JOHN SCHWARTZMAN - Cinematographer

(soft music) - Hi and welcome to season two of the Team Deacons podcast, a collection of informal conversations between Roger and James Deacons and Aghest. We never know where the conversation will take us, so listen in and see where it goes. (sniffing) - Today we're speaking with a cinematographer. His credits include the house made, the highway men, Jurassic World, and Pearl Harbor were pleased to welcome John Schwartzman, John. Thank you for doing this. - It's my pleasure. Thank you guys so much. You know, I met Roger probably in 1988, we were the only two cinematographers at the Aghest at the ASC Awards, 'cause he and I both shot that film stock, which was really beautiful, especially if you overexposed it a stop. I thought it was lovely. - Yeah. - And I miss it. - Yeah. - Well, yeah. - On this those days, anyway. - Okay, so let's start with our first question, which is always, how did you get to where you are today? Is this something you always knew you were going to do, or is it something you found out later? What's your story? - How did you get there? Because how did you get to be a cinematographer? I see you got a credit as a grip on standalone. - Well, so tell us your story. - Well, if you really want to go back, I was an actor on the musical version of Huckleberry Finn in 1972, and I used to ride on Lasla Kovacs' feet on the Titan crane. So my father was one of the first and probably one of the most famous entertainment attorneys in Hollywood. So I was Hollywood, but Hollywood adjacent. My father's clients were Stanley Kubrick, William Friedkin, Hal Ashby, Peter Vockdanovich, Nick Rowe, Elton John, I mean, it was everybody. And these people were at our house every weekend, but I'm 10 years old. I just want to play Little League Baseball. So I had no real understanding of what their world was. Other than my father always kind of looked at it as a cautionary tale, which was, he was always making money because he was the attorney, but he would tell me his clients who, Peter Vockdanovich makes at long last love after having 10 hit movies and now can't get arrested. So he always kind of tried to steer me away from that business. Now, when I was 14, my parents got divorced and my father married Talia Shire, Talia Coppola. So now I'm part of a filmmaking family, right? Francis Ford Coppola is now my uncle, and he's an absolutely lovely, gracious man. And I'm 15 years old and I'm in this family and we now spend every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter up at the winery and nap up. But again, this is all, I'm not a filmmaker. I don't know what I'm gonna do, except that I was a good still photographer. And at that point at 16, I had a color dark room. I was making type RC, background prints. I had a three head Phillips in larger that had three distinct color heads. I had an understanding. So anyway, my father was, although he was a wealthy man, was grew up very poor. So he insisted that I always had a job. And my senior high school, I worked for Halashby as a go-forer, as you would say, Roger, a runner. So my job was go-to-metro labs, pick up work picture. 'Cause remember Halashby, although he was a director, won an Oscar for editing in the heat of the night. So even though there were editors listed on house movies, he cut them all. So he was living in the Malibu colony. He had an editing room above his garage. And I would go to lab, I would bring work picture back. He would cut away, I would go to the Malibu colony coffee shop. 'Cause remember, this is 1977. The colony is not what it is today. I'd get him a guacamole bacon burger. I would rub some canned lotion on a bevy of beautiful girls who were bathing out on his patio. And that was my summer. At the end of that summer, Hal invited me up to the editing room to watch coming home on the camp. That experience changed my life. That was like getting shocked through the head with a crystal bullet. I suddenly understand, I'm understanding now the importance of filmmaking, the emotional impact that can have, it was transformative, right? But at the same time, I'm 17 years old. I'm going off to university. So I go off to university and my father gives me enough money for four years at college, and the name of an investment banker in New York and says, "Never ask me for another set. You're on your own." Now, I go to college, I'm getting a degree in economics. It's during the Reagan administration. Interest rates are at 19%. So I take out student loans, and student loans, you could pay back at 3%. So I was making 16% in interest. So by the time I was getting ready to graduate, I had more money in my bank account than when I started university. So I had used my economics to, you know, I was clever. So I'm getting ready to graduate university. I think you call them the A levels in England, but here we have what's called the GRE, the graduate record exam, and you have to take that to go to graduate school. I was good in university, and I ace that exam. I think it was out of 1600, and I scored a 1570, which basically meant I could go to any graduate program. I wanted to, but I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. So I went back to Francis' senior year Thanksgiving, and I thought I wanna go to film school, but I can't tell my dad 'cause he's gonna kill me, but at the same time, I'm paying for it all, so he can't really stop me. So generally, Thanksgiving's and Christmases at Francis was Francis, George Lucas, Tom Lutty, Walter Merch. I mean, it was a pretty heady group of people. So I took George and Francis to side the Thanksgiving morning, and I said, "Would you guys write me letters or a recommendation to film school?" And they said, "We can't do it." We get calls all the time, and it would be unfair, it's napotistic, we're not gonna do it. We love you, but you gotta get it on your own. And I was illusory, a little pissed, disappointed for sure. So we have Thanksgiving dinner, and one of the things that Francis says love to do was play board games. So we finished Thanksgiving dinner, and Francis says, "Okay, we're gonna play a game or a risk," which was a Parker Brothers board game. It was kind of a military, I don't know if you guys know this game, but it's all about military stuff, and we sit down to play, and I turn to Francis and George and say, "Okay, let's make this interesting. If I win, you have to write me letters or a recommendation to film school. And if I lose, I am your indentured servant for the next three days." Dean is the same, I got into every single film school I applied to. (laughing) So I went to USC Film School, which really was at the time, I think, and we're talking 1982, kind of the preeminent film school. It was the one that was most connected to the industry, right? Lucas, John Carpenter, Robert Sumeckis, a lot of people had come out of there. It was the one that Holly, what I think, had their eyes on at the time. I'm not saying they do anymore, but at the time, maybe more than NYU and UCLA. Francis, what's UCLA? He wanted me to go there, but I chose USC. And I had a very good time at USC, and what I realized was, I wasn't really a writer, and the only way to get a graduate student film that you could direct was to write it, right? Back in 1982, the student projects that were being made, and there were six graduate projects each year, their director was also the writer. So, but what I was getting, I was getting a reputation for it, being a good cinematographer. My partner at Film School was a director, who I work with a lot, and Paul Fee, and I would shoot his student films, and people always thought, "Oh, wow, "these look a little better than the rest," right? And I'm not saying that I was a better cinematographer, but I certainly had an understanding of cameras, lenses. I understood lab, I understood how to print. I mean, this is stuff that came out of being a still photographer. So, there was a student named Phil Jijuana. Phil Jijuana was a student, and he was gonna direct his thesis project, and he liked my work, and he said, "We shoot it," which I did. And it was a picture called the Last Chance Dance, which has gone down in USC Film School as an infamous movie, which we'll get into in a second. So, I shoot this film, my cinematography professor is Gene Palito, the son of the great Saul Palito, who shot Mutiny on the Bounty, and Gene actually had done the first Westworld. He was not a bad cinematographer, but he hated my work. I mean, he really, every, every Thursday, when we screen daily, so you just rip me apart. And one day, because of the USC mafia, Caleb Dationel came to watch all of our daily's. And we screened them all. And after the class was over, I went over to Caleb. And I said, this guy hates my work. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. But he can't stand anything I'm doing. And Caleb said to me, so this is cinematographer number one who changed my life. Caleb said to me, if Gene Polito likes your work, you're doing something wrong. So I stuck I stuck to my guns. And the rule was with the graduate student projects, they had to be 20 minutes long 800 feet 16 millimeter 800 feet long. But none of the really good movies were the Robert Semeckis was 34 minutes. John Carpenter's famous dark star was, I don't know how long George Lucas's THX 1138 was 40 minutes long. So when Phil cut his movie together, it was 32 minutes long. And as the cinematographer was my job to also cut the negative. So we had Gary Rydstrom was our sound TA, the great Gary Rydstrom has got I think 11 Academy Awards. And he sort of let it fly under the radar and fill mix the movie to 32 minutes long. We turned in the sound reels, the school gave me the negative. I cut the negative to 32 minutes. I drove it over to CFI who did the lab work. And then the prince got made and they got sent back to USC and shit hit the fan. It was unbelievable. I mean, it was worth so at USC, they would run the graduate student films at the Academy, which was a huge deal, right? Directors got agents. It was a it was a big coming out party for SC film students. And they said to fill it up. We're not going to run your movie. And fortunately, Phil's father was one of the top advertising executives in Los Angeles. And he planted a story in the variety about the young kids versus the school. And suddenly it got very public as to what was going on. And USC acquiesced and let us run the movie. I subsequently failed cinematography and was expelled from USC for airing dirty laundry in public. So now so now after two years, I don't have a master's degree, not that I think anybody's ever asked to see your diploma from no, exactly. So I walked away a bit a bit pissed off. But at the same time, I had to figure out a way to make a living. Fortunately, there was this USC mafia. So there were a lot of people that had gone into the business and they were looking for young USC students who would work cheap. So I started doing now we would call them EPKs. But back then I was shooting behind the scenes footage with an area SR I would go on to the stage of hook and film stuff on Steven's you know, for on a Spielberg movie or on goonies with dink dawner and it was I was getting paid and I was able to pay my bills. Cut to six months later, I get a call and they say you sitting down and I say yes, and they say, well, you've just won the focus feature award for best cinematography, which is was which later became the student Academy award. So I've failed out of film school because I've failed cinematography. And now I've won the award for best cinematography as a film student in the United States. So I'm like, okay, great, I get a $5,000 prize, which helps because I'm living in an apartment in Santa Monica, the Serenco controlled. I need to make $800 a month to live on KCD is and you know, I'm 25 years old. So my uncle was a very famous doctor in Los Angeles. He's passed away, but his name was Leonard Schwartzman. And one of his patients was Conrad Hall. And he cured Conrad of his tropical illness, you know, Conrad had been diagnosed for like 10 years. So Conrad was just was he loved my uncle. So my uncle said to me, look, I know you're trying to figure out what to do with your life in your career. But what do you call my patient and friend, Conrad Hall, he might be able to give you some advice. So obviously, I I know who Conrad Hall is. I've gone to film school. I've watched all of his movies. I am terrified to pick up the phone to call him, but I call him and he says, come on, I'm on fountain in sweet sir. I'm on the top floor of the soul, kind of Spanish apartment building, and bring your three quarter inch tape and come and see me. So I drive over to Conrad and he is, you know, the sort of looking like a homeless hippie, the sweetest guy in the world. And he sits down and he puts my student film in his three quarter inch machine. And we watch it. And I when it's over, I said, look, I'm thinking, maybe I should become a camera assistant. I should probably work my way up to becoming a DP. And he turns to me and he says, what the hell are you talking about? You're already a DP. Every cinematographer who's not shooting feature films, wishes they had a student film that look like this, you just need to go pursue being a DP. That's it. You don't want to be a camera assistant because you're going to start making money. And then you're going to buy a house and you're going to have all these bills. And he said, you're 25 years old. Now it was the time you're free, go and do it. You can always, if it doesn't work, go back to that when you're 28, but you're never going to have this time in your life. So I took his advice and I worked as an electrician, a grip, a gaffer on independent movies, non-union, straight to video horror movies. And right around that time, music videos were starting to happen. And my friend, I grew up with Michael Bay, the director, he and my mom, his mom and my mom were sorority sisters that you CLA. He went to school with my younger sister since elementary school. So Michael was now going to the art center college of design, which had a very small film department. Although of the eight people in it, there was Tarsim and Larry Fong and Michael Bay. So that's not a bad class. And I was shooting Michael's student projects, which at art center, the idea was that you made a show real. So we were kind of ripping off Joe Pitka and Leslie Dector and Peter Smiley, we were doing Evian commercials, we were doing 30 second promos, right, as a way to build a show real. Michael got out of art center and immediately got hired to a very young music video company at the time called propaganda films. So I went to propaganda films with Michael and I shot a music video the first week he was there. And the next week the phone rings and I get a call from a guy named David Fincher. I have no idea who he is. And he says, I want to, are you available? I want you to shoot a Paula Abdul music video for me. So I'm like sure, I have no idea that this guy is smarter than anybody that I've ever met. Certainly is no cinematography Roger better than you where I do in terms of the technical aspect. And he hires me to to do this Paula Abdul video. And at that point, it's in heavy rotation on MTV. And it's all over. I can't, there's more, I have more calls than I have time in the day. And my career is is has taken off. And it's, you know, it's every big music video director that exists is calling me because because Fincher was so big at the time. And I still kept working with David and Michael and Steve Barron and all these people, let me fantastic directors. And it was a great place because you could make a lot of mistakes. No one really knew from the record business exactly what you were doing. So even if you kind of screwed up, you learned and maybe something good came out of it, you never knew. And then music videos kind of transitioned into commercials into advertising, right? That look became very popular amongst ad agencies. So I started doing Nike commercials with Fincher and Bay. And then I got hired by an older director by the name of Jeremiah Chechuk. And we had a long run together. And then he asked me to do his first movie, actually his second movie, Betty in June. So that was really my first film. Now, just to take a step back, I have been diabetic since I've been at or in my early 20s. So it was impossible for me to get health insurance. And I couldn't get into the union. So just to cover the cost of staying alive was eating up most of my income, right? This was a huge deal. I had to take six shots of insulin every day, just to function. I still do. And when we did Benny and June, it was a non-union movie. But at the time, Johnny Depp was head and which is her hands had not come out. He was not a big movie sorry. He was just a kid from 21 Jump Street. But the movie came out while we were filming Benny and June and the movie got organized. And that's how I got into the union. And that's how I got healthcare. And then the rest of my career sort of my IMDB page. Well, what was your biggest challenge on that particular movie on Benny and June? Yeah. I didn't have, I mean, it was just to be honest with you Roger. I was so young and I'm not Roger. He's Roger. - I'm James. - I was so naive and so gung-ho, there really weren't any challenges. Johnny was fantastic, Aiden Quinn was fantastic, Maris Stewart was fantastic. It was the first time I realized that when you shoot coverage, you have to understand actors because Aiden Quinn wanted 20 takes and Johnny too. So I very quickly realized that you started on Aiden so you didn't burn Johnny out, right? So I learned that lesson on that movie very quickly. And I'm a pretty quick study. I mean, you just, you're like, oh my God, this guy wants it and you're looking at Johnny and he's getting, if I started on him, he'd be exhausted, right? So I'd rather start on his back and just sort of let him do his thing. And then when we're done when Aiden's finally happy, we turn around on Johnny. Were you operating as well as you? - Yeah, I noticed you got credits on an operator on Moonwalker and Heather's. - Well, Heather's was directed by Michael Laman who I went to film school with and I was supposed to shoot that movie until they hired Winona Ryder and then the budget went up and I couldn't, they wouldn't let me shoot it 'cause I was not a completion bonded cinematographer so good as a gesture of goodwill. Let me operate B camera on that. Mitch Jubin was the A camera operator. On Bennian's, I did not operate the A camera I operated the B camera and you know, I had Mitch Aminson who had been my operator and assistant for a lot of years. He did that movie. I like to operate, but what happened is very quickly in my career, the budgets got bigger and bigger and the union started to push back on me operating. Now I could hire an operator to have them stand by but when you're doing a Michael Bay movie, you've got to be able to run around like all the time. I mean, you know, while you're setting up one shot Michael wants to go to the next set and see how the lighting's coming along. So I understand Roger, I mean, you are an incredible camera operator. I was a very good camera operator but I had to give it up early. So part of it was the structure of the American system and part of it was each of the movies that I was falling into. These. I would also imagine that when you're doing multiple cameras, it's kind of moot whether you're operating or not 'cause you've got to see all of the cameras. Yeah, but remember James, this was an error with NTSC video taps and I don't. I never sit at video village, right? The part of this story that I didn't tell you was there was a period in 1987 where I was working doing these kind of like behind the scenes and non-union movies. And by Uncle Francis Colby and he said, "Vatorios, you are and I are gonna do a movie "in Northern California called Tucker. "Would you like to come and be Vatorios apprentice?" What was I gonna say? I said, "Absolutely." So I spent 16 weeks in the summer of 1987 as Vatorios told I was apprentice and that was cinematographer number three. Conrad was number two who told me you're a deep enemy and then Vatorio was the one who spending four months with him really taught me the understanding of how you conduct yourself on a set. You don't yell, you don't raise your voice. He obviously, Vatorio had endless amounts of resources that I wasn't gonna have for a long time. But I learned a lot. I used to sit with Vatorio and make notes and lighting diagrams. I had my spot meter and one day he turned to me and he said, "What are you doing?" And I said, he said, "No, no, cinematography is not on the page. It's from the heart. You see it, you feel it, then you shoot it." And I sort of said, "Well, that's easy for you to say you got three Oscars. I'm just trying to get a job." But again, these were very lucky things that happened to me. Obviously part of it is the family that I was born into, but I certainly never felt any sense of entitlement, right? I mean, this was, I was gonna make the most of all these opportunities. - It seems a huge shift from Benian June which is the kind of charming, almost independent movie. You sort of move that you couldn't imagine being made today. And then you go, and then you're going and shooting with Michael Bay, the rock and armageddon and Pearl Harbor. I mean, that seems a huge shift. What experiences were that like? - Well, I mean, so you have to understand that I had probably done 200 music videos in commercials with Michael. So I knew him very well. I've known him since he was 10 years old. And the opportunity to get to do the rock, to me, I loved lethal weapon. I loved Hollywood movies. So this was a dream come true. Don't get me wrong. I love shooting Benian June. And if I could have made a career out of doing those kind of movies, I probably would still be doing them. But the rock, Michael came to me. I didn't do Michael's first movie, Bad Boys because my father was dying of cancer and I thought I needed to spend time and be with my father as he was passing. But then Michael is a very loyal guy, believe it or not, and he asked me to do the rock. No one at the studio wanted me to do the rock. I hadn't been in June and airheads as my credits. And God loved Jerry Brockheimer because Jerry Brockheimer went to the studio and they said, you like this guy's show real, right? Well, that's the guy that shot everything on his show real and that's who we're gonna hire. And they said, yes. And then Jerry basically took me aside and said, don't fuck this up. And it was an experience. I mean, Sean Connery is a experience that only if you've been with him, you know what it's like. And he and Michael had a really hard time. It was, Michael's very much a, he prepares, but he doesn't disseminate information. So suddenly he'll say to the AD, get me these 15 guys and we're gonna put them over there. And the 80s, like yeah, but they're not even in the scene. And Michael say, yeah, but look at the light. It's great on San Francisco. I want to shoot this scene from scene 93, which drives both the strip supervisor crazy and everybody crazy, but that's just the way Michael works. And it drove Sean crazy. So four weeks into the movie, Sean is very unhappy. But Jerry Brockheimer being the spectacular producer that he is and a really lovely man, gets Richard Francis Bruce, our incredible editor who had cut the road warrior, who I actually love to cut together a sizzle reel. So we come home off of Alcatraz where on the water taxi, there's a car at the dock and they say, we're gonna go to this screening. And it's me and Michael and Sean and Jerry. And we sit in this screening room, but I'm sitting in front of Sean and Michael sitting in front of Jerry and they run this four minute sizzle reel of cut footage from the rock. And it is pretty spectacular in terms of the energy, right? It's a very energetic movie. And that's what Michael and I were trying to do. We wanted the audience to pull the seat covers off the, the chairs in the theater. That was what our goal was. And 22 minutes into the screening, I feel these hands on my shoulder. And it's Sean Connery massaging my shoulders. And I know that the one thing Sean is not happy about Michael's style, but Sean certainly appreciates getting rich and he can see the dollar signs. So the screening goes great. Sean's happy, we go out to dinner and we're sitting in this beautiful restaurant San Francisco, me and Sean and Michael and Jerry. And I turn to Sean and I say, say it. And he says, what? And I say, you know what I'm talking about? Say it. And he says, okay, one time and one time only. And he says bond, James Bond. And I said, thank you. (laughing) You know, the experience on the rock was, I was young. I was 31 years old, I think maybe 32. And it was hard, but it was exciting. And I loved it. I mean, there was a day, Michael and I were standing in a Ruckian Hill. We had just blown up a cable car and we looked at each other and we said, combined, we're younger than Sean and we kind of high-fived each other and thought, how the hell are they letting us do this? Now, Richard cuts a great movie or a great action movie. I don't think it's necessarily a great movie, but it's a great genre movie. And the movie makes $1,000,000,000 worldwide. So at that point, I'm off to the right, right? And the next thing is I get a call from Richard Donor to do a movie called Conspiracy Theory. And completely different experience. Old school director, 120 page script, 80 days, we're gonna do a page and a half a day. And I've got a lot of energy as you can tell. I like to move quick. And it was an amazing experience. I got to work with one of the great kind of old school directors, right? And it was just fantastic. And it was the first time I was allowed to shoot Anamorphic. When we shot the rock, we had to shoot Super 35 because Disney didn't believe that I had enough experience to shoot a movie on Anamorphic. - So on this big movie, What is the role of a cinematographer? In my view, everything, I am lighting every shot. I stand with a bounce card four feet away from every actor I still do to this day. I don't ever, you will never see me in video village. I grew up, so I did a movie with the late Rob Reiner. And he would say to me, why aren't you at the monitor? And I would say Rob, if I want to see Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman on TV, all by the DVD when this movie comes out. I said, I want to be three feet away from one of the greatest actors of all time. That's the joy of it, right? My stepmom did Rocky. She did the Godfather movies. I understand how actors think. Knit Cage is my cousin. Jason Schwartzman's my brother. The idea is to make actors feel comfortable. That's obviously lighting being prepared. Being well, you know, figuring out the day, which is something I can do very well. I'm very logistically minded. But at the end of the day, what gives me the greatest joy is to be five feet away with somebody with either the black side of my stop sign or the white side of my stop sign with unbleached muslin, putting a little glow on their cheek or a little pop in the eye. And I'm watching as the cameras moving and I'm moving and the operators telling me I'm getting in the shop to this day. I still do that every day. That's the joy of the job. Now, this will require a lot of management to do these big movies. 100%. And I'm going to get 17 cameras on Pearl Harbor for the big, big, you know, we so the Navy was going to sink eight ships to create an artificial reef. They waited and allowed us to do it for them. So when you see those explosions on those ships, those are real. There was no, there is some CG in that movie, but realize that was the infancy of CG, right. And then when you come out, Terminator 2 had so there are very few visual, there are lots of visual effects, but their traditional green screen. The famous bomb drop shot in Pearl Harbor was the bomb on green screen. A bunch of sailors in a parking lot painted blue, running around shot from a construction crane with a descender. A helicopter covering over the battleship, doing a very slow drop and then I'll end compositing all that together. So it was very old school. I mean, it was not this was not created in the computer. But how do you approach lighting when you're doing such a big movie and we got so many cameras, seeing so many different angles. And you have to deal with visual effects to sometimes you have to think about that. I got Michael Bay. So Michael Bay will tell the visual effects guys don't worry about it. You figure it out. And Michael has a great eye. So Michael when he was a high school student, used to shoot glamour stills of girls and women. He was very good at it. And with Michael, you never have to show up in the morning knowing which direction you're going to look. Michael's always going to want to want to shoot those movies. Whether it's right or wrong into backlight or cross light. So if I have 10 cameras and we're going to blow up four airplanes, they're going to be all backlit or cross lit. There's never compromising with him. And you're never going to put a camera in a place where he doesn't think the light looks good. So that was always the advantage with Bay. Now on the rock, we mostly shot with one camera. You know, every once in a while when we were doing a stun scene, we did two cameras because you don't want to or three or two cameras in a lock tough because God knows you don't want to risk injuring somebody if you can do it once. And it's better than, oh my God, we got to have the stunt guy on a wire fly again, right. But Pearl Harbor was hard because Hawaii's hard, right. The trade winds blow the clouds constantly. So you would try to shoot a three minute dialogue scene and it would start on the sun and it would end in the clouds. And then I would say to Michael, OK, let's start just taking the clouds so we can get the second half of the scene in the sun. He's a animated and energetic guy, but he's also a smart enough filmmaker to know, OK, yeah, let's do that. So I didn't feel Roger James, like I was really compromising. I mean, I was, I used to have a piece of tape on my arm with all the cameras, all the stops, the frame rates. And by the end of that movie, I had no hair on my arms because I would peel them off every shot. And I, and Michael would want to roll and I kept every power cable on me. I would not let anybody plug the cameras in until I was ready. So I would run around on my belt with 10 power cables. And then I would say, OK, I'm ready. And I would run to each camera and give the guys the power cables. And how about I mean, you've been shooting kind of very large movies over the years. And so how, how did your process change? How did you develop this cinema? Jurassic World, you've done several of those technology has to have had to change in between. Well, let's back up one sec. So I finished the rock and I, and I realize I am in a rock, right now I'm only be considered for movies that are $150 million or some more. And I am. And by the way, doing those kind of movies, yes, I take great pride in the cinematography. I think they look good. But at the same time, that's almost like being a member of FEMA. And you're now dealing with Hurricane Katrina, right? I mean, you know what this is like. I mean, how you lit half a mile of Texas for no country for old men. You know what it's like. Yeah, different kind of filmmaking. Jonah, I've got to say, I think working with Joel and Ethan is like another world from Jurassic Park or whatever. No, no question, but still the prep work, the thought behind is the same, right? I need 18 foot candles of light. I need whatever it is. So I realized that, oh, God, I am stuck in this world of doing these giant big budget action movies. So I finished Pearl Harbor and a friend of mine to buy the name of John Lee Hancock, who I've done eight movies with and I'm about to go do my ninth with him in Germany called me had a little movie about baseball called the rookie. And it was a $12 million movie. And I said, I'll do it. He said, I can't pay you. I said, I love the script. I'll go do this movie. It was 35 days in Austin, Texas. And it was Disney, the same studio that I've done Pearl Harbor for and they called me and they said, you can't do this movie. And I said, what are you talking about? I want to do this movie. I'll do it for a third of my salary. And they said, no, you don't understand you can't do this movie. You can't do you don't know how to do movies this small. And I said, I said, and I said to them, I'm a cinematographer. This is what I do. If I can't do this movie, then I should retire tomorrow because this is the job, right. This is the, I know what the job requires, whether it's a big movie or a small movie, let me do it. And they said, OK, but don't ask us for anything because you got one camera, you got 38 days and you know, you can't come to us to say you need a technocrite because you ain't going to get it. And I said, understood. So I went to Austin, Texas and I shot this movie, which was probably the most lovely experience I've ever had. And John Lee Hancock, who's a great screenwriter and an incredible director, we had the most incredible time and it was not a complicated movie, but it really restored my faith in both cinema and my ability as a cinematographer. And the irony of that is I wouldn't have gotten hired for sea biscuit had I not done that movie when I got the call from Gary Ross, I went into medium and he said, you know, I look at your credits and I think there's no fucking way I'm hiring the guy who shot Armageddon to do sea disco. Now I had loved the book, right, I thought it was a beautiful book and he said, but my son, who's in little league, took me to see this movie called the rookie and he said, I saw that movie and he said, that's the look and the guy want to shoot sea biscuit. So doing that movie, turning down all these big pictures, doing a little movie for union scale, change the course of my career. And it was the best decision I ever made because I wouldn't have been able to shoot sea biscuit, which was an absolutely lovely experience with the late Adam Sumner, it was his first movie as a first AD. And it was just the material was great, Gary did a great job, I think I delivered on my end and it was one of those movies where Gary had been a writer, he had really directed one movie, but he didn't know a lot about directing. And he said, look, you, you and Adam plan out the day, tell me where I got to be and what I got to do, I'll direct the actors, you do everything else. And my goal on sea biscuit was to never turn a light on outside, because I don't like the way, even if you bounce an HMI daytime, I just, I, nothing, it doesn't quite look right. I would much rather use passive fill. So I was able to without them coordinate where we shop, what time of day, and I never burned a light on that movie ever during the day. - And there was a lot of obviously horse racing and sea biscuits. How did you figure out how to shoot that? 'Cause that's something quite different. - So that, so remember, the Russian arm didn't exist. Now, also remember I had met Caleb Deschanel during college. So I called up Caleb, and as you know, cinematographers are incredibly gracious. They share information. It's not as though it's the secret to Coca-Cola, right? So I took Caleb up for a lunch and I asked him how he shot the black stallion, which to me is still the one of the most beautiful movies ever shot. And he said, "Well, we did this. "We had a camera on a pole and a blah blah blah blah blah." So I thought, "Okay, so we're now in 2003. "We've got a techno crane." So I went to a guy named Alan Puddel for two built camera cars and I said, "Can you build me a truck that can go "around a horse racing track and support a 50 foot techno crane "on the back and a 30 foot techno crane on the front "and go from zero to 40 miles an hour in eight seconds?" And he said, "I think I can." So we built this vehicle, we tested it. And at that point, I was gonna shoot on anamorphic lenses 'cause I really wasn't happy with the Super 35 squeeze optically that happened on the rock. I thought we lost all the contrast, it got kind of flat. And I went out and I did tests and I put a 40 millimeter anamorphic lens on and then I put a 21 millimeter spherical lens on. So same basic field of view. And I realized boy, it's much more exciting on the spherical lens being closer and wider to the horses. So that was the choice I made. We shot Super 35. The vehicles worked really well. We had Libra heads so that the rubbed to see this get was the horses could run one eighth of a mile two times twice a week. - That's like working with children. - So every moment of that movie is broken down. There is not, it's not like we ran the horses around the track and fished for shots. Every single thing. So we had 140 horses. We had six sea biscuits. So we would run two. And if we got the shot, we would move on and then we would go to shot four. And literally it was like a playbook. We would sit down on the morning, we had the racetrack drawn out on the floor, San Anita. And we would organize it. And these shots Roger and James were literally eight seconds long, 10 seconds long. That was it. This is not like we ran around the track with the horses running. We couldn't do it. If we did that, they wouldn't be able to run for two weeks. So this was the best description I can tell you. Is this sort of like being the manager of a baseball team and how you manage a pitching staff, right? You don't want to burn out the arms. So the way we did see this get was we would shoot on the track. We got the track. It was the winter. So the light was beautiful. We got the track at nine in the morning. We lost the light around three in the afternoon. And then within the grandstands of San Anita, we built sets. And I would light the sets for either day or night and we would shoot those. And that was our day. And it was yeah, that was all Adam Sumner. It was very, very well thought through. And it was a great experience. It sounds like it was. Yeah. How would I really interested in a technology here? If you were doing that film today, or even over your career doing other things, how has it changed? How is your approach changed because of technology, because of digital capture and everything else? Smaller cameras. It hasn't. I still carry a light meter. I like to, I like to a four stop with, especially with a director like John Lee Hancock, maybe even deeper, because he feels like the location is a character in the movie. When I shot the highwayman, I had Panavision build a series of lenses that are now called the H series after the highwayman. And I said to Dan Sasaki, I need lenses that at 11 will not have a lot of refraction. I want them to look like vintage lenses at an 11, because the whole point of this story was these two men tracking Bonnie and Clyde. And I want to carry as much step the field as possible. So I am not one of those guys that walks in and says, oh, we can shoot and it's wide open, because there's a huge difference between exposure and light in. You know that. I know that a lot of our peers do, but a lot of the younger cinematographers unfortunately are coming up in a world in which production doesn't really understand what their needs are. And I do find now, as I go on in my career, the production people aren't as experienced as they used to be. When I was scouting on the rock, I turned to the production coordinator and I said, I need a 60 foot condor for 218Ks for this location. And the production coordinator said to me, no eating an 80 foot condor, numb nuts. - Sitch. - Yeah. - And she said, the basket weight of a 60 foot condor can't handle 218Ks. So I realized, oh my God, these production people knew my job. They may not know the aesthetics of my job, but they knew how to make movies, right? These were people that had been doing it for a long time. I got very good at, which is hard for me, at shutting my mouth and opening my ears. (laughing) - Talk about the highway man, actually, we watched it the other night. I hadn't seen it before. I think it's a really, really magnificently made piece of filmmaking. But you say it's like this one side of your career that is kind of lower budget, location work, and you must have had far fewer resources to do that, Phil. - Yes, but it's John Lee Hancock. So that grip was written by, first by John Fusco, and then Scott Frank and John Lee Hancock. Do the best screenwriters in Hollywood. So when you've got John Lee, and you know you've got 38 days, and you know you've got a limited budget, you've got a director that understands, he'll turn to me and say, look, this entire scene can play in a wide shot. I want Kevin and I want Woody as silhouettes on the horizon, no cover, right? That's it. He's a real filmmaking director. And I'm gonna go off to Germany to do a movie with him that is supposed to take place in Northern California, but we're shooting it in Munich because of a tax incentive. Now, would there any other director, I would say, oh my God, we are in trouble, but not with Mr. Hancock. So I love the challenge. I would rather go out with a camera and an assistant and a bounce card that have 17 electricians. I mean, if you looked at the call sheet on the third Jurassic World in London, with, and Lee Walters, my gaffer, who's amazing, we had that, I said to Lee, okay, we're shooting 65 millimeter film. I need to light to an eight stop to maintain the same depth of field as we would if we were shooting for per 35. We're building a $6 million set. I don't want it to be mush. So I need a base exposure of 40 foot candles. That's two stops below key. And he looked at me and he was like, what gav? And I said, this is the deal, right? So I must have had 35 guys in the reds, just with all the park hands and space lights. That's much more fun to go out and work with four people. Yeah, well, I would certainly agree without one, but it just seems you've, you've subjected yourself to so many of this huge movie. I'm very, but Roger, I'm very good at them and I'm very good. Yeah, I'm very, I'm very good at crap. I'm very good at logistics. I'm good at showing up and figuring out what needs to go where. Doesn't mean I may, I may not light it as well as somebody else, but I know how to put, especially on a big movie, where the big pieces need to go. And obviously, with Colin Trevorrow on the first Jurassic World, he had only done one little movie called Safety Not Guaranteed. So he was very much a novice and we shot that entire movie with one camera. Was there any studio pushback to that? Because I mean, even when we did just sort of bleed run of 26th, whatever it was. You know, for eight or nine cameras. The producers were saying, where are the other seven cameras? Well, remember who the producer was. It was Steven Spielberg, right? And so Steven is a one camera guy. So all we had to do was make Steven happy. I mean, I can remember getting on the phone with Steven in Hawaii. and him saying to me, "Look, I love everything." But you know, when you pushed in on Chris, I think you went about six inches too close. And I said, "Well, you know, Mr. Spielberg, "can I agree to disagree with you?" I said, "I have great respect for you, "but it felt right for me at the moment." But he was incredibly supportive. I mean, yes, when we had crowds running, and it was a hundred degrees into Orleans, and we had the main street set up in the old six flags theme park in Louisiana, and it was unbearably hot. I would run two or three cameras for just be-walled stuff. But if it was dialogue, it was one camera. One camera and one camera. Collins idea was there's only one spot for a camera, and I want to focus on that one camera. And I think he's right. And John Lee Hancock is the same. We should one camera. - So on the highwayman, you didn't see the faces of Bonnie and Clyde till the very end, and that kind of intentional thing is so rare to see in a movie these days, because you always have to be thinking about it and designing the shots around that. That was really great. - Well, that was strong. I mean, that was what Mr. Hancock said. I mean, my only disappointment with the highwayman is that I did two DIs. So I would, we ran one camera. I have one camera set up, one monitor set up in black and white, and one set up in color. And I kept saying to John, this has to be a black and white movie. And the unfortunate thing was that Netflix had put all their eggs on Roma. And they said to me, "We're not gonna release two black and white movies." And I was so heartbroken because the beauty of shoot, the beauty of shooting black and white film is one thing. But if you shoot color and you go into the DI and you use the color channels to create a black and white master, it's like having polycontrast filters, right? And I will tell you that the black and white master of the highwayman to me is spectacular, and it will never be seen. - You don't think that they would ever like put it out because they re-released so much these days and it's a different way of showing it. - May? - I think they should. - Okay, good. Maybe they'll listen to this podcast James and you can ever have it happen. I will give you all the credit. 100%. - I'll ask you, what's the one to highwayman? You shot some digital, for your shot film and digital, right? And what was the reason for that? I know that's a misnomer. - That was all digital. We couldn't shoot film. So-- - Oh, all digital. - Yeah, all right. - John Lee loves the shoot film. And when we went to do, the last movie that I did with John Lee on film was "Sage in Mr. Banks." That was film. The movie with my brother and Tom Hanks and Kyle and all that. And then we went and did a small movie called "The Founder" about Ray Crock who started McDonald's, which I think is a really great movie. Not a lot of people, we had it, it was caught up in the whole Weinstein debacle and got married. But it's a really lovely film and the studio forced us to shoot digital because they thought film was gonna be too expensive. So John Lee, Hancock probably shoots 5,000 feet a day. Right? He's probably like Joel and Ethan in the sense that we rehearse, he says action and he says cut. He doesn't do a lot of takes. He does if he's not happy, but we don't leave the cameras rolling. He is very old school. So we shot the Founder digitally. And then obviously because the highway man at the time was one of the first theatrical, original movies that Netflix had ever done. We had to shoot digital. - Oh, really? So that was 2017, I think it was. So we shot digital. Large format. - 2019. - 2019, we shot large format digital. - Interesting. I mean, you say Netflix on that, but it didn't really get theatrical release, did it? It must have been kind of disappointing. I mean, how do you feel that's going? Because some of the films you've done have laid really. I mean, the housemate, I suppose, got a good theatrical release, but some of the others, not so much, right? - Yeah, it sucks. I mean, the thing is, I love what I do. So I'm going to continue to do it. Whether people are watching them on a small screen or a big screen, I mean, the housemate hopefully will give us some hope, right? We made that movie in 29 days for $30 million. And it's now grossed over $420 million in theaters worldwide. So somebody's making a lot of money. Not me, but somebody is, but I wish we were going to the movies. Look, I mean, we know, but the reality is there's not a lot of those movies. And if they are, they're the Jurassic worlds. And I'm trying to kind of steer myself away from those, right out of, I've climbed that mountain. - All right, yeah, being that done that. It's really interesting that these, you've done three films now, School for Good and Evil, a jackpot on the housemate with the same director, which is Paul Figwich, who you knew at film school, right? - Well, I think I've done seven movies with Paul. So it's a very nice thing. I mean, he's, I've known him since we were 22. And it's a lovely way to go to work. Now, Paul makes a more commercial movie than John Lee. And he picks his movies, what he wants to do them. I mean, and that's the beauty, right? You get a guy who's coming in and who's not like, this is another gig, this is, I don't wanna make this film. So that's, and not to see the Paul's not a committed director. He is, but he tends to like to constantly work. So he's gonna look for the next movie. We're gonna do the housemate part two in the fall. Well, there's five, there's five books. They're all best sellers, right? - All right. - So, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, it's, what I'm not gonna say, no, I mean, the studio wants to make the second one because they made more money off the first one than any movie that Lionsgate has ever made. I get it. - Yeah, yeah. - So my, my choices, do I sit at home or do I go back and do another movie with Sydney Sweeney who I absolutely adored working with. She was super professional. Do I think these are masterpieces of writing? No, they're beach books, but they're fun. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you say early on, you said when you saw coming home that time, it sort of changed your life. You would have to wait a long time to get a chance to shoot a coming home today. Would you say it all, mate? - Is it all made home? - I mean, shampoo, one of the greatest movies ever made would not get made today. - No, definitely not. - A country for old men would not get made today. - Oh, no, no, no. - So I mean, the reality is, the business is changing. I am not at the end of my career, but I'm certainly getting up there. I hope I'm not past my best-by date yet, but I am in my mid 60s, right? I can't change the nature of the business, but I can still, so I make movies because I want to be proud of the lighting that I do. And I see there's not a movie that I've done where I don't want every single shot back, right? Right, so I'm trying to figure out how in this new version of cinema, I can still satisfy my creative needs. Now, sometimes they're really subtle, or they could be the sheen on a table in the background, and I'm very clever as to how I achieve that. No one else is gonna see it, but I know what's right. - Right. - Right, yeah, yeah. - Those are the things that I still live for. Lighting a close-up of Sydney Screenie, I could teach my sister how to do that in four minutes, right? It's not difficult, right? But it's the other stuff. It's how you block a scene. It's how you plan a day. It's the lenses you choose. You know, I constantly think to myself, maybe I should have been on the 40-mill six inches closer. Why did I do that? - Yeah, that's the little thing. - Yeah, yeah. And those things still are at propo, right? It hasn't changed the nature of the job. Now, the way people watch it has changed, and do I miss going to the cinema? Yeah, do I miss seeing projected film? Sure. I mean, I loved the way that the process was when you had a film camera on set. Don't get me wrong. I have no issues with the digital cameras. They're beautiful. I mean, the Alexa 35 makes a gorgeous image. The Sony Venice II, especially if you need the high gain, makes an incredibly clean image. They're just tools. They're just paintbrushes, right? They're tools. And it's how you use them. You mentioned on a highway, man. It was interesting. I didn't realize Scott Frank had some contribution to the script. And now you see the kind of work that he's doing in television. Have you thought about going into shooting series TV? I mean, some of his work is quite extraordinary, isn't it? And I would say it's superior to most of what I actually at the cinema. There's no question. I obviously Scott uses Steve Meisler, so I'm not about to try to go in there, but I did. I did a streaming pilot last year with John Lee Hancock. My first four in the TV, we shot in Manchester, which I loved. Went to my first Premier League game at Old Trafford. So I'm there. Oh, good for you. On Manchester United Playlist cool. It was fabulous. I probably lose. They lost in the pouring rain, but it was a great, I actually really enjoyed it because I had a director. It was shooting the pilot, who's a director I've worked with, who wasn't under the, you know, there were the showrunners weren't telling him that everybody who asked that everybody who has a line of dialogue has to be on camera. We didn't have any of it. We shot it like we were shooting a one hour movie. I don't know how the rest of that world works. So the answer to your question is, I'm sure I'm going to be there sooner rather than later, but I don't, but it's not a world that I really am familiar with. And there are very few Scott Franks, right? One's probably got to move to Scandinavia to find the equivalents. So I mean, the reality is that even Noah Hawley, who did, you know, these, the Fargo series, which I thought were really very good, he directs two episodes and then you've got directors to come in and you know that there's a, a victim that they have to follow, right? They can, if they want to put the camera on the ground for a wide exterior, I'm sure they're allowed to, but I guarantee you there's something that says everybody that talks better be covered in a median closet, right? Where's with, where's with John Lee? I never have those discussions. He's like, no, we're going to play it on the back of their heads in a two-shot and wrap. That's what I want for this scene. Just great. And you're off to Germany with him. That's great. Yeah, good, good. Yeah. Anyway, John, this has been great. Thank you. Yeah, I have a, I don't know, my origin story is a bit unique. Yeah, my god, yes. Yes, yes. Very unique. That's been really good. Thank you. And your career is unique as well. I mean, yeah, it's the great mix of love. It is. And I'm trying to sort of stay on the smaller side these days. The great irony is I failed the USC film school. And after the rock came out, they gave me, as I like to say, they gave me my master's degree, posthumously, because they won, they wanted me to participate at the school to come and talk and inspire. So they, there was a new, a new group in running the film school. So they gave me, they said, we're going to give you your degree. That's great. Oh, good. All right. Quite John. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. All right. All right. You check out. Bye. If you'd like to sponsor the Team Deakins podcast, let us know at [email protected]. Thanks for listening. If you want more information and further discussion, check out the forums at www.RogerDekins.com. Becoming a member is free and you can ask follow-up questions there. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast for more new questions and topics. Also, check us out on Instagram at team.deakins. See you next time.