And, given the fine-art comparison, it seemed only fitting to quiz these legendary lensmen on the source of their own inspirations. After all, if Da Vinci were around today, wouldn't you want to know what was behind the most famous smile in art history? I sure as hell would.

ALLEN DAVIAU

Daviau was shooting film clips for a Los Angeles rock 'n' roll TV show when a 20-year-old Steven Spielberg (not yet signed to direct for Universal at the time) asked him to shoot a little short film called Amblin'. Because the tight-knit union structure of the time would not let Daviau join his pal at the studio, the DP logged many miles in industrials, TV commercials, and educationals before finally cracking the union. After shooting additional photography on Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind: New Edition in 1980, Daviau's considerable talents were finally put to full use the following year, in Spielberg's "personal" film, better known as E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Since phoning home, Daviau has garnered five Oscar nominations and worked with such heavy weights as Barry Levinson, Peter Weir, and John Schlesinger. Yet he still seems every inch the enthusiastic kid from Loyola High, who can't wait to talk about his life's passion: cinema.

Allen Daviau (AD): Seeing color television for the first time started my fascination with the technology of light and photography. These studies were enriched by meeting a remarkable guy named Bob Epstein, a Loyola High grad, who was attending the U.S.C. Cinema Department during the late '50s and early '60s. Epstein introduced me to filmmakers like DeSica, Fellini, Bergman, Bresson, Ozu, and Kurosawa. And I soon realized what a phenomenal art form this marvelous technology could be. At about the same time, when I was 16, I was gate-crashing the set of One Eyed Jacks, which Marlon Brando was directing and Charlie Lang, A.S.C., was shooting. Lang was lighting this enormous interior, shooting VistaVision on what was probably ASA 50 color negative. He seemed to be everywhere at once, fine-tuning the frame with the operator, adjusting the positions of the background players, tweaking the light from at least a dozen babies. As he led a beautiful actress to her mark and subtly adjusted the shadow on her forehead, I thought to myself that this man has the very best job in the history of the world.

MM: Tell me about all the struggles you had to get into the union back in the '60s and '70s.

AD: Back then the union was nepotistic, and, if you didn't have a close personal contact, you just did not get in, unlike today. It literally took me, and a handful of other now-prominent DP's-Caleb Deschanel, Tak Fujimoto, Andy Davis and others-a decade to gain entrance into the Inter- national Photographer's Guild. And, we finally had to file suit to get in. During that time, I also shot thousands of TV coMMercials, as well as documentaries, industrials, and educationals; anything I could to keep myself working and expanding my knowledge of film. It was very difficult.

MM: What kept the dream alive that you'd one day get to shoot feature films?

AD: I think it was the inspiration from the work of all those great cinematographers who were active in the '70s. Vittorio, Vilmos, and Laszlo were amazing to me! I remember one day I was in Chicago shooting a commercial and I was having one of those "am I really doing anything with my life" depressions. I went to see Godfather II at this giant old cinema downtown. When I came out, I was so overwhelmed that I literally had to walk around the city just to calm down.

MM: You obviously were blown away by Gordon Willis's work?

AD: Absolutely. What Francis Coppola and Gordon Willis and all those other artists had done together was beyond belief. They had made this great work of art that was not a "sequel" but an extension of its predecessor. Gordon Willis had driven this huge marker into the history of the art form that said: This is how far we can go if we dare. I will never forget what seeing his work that day meant to me.

You may know that Deakins, an Englishman by birth, gave life to the Coen Brothers' ultra-weird Hollywood hotel in Barton Fink, or that he snagged an Oscar nomination for last year's snow-bound masterpiece, Fargo. But did you also know that Deakins was responsible for such landmark indie hits as Passion Fish, Dead Man Walking, and Sid and Nancy? Martin Scorsese sure did-Deakins shot the master's recent Tibetan epic, Kundun, before reteaming with the brothers Coen for their bowling-noir, The Big Lebowski.

MM: If you had to label one quality a DP really needs to be successful in film, what would it be?

MM: How about your influences when you were starting out?

RD: Well, I studied still photography in art college, so my main reference points at the beginning were photojournalists and fine-art photographers. People like Sebastian Selgado, Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, made a big impression on me.

MM: Would you have been a still photographer in another life?

RD: Most definitely. The problem with movies is that there are too many people around to dilute the original concept. But with stills, it's just one person with a camera, and the image is sacred. Particularly in a journalistic sense, I think great still work is as good or better than anything the movies have offered us. It's really powerful.

Why was Conrad Hall the only DP who got everybody's vote when MovieMaker compiled this list? Maybe it's his six Oscar nominations for films like The Day of the Locust, In Cold Blood, Morituri, The Professionals, Searching for Bobby Fischer, and Tequila Sunrise. Or for winning the little gold guy for what is arguably the most popular western of all time, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Spanning nearly five decades, Hall's career is still going strong with the upcoming Steve Prefontaine bio-pic, Without Limits. Most legends are looking to step down by the time they get this kind of universal respect. Hall's just getting revved up.

Conrad Hall (CH): Well, there was a moment alright, but it was pure chance. I had no plans to be a cinematographer-none whatsoever.

MM: But I thought you went to USC to study cinema.

CH: No, I went to USC to study journalism. I got a D+ in one class and I didn't feel like repeating it so I had to pick another major and cinema sounded exciting. After I graduated from USC, I started a partnership with two other students to make documentary films. We did anything that came our way. We weren't selective at all. During one slow period, we decided to option a short story-"My Brother Down There," by Martha Foley-and make a film of it. We wrote the script and did the budget together, and when we were ready to shoot we realized we had to divide up the jobs. So we put the three top jobs in a hat-producer, director, cinematographer-and picked. I suppose you can guess which one I got stuck with!

MM: If you had to come up with a single element a DP needs to succeed, what would it be?

CH: Sleep! They work you 14-16 hours a day now and it's really hard to be creative and sharp without a lot of rest! (laughs) But seriously, I believe a DP needs to stay contemporary to excel at his or her craft. You need to evolve, not just technically, but also as a person-to be wiser, kinder, more educated. To stay contemporary is to be truly alive in your work and your life.

It's hard to fathom that Sven Nykvist has been up for only 3 Academy Awards in his 50 year career. Yet, when you realize the relatively small amount of work Nykvist has done outside his native Sweden, it makes his Oscar victories all the more impressive. A master of natural lighting, even Nykvist would be hard-pressed to surpass his own handiwork on films like Fanny and Alexander or Cries and Whispers. Though Americans know him best for such fluffy romances as Sleepless in Seattle and Only You, Nykvist is most at home in the cold light of a Swedish winter, creating magic with a few candles, a camera, a few actors, and precious little else.

Sven Nykvist (SN): My parents were missionaries to Congo and one of my earliest memories is of looking at issues/29/images captured on a wind-up film camera. I was seven or eight and the issues/29/images were of African men building a church with my father. I was fascinated by these issues/29/images.

MM: Did the African pictures lead you directly into movies?

SN: No, because when I was a teenager, my parents didn't want me to go to the movies because they thought it was sinful. I was involved with sports at the time and I managed to save up eight dollars delivering newspapers to buy a Keystone 8MM film camera with slow motion that I used to film the athletes during competition. This got me interested in film. Also, I had been doing still photography for a while and I managed to earn a place at a photography school in Stockholm- there were no film schools in Sweden at the time. Once I got to Stockholm, I went to the movies every night! By then I'd made up my mind to be a cinematographer.

MM: Your work has always felt so pure to me, almost spiritual in a way. What is the most important quality a cinematographer should bring to a film?

SN: The most important task of the cinematographer is to create an atmosphere. To interpret the mood and feeling the director wants to convey. I mostly perform this task by using very little light and very little color. There is a saying that a good script tells you what is being done and what is being said, but not what someone thinks or feels, and there is some truth in that. Images, not words, capture feelings in faces and atmospheres and I have realized that there is nothing that can ruin the atmosphere as easily as too much light. My striving for simplicity derives from my striving for the logical light, the true light.

If Owen Roizman had retired after shooting the most famous car chase in movie history (The French Connection), his place in the DP canon would have already been secure. The fact that Roizman went on to gather five Oscar nominations, shooting such classics as The Exorcist, Network, Three Days of the Condor, Tootsie, and Absence of Malice, only makes his reputation that much more secure. This one-time athlete (Roizman had two tryouts with the New York Yankees) makes even 20-something executives breathe a sigh of relief when he signs on a film; his talent and professionalism are first class.

Owen Roizman (OR): My dream was to be a professional baseball player. Unfortunately, when I was 13, I contracted polio and while it didn't stop me from playing, it became clear at some point that I wasn't going to be a professional athlete. I studied math and physics in college, but that didn't really hold a great appeal. Eventually, I drifted toward the movies and became an assistant cameraman.

MM: Did you see a connection between athletics and filmmaking at all?

OR: Possibly the competitive aspect of sports. I've always had this obsessive desire to push myself in whatever sport I was playing-baseball, golf, tennis. And I think I've tried to do that in my film work. Sports inspires perfectionism, which definitely has spilled over into my film work.

MM: If you had to pick a single quality a DP needs to be successful, what would it be?

OR: Taste. Which really means the ability to know what scripts to work on, what feels right as far as composition, lighting, everything that goes on during a film. Taste is an instinct and it should guide you toward the projects that are going to provide a great experience. I've been lucky as far as the films I've had a chance to work on, but part of that is my ability to go with what feels right-to trust my taste and see where it's going to take me.

Last year's Oscar winner for The English Patient is clearly on a roll. A former camera operator for Peter Weir (The Last Wave, Gallipoli, Picnic at Hanging Rock), Seale has been riding a freight train of critical acclaim since his American feature debut, Witness, way back in 1985. Of course, working with directors like George Miller, Ron Howard, John Boorman, and long-time Aussie collaborator Weir, doesn't hurt. But then, most DP's who have hit this level of commercial success rarely jump back behind the camera to operate as Seale did, on the 1995 Beyond Ragoon. Tough, illuminating, sensitive, transcendent are just some of the terms used to describe Seale's work. At the end of the day, these attributes seem to account for why he seems able to capture Mother Nature's ferocious glory better than any other cameraman on the planet.

MM: You're the only Aussie on this list and I'm curious as to how that continent shaped your early years?

John Seale (JS): I was about 18 or so when I went traveling into the Australian outback. I brought along a little 8mm camera to record my experiences for my parents to see. The imagery out there was so spectacular-climatic things like dusk rising off the back of sheep; endless sunrises that went on for miles. I thought wouldn't it be a lovely life to travel around the world and record life and death and man's unrest within nature in moving issues/29/images.

MM: Apropos of that, many people characterize your work as having an intense quality of "realism." Does having a style, per se, interest you?

JS: I've never set out to create a style. There are so many different scripts, locations, climatic situations that can influence the look of a film, that it would seem unfair to bring a standard approach to each project, particularly since I believe that no two films should look alike. I suppose those who say I have a sense of realism in my work are making an honest appraisal, since I often favor natural lighting techniques or the enhancement of natural light sources to photographic levels.

MM: The natural world is such a big part of your work. Yet nature, especially in its elemental form, is totally chaotic. A tough job made tougher for the DP who is trying to capitalize on that environment.

JS: Absolutely. That's why anticipation is the single most important tool a DP needs to have. Nature is raw and unpredictable and the guy who can anticipate where the sun may be, or what is going to happen with the light puts you way ahead of the game. The element of chance is a huge part of making movies, but if you can anticipate, you can adapt quickly and control the moment, rather than being controlled.

MM: Do you have an example to share?

JS: Well, this may sound like an anomaly because it was a scene I was doing inside a jail, which is about as controlled an environment as you can get. But I hadn't anticipated the light that day because we'd just changed locations very quickly. I realized that the sun was going to come through this six-inch window shaft in about 15 minutes. I said to the director, can we just wait 15 minutes because the light is going to be amazing. I grabbed the smoke machine and raced down the hallway to prepare. We began to rehearse and the director thought I was insane because absolutely nothing was happening! Everything looked the same. About 15 minutes later the sun suddenly rose up and burst through these slots, tracing down the entire walkway inside the jail.

MM: Wow! That's working in the moment, alright.

JS: Yeah, it sure was.

MM: If you had to pick a single shot that best sums up cinematography's potential, could you do it?

JS: Well, this too may sound ironic, considering how I told you the outback inspired this thirst for moving issues/29/images, rather than static still frames. But, I think it would have to be that shot from Lawrence Of Arabia, when Lawrence goes to sit in the desert and contemplate the attack on Aquaba. He's totally alone on this sandhill with his back to the camera. The only movement is the sand being blown past him at dusk. It's basically a still frame. Yet that shot represents everything Lean was going for within that scene: the stillness of thought, the character's back to us for indecision, and the sands of time sweeping past. Combined with an anamorphic frame to show the vastness of the desert, it creates this incredible overall power even though it's just a single cinematic frame.

How does one describe a man who photographs Rosemary's Baby, Bullitt, and Paint Your Wagon all within two years? Diverse? Multi-talented? Adap- table beyond all reason? With six Oscar nominations to his credit, including a double honor for cinematography and visual FX for Spielberg's 1941, Fraker has managed to convince more than a few directors of his ability to shoot anything, anywhere, anytime. Whether it be jumping into a tank with a precocious undersea mammal (The Day of the Dolphin), or getting several hundred computer monitors to behave on cue (War Games), or throwing a batch of Elvis impersonators out of a plane (Honeymoon in Vegas), Fraker has literally done it all.

MM: Tell us what inspired you before you picked up a camera.

William Fraker (WF): My mother and aunt were extras in the movie business, back in the '30s. I'd see them take off every morning on the bus in their hula skirts to go shoot at the beach at the end of Sunset Blvd. One day my aunt took me aside and said "Billy, you're gonna be a cinematographer." She said it was the best job on the film because the cinematographer got a great deal of respect! Needless to say, I took her advice.

WF: I don't believe in style. I think you find what the picture looks like within the material. And the director, the actors, the location all help you to dictate the look of the film, not some arbitrary style that you want to impose.

MM: But you do have certain preferences for types of lighting-the proverbial "bag of tricks," as some DP's say.

WF: I was so influenced by the movies of the '30s and '40s that I have to confess I have a weak spot for making actors look beautiful, bigger than life, like the great movies I remember.

MM: You have a reverence for the old style of moviemaking, when the division of labor was more pronounced. I'm wondering if you could come up with a single shot or sequence that put it all together for you, visually, thematically, etc.

WF: (laughs) Out of three million issues/29/images you want me to pick one shot!

MM: Yes, if you can!

WF: Well, it would probably be Freddie Young's work in Lawrence of Arabia. When Lawrence is looking for this young man out in the desert on his camel. He spots another rider and realizes it's the guy he's looking for, and both camels start rushing toward each other at great speed. As they do, the camera cuts to this very long shot, where all you can see is these two little dots in the desert. They're so eager to meet, that they end up running right past each other and have to turn around. It's simple, yet totally unexpected. So much going on in that one frame, even though you're a long way away.

Rousselot first caught Hollywood's eye with John Boorman's elegant tale of broken childhood, Hope and Glory. But the French-born cinematographer had already scored a hit in his own nation six years earlier with the effervescent Diva. A three-time Oscar nominee (winning for Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It), as well as a César (France's Oscar equivalent) Award winner for the starkly beautiful Therese and the epic Queen Margot, Rousselot took his palette to new levels last year with the distinctly American The People vs. Larry Flynt.

MM: Can you talk about your early influences?

Philippe Rousselot (PR): My earliest influences occurred long before I picked up a movie camera. I was 11 years old when I first saw the films of Jean Cocteau and they were so moving, emotionally, visually, and intellectually. They were complete magic to me. Of course later, when I began working, I was influenced by the people I worked with: I was a loader for Nestor Almendros (see page 82-ed.) and that had a huge influence. Also a woman named Sara Moon, who I worked with in commercials and is a superb still photographer. I don't know if it's typical, but I saw a lot of great films at an early age-Bergman, Fellini, the German ex- pressionists-they all contributed to my education.

PR: I've been very different from film to film and I think that's a good thing. Style is very limiting, and when people come to expect it of you, you're in big trouble. Of course, I can trace back to two films where my technique radically changed from what it had been: Therese was a real risky film photographically speaking, and Hope and Glory. This change was mainly due to the fact I was working with two very different and strong directors.

MM: How about a single film you can point to that really sums up how well cinematography can work?

PR: Well, for me, it's hard to separate the photography from the film itself. But certainly one that comes to mind is Days of Heaven. It was a breakthrough in terms of the photography and a shock to my generation, in the way that Lawrence of Arabia was a shock to a generation of DP's before me. Somebody had the nerve to look at reality and say: I like that. I'm going to put that on film exactly the way it is and not overwhelm the image with my technology or my craft or my personality. Days of Heaven was groundbreaking precisely for its very modest approach.

What's that old saying? You gotta kiss a few frogs before you find your prince. One of the most sought-after DP's of the 1970s (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Deliverance, Scare- crow, The Sugarland Express, The Deer Hunter, The Last Waltz) had to start somewhere. And that meant such Corman-style epics as Horror of the Blood Monsters, Five Bloody Graves, and Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, found their way onto Zsigmond's amazingly impressive resumé. Think those early pulpers hurt this Hungarian-born DP's career? Richard Donner, Brian de Palma, Roland Joffee, Michael Cimino and Steven Spielberg didn't think so. Neither did the Academy when Zsigmond took home the best Oscar for what many still consider the greatest sci-fi movie ever, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

MM: I'm wondering what director you never got to work with that you would have liked to, living or dead.

MM: Did you watch much of Fellini's work in Hungary?

VZ: When I was studying cinematography in Hungary, I really admired the Italian neo-realists like De Sica and Soviets like Urusevskj for their gorgeous black and white work. Welles' Citizen Kane, and Olivier's Hamlet were also big influences, again for the black & white photography. I really learned to light for black & white, and even today, when I light, it is for the light and shadows and not for color.

MM: Have you developed lighting preferences over the years?

VZ: Well, I don't like soft lighting very much; I feel it's overdone and boring. Many people use it as a lazy way out-it's fast to execute but not interesting to me. I like contrast and strong directional lighting from the sun or the moon, or other light sources (desk-lamps, candles, lanterns etc.) I often refer to painters like Caravaggio, La Tour, and Rembrandt for lighting inspiration.

MM: Tell us your all-time favorite shot, if you can.

VZ: Probably Roger Lanser's closing shot in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing. It lasts about 2 minutes and 45 seconds. It starts in the garden of an Italian villa, and you follow the dancers through an interior room to an interior courtyard, with this confetti flying around you like snow. You go under a bridge, and back to the garden, mingling with a festive crowd of dancers and singers. Then the camera starts rising above the roofs of the villa, probably 120 feet above all the dancers, till it ends on a tilt up of a lovely vista of Tuscany. Magnificent!

If a movie camera could be a political weapon, then Haskell Wexler is Hollywood's great cinematic agitator. A five-time Oscar nominee, (Blaze, Bound for Glory, Matewan, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and three-time winner (along with Vittorio Storaro, more than any other DP on this list), Wexler is perhaps best known for his '60s docu-classic, Medium Cool, a film he also directed. Look closely at Wexler's resumé and you see a list of films: American Graffiti, Coming Home, Matewan, The Secret of Roan Inish, which display a passion for truth-telling and emotional honesty-probably the grandest polit-ical statement no matter what the decade.

MM: Can you talk about your inspirations before you got into cinematography?

Haskell Wexler (HW): Believe it or not, I wasn't influenced by anybody, or anything, but my own experiences. We used to go on these family trips, outings or vacations, and I was in charge of making these little home movies, a kind of personal record of our lives. It was really fun and I soon realized that it gave me a kind of status in the family I might not have had.

MM: The designated shooter!

HW: That's right, the family documentarian. Gradually, I came to realize that shooting little movies gave me the confidence to try and use film as a way to document what was going on in the world around me. That's really what got me into shooting movies. The need and desire to record what was going on in the real world.

MM: That's an interesting conclusion, considering fiction films are all about recreating reality, not recording it.

HW: Yes, but strong documentary filmmaking puts you right there and can, for better or worse, have an effect on real life. Great fiction films can do that too, I suppose; the recreation of an historical reality in a way in which the audience has never been exposed. It's the truthful reality, as opposed to so many bogus themes Hollywood tries to shove down our throats.

MM: Do you have a single image from your films or someone else's that really stands out for you?

HW: I think it would have to be the first use of steadicam in Bound For Glory. Nowadays they'd call it a combination shot, but back then there was no device that would allow you to walk right off a crane and mingle with hundreds of actors, as we did in that shot. Garrett Brown was lowered down off a crane into the migrants' camp and just started walking amongst the workers with this new device, a steadicam. It was a pretty sensational shot from a technical aspect because, at the time, no one knew how we did it!

MM: You've always been a big advocate of movies as a social force. Are you involved in any documentary work now?

HW: I'm completing a film about people who ride the buses in L.A. As you probably know, if you don't own a car in Los Angeles you're a member of an outcast nation. It's been a real education for me to see how all these people of vastly different races interact and deal with each other. But, of course, that's why I've always been involved in documentaries and in teaching as well (Wexler teaches at four different LA area colleges and universities). I thrive on learning things from real life that Hollywood never bothers to explore.

Kovacs came to America with fellow countryman Vilmos Zsigmond after the 1956 Russian invasion of Hungary. Like Zsigmond, Kovacs became synonymous with a new wave of filmmakers leading the charge into the 1970s. Films like Easy Rider, Getting Straight, Five Easy Pieces, Alex in Wonderland, The King of Marvin Gardens, and Shampoo, belied a younger, more reckless approach to cinema than Hollywood had ever seen. Without missing a beat, Kovacs led the charge into the '80s and '90s as well, photographing films like Ghostbusters, Mask, Say Anything, Radio Flyer, Ruby Cairo, Multiplicity, and last year's sleeper comedy hit, My Best Friend's Wedding. Not many great things were born out of old-style Soviet oppression, except Laszlo Kovacs' coming to America.

MM: You must have had some interesting early memories growing up in Communist Hungary. Can you recall any that contributed to your eventual path as a DP?

Laszlo Kovacs (LK): Two memories stand out: the first is of going to the schoolhouse on weekends to see 16mm movies. My mother had a friend who was a local store owner in the village I grew up in. He ran a movie program every weekend and I was given the job of posting the movie program on stores and trees, and for this I was allowed to see the movies for free. They would hang up a white sheet on a wall, or sometimes outside in the summertime and project the films onto the sheet. I don't remember specific directors because most of the films were German propaganda work-this was during World War II. That sheet became my whole frame of reference. I was fascinated by that frame.

MM: What was the other one that stuck with you?

LK: It was a railroad track that ran just outside my village. I would go down there and stand on the tracks and gaze off, trying to imagine what was at the end. What worlds and peoples would I find if I could just travel down the tracks. I would stand there for hours and imagine all kinds of things. To this day, the railroad still holds a tremendous fascination for me.

MM: That makes sense from the man who shot the quintessential American road movie, Easy Rider.

MM: Why is that?

LK: I had been shooting a lot of motorcycle movies prior to Easy Rider and I was ready for a change. I went to a meeting Dennis Hopper had set up with many of the film's principals. Dennis burst into the room in this very theatrical way. He held up a screenplay and said "this is the script for the film I've asked you all to work on." Then he took it and threw it up in the air, scattering the pages all over the room and said: "Now I'm gonna tell you all the story." And he proceeded to act out the entire story of Easy Rider for us. When he was done, I took a deep breath and said when do we start. I could barely contain my excitement, I was so eager to get out there and make another motorcycle film!

MM: Which changed American filmmaking forever.

LK: Yes, I think you're right. And the thing about Easy Rider was that most people thought we all just got lucky shooting in a haphazard way, but it was totally planned out. It may have seemed wild and experimental, but Dennis and Peter (Fonda) were scrupulous in their preparation.

MM: I have to ask you about some of your techniques on that movie, which are now standard MTV-generation stuff-lens flares in particular.

LK: Well, I had done a lot of non-studio, low-budget films by then-using natural exteriors and practical locations, etc.-and I was getting pretty daring. Back then shooting out on the road was unheard of-we didn't even need to get permits! I used a 1968 Chevy convertible as a camera car because the shocks were so good. We laid a sheet of plywood on the open back, put the camera, which belonged to my good friend, Vilmos Zsigmond, on a high hat and hit the road. I was trying to control the flaring light that was shooting over Dennis and Peter. I was trying to make them very heroic and larger than life and people saw it and said: "these guys don't even know how to protect the lens." But it was all very intentional and thought out.

MM: 50 years have gone by since you were that little kid standing on the railroad tracks in Hungary. Can you point to one thing you've learned as a DP that helped you travel down those tracks better than any other?

LK: Light. For everything we do as human beings we are affected and defined by light. A cinematographer is a master of light. We need to think about light, to learn to see it in all its different moods and approaches. It is absolutely, the most important tool we have to work with as cinematographers and, I think, as people, too. It was always the one thing I was so aware of when I was staring down those railroad tracks as a child and now years later. The light.

Talk about a killer batting average! With only 10 features to his credit in over 20 years, Caleb Deschanel has chalked up three Academy Award nominations, and worked with directors as varied as John Cassa- vetes, Hal Ashby, Randal Kleiser, and Barry Levinson. Perhaps best known for his '70s nature classic, The Black Stallion, Deschanel branched out in the '80s, directing two features-The Escape Artist and Crusoe-and television's Twin Peaks. Though he's only done two films with animal protagonists, Deschanel seems able to capture the non-human soul like no other DP out there, proving that quality, not quantity, makes the artist.

MM: I'm curious to know what movie you think really sums up the best cinematography can offer us?

Caleb Deschanel (CD): If I had to pick one, which really is impossible, I might look toward Storaro's work in The Conformist. He was able to marry these extreme ideas visually with the emotional impact of the story. The photography had this amazing mystery throughout the film which supported the tribulations of its characters. That love scene where he's kissing his girlfriend and the light is moving along with them is really risky but it somehow works. Vittorio was willing to take big chances in that movie and that's such an important quality for a cinematographer to have to be successful.

MM: Is that really the one element a DP needs to make a movie happen? The willingness to take risks?

CD: Well, when I first started out, I really believed that the DP's job was to create this perfect reproduction of reality-totally naturalistic, etc. But I've evolved through the years to understand that you have to take big chances in your work, as long as those risks are in sync with the drama you're telling.

MM: Can you cite an example?

CD: If you're really in tune with your story, you can get away with some incredibly exaggerated visuals which actually help to push the momentum of the story forward. A great example is what we did at the end of The Natural. The lights exploding in the park may seem totally ridiculous if taken out of context. I mean, it's a baseball game-lights do not explode unless there's something drastically wrong. But you've invested so much in the story up to that point. And, that explosion is such a great emotional payoff. He hits the home run and all hell breaks loose.

MM: So, is that shot one of your all-time favorites?

CD: No, not really. The problem with singling out one shot is that it goes against what I believe movies should do. A film is a sum of its parts and one shot is only as strong as what has come before it. The Godfather points that out really well. It's mostly done in these very straight-on medium shots. Then you come to the scene where Marlon Brando gets shot. He's buying some stuff at a store and he sees these guys coming down the street after him and he takes off. As he's running, the film cuts to this high angle-looking straight down-and that's when Brando gets shot. That frame, which is amazing, would not have meant nearly as much if the whole film hadn't been done in this eye-level, medium shot approach. To pick out a single shot in a movie is to deny that the shot is important because of the style already established.

MM: Cause and effect within the film.

CD: Very much so. A single shot is only as strong, or weak, as the other shots surrounding it. I think if you look back at the many famous shots in movie history which people cite, you'll find a visual scheme leading up to that one moment.

If there is such a thing as a high priest of light, then three-time Oscar winner-Apocalypse Now, Reds, The Last Emperor-Vittorio Storaro would be a prime candidate for canonization. Virtually writing the book on the sprawling historical epic, the Italian-born lenser has experimented ferociously throughout his career with light and color, yet never lost sight of the human scale. Best known for his long-time pairing with Bertolucci (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, La Luna, The Last Em- peror, The Sheltering Sky, and Little Buddha), Storaro's romantic sensibilities have been embraced by American directors like Francis Coppola and Warren Beatty, as well. Master of the big palette to be sure, but in a Storaro film, the faces are as memorably etched as the land they come from.

MM: Can you recount some of the imagery that influenced you when you were a child growing up in Italy?

Vittorio Storaro (VS): We were a very poor family. My first memories were of my father, who worked as a projectionist, very much like the film Cinema Paradiso. He would bring home a 35mm projector to show films to us. My brothers and I would paint the wall in the backyard white and in the evening my father would open up this magic box for us called cinema. I was probably five or six years old. I think it may have been a Charlie Chaplin film that was the first imagery I recall seeing.

MM: Was your father instrumental in helping you become a cinematographer?

VS: Very much. Because he had such a desire to be part of the imagery he was screening, he wanted to put me inside the film, to inspire me to be part of the process rather than just the projectionist. I remember going to visit him and each movie was silent, there was no sound in the booth and I never went inside the theater itself. My father definitely gave me the tools to study photography. From his desire I began to feel the attraction to moving issues/29/images.

MM: Can you imagine a life without cinematography? A career path completely different from the one you took?

MM: Instinct and intuition are wonderful gifts to cinematographers.

VS: Absolutely. We rarely know why we make the choices we do at any given time. But, the opportunities are always there and we follow them according to our instinct. Cinema is fantastic for us. It opens incredible doors of knowledge and experience. In fact, I have never considered myself a professional, always an amateur who is learning from experience to experience. I literally don't make a distinction between duty and pleasure, between my free time and my professional life. I am always the student. Always.

MM: Your career has had many cycles. Can they all be taken as different semesters in your photographic education?

VS: I think so. Beginning with my only black & white film, Giovanista, Giovanista, which was directed by Franco Rossi. I laid down a cinematic fingerprint that was later developed in every single movie that followed. I didn't know it at the time, but I was searching for a balance between opposing elements: light and dark, woman and man, natural light and artificial light. I didn't understand why I couldn't find the balance, so I separated everything. I tried to re- spect the differences of all these elements. But I knew there was a danger in what I was doing. I was enhancing the conflict between these elements rather than uniting them.

MM: The Conformist, 1900, Last Tango, all be- long to the period you're talking about?

VS: Very much. And, Apocalypse Now was the deepest and most profound separation of elements during this period. One culture grafted on top of another culture, artificial light imposed on natural light, artificial color mixed with natural color. I had the feeling after this movie that I had gone as far as I could with this research. I took a year off and studied the nature of light itself. When I returned to filmmaking I made Luna, which explored color in a symbolic way. Then came One From The Heart, and I realized I was now in a period which explored the very nature of light and color upon human behavior.

MM: The Last Emperor was part of this cycle?

VS: Yes. Another 10 years passed and this time it was a very conscious revelation of what my life was about. It was something that hit me in the innocence of youth. I had begun my career exploring light and darkness. I followed that with the relationship of one color to another. And now, represented best by the film Little Buddha, was the search to unite all these separations.

MM: A search for balance.

VS: Yes. Exactly. Balance. Like when I was a child in my father's projection booth, I perceived the cinema in silence, as a world of issues/29/images. Later, I discovered that cinema had to evolve and that it would include words along with the issues/29/images. Today I really do believe in balance. A perfect movie is balanced between words, music, and issues/29/images. The meaning of my work, which I have only just now discovered, is this search for balance. It's everything.

It's not an overstatement to say Gordon Willis revolutionized the way we see movies. Labeled the "Prince of Darkness" for his fearless use of deep shadow tones (most notably in the first two Godfather films), the light, or lack of it, in a Gordon Willis film often exudes a character equal to or greater than many of the project's human faces. Enjoying a long and fruitful collaboration with Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose and The Purple Rose of Cairo), Willis has stamped much of his work with the gritty, elegant sensibility of his beloved New York. It's amazing to think Paramount execs considered The Godfather too dark upon first viewing. They just needed to open their eyes.

MM: Tell me what you think is the most important quality a DP needs to excel at his or her craft?

Gordon Willis (GW): All the decisions I make about anything I'm doing have to do with relativity; good and evil, light and dark, big and small. A good example is the scene in Godfather II where the young Vito Corleone is arriving in America. All the choices in that sequence were designed relative to that character's emotions. A young person, all alone and moving across the world, arrives in a strange and wondrous new place with no clue as to what may happen to him. How can that kind of feeling be expressed with a camera? Whether we use medium shots or close shots, or whatever, to link up the sequence, the point of departure is always relative to what the character is feeling. Relativity is everything, in life and in the movies as well.

GW: Very much so. And this is a point that cannot be overstated enough when you're shooting a movie. Every choice you make is going to have an effect, an outcome, on the shot or scene. To be able to understand, and more importantly predict, what that outcome may be before you ever roll a foot of film past the lens is a tremendous advantage.

MM: If you had never become a cinematographer, what career path might you have gone down?

GW: Oh, that's hard to say. But, I think I might have been a writer. Over the years I've worked with many writers, and I've become impressed by their talent and sheer creative worth. To be able to express with words all these complicated dynamics of human relationships-anger, jealousy, love, compassion-just amazes me. Of course, my work is told visually, and writing is such a different way to express things and I suppose that's what attracts me to writing. The theory of opposites again and relativity.

MM: Do you know what kind of writer you would have been?

GW: I would have been a playwright first, and then a novelist.

MM: Not a screenwriter?

GW: (laughs) No. They're brilliant artists but I've seen close up how much they suffer in this business!

MM: Can you name a director, living or dead, you haven't worked with that you'd like to?

GW: It would have to be David Lean. His use of scale, both intimate and epic, was unsurpassed. Not only do very few directors today dare to work on such a big canvas as Lean did, and I'm talking emotionally, not necessarily the big, foreign locations or whatever. But very few directors today, maybe ever, understood what seemed to come to Lean instinctually: his movies were this perfect marriage of form and content-the technique never overwhelmed the story. It only made it better.

MM: Form and content working in harmony.

GW: Absolutely. Like light and darkness, what appears to be in conflict can sometimes lead to a seamless union and hold great power on the screen. MM

David Geffner is a screenwriter and freelancer living in Los Angeles. He has contributed many articles to MovieMaker, among them the #28 cover story on Spec Scripts and the #22 cover story on Jim Thompson's Lost Hollywood Years.