Hanford native Larry Dias was almost too sick to enjoy one of the biggest days of his professional life. He had come down with the flu the night before the nominations for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards were announced.
The list included Dias – along with production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and fellow set decorator Doug Mowat – in the Art Direction category for their work on "Inception."
"I was up half the night with a fever when the phone rang at 5:40 in the morning. It was Guy Hendrix Dyas telling me we had been nominated," Dias says. "I said, 'If I don't sound excited it's because I feel awful right now.'
"I tried to go back to sleep but the phone just kept on ringing so I called him back and told how thrilled I was with his wake-up call."
Dias has come a long way from his family's dairies – Willow Grove and Delta View Farms – in Hanford. If his journey seems kind of magical, maybe the "Wizard of Oz" had something to do with it.
"The first film that really stuck with me was 'The Wizard of Oz,' and it may have been the whole Dorothy on the farm having her eyes opened to an outside world," Dias says.
"I owe a lot to my parents – Gregory and Vivian Dias – because they did such a great job raising us and instilling in us this passion to pursue our dreams."
He didn't exactly take the yellow brick road to get there.
Dias was 20 when he left the farm to study science with the idea of becoming a physical therapist or chiropractor. He started at The College of the Sequoias but transferred to Long Beach State.
He realized while living in Southern California he wanted to work in show business and enrolled at Otis Parsons, a school of the Arts.
"I have always had a creative slant to my personality and was always able to make things look a certain way. I was the only one out of seven kids that could trim my Mom's topiary plants in in her garden that could meet her satisfaction. All things visual have always been very important to me," Dias says.
He worked as a set dresser on TV programs and commercials before being hired as set decorator for the 1995 film "Unstrung Heroes." Since then he's been the set decorator on films including "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "The Last Airbender."
Movie sets, his workplace, can be just about anywhere imagination and scripts take him. The job is all about collaborating with the director and film designer to find locations, color palettes, furniture styles and art to fill the space behind the actors.
"For instance, on 'Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl,' I decorated fantastic pirate ships as well as English military ships, a blacksmith shop, English streets and shops from the 1700s and an outrageous treasure cave for which I had over a million period gold coins minted," Dias says.
"Inception" required Dias to decorate sets in six countries. Because very few computer-generated effects were used, Dias had to decorate everything, from a Japanese castle to fancy hotel rooms.
After "Inception" finished, Dias worked on "Battleship," the film based on the board game. He's currently working on the film version of "The Hunger Games," the story of life in a post-apocalyptic world.
He'll take a break from work for Sunday's ceremonies. The Oscar competition for Dias, Dyas and Mowat includes teams from "Alice in Wonderland," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1," "True Grit" and "The King's Speech." The "Inception" group has already picked up a BAFTA – Britain's Oscars – besting "Alice In Wonderland," "Black Swan," "The King's Speech" and "True Grit."
Even if he doesn't come home with an Academy Award, he says feels like a winner.
"It is a great feeling to be recognized by the Academy since the awards ceremony is viewed by over 40 million people," Dias says. "That's pretty good exposure."
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No Oscar wins for two with Valley ties