Dennis Gassner Filmography

Born:: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Occupation:: Production Designer
Biography:: Distinguished American production designer Dennis Gassner began his film career working closely with Francis Ford Coppola, first as a production assistant on Apocalypse Now (1979) and then as part of Zoetrope Studios for a few years before making his own debut as a production designer in Coppola's...Read More

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The Golden Compass

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig, Sam Elliott, Eva Green

Synopsis: A young girl ventures into a perilous parallel universe to rescue her best friend and fight the forces of darkness in director Chris Weitz's adaptation of the first installment of author Philip Pullman's best-selling fantasy trilogy. Screen newcomer Dakota Blue Richards stars as young heroine Lyra Read More

12/7/07
Ask the Dust

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Colin Farrell, Salma Hayek, Donald Sutherland, Eileen Atkins, Idina Menzel

Synopsis: Adapted from a novel by John Fante, Robert Towne's Ask the Dust stars Colin Farrell as Arturo Bandini, a young writer who comes to Los Angeles during the Great Depression in order to write a novel. As the film opens, he is down to his last nickel and decides to spend it on coffee in a diner. He is Read More

3/10/06
Jarhead

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Lucas Black, Brian Gberaghty, Jacob Vargas

Synopsis: A young man gets a crash course in the madness of war in this fact-based drama from director Sam Mendes. Anthony "Swoff" Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) decides to join the Marines, just like his father and his father before him, and signs on just in time to be sent to Iraq to fight in the Gulf War in Read More

11/4/05
The Ladykillers

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Tom Hanks, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Irma P. Hall, Tzi Ma

Synopsis: One of the best-loved films from the idiosyncratic British film studio Ealing Pictures gets an update from the equally idiosyncratic filmmaking team of Joel and Ethan Coen in this offbeat comedy. Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall) is a spry, elderly woman who attends church regularly, doesn't care for Read More

3/26/04
Big Fish

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, Alison Lohman

Synopsis: Tim Burton directs the fantasy drama Big Fish, based on the book Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Southern writer/illustrator Daniel Wallace. Billy Crudup plays William Bloom, a young man who never really knew his dying father, Edward (Albert Finney) outside of the tall tales he told Read More

12/10/03
Road to Perdition

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stanley Tucci

Synopsis: The acclaimed graphic novel from crime writer Max Allan Collins becomes this big budget Dreamworks drama from director Sam Mendes and screenwriter David Self. Tom Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan, a morally conflicted Depression-era hit man committing murder in the name of his employer, John Rooney Read More

7/12/02
The Man Who Wasn't There

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini, Tony Shalhoub

Synopsis: Set in a sleepy Northern California town in the 1940s, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There stars Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, a humble barber who suspects his hard-hearted and hard-drinking wife Doris (Frances McDormand) of having an affair with her boss (James Gandolfini). When Read More

10/31/01
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Charles Durning, John Goodman

Synopsis: The writing, directing, and producing team of Joel Coen and Ethan Coen created this picaresque comedy (inspired in part by Homer's The Odyssey) set in the Deep South during the Depression. Suave and fancy-talking Everett Ulysses McGill (George Clooney), dim-witted Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) Read More

12/20/00
The Truman Show

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Ed Harris, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone

Synopsis: Peter Weir directed this comedy-drama, a commentary on all-pervasive media manipulation. Scripted by Andrew M. Niccol (Gattaca), the film plays like a combination of the British TV series The Prisoner and Paul Bartel's The Secret Cinema. Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is unaware that his entire life Read More

6/5/98
Waterworld

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino, Michael Jeter

Synopsis: Widely considered to be an expensive failure, Waterworld was an epic vehicle for Kevin Costner, who starred in and co-produced the film, with his friend Kevin Reynolds as director. It was based on a 1986 screenplay by Peter Rader and cost an estimated $235 million, more than any film in history up Read More

1995
The Hudsucker Proxy

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman, Charles Durning, John Mahoney

Synopsis: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen concocted this stylish screwball comedic amalgam of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks. Tim Robbins stars as Norville Barnes, a dull-wit from Muncie, Indiana who wrangles a job with the big Hudsucker Industries. He has a singular idea for a new children's toy that he wants to Read More

1994
Hero

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, Andy Garcia, Joan Cusack, Kevin J. O'Connor

Synopsis: Stephen Frears' Hero is a contemporary re-working of a Frank Capra-styled fable about a two-bit criminal named Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) who saves several passengers from a plane crash and leaves the scene without being identified, leaving only a lost shoe for identification. One of the passengers Read More

10/2/92
Bugsy

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould, Bebe Neuwirth

Synopsis: Bugsy is a character study of mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel wrapped up in a gangster movie. Siegel (Warren Beatty in a flashy performance) arrives in California in the Forties, assigned to oversee the L.A. rackets. He is quickly seduced by both the glamour of Hollywood and actress Virginia Hill (Annette Bening Read More

12/13/91
Barton Fink

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney, Tony Shalhoub

Synopsis: The title character, played by John Turturro, is a Broadway playwright, based on Clifford Odets, lured to Hollywood with the promise of untold riches by a boorish studio chieftain (played by Michael Lerner as a combination of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn). Despising the film capital and Read More

8/21/91
The Grifters

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, J.T. Walsh

Synopsis: Director Stephen Frears' tense adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel The Grifters was one of a number of revival film noirs in the first half of the '90s. Updating the setting to contemporary Los Angeles, the film follows a trio of con artists who are intent on out-foxing each other. Roy Dillon (John Cusack Read More

12/5/90
Miller's Crossing

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, Jon Polito, John Turturro

Synopsis: Joel and Ethan Coen's third collaboration, the gangster film Miller's Crossing, stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan, the right-hand man of big-city Irish mob boss Leo (Albert Finney). The film opens with Italian mobster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) and his second in command Eddie Dane (J.E. Freeman) Read More

9/22/90
Earth Girls Are Easy

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Julie Brown, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans

Synopsis: In this madcap comedy, Geena Davis plays Valerie, a manicurist living in the valley with her cold fiancé, Dr. Ted Gallagher (Charles Rocket). At the Curl Up and Dye beauty salon where she works, Valerie enlists the help of her boss, Candy Pink (Julie Brown), for some style advice to try and win Read More

5/12/89
Field of Dreams

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Burt Lancaster

Synopsis: "If you build it, he will come." That's the ethereal message that inspires Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) to construct a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield. At first, "he" seems to be the ghost of disgraced ballplayer Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta), who materializes on Read More

4/21/89
Like Father, Like Son

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Dudley Moore, Kirk Cameron, Sean Astin, Patrick O'Neal, Margaret Colin, Catherine Hicks

Synopsis: Dr. Jack Hammond (Dudley Moore) is a noted heart surgeon whose personality is switched with his teenage son Chris (Kirk Cameron) in this uninspired comedy. The ingestion of a brain transference serum is the catalyst for the comic catastrophe and the confusion that follows. Sean Astin and Patrick O'Neal Read More

10/2/87
In the Mood

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Patrick Dempsey, Beverly D'Angelo, Talia Balsam, Michael Constantine, Betty Jinnette

Synopsis: This romantic comedy is based on a true story that happened in California in 1944. Sonny Wisecarver (Patrick Dempsey) is 15 year old who has an affair with his older neighbor Judy (Talia Balsam). The two run off and get married, but a stern judge has the union annulled. Sonny is hauled before the Read More

9/16/87
Wisdom

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, William Allen Young

Synopsis: In this film, an old felony conviction comes back to haunt the young, ambitious John Wisdom (Emilio Estevez) as he applies and is turned down for a number of jobs. Frustrated by his attempts to make a legitimate living, John and his girlfriend, Karen (Demi Moore), set out to commit a series of Read More

12/31/86
The Hitcher

Crew: Production Designer

Actors: Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jeffrey DeMunn

Synopsis: Pretty boy actor C. Thomas Howell stars in this dark, violent suspense film about the strange psychological bond between a traveling serial killer and one of his intended victims. Driving cross-country from Chicago to San Diego, Jim (Howell) narrowly avoids an accident when he falls asleep at the Read More

2/21/86
Wet Gold

Crew: Production Designer, Set Designer

Synopsis: In this suspenseful made-for-TV adventure, a beautiful young woman and her drunken beach bum boy friend join the financially ruined owner of a diving shop and go looking for sunken treasure. Tensions mount as both men vie for the gold and the love of the woman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1984