Danny Glicker has always been fascinated by costuming. Growing up on Long Island, he frequently traveled into Manhattan to see Broadway shows - sometimes up to three a week. "There was a time that I could tell you every designer on every show from the last thirty years. I was one of those kids." Those shows - and that attention to detail - informed his career path into adulthood.

Glicker entered the field at the tender age of seventeen, when he worked as a gofer at Barbara Matera - "one of the most extraordinary costume houses in the world" - and took time off from RISD to work on his first feature, Quiz Show.

After college, Glicker worked on a number of indie films and then headed to Los Angeles, where he had a stint at Bob Mackie, with whom he worked on a Vegas "tits and feathers show", called Jubilee! New York called him back, however, and he cut his teeth further on L.I.E. Since then, he's gone on to design for such films as TransAmerica, Pretty Persuasion and Northfork.

These films may not be spectacular blockbusters with outlandish, space-aged costumes. They do, however, deal with another wild, pioneering costume phenomenon: Americana. See what Glicker has to say about his cinematic sartorial philosophy, the cannibals in The Hills Have Eyes and working with Felicity Huffman, after the jump.

Andrew Belonsky: I'd like to know about your process. I'm assuming you read the script, but what details do you pick up on that help inform the character's dress?

Danny Glicker: My first instinct is to ask, "Who are these people? What is the world this takes place in? What is the journey?" The beginning of the process is always the same: an immersion in research - visual, of course, but also social, historical, all influencing aspects. I'm very old fashioned in my approach. I love books. Microfilm. Junk shops. Anywhere history and society can rest comfortably until needed. I create a narrative within the visuals.

AB: You won the Costume Designers Guild's contemporary film prize for your work on Transamerica. I understand you and Felicity Huffman tag teamed that one. What was the process of designing for a transgendered person? What steps did you take?

DG: Working with Felicity was one of the most amazing experiences of my career. Any actor who wants to top her can be my guest in trying. In any job, no matter how hard I work, how prepared I am, it all comes down to the performer's comfort level with the character and the clothes, and Felicity was beyond fearless. I honestly think she just threw all caution to the wind and said, “Bring it on”. It's funny to think back to when I just started, and my biggest fear was, “Is the lead actor going to be vain and want to only be only pretty?” Felicity and I both had the same vision for Bree: finding her discomfort level, which surprisingly was not based on being transgendered, as one might expect going into the film, but being a plain old fashioned maladjusted person. The fact that Bree was having such a difficult transition at the opening of the film was based on her life of isolation and self-protection. It was my job to reflect that in the costumes.

In researching Transamerica, the most important research were several sessions with transgender transition coaches Calpernia Addams and Andrea James. Felicity hired them out of her own pocket to help her with her research, and she threw in a couple of sessions for me as well. They were endlessly generous in sharing all sorts of information that you can't find everywhere, even when I asked questions like "What are some of the biggest mistakes of early transitioners?" They told me everything. Some of it was hilarious, some of it was amazing, some of it was harrowing. If there are any people on earth braver than trans people, I haven't met them.

AB: Can you remember any specific “mistakes”?

DG: I would rather not get too detailed about some of the "mistakes" that early transitioners make, but I can give you a few general examples. [One] is that when someone is beginning to explore their identity, it's not uncommon to fall into some traps, one of which is dressing in an inappropriately youthful fashion, in response to the excitement of having something of a second adolescence, or dressing like one's mother. In Transamerica, Bree did not fall into those categories exactly, but instead had a few fashion setbacks born of her reluctance to shop in public - much of her clothing reflected a few shopping binges from catalogs, the lot of which blew her clothing budget and reflected a limited style, as opposed to a lifetime of gradually obtaining clothing.

AB: You seem drawn to a particular type of movie. Transamerica, Thank You For Smoking, Pretty Persuasion - even The Hills Have Eyes - they all deal with a variation on the American dream. Or, at the very least, the American culture. There’s a quest. Felicity Huffman's character is looking for peace. Aaron Eckhart's is looking for the next angle. The mutants of The Hills are looking for a little justice. Why these movies?

DG: If given the choice of designing a big flashy spectacle with a lousy script or an insightful little character piece that manages to pinpoint a glimmer truth in our universal experience, I always manage to gravitate towards the latter. Not for any altruistic reasons, but for downright selfish ones. They're usually better movies. I want to work on projects that I love, and those usually include something relevant to our world [or] our culture now.

AB: Your costuming seems to pull directly from that mythical American dream: not too flashy, not too complicated, but reeking of Americana. I know that's not really a question, but perhaps you can elaborate on that?

DG: It's funny. I've never given much thought to [that], but now that you bring it up, I do see it. Some of the pieces deal with Americana: Transamerica, Thank You For Smoking, The Astronaut Farmer, Northfork and The Hills Have Eyes. Those projects all specifically set out to explore some element of social behavior in a sociopolitical context.

I think what all of them have in common is that the politics of the protagonists' situation takes a back seat to their personal journey. As an example, The Hills Have Eyes was scripted as a dark satire of the Gulf War and our country's lack of understanding of what horror is, and our role in the creation of it - so it was filled with Americana. I had the Matriarch of the family wear a t-shirt with an American flag over her heart, which told us everything about her - especially when a cannibal tore out her heart and ate it in front of her kids. On the surface, it seems like a glib joke, but the deeper meaning of it is reveals something more layered about the nature of our shared culture, what is happening to us, and character and perception vs. reality.

Pretty Persuasion was more of a social satire and had a wonderful script filled with nasty, dirty behavior and razor sharp observations about our society. In order to interestingly contradict and provide a context for their vile behavior, I looked towards both the squeaky clean American aesthetic of The Donna Reed Show and the shiny Aryan prettiness of the Third Reich. I tried my best to combine those elements to create a hyper stylized version of Beverly Hills. I think it worked a little too easily.

The upcoming film I designed that Alan Ball directed [is] also very much about the American dream, but filtered through unexpected eyes. It is about a half-Lebanese, half-American teenage girl living in a suburb of Houston, Texas on the eve of the Gulf War in the early 90's. In addition to dealing with a very complicated and real version of the American dream, I also got to place the characters in some seriously high-waisted jeans, acid-wash denim, scrunchie socks and Reebok High-Tops. If that's not the American Dream, I don't know what is.

AB: It seems to me that American dress has a certain, perhaps manufactured, air of casualness. We were pioneers. We're adventurous. Sea to shining sea and all that. There's something - well, not so much unrefined, but untamed.

DG: I think [our] presentation comes down to a very elaborate game of creating context. We are a young country with a relatively brief history, and our fashions are so representative of that. Whenever I walk into stores featuring racks and racks of distressed clothing, I think it's so indicative of our longing for a history. It's as if we're all searching for the family that could have passed down that garment to us. It's no different than when you look around the country at all the strip malls built overnight, and see "rustic" restaurants with faux-exposed brick and industrial vent ceilings. Although I understand the instinct to surround one's self with the pre-manufactured examples of a shared history, I think they represent a real missed opportunity to build something more substantial and lasting. [Something] that can become part of our real history.

I think America had a very serious costume-party movement in the 70's. “Today I'm a Cowboy! Tomorrow I'm a British Scholar!” The younger consumer culture really embraced the search for identity that was sweeping the fashion industry. I still think we have elements of that, but it has become so intertwined with corporate branding. It's funny that with all our modern technology, the results are the most basic form of cultural communication, which is tribal identification. It's the same in costume design, which is about creating the context for the characters to exist. It's why it's so important for background characters to be as carefully dressed as the principals. They create the context in which the principals exist.