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Dean Tavoularis (Greek: Ντιν Ταβουλάρης; born May 18, 1932) is an American motion picture production designer whose work appeared in numerous box office hits such as The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Brink's Job, One from the Heart and Bonnie and Clyde. Although born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrant parents, Tavoularis spent his entire childhood and teenage years in Los Angeles, in the shade of the Hollywood studios. He studied architecture and painting at different art schools and landed a job at the Disney Studios first as an 'in-betweener in the... MORE

Dean Tavoularis (Greek: Ντιν Ταβουλάρης; born May 18, 1932) is an American motion picture production designer whose work appeared in numerous box office hits such as The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Brink's Job, One from the Heart and Bonnie and Clyde. Although born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrant parents, Tavoularis spent his entire childhood and teenage years in Los Angeles, in the shade of the Hollywood studios. He studied architecture and painting at different art schools and landed a job at the Disney Studios first as an 'in-betweener in the animation department, and later as a storyboard artist. In 1967, Arthur Penn called him to take charge of the artistic direction of Bonnie and Clyde. Three years later, Penn called him once again to invent the no-longer-existing Little Big Man. But it was a meeting with Francis Ford Coppola in 1972 on the set of The Godfather that set the creative tone of his career. The Godfather II and The Conversation, in 1974, consolidated their collaboration and laid the way for what was to be their joint creative challenge: Apocalypse Now, the Vietnamese odyssey for which Tavoularis created a nightmare jungle kingdom, inspired LESS