From the West Bottoms to the Oscars: KC shop has ties to best picture ‘Oppenheimer’

The phone call came in February 2022. A movie set designer traveling through the Midwest wanted to shop at Bella Patina, an antique store in Kansas City’s West Bottoms.

Nick Allen, who owns the store with his wife Megan, told the guy sure, no problem.

“We’ve had short films and other production things that happen in the Kansas City area that have bought from us, small productions usually, and I assumed that’s what the situation was this time too,” Allen told The Star on Monday.

“So I met him down there, him and a couple of guys that worked with him. They went through the store for a couple of hours and found some items and put them together.”

As he was ringing up the purchases Allen asked the guy what movie he was buying for so he could watch for it.

“I’m thinking it was going to be a couple of short films or something that I’ll find online,” said Allen.

“And he said well, the first one is a Christopher Nolan film and it’s called ‘Oppenheimer.’ And the second one is a Martin Scorsese film called ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’

“And I’m going. ‘OK, like these are real movies, real big deals.’”

Oh yeah. Really big deals.

At the Academy Awards Sunday, “Oppenheimer” was the big winner of the night with seven Oscars, including best picture, actor (Cillian Murphy) and director for Nolan. “Killers of the Flower Moon” was also nominated for best picture.

After the show, Allen posted photos from “Oppenheimer” showing four red leather chairs that came from his store. Matt Damon, as Lt. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, sat in one of the chairs in the movie.

“From the West Bottoms to Hollywood,” say the posts on Instagram and Facebook that have been shared hundreds of times already.

“After the fact I was telling my wife if I had any idea I would have taken some pictures of myself sitting in that chair and been like ‘I sat in the same chair Matt Damon did,’” he said.

Allen asked the set designer why he was shopping in the Midwest and he said, “Everything in California and the West Coast, and the East Coast too, are just so expensive. It’s killing their profit lines.”

“So his company would have him come out to the Midwest and buy and they just fill up a truck and drive it back to wherever the productions are.”

Someone who knew he was passing through Kansas City referred him to Bella Patina “and that’s just kind of the simple connection that got made,” said Allen, who opened the store at 1320 W. 12th St. with his wife 13 years ago.

“We were their first stop. I don’t think they’d ever been to Kansas City. Never been to the West Bottoms,” said Allen. “They were all talking about how cool it was and ‘Man can’t believe there’s not more movies shot down here because this whole area is so cool.’”

As he helped the designer shop the store the guy spoke of someone named “Leo.”

Leo this and Leo that. Leo said we should do this.

Allen had no clue “Leo” was Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the stars of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

“They bought some chairs, paintings, some mirrors, it wasn’t a ton, nothing real big. But it all had to be very period specific because both films were set during a specific time frame,” Allen said.

Allen didn’t take many pictures of the purchases because he had assumed he was selling to someone local.

But when “Oppenheimer” hit theaters one of his vendors, Vonda Jensen, recognized her four red chairs in the movie, used in an office setting. They have curved backrests and hobnail trim. “It’s a unique kind of design for that type of chair, which is also cool because it stands out,” Allen said.

With the Oscars looming and the “Oppenheimer” juggernaut nominated for 13 awards, the Allens looked for photos of the set designer’s purchases.

“There’s also a chalkboard that is used regularly throughout (‘Oppenheimer’), a standing chalkboard that was also from our store but we cannot find an original photo so we didn’t really feel comfortable sharing, ‘Oh this is our chalkboard,’” Allen said.

But he had taken pictures of two of the chairs before the set designer trucked them away, and Jensen had photos, too.

So the Allens decided to share the news “and people got real excited about it,” he said.

“We’ve had shops from all around the country that have reached out and have had similar stories and have said ‘Oh yeah that’s happened to us too.”

Bella Patina — 25,000-square feet of shopping on three floors with an average of 75-plus vendors — is only open on First Friday weekends. It is open next April 5-7.

Allen hopes the store’s brush with Oscar greatness will “remind people that we’re around if it’s been a while since they’ve been down to the shop.”

And maybe experience what charmed the shopper from Hollywood?

“It’s this kind of thing that only Kansas City really has,” Allen said. “You have kind of this perfect pairing of being able to shop for vintage and antiques in these 100-year-old warehouses in this kind of historic area.”

People are telling him that it’s almost like he’s won an Oscar himself.

“I don’t think that’s how it works but I’ll take it,” he laughed.