Joseph C. Nemec III

This production designer and art director has worked on everything from high-tech fantasy sets to the rural Wild West. A little boy from Little Rock, Nemec began his career as an architect in his native Arkansas. Moving to L.A. in the late 1970s, he answered an ad for work at Universal Studios and was hired. Nemec began his career as a set decorator and designer on such films as the music fantasy "Xanadu" (1980), "Ghost Story" and "Continental Divide" (1981). Nemec's first assignment as a set designer was for the wild children's fantasy "The Goonies" (1985), produced by Steven Spielberg, followed by the nostalgic, all-American landscapes of "American Flyers" and Spielberg's "The Color Purple" (both 1985).