Captain America: The First Avenger Crew Members Hid Their Director In A Secret Room
Whether you love the current trend of superhero cinema or hate them all with the fiery passion of Martin Scorsese after he stubbed his big toe on a particularly pointed corner, there's no question that Marvel's ascension and box office dominance is going to go down as one of the most interesting moments in movie history. It's certainly the biggest shift I've ever seen in over 20 years of being in the weeds covering the industry.
So, it's only right that we're getting an in-the-moment deeply researched chronicling of the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's called "MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios" written by the very talented trio of Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards. They talked to just about everybody in and around Marvel Studios and got all the warts-and-all insight you could want in a book like this. It doesn't release until October 10, 2023, but we have some insight that's already providing some fun behind-the-scenes context to some of our favorite nerd cinema thanks to an interview with the authors conducted by /Film's own, Ben Pearson.
Case in point, in talking with the production designer on "Captain America: The First Avenger," Rick Heinrichs, the authors uncovered a fun story about director Joe Johnston needing a little creative nook during the stressful making of what would become a cornerstone of the massive success that is the MCU.
Johnston's secret nook
If you're a nerd like me, you know that before he was a director, Johnston was an artist who helped design much of the "Star Wars" look in the Original Trilogy, including coming up with Boba Fett's signature look, so it shouldn't be a surprise that he'd be drawn to the art department when things are stressful on set.
In order to seclude himself even further, he had the crew build him a hidden little room behind the set designers where the director could escape the more stressful, less creative side of his job. Supervising Art Director Andy Nicholson even confided that the art team would cover for Johnston from time to time. As he said:
"When Joe wanted to hide from everybody else and just draw, he could go in there for a day and no one would find him. The producers would come walking through and go, 'Where's Joe?' And we're all trained to say, 'Well, I haven't seen him.' He'd be sitting in an office drawing because that's how he liked to operate, and he'd come out with 20 pages of beautiful hand-drawn art."
All directors have different creative processes. Johnston clearly ended up doing a wonderful job introducing MCU's Captain America and it sounds like you can probably thank the supportive crew for giving him the space he needed to work out the best way to tell this particular story, at least in part.