Pollock. Donald Wigal

participated. We also had look-alike actors playing Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler (the Art In America critic), and Philip Guston.

      In the movie, these characters are seen individually exchanging comments with Jackson prior to being set to work on the painting. (Rabinovich knew Guston, who visited his studio a few times).

      Rabinovitch said,

      I had tried to get Larry Rivers, whom I knew, to come over (to participate in the Blue Poles scene) which would have been great fun, but he was already very ill and in fact passed away that very week. In his honour we did a scene later that day where our Jackson runs over a Larry Rivers sculpture (on purpose) which provokes a bit of fun and a yelling fight, with a real Manhattan art dealer playing the part of Larry. Larry Rivers died on 26 August, 2002 of liver cancer. In its obituary of Rivers, Time Magazine remembers Rivers once suggested the headline for his obituary should state, ‘Genius of the Vulgar Dies at 63’[90]. He lived to be seventy-eight.

      Also in the scene are the sculptor Reuben Nakian’s son and a real Manhattan art critic and Greenberg look-alike. Rabinovitch adds, “Filling things out was a look-alike (Marcel) Duchamp. We returned late that night with a handful of people and by using my night vision camera did some meditation scenes of Pollock with the painting.”

      For the earlier feature film Pollock (2000), Ed Harris never got to use the actual Pollock studio. Instead, he recreated a look-alike studio from scratch somewhere in Brooklyn (45). However, Rabinovitch explained that for PollockSquared:

      We actually used the real studio several times, but not on the day of the Blue Poles shoot. When we did use the real studio we used slippers but in one scene our Pollock and Krasner play off each other barefoot as a reminiscing Pollock goes around pointing out patches of colour on the floor, identifying several by year and by painting. On the day of shooting that scene we also showed our handsome de Kooning, a real Italian art dealer playing (Leo) Castelli, as well as look-alikes playing (Clement) Greenberg, and our vivacious (Peggy) Guggenheim[91].