried Green Tomatoes<\/em>, on which she also was an associate producer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tShe also teamed with director Scott Hicks on <em>Hearts in Atlantis<\/em> (2001), <em>No Reservations<\/em> (2007), <em>The Lucky One<\/em> (2012) and <em>Fallen<\/em> (2016).<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMost recently, she worked on Marc Forster\u2019s <em>A Man Called Otto<\/em> (2022), starring Tom Hanks, and on the blockbuster biopic <em>Michael<\/em> (2026), directed by Antoine Fuqua.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tOn <em>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/em> (2019), Ling shared the Oscar for best production design with set decorator Nancy Haigh; the two had worked together once before, on the 1988 film <em>Checking Out<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tTarantino\u2019s \u201cmain thing from the moment we sat down was, \u2018I want this to be real. I want to see. I want to smell and I feel that Hollywood. I don\u2019t want to do green screen over here or have the digital interpretation. Let\u2019s really change the billboards, and let\u2019s put the real facades back on,\u2019\u201d Ling said in a <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.awardsdaily.com\/2019\/10\/28\/interview-barbara-ling-turns-back-time-for-tarantinos-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood\/\" target=\"_blank\">2019 interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cThat is, to me, very exciting. It\u2019s something we don\u2019t do much of anymore. I knew that what he wanted was to encompass himself and the actors into an environment that you could feel is real. You\u2019re not just staring at something that\u2019s a piece of green screen where we piece together later. That was the starting ground of this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cI had to go out and figure out where I could attach real things to. It was quite an engineering feat to do, particularly on Hollywood Boulevard, to say, \u2018I want the Pussycat Theater back.\u2019 To build those marquees, it\u2019s added weight. These are old and fragile buildings that we were working with. We had to also work with engineers to make sure we weren\u2019t going to pull the facade off once we rebuilt the old signs. It was laborious but well worth it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cThe night of the first shoot when all the neon lit up and the period cars came out and [Arianne Phillips\u2019] costumes were out there, you absolutely believed you were in 1969 because everything was real. It was a movie filming a real street. We pretty much carried that theme through Westwood [to re-create the Bruin Theater] and everywhere we shot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tAfter winning her Oscar, Ling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-news\/oscars-once-a-time-hollywood-collects-production-design-honors-1277412\/\">lamented to reporters backstage<\/a> that \u201cL.A. is not a preservation city, never has been. Now there\u2019s been a nonstop movement of apartment building and glass towers. \u2026 What we did will be impossible to do next year. It\u2019s unfortunate. We hope this will bring some nostalgia back and stop things from being torn down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBorn in August 1952, Barbara Claire Ling began her career designing sets and lighting for more than 200 theater, opera and musical productions. Among her early efforts was the 1981 HBO special <em>The Pee-Wee Herman Show<\/em>, taped at the Roxy in West Hollywood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tShe made the leap to filmmaking when David Byrne enlisted her to design his directorial debut, <em>True Stories<\/em> (1986).<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tHer credits also included <em>Heaven<\/em> (1987), <em>Less Than Zero <\/em>(1987), <em>V.I. Warshawski<\/em> (1991), <em>With Honors<\/em> (1994) and Sydney Pollack\u2019s <em>Random Hearts<\/em> (1999), among the films that demonstrated she was equally comfortable with period authenticity, contemporary realism and stylized fantasy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tSurvivors include her wife, Lindsay, and their\u00a0sons, Clay and Will.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barbara Ling, the production designer who turned back time and won an Oscar for re-creating 1969 Los Angeles for Quentin Tarantino\u2019s acclaimed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has died. She was 73. Ling died Thursday in Santa Barbara after a battle with cancer, a spokesperson for WME announced. A Los Angeles native, Ling also&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Barbara-Ling-Getty-H-2026.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}