David Rockwell: lately it feels like designer David Rockwell has his hands on everything. In the new film Team America: World Police, he puts his personal touch on a very UN-P.C. Planet Earth

Interview, Nov, 2004 by Tony Moxham

Trust Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park infamy to mastermind this month's political parody Team America: World Police. And trust them to bring on board David Rockwell--the uberpopular designer whose resume comprises everything from restaurants and bars to hospitals and Broadway sets--to help realize their "slightly" unorthodox vision of the world.

With an all-marionette cast of terrorists, tyrants, and the "team" who thwart them at every turn (plus a few live cats, who take on lionlike proportions amongst the puppet players), the world Rockwell has created is a hilariously cliched vista of global culture through American blinkers--one in which the Eiffel Tower is festooned with advertising, and signs for McDonald's dot the horizon of the Egyptian desert.

For Rockwell's take on the Film Actor's Guild headquarters, pictured above and featured in the movie, the designer says, "It's a self-important governmental building with fascist overtones. But on top is a large Hollywood arch that mixes the idea of the vanity and the power of the place. We used ripped dollar bills to make the palm trees."

Tony Moxham is Interview's art director.