side of the coin too. You have the director who has a very strong sense of how he wants the film to look. Maybe it’s a fantasy that he’s somehow got into his head and isn’t based on any real technical expertise on how film is exposed. However, the director has this notion and the director of photography may or may not be able to deliver that. It’s a tremendous responsibility. There’s a real kind of amorphousness to it. A lot of times the director will say, “I kind of want it to look like this.” What does that mean? But still you have to deliver it. All the departments, from set decoration to wardrobe, come to dailies to see if their stuff is photographed in a way that’s satisfactory to them. So it all focuses back down on the cameraman. He’s the guy that gets the praise or the heat.
You operated for several years. Do you feel that there’s a lot of unconscious material expressed in the photographing of a picture? For example, you may not logically be able to explain why you choose to shoot a scene at a certain angle, but you just instinctively feel it’s right.
Yes, in a way. But because I spent those years as an operator where I had to study the frame so much of the time and consider the fifteen different ways any given shot could be framed, I became very deliberate and very analytical about making those choices. When I was an assistant cameraman, I was very analytical about where the focus should be and when it should jump from one place to another. That all accumulated as baggage when I became a director of photography. So I don’t find a very high level of unconsciousness for me. Now it may be very intuitive for a lot of other people. But in so far as I have the time to reflect, I do try to consider as many options and elements as I can. I feel that I’m very deliberate; I don’t arbitrarily put a 35 mm lens on the camera. To me there’s a big difference between a 29mm, a 35mm and a 40mm lens. There’s a very strong difference in what they can do. Especially when you stop to consider that if you have the room in a set, the difference between using a 29mm and 35mm lens is just the difference between moving forward or backward two steps. You get the same field size. If you’re on a dolly, where you can easily move the camera up and down, you can spend a couple of minutes deciding exactly how high or how low you want to put the camera. There are just all these variables. I have an unconscious checklist I go through; that part of it, in a sense, is unconscious and intuitive. I run through a ritual almost of elements I consider every time I do a shot. I do it much more so in setting the camera position and choosing the lens rather than the lighting. Once you have established what the source of the light is, you basically spend the rest of the shots in that sequence making it consistent. So you follow almost a predetermined guide that you’ve established at the beginning. You’re filling in the blanks. The mechanical setting up each shot photographically is very, very deliberate.
Where it doesn’t become deliberate is when a cameraman and a director decide to slap on a zoom lens and then shoot ninety percent of a picture with it. What you tend to do is that wherever the camera roughly happens to be, you leave it right there, zooming in or out for your frame. So by not considering the focal length of the lens, you don’t consider whether the camera should be three inches further left or right or six inches higher or lower. I find that by using fixed focal length lenses I’m forced to deal much more methodically with every element of selection.
How have you found working with Paul Schrader, the nominal leader of New Wave Hollywood, if there is such a thing?
By directing, Paul has had to confront some of his demons. Paul is an introverted person and directing is not an introverted experience. So I’ve seen a tremendous evolution in Paul from American Gigolo to Cat People. Paul has been growing outward and facing the world around him a lot more. That might be one of the reasons he decided to direct. Writing is a very solitary experience obviously. I have a good relationship with Paul; we get along terrifically. We love the same filmmakers: Bresson, Franju, Renoir. Paul’s grasp of film history and film aesthetics is more profound than anybody I’ve ever worked with. It’s nice for me to be able to deal with that directly and not have to worry whether or not I should mention to this director that this scene is similar to a sequence in Beauty and the Beast or A Man Escaped. Paul and I can talk about that. As a matter of fact, we look at a lot of films before we start production. Preparing for a film with Schrader is almost like going to film school.
Do you yourself have any aspirations to direct?
I’ve got myself committed slightly in that direction. A year ago I denied it even while I was trying to work to make it happen. I’ve optioned a novella. It’s not something that I’m just entertaining; I’m actively working on it.
What is attracting you to directing as opposed to what you’re doing now? What more is there for you in it?
It’s the total experience of making a film, of making a statement. It’s dealing with my own perception of the world and the way we live in it. And finally, a cameraman can’t make any direct comment about that. I mean, he can through his choice of images but you really make your statements through characterization. It’s not that I have an overwhelming urge to make the jump just for the sake of doing it. It’s that there are very specific stories I want to deal with. I love photography and I don’t expect to ever give it up. If I’m fortunate enough to direct a film, I might find it a totally disillusioning experience. But I want to try it once. And if I’m successful, I would still want to continue shooting. I can imagine that there are a tremendous number of films I would be attracted to as a cinematographer but that I would never want to direct. For instance, I would love to do another picture that had the scope of Honky Tonk Freeway; but as a director I don’t think I would want to do something with that scale. I’m very interested in more intimate relationships. So it’s the ability to have the best of both. Also by virtue of having a craft, I can go out, get a job and work. It’s not just a question of supporting yourself but rather the satisfaction you have of working day by day. A cameraman goes out every day and does his job. A director today has become a writer, producer, editor and everything else. So much of his energy is taken with putting all the elements together and getting ready to shoot that the actual shooting of the film is only a small part of it. For a director to take a project from infancy to maturation may require several years. I don’t know if I can take that because I like production. I don’t know if I have the temperament to deal with all the other things you have to deal with to get the project done. I know directors who would love to be able to do two pictures a year but instead are able to do one picture every two or three years.
Could you give me a thumbnail, one-paragraph sketch of your artistic and aesthetic approach to each one of your films? What were you trying to do photographically?
Boulevard Nights for me was primarily an exercise in nighttime street photography. Most of the film takes place along and around Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles. Those cars have a very magical feel; I wanted them to kind of dance, to come alive and sparkle. The scenes with the gangs I wanted to have a much funkier look. So within the element of nighttime street photography, I wanted to deal with the textural difference between the gangs, who were the have-nots, and the car club people, who were the haves. And that’s exactly the dichotomy manifested in the relationship of the two brothers. Chuco was a gang kid and he walked most places while his brother Raymond, who used to be a gang kid, had this incredibly manicured car. It was part of the dramatic chasm between them, part of what kept them from really being able to communicate and understand each other.
American Gigolo was basically an exercise in high-tech chic. Not high tech in the sense of architecture but high tech in its lifestyle and totally urban in its sensibilities. There’s no sense of nature in the film at all; what little is there is incredibly manicured. Unlike Boulevard Nights which had a very realistic street look, I wanted the nighttime look in American Gigolo to look very manipulated. I wanted the light to look as though everything was artificial. There’s a lot of arbitrary use of light and a lot of arbitrary compositions and camera moves in the film. It’s a study in artifice finally. Richard Gere’s lifestyle is a style of artifice, of packaging and presentation. Paul and I tried for a visual style that reinforced the superficialness of what you see is what there is.
Ordinary
