She was hired to recreate the elaborate wedding confection served at country music legend Hank Williams and Billie Jean Jones Eshliman’s 1952 New Orleans wedding for the movie “I Saw the Light.”
The movie, which wraps production in Shreveport on Friday, stars British actor Tom Hiddleston — best known for his role of Loki in the Marvel Studios film “Thor,” “The Avengers” and “Thor: The Dark World” — as Williams. Maddie Hasson stars as Shreveporter Billie Jean, who married another country music star, Johnny Horton, after Williams death.
Fair was hired for the job upon the recommendation of the film’s assistant prop master, Hannah Roark, who knew Fair because her mother took cake decorating classes from her.
“I knew that she could handle anything we threw at her,” Roark said.
And what they threw at her was no joke, as Roark said.
A photo of the original wedding cake shows a gaudy, three-layer cake with a fluted tower and wedding topper.
Why go to the trouble to duplicate that look?
“We’re trying to be as authentic as possible in every aspect of shooting,” Roark said.
That meant hours of study for Fair as she tried to figure out how to recreate the cake using only poor quality black-and-white photographs as guides. Actually making the cake took two weeks.
The finished cake consists of an 18-inch layer bottom, 14-inch layer middle and 10-inch layer top with a tower and wedding topper. The total creation is 44 inches tall.
Only the middle layer of the cake was real so the actors could cut and eat it for the wedding reception scene. When Fair returned the disassembled cake to her shop, she added a dummy middle layer so she can keep it for display.
The most difficult part was creating the tower, which Fair believes was made of puff pastry on the original and which she recreated in Styrofoam.
Another roadblock: finding the vintage decorative items, such as the bride and groom wedding topper.
“They don’t make them anymore, so we had to take one that we could find and actually take it apart and put it back together with what we thought it would look like back then.”
Fair said the cake was a $2,000 job, but she charged less in exchange for being able to stay on set while the scene was filmed. Although there was a bit of confusion when she arrived with the cake, she was able to sit near the back of the Municipal Auditorium during filming from 2-8:30 p.m. Nov. 21.
And it’s a good thing she stayed.
“It ended up they needed me three times during the course of the day. They had a beautiful spotlight on my cake all day long. The roses on this row kept falling off because it’s real icing and real cake. So I’d run down and I’d fix it and then I’d go back and sit down.”
The minor mishaps didn’t tarnish the experience.
“The director thanked me profusely for actually copying that period of wedding cake and told me how good a job I did,” Fair said.
And Fair couldn’t say enough nice things about Hiddleston.
“He stayed in room where the cake was and when I went down to dissemble it so I could take it off the table, he shook my and my husband’s hand and he told me how pretty the cake was and how good it tasted. I thanked him for actually eating it. He sat down at the table and actually ate his piece of cake. I told him ‘I’m so sorry I haven’t seen any of your movies, but I’m buying this one when it comes out.’ He’s so sweet. He’s a really nice person.”
Fair wishes the film premiere, expected to be in sometime in 2015, would be at the Municipal Auditorium.
“I just think it would give everyone a little glam in their life,” she said.
But one thing she’s sure of: “I’ll be there the first day that it’s out.
“I think I’m going to be nervous because the roses fell off and, of course, I strive for perfection. But I’m going to be excited because I got to be a part of something.”
Source : AuBridalDresses.com
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