Rush hour at the Hamburger Hamlet on Hollywood Boulevard.
On a street crammed with tourists, nobody seems to notice a brand
new Academy Award winner slip through the doors. Russell Carpenter,
the tall, lanky, Oscar-winning cinematographer of Titanic, has
come to dinner to discuss the movie and his future. No face lifts
or butt tucks for this guy. Being humble has kept him young and
his clear eyes keep contact with me throughout the interview. Carpenter
only looks away to reflect, but never out the window at the gigantic
Titanic billboard that drifts above the star-strewn sidewalk in
front of the Mann Chinese Theater.

Christopher Zack (CZ): James Cameron originally
started shooting Titanic with a different DP. How did you end up
getting the job?

Russell Carpenter (RC): I was involved in
another project at the time and I got an exploratory phone call
from John Landau, who basically said that things weren’t
going well on the set. Evidently there was a lot of tension and
a lot of difference in working style between Jim (Cameron) and
Caleb (Deschanel) and he didn’t know how long things were
gonna go before one person or the other said he’d had it.
Landau asked what I was doing, and I told him I was involved
in a shoot. With the help of my wife, who was instrumental in
putting this all together, I arranged a situation where I could
exit the film I was on if I could bring another director of photography
on. I can’t thank the director and the producer of that
film enough because they said, “This is a wonderful opportunity.” It
was such a great gift they gave me because the studio could have
said, “No way.” I was able to exit the previous film
and I had two weeks to get ready for Titanic. I had an advantage
because, at one point, I was the front runner for the job, so
I had been thinking about what I would do.