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Bill
Butler, ASC
Butler won an Emmy award for his electronic camera work. He ventured into filmmaking with Friedkin when they made a 16 mm black and white documentary for a local charity group. Their second film focused on a prisoner who was slated for execution in Illinois. It was a docu-drama that resulted in the governor of Illinois commuting the prisoner's death sentence. As a result, Butler's interest shifted from live television to film documentaries. He earned his first narrative credit in Chicago in 1967 for Fearless Frank, a low budget feature directed by Phil Kaufman. Two year later, Butler shot The Rain People, for Francis Ford Coppola, another young director. He migrated to Los Angeles in 1970 after shooting a low budget feature in Australia. Butler has subsequently
compiled some 70 narrative film credits, including such classics as
Jaws, Grease, Rocky II-IV, Capricorn I, Stripes and Biloxi
Blues. Eight of his feature films have earned more $100 million
at the box office. His telefilms credits include The Execution of
Private Slovak and the landmark miniseries The Thorn Birds.
Butler also earned Emmy Awards for Raid on Entebbe and A Streetcar
Named Desire. He will receive the coveted American Society of Cinematographers
Lifetime Achievement Award on February 16, 2003 recognizing his distinguished
and enduring body of work. |
Bill
Butler, ASC was born and spent the first five years of his life living
in a log cabin on a homestead in Colorado, where his parents were farmers.
He was mainly raised in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, a small college town. Butler
studied electronics and began his career as an engineer at a radio station
in Gary, Indiana. He subsequently moved to Chicago, where he helped
design and build the first television stations at the ABC affiliate
and later at WGN. When WGN-TV went on the air, Butler operated a live
video camera for commercials and for locally produced programs. He frequently
collaborated with a young director named Bill Friedkin.