Robbie Greenberg on Fools Rush In
by Bob Fisher

This article was written for Film & Video Production in 1996

Robbie Greenberg, ASC was born and raised in the Bronx. He studied philosophy and sociology at the City College of New York, where he was an avid moviegoer with an acquired taste for European films, especially those directed by Renoir, Truffaut and Antonioni. After graduation, he drove to San Francisco, sold his car, a treasured possession, and used some of the money to buy his first still camera.

It was 1968-69, and Greenberg was at the hub of the anti-war demonstrations at Berkeley trying to document those historic events for posterity. He wasn’t satisfied and took the advice of a friend, who told him to study composition in books featuring photographs taken by Weston, Strand and Stieglitz.

Greenberg switched to a large format view camera and processed and printed his pictures in a homemade darkroom without running water. During the early 1970s, Greenberg apprenticed as an assistant cameraman, assistant editor, gaffer and grip. Finally, he got opportunities to shoot documentaries, educational and rock 'n roll concert films.

Greenberg describes in loving detail, memories of wandering through rock concerts with an NPR camera on his shoulder capturing free-form images on film. His first narrative film was a 1973 psycho-drama produced on a proverbial shoestring budget. By then, he was captivated by the idea of adding and subtracting light as a form of visual story-telling. He moved to Los Angeles in 1975, determined to join the above-ground movie industry. His first taste of success came when he shot a short film for ex-Beattle George Harrison and watched it on Saturday Night Live the ensuing week.

The following year, Greenberg was recognized when Youngblood, a low budget feature that he shot for AIP, earned kudos from the critics. That was followed by an eight year struggle trying to get into the camera guild, while shooting occasional independent, low budget features and many documentaries. His subsequent feature credits include Sweet Dreams (directed by Karel Reisz), Creator (Ivan Passer), The Milagro Beanfield War (Robert Redford) and Far North (Sam Shepherd). During the mid-1980s-1990, Greenberg concentrated on directing and shooting hundreds of commercials.

Greenberg returned to the narrative film genre to shoot Free Willy.

“You can call this an art or a craft, and I suppose it is some of both. But, the fact remains that there are scenes that have never left my mind. The land was a character in Milagro. We were shooting in the direction of sunset. It was backlit. The camera was on a crane. I turned around and the path leading to the bean field was bathed in absolutely golden light. I'd never seen anything like that before. The sky beyond it was absolutely storm black with a perfect rainbow. I started screaming like I lost my mind. We swung the camera around and got one of the old actors to walk down the path. That made the shot.”

Fools Rush In is a romantic comedy produced by Columbia Pictures. A waspy East Coast guy, played by Matthew Perry, a TV actor in Friends, and a beautiful Hispanic woman, portrayed by Salma Hayek, a Mexican born actress, meet in Las Vegas. They fall in love but cultural conflicts pull them apart. From the beginning, Greenberg told the director, Andrew Tennant, he wasn’t interested in shooting a comedy with obligatory high-key lighting. He saw it as cross-cultural romance with humorous overtones.

“There's conflict and contrasts and that makes it interesting,” Greenberg says. “They talk about the difficulties of their relationship and I tried to enhance the mood. We weren’t afraid not to put light on somebody's face, or to let them stand in shadows when they're talking. People like to hide their emotions every once in a while.”

In the Las Vegas sequences, the camera moves vigorously, reflecting the energy of the setting and tracking the actors in big open spaces. In a 200-year old Mexican hacienda, where just a few people are engaged in conversation, the camera is virtually static.

“There are times when we (cinematographers) can influence how stories are told,” he says. “We were supposed to shoot a walking/talking two shot in a Las Vegas graveyard for glitzy old hotel signs. Even if I used a relatively wide angle lens, I wasn’t going to get the background that told the story. I just kept looking until I came to a perfect spot. There was an island of signs and two pathways surrounded by old neon signs. We set up a wide angle shot with them walking toward the moving camera. The actors and camera converged at an old sign with a glass slipper. It works like magic with the dialog.”

After they go their own ways, Hayek’s character visits her great grandmother, who lives in the hacienda in Mexico, in a place beyond the reach of electricity. Greenberg lit the night interiors very warmly, using Chocolate gels that enhanced the olive skin tones and augmented a candle lit feeling. He describes a poignant daylight scene: “The old woman is seated in a chair near a window talking with her great granddaughter about fate and destiny. How can you miss,” Greenberg asks? “I lit just part of her face with beautifully soft window light, looked into her eyes, and let the camera sit on her. We shot almost a full magazine without a cut. There's an introspection that goes with these visual memories. It's a matter of interpreting the script, so the moment comes alive.”

Meanwhile, Perry’s character is in New York. He realizes how important she is to him and tries to find her in Mexico. The girl has already left. He knows where she is headed. It is a spot on top of Hoover Dam, where they’ve shared a poignant memory. They meet at night in the pouring rain.

“It was a monumental lighting task,” says Greenberg. “We used two Musco lights and several Condors with two 150-foot crane arms. We weren’t physically able to light from two directions in one night. So we lit and shot from one direction for several nights. Then we lit and shot from the reverse angle on several other nights. We could have contained the shot by avoiding the big backgrounds, but it wouldn’t have been the same.”

Greenberg believes cinematography is becoming more spontaneous, because faster films and lenses make it possible. But, that’s an over-simplification. He used 5247, the oldest, slowest film Kodak makes, for daylight exteriors and some interior scenes because it renders “a softness and warmth” appropriate for this film. Night scenes were recorded on the 5298 film, which he rated at an exposure index of 400 rather than the recommended 500, “pretty high on the printer light scale.” He used 5293 film for all other daylight interiors and night interiors, where he wanted “really deep blacks.”

Those were gut decisions, based on the sum of Greenberg’s unique experiences in life and work, tempered by his innate taste. In the end that’s why two cinematographers like Lachman and Greenberg can follow very similar paths and arrive at different destinations.

Greenberg reflects on his personal journey by telling a story that made him chuckle. “I’ve always thought of myself as an outsider. I came from outside the system, shooting documentaries and low budget feature films. I never worked on a studio film until I was a cinematographer. A friend on my crew recently worked on a commercial with another cinematographer who said, ‘You work with Robbie Greenberg, one of those Hollywood establishment guys?’ I’ll never think of myself as an insider.”