A Conversation with Donald M. Morgan, ASC By Bob Fisher

Donald M. Morgan, ASC was born and raised in Hollywood, where his father was an animation cameraman. During his youth, Morgan tried his hand at being a rodeo cowboy and midget racecar driver. He worked at film labs and briefly tried operating an animation camera before becoming an apprentice to aerial cinematography pioneer Nelson Tyler. Morgan worked his way up through the ranks as an assistant and operator and subsequently became an aerial cameraman. He earned his first narrative film credit in 1973 for Santee, an ultra-low low budget Western starring Glenn Ford.

During the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, Morgan compiled an impressive list of television and feature film credits. After filming Star Manin 1984, Morgan focused mainly on directly and shooting commercials for seven years. He has compiled some 50 narrative film credits. Morgan has earned ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards in the annual American Society of Cinematographers competition for Murder In Mississippi(1990), Dillinger(1991), Geronimo(1993) and The Siege at Ruby Ridge(1994). Only two other cinematographers have claimed top honors four times. Morgan was also nominated for For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story(2000) and Out of the Ashes(2003). He also won Emmy Awards for Murder in Mississippi, Geronimo, Miss Evers Boys (1997) and Out of the Ashes, and other nominations for Elvis(1979), Doublecrossed (1991), The Siege at Ruby Ridge and For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story.

Following are excerpts of a conversation:

ICG: Don, you came out of a film family, right?

MORGAN: I did. My dad was born in Missoula, Montana, and he came to Los Angeles hoping for a career as a singer. That’s how I happened to be born and raised in Hollywood. Everyone in my family worked in the industry. My mother was a model for a while, and a stand-in and extra. My father worked for Disney at the old Hyperion studio as an animation cameraman. Eventually, he opened his own company in Hollywood that did special effects for animation. It was called Max Morgan’s Animation Service.

ICG: Did you think you were going to follow in his footsteps?

MORGAN: He worked on Snow White,Fantasia, Bambi, Pinocchio and other great Disney films, but I saw him hunched over an animation stand while I was growing up. I knew I wasn’t going to spend my life doing that. I wanted to be a cowboy.

ICG: How does a kid growing up in Hollywood decide to become a cowboy?

MORGAN: I had trouble in school, but no one knew I had learning disabilities. They just sort of thought maybe I was dumb. I used to watch the old cowboy movies and wanted to be a rodeo cowboy and ride bucking horses. When I was 15 or 16, I met a cowboy who helped me get a job in the rodeo. I rode bucking horses and bulls. I say I rode them. I tried, but I actually got on them and fell as the gate opened.

ICG: How did you get from the rodeo into movies?

MORGAN: There was another stop along the way. After I decided that the rodeo was not working out, I decided to become a famous midget racecar driver. I got to see a lot of the country, because I slept in the backseat of cars. I told whoever was with me, we’re going to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, but not all in one day. I wasn’t a great success as a racecar driver, and I got into some pretty terrible wrecks.

ICG:You have had a lot of interesting life experiences, which must contribute to the insights you bring to your work. How did you finally get started in the film industry?

MORGAN: My dad got me a job at the old Cine Color Lab, which was where FotoKem is now. The first day a guy asked me why I was working there. I said I needed a job. He said there won’t be any film in a couple of years. It will all be videotape.

ICG: How long did you work at Cine Color?

MORGAN: Back in those days, you needed seniority, so I got laid off quite a bit. I used to travel from lab to lab. I think I worked in every lab in town but MGM. I mainly worked as a film printer at little 16 mm labs. I worked at Hollywood Film Lab where they had a special printer used with old nitrate pictures that had shrunk. I also kept trying to become a famous racecar driver in between jobs.

ICG:Looking back, do you think that the experience of working in a lab, and seeing what happened to film helped you later on?

MORGAN: It might have helped me a little, but I don’t think I was paying enough attention at the time. I just learned what I had to learn to get through the day. I learned what happens to film when it leaves the loading room. I finally went to my dad and said you know, maybe animation isn’t so bad. Do you think you can find somebody who will give me a chance at animation? A friend of my dad’s hired me. My first job shooting film was on an animation stand. We mainly did commercials. Captain Crunch was one of them. My dad was absolutely a legend in the animation business. People used to call him with questions all hours of the day and night. You had all these knobs you had to turn north, south, east and west. You had all these different cells that you put up on the stand, and then you’d click and expose one frame at a time. It just drove me crazy. Sometimes the phone would ring. I’d answer it and forget whether I clicked on that frame or not. You could work for a week on 60 feet of film, doing pass after pass. Sometimes I’d call my dad when I was worried. He’d come over and look at the sheet. My dad actually only had a tenth grade education, but mathematically he’d figure out where I was and what I had to do. People used to call him all the time and ask how to get out of trouble. I think he saved a lot of jobs.

ICG:How long back did you do that?

MORGAN: Not long. It seemed like seven years but it was only seven months. A friendsaid he knew someone who built a lens that fits on a helicopter. I didn’t know what he was talking about, and obviously he didn’t know either. He was talking about Nelson Tyler. I talked to my dad, who had worked for Mort Tyler, Nelson’s father, at Disney. I went to San Francisco and met Nelson. He said I could hang around. He didn’t hire people, but sometimes he sent assistant cameramen out on jobs. He said that he would be glad to send me out if I hung around, watched and learned the job. Working around helicopters and hanging out the side with the wind blowing in your face sounded like a good job to me. I spent a couple of months learning how to set the camera mount up. Once in awhile I’d go out on a job with Nelson. Sometimes someone came in from New York without an assistant and Nelson would send me out with them. Once, he sent me to the east coast to do a job. I was frightened and didn’t feel ready. Nelson said, ‘you’re ready. Don’t worry about it. Just do it.’ I went to the east coast, set the mount up, and I’ve been working ever since.

ICG:What was the job?

MORGAN: It was in a commercial. I can’t remember what the product was, but there were a bunch of cars parked on the top of a grassy knoll. I remember thinking, wow, I’m in the movie business. That was my start of a long love affair.

ICG:When and how did you get into the camera Guild?

MORGAN: Getting into the union was more of a trick than becoming a cameraman. I can testify to that. I had a permit to be an animation cameraman, but I only did that for seven months. When I wanted to get into live action, the union’s response was ‘you are an apprentice animation cameraman. No more. No less. Every time I got a job doing aerial work, the union would call me down and chew me out. Finally, they decided that it looked like I was going to be an aerial cameraman, so maybe they ought to give me permission to do the job.

There weren’t too many guys who wanted to do aerial shots only, and I didn’t know how to do anything else. I wasn’t trained like an assistant in regular production. I went through the loading room, and then I became a second. As an aerial assistant, I’d load a magazine and sit in the truck and wait for Nelson to come back after he shot a roll; so I really didn’t know much about assisting. My first chance at shooting came after about six months as an assistant for Tyler Camera. Basically, someone asked, ‘Do you know how to shoot? We’ve got a 16mm shot that we’d like to get done.’ I flew in an old Hughes 300 Bumblebee with a mount on it. I did a terrible job. The Tyler people decided that maybe they’d better not rush to make a shooter out of me. Then, one day there was no aerial cameraman available, one of the hot pilots, David Jones, said, ‘Well I guess we’re not going to shoot that Buick commercial in Big Bear.

I said, ‘why not? I can do it.’

He said, ‘No, I’m not going to take a chance on wrecking a good account.’

I said, ‘you’re not going to wreck it. I fly with you everyday, and I practice everyday. You’ll take me alongside the car. I’ll zoom in and zoom out. You put me where you want me and I’ll pull the trigger.’

He said, ‘I’m going to kill you if you don’t do a good job.’

We went to Big Bear and I shot the aerial part of a Buick commercial. All I did was leave it on a wide angle, let him put me where I had to be and aimed the camera. They thought I was brilliant.

ICG: Was it all shooting from then on?

MORGAN: Yeah, pretty much so.

ICG:Was it all commercials or some of it movie inserts?

MORGAN: I worked on a lot of movies, but when I tell people which ones they were, they think I’m a liar. Some of the films I worked on were Catch 22, Bonnie and Clyde,The Graduate and Diamonds Are Forever. Usually, it was only for one or two days. I also occasionally shot aerials for The Streets of San Francisco TV series.

ICG:How did you get cameraman status in the Guild?

MORGAN: I worked on a permit and then I got an assistant’s card. Every time I’d go out on a job, I had all the pilots on my side. They would say to the client, ‘Are you sure your cameraman knows how to shoot off this mount, because this assistant is really qualified.’ The sun would be going down, and they’d say, ‘we only have about a half hour, why don’t you let Don shoot it because he’s really good.’ After every other job I’d shoot, the union scolded me, until finally they made me a DP for aerials .

ICG:Who was in charge in those days?

MORGAN: It was Gerald Smith. Finally, one of the board members asked, ‘How many times are we going to bring this guy in and scold him for shooting when obviously he has a knack for it? Why don’t we give him a card?’ They moved me up to camera operator. In those days, you were supposed to have a DP on the ground or shooting aerials, which didn’t happen very often. I was actually a camera operator in Group 3. That meant everybody who could breathe was supposed to work before me, but it wasn’t a problem on aerials. There weren’t a lot of people looking for my job.

ICG: Do you remember some of the different cinematographers who you worked with?

MORGAN: I loved going up to the DPs and having them tell me what they wanted. One of the greatest guys was Jordan Cronenweth (ASC). Every time I’d walk into a set with him, even when I was an assistant, he’d say, ‘Look, they want me to go up and make a shot, but you’re more qualified than I am.’ Jordan would then say to the client, ‘I’ll go up and do a shot, but I think you ought to let Don Morgan do it.’ His generosity is a wonderful memory.

I did five or six commercials with Jordan. “Curly” (Lionel) Lindon (ASC) was another good guy. He was a little bit of a roughneck. He came up to me and said, ‘I’m supposed to tell you how to do a whole bunch of stuff. Just aim the camera at the subject and do whatever you feel like doing. I’m sure it’ll be great. You’ve got a good reputation.’

Those were great days. I worked with other aerial guys when I was assisting, I worked with Johnny Stephens. I remember I went out with him one time when I was pretty new. He asked, ‘What stop should I put this on?’

I said, “You’re asking me? I don’t know. I don’t even own a light meter.’

He said, ‘You don’t own a light meter? What the hell are you doing, just visiting?’

I said, ‘No, I’m going to make a career out of it.’

He said, ‘Then get a damn light meter.’

My dad bought me a $35 light meter, so I wouldn’t be embarrassed next time. I had no clue how to use it. I also worked with Don Birnkrant (ASC). He was supposed the operator on a car commercial we were shooting in Detroit. Nelson told me I was going to be the aerial cameraman. When we got to the airport, Don thought he was going to do the aerial photography. When we got to the airport in Detroit, a the director walked up to us and asked, ‘Which one of you is Don Morgan?’

I said, ‘I am.’

He said, ‘Well here’s what I want to do. Then I knew I was the cameraman’

I even did a job with James Wong Howe (ASC), but I never got to say hello to him. I did an aerial part of a commercial that he shot at Griffith Park.

ICG:How long did you do aerial work?

MORGAN: The last time was in the Philippines in 1999. I did a lot of aerial work on a movie I did with (director) Roger Young. It was called Kiss the Sky. They don’t seek me out to do aerials anymore, but for a while, I think I was one of the hot aerial guys. Nelson Tyler was certainly the top guy.

ICG:When did you transition from doing aerial to working on the ground?

MORGAN: I bought an ARRIFLEX 2C and kept it on the seat next to me when I was flying. Whenever I saw anything interesting, like when there was a wreck while we were covering the Baja 1000 race in Mexico, I’d ask the pilot to land and I’d walk around with my handheld camera. I used to get jobs doing second unit on different television series. I’d grab a shot of a car going this way for one series, and I’d grab a shot going the other way for another series. When we got on the ground I’d do a couple of handheld shots. Eventually, one of the guys who I had shot some aerials for asked if I had ever lit a scene? I said, ‘no I haven’t.’ He suggested I get a gaffer who knew what he was doing. He told me he just needed a shot of a bunch of kids with balloons yelling and screaming to cut in between animation. He didn’t need anything fancy. So, I got a gaffer and we did this job.

ICG:It doesn’t sound like you spent a lot of your career working as anybody’s assistant or camera operator on dramatic films. It that impression accurate?

MORGAN: I went on very few jobs as an assistant. I was mainly a second assistant. Nobody sought me out, maybe because I wasn’t very good at it. I did operate on a few minor things, a day here and a day there.

ICG: Was there a turning point?

MORGAN: My life in the film business has been absolutely been charmed. I met Nelson Tyler when the aerial camera mount had just come out, and there were very few guys shooting with him. After a while, everybody started renting the smaller mounts and began doing their own aerials, so the jobs started drying up. I was getting less and less work and there were more and more guys, including Rex Metz (ASC) and John Stevens was shooting aerials. All those guys were excellent aerial cameramen.

ICG: Besides practical experience on aerials, did you have any formal training?

MORGAN: No. I don’t even remember going to a museum to study paintings. When you read bios of other cinematographers, it seems like one was an art student and another was an engineer who switched to cinematography. I learned whatever I learned in this business by just doing it. I don’t recommend it to anybody. A few weeks later, the producer of the little film I had shot with the kids and balloons asked if I wanted to shoot a 16 mm presentation film for a project he was trying to sell a network. It was about a group of teenage kids who were trying to clean up the atmosphere and do good things. The only actor I can remember who was on it was Mickey Rooney’s son. If these kids saw a car smoking they would talk to the people about polluting the air. That was my first opportunity to shoot a half hour film where I lit interiors. I got into shooting commercials pretty much right after that. I used to hang around the old Producers Studio, which is now called Raleigh Studios. There was an outfit there that supplied crews for New York producers. I hung around and once in awhile I got to shoot a commercial. Little by little, I started getting a name and became a little better at lighting. At one point, a bunch of us put a film together with about 100 investors who put in $100. Our investors were drivers, grips, electricians and anybody else who had $100. The movie was Win, Place and Steal . It was a true story about some people who stole a pari-mutuel ticket machine from Santa Anita, and started making their own winning tickets. We hired a writer, and every week we held a meeting and voted how much we were going to spend the next week. I made a deal with an equipment rental house and CFI labs. Russ Tamblyn, Dean Stockwell and Alex Karras were the actors. This was during the late 1960s.

ICG: What came next?

MORGAN: I was working on a movie called Skyjacked (1972) as an aerial cameraman. I got friendly with the cinematographer, Harry Stradling,Jr. (ASC). He recommended an agent, and the AD on that film suggested me for a Western that they were actually going to shoot on tape. It was called Santee, and it featured Glen Ford. When I went on the interview, they asked if I knew about working with tape. I said, ‘You put it around film cans so light doesn’t leak in.’ The guy said I was hired. He didn’t want somebody who actually had shot tape. He wanted a film cameraman.

ICG:That must have been an interesting experience.

MORGAN: I think one minute of it was done on tape. This outfit from Toronto brought a huge truck with cables and cameras as big as this table. I asked, how the hell are we going to shoot a Western with all this junk? They told me not to worry. We shot a night scene at a campfire. The fire looked terrible on tape. When Glen Ford shot a gun, it looked like a flamethrower. I brought my handy 2C camera to the set, and started shooting with it more and more. They’d say, ‘We need to be up on that bluff shooting Glen Ford riding towards us.’

I said, ‘We can’t get that truck up that hill, and the camera has to be tethered to the truck.’ So, I’d shoot it with my 2C. Finally, they decided the tape idea was ahead of its time.

ICG:Did you get to know any of the guys who were the icon cinematographers in those days, or did they brush you off ?

MORGAN: I think most people thought I was a joke. I’d be on a job with them as an aerial cameraman, and they’d be talking about the next feature they were going to shoot. I don’t think most of them took me real seriously. Harry Stradling did. He thought I was going to go places. But, most of them didn’t take me very seriously.

ICG:One of your earliest credits is a film you shot about 30 years ago, Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York. How did you happen to shoot that film?

MORGAN: I was shooting second unit aerial photography on Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry . Michael Margulies was the cameraman. One night, there was a phone message in my motel room from Sid Furie’s secretary. He had just directed a couple of big movies. When I called his secretary back, she asked if I was available to come in for a meeting because Sid would like to meet with me. I had shot an aerial part of a commercial with Sid. He rode around in a helicopter with me. I thought, he couldn’t possibly want me to do this feature. Maybe it was some more aerial work. When I went in for my interview, he explained that John Alonzo (ASC) was going to shoot the picture. They had just done Lady Sings the Blues together. As it turned out, he thought John might have a conflict. I knew John really well, and liked him a lot. I told him I’d be honored if John couldn’t do it. I was so excited that I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. What I found out later was that Sid Furie had seen Santee on an airplane. He asked the producer to find out who shot that Western. That’s how he tracked me down.

Sid said, ‘I really love your work and I’d like you to do this movie if John Alonzo doesn’t end up doing it. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ That was the longest day of my life. I couldn’t sleep that night. By 1 p.m. the next day, he hadn’t called, so I called him and said I had another offer, so I had to know whether he needed me. Of course, I didn’t have any offer. He told me that John Alonzo was going to be able to do it. I did some more aerial work on Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. A couple of days later, I got a message to call Sid Furie’s secretary. She asked if I was available to come in and talk with Sid. I asked her, ‘Does he want me to shoot the film?”

She said, ‘I can’t discuss that with you.’

So I asked, “Is John Alonzo going to shoot it?”

She replied ‘No.’

ICG: What was it like, shooting your first big Hollywood film?

MORGAN: It was probably the most exciting picture I’ve ever been on in my life, because Gordon Willis (ASC) was shooting Godfather II on the stage next door; the pilot for Happy Days was shooting on another stage; and Conrad Hall (ASC) was shooting The Day of the Locust. Sheila Levine barely cost a million dollars, but I remember that it was really exciting. I was working on a million dollar Hollywood film with Sid Furie. I thought I’ve arrived. I’m going to be famous. When we first started shooting, all the suits came down from their offices and asked Furie, ‘Does this guy know that he’s shooting a comedy? Its too dark’ Sid went nuts.

He said, ‘Have you guys ever laughed at radio? You don’t see anybody’s eyes on radio!’ The next day, I kind of brightened things up a bit. We went to dailies and Sid said, ‘they’ve ruined you! They’ve ruined you! Go back to the way you were working before. Don’t let those guys talk you into lighting brighter.’

ICG: Did Shiela Levine lead to other projects?

MORGAN: After Sheila Levine, I got hooked up with Sidney Poitier and did two movies for him. Sidney heard about me, I think, through Furie. He called and said, ‘I really like the look of your stuff, and I’d like to hire you.’ That was it. The first film was Let’s Do It Again (in 1975). Bill Cosby was one of the stars, and he cracked everybody up every five minutes, so it wasn’t a very tight set. Sidney would have liked it to be tight. He’d say, ‘Quiet down.’

And Bill Cosby would say, ‘Hey, it’s only a film.’ It was a wonderful experience. Sidney was very thoughtful. The producer got a deal on some really old, junky camera. On the second film, A Piece of the Action, I brought Sidney to Panavision. When he saw the versatility of the Panaflex camera, he asked if that’s what I wanted to use? I told him it was. He got it. Of course, I was the bad guy at the studio with the producer. I have really fond memories working with Sidney.

ICG: You also shot the pilot for the Serpico TV series around that same time in 1976.

MORGAN: The director on Serpico told me that he wanted it to look like the film. He didn’t want me to listen to the television guys who would want to make it bright. He wanted a really gutty and interesting looking. We shot in New York for a little while and in Los Angeles on stages. I think the studio thought I was nuts. They’d call me in and tell me to brighten it up. I’d tell them that the director doesn’t want it bright. They thought that was unacceptable and they didn’t think it looked good. I just kept hearing what terrible stuff I was shooting and the director kept telling me it was perfect. He loved it. When I got done, the studio barred me from having any more to do with the film. They didn’t want me to time it. They didn’t want me around it. I’d sneak in at five in the morning and time the film. The director knew that, but the studio didn’t. When it aired, Haskell Wexler (ASC)called me and said it was the best looking film he’d ever seen on television. I thought the hand of God had touched me. I really didn’t care what Paramount thought, but they barred me. I didn’t work there for more than 20 years. Every Paramount job I’d get an interview on, I would tell them I’m not going to get this because the studio doesn’t want me working here.

ICG: So, you are pretty much self-taught?

MORGAN: Like I said, I had very little education coming up through the ranks. You don’t learn much about lighting hanging out of a helicopter. Once I saw an ad on television for 100 famous paintings for $13. I brought and looked through that book. Rembrandt was probably the only name I recognized, but I would go to sleep at night looking at that book and thinking I can copy this. I did a 12‑day movie of the week called Panache (1976). The director said he wanted every frame to look like Rembrandt painted it. It was gorgeous, but it wasn’t much of a success. It was the time of the Renaissance time with sword fighting and Amy Irving playing the queen.

ICG:Didn’t you also do some early films with Robert Zemeckis?

MORGAN: I did his first movie, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (in 1978). Steven Spielberg produced it. They tried to give Zemekis an old time cameraman, but he had been on the lot at the studio and watched me shoot Sheila Levine. He came to New York, where I was working, came up to my hotel room and threw a script on my bed. He said, ‘this isn’t an interview. You’re hired if you want to do this film.’ Our second movie was Used Cars (1980).

ICG:Could you tell then that he was headed for great things?

MORGAN: I recognized his talent on the first movie. Spielberg was on the set everyday, but he never told Bob what to do unless Bob asked him what he thought. In fact, Steven had his 30th birthday on the set while we were shooting I Wanna Hold Your Hand. He told Zemekis, who was 28, I guess you can’t trust me anymore. I’m over 30.

ICG:Isn’t Serpico how you met Joe Sargent?

MORGAN: Yes. I was doing a picture in Hollywood called Skatetown USA (in 1979). We were filming at the Palladium. We were five weeks into production It was a screwy skating movie. I got a call from a producer who was working on a TV film called Amber Waves. He asked if I would like to shoot a beautiful film about wheat farming. I told him that I’d love it. He explained that Joe Sargent saw Serpico and wanted me hired. I never met Joe until I arrived at the location. That was the start of my relationship with him, which, so far, has lasted more that 25 years.

ICG:During that period, the late 1970s and early ‘80s, you were sometimes shooting features and other times television movies.

MORGAN: I did a little bit of everything. I shot a pretty big feature Starman in 1984, and my next project was an After School Special shot in 16mm. I did it because I liked it.

ICG:What is it that draws you to a project? Is it the story, the director or…?

MORGAN: It all starts with the script, but I can get pretty excited about who’s directing, including projects I’ve done with first timers, when I like their enthusiasm. Sometimes people ask what’s the best movie you ever worked on? I don’t think I have done it yet.

ICG:What about the TV film you did about Elvis (in 1979). That had to be satisfying.

MORGAN: That was my first experience working with John Carpenter. John’s a pretty down to earth guy. Kurt Russell played Elvis. It was a great experience, because he was Elvis. We shot part of it in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry and at surrounding areas. We also shot at a home where Elvis actually lived in California. It had black walls with silver lightening streaks on them. It was pretty gaudy. But, it was a lot of fun. I credit John Carpenter with teaching me a lot more freedom with the camera. He had no hard fast rules.

ICG:You did a really scary movie with Carpenter, Christine, in 1983.

MORGAN: That was the second film I did with John Carpenter. I remember Kim Gottlieb was the still photographer, and she was pregnant. We used to think she was going to give birth every time something blew up on the set. We had a big dangerous scene for her to be shooting one time. I had them build a guard around her so she wouldn’t get hit.

ICG:Didn’t you also do Starman with Carpenter in 1984?

MORGAN: Yeah, that was my third movie with John. I had something like eight weeks of prep time on Starman. I’d look at drawings and then we’d go to (George) Lucas’ place and see how we were going to handle certain effects shots. Kodak had just come out with a new fast film I wanted to use. Dick Barlow, who was the head of the camera department at Warner Bros., said, ‘If I were you, I’d use 5247 and push it a stop.’

The first day of the shoot, my assistant asked, ‘what film do you want to use? Do you want to use the new 500 film for the interior?’

I said, ‘No, I want to use 5247 and push it a stop.’ That’s what we did, and I think it worked.

ICG: What came next?

MORGAN: I had a son born while I was doing Starman. I was on the road all the time, so I thought maybe I’ll give commercials a try again for a while and not be gone for long periods of time. I actually went all over the place, but I’d only be a week here, a week there. That was my motivation, but I think it was a good move for me. I worked with some really talented people in commercials, and learned things about different looks that I still use today. I started shooting for one director, who walked onto the set and asked, ‘Why does that wall look so blank? Why don’t you put a slash across it?’ I had some grates made that look like Venetian blinds. I still I carry that with me on all my jobs. I’ll put them up on a grip stand, and even if I don’t want the wall to look like light is coming through Venetian blinds, I’ll use it to soften the light and little shadowy lines across the wall. I did a commercial for Midas, where I walked into muffler shop, and there was nothing visual about it. It was a bunch of mufflers hanging on the wall. I put a Xenon light behind all of those mufflers and used a couple of 12K HMIs as a supplement to the hard light. I had a circus tent put over the entire building, including the parking lot. Then, I smoked it all up and we had these big shafts of light. There was nothing about it that looked like any other muffler shop, but it sold an idea. I think the fact that you are trying to tell a story in 30 seconds or 15 seconds makes you a little bolder. You can draw on those ideas to make your feature films a little more interesting. I directed and shot commercials for seven years, mainly shooting, because that’s what I do.

ICG: Starting in the early 90s, you had a string of amazing television movies. I remember Murder In Mississippi, Dillinger and Geronimo coming out one year after another.

MORGAN: I thought after seven years of commercials, I would just step right back in and be welcomed back as a feature cameraman. That’s my criticism of this town. Why do people think a guy who shoots a really good episodic television program is incapable of shooting a feature film? One guy said, ‘what happened to you for seven years? Were you in prison?’ The first job that was offered to me was Murder In Mississippi, which was produced by Mark Wolper, David Wolper’s son. He had hired Roger Young to direct it. I was sitting in an office at Warner Bros. The producers already interviewed me. Roger poked his head in and asked me to walk with him while he ran across the street for a meeting. I could hardly keep up with the guy. He was about 6’‑2" and I’m 5’‑8". I was practically running alongside of him. He asked me what I saw this film looking like? I said, ‘It’s kind of the same material as Mississippi Burning. How about making it look like that?’ He told me okay and that he’d see me in Atlanta. I’ve now done 12 movies with Roger, and I’m about to do Hercules with him in New Zealand.

ICG:How about Dillinger in 1991?

MORGAN:Dillinger was another Mark Wolper project. I believe the director was 27 years old. He’d shot music videos and won some awards. He was pretty much badgered into hiring me, because I was the old timer and he was the kid. He took a little different approach that I thought was pretty crazy, but he wanted to make Dillinger a little like Miami Vice. He wanted a little glossier, flashier and out of the ordinary look. You know what? I won an ASC Award for doing it. The kid was right. We did some pretty wild stuff. We’d go on locations in Milwaukee that were worn out buildings that were abandoned. They made good hideouts for these gangsters. We’d hang these big sheets of colorful plastic as room dividers in these big, old empty buildings with these rugged old wooden floors and dirty windows. We had Dillinger wearing a hat when he’d do robberies. I never put any eyelights on him, because the hat created shadows that were like a mask across his face. I thought that was pretty cool, but the network was worried. They’d call and say we want to see Mark Harmon’s (Dillinger) eyes all the time. I said you’re not supposed to see him in the robbery. You see him when he’s making love and when he’s in the nightclubs. You see him everywhere else, don’t you get it?

ICG:You did do a feature film during that period called The Rage: Carrie 2 in 1999.

MORGAN: That’s actually kind of a funny story. I had just finished a TV film called The Wall when I got a call from a producer who said the director of The Rage really liked my work on The Wall. Well, The Wall wasn’t released yet. Joe Sargent and I had just finished shooting it. It was three stories about guys who had died and got their name on the Vietnam wall. I kept thinking how could this be? I knew who the original director of The Rage was and didn’t realize that that he had been replaced . I finally got a third call from Patrick Palmer, the producer, who ended that conversation saying the director really liked The Wall, so we’ve decided to hire you. I asked about the director, and he said we’ve replaced him with Katt Shea. I didn’t know who that was, but I traveled the next day to meet her. I arrived and was looking at footage in a screening room. She walked into that dark room. The only light came from the projector. She said, ‘I’m so glad to have you here. I really loved The Wall.’ I asked her when saw it, because it wasn’t out yet. It turned out that she was talking about a Pink Floyd film that had been out years ago. I said, ‘ If you hired me on the strength of that, I should I go home because I didn’t shoot it.” She said she liked other films as well. That was probably my strangest hiring experience in the industry.

ICG:I wanted to ask you share some brief memories about some of those great television movies you did during the 1990s beginning with Geronimo.

MORGAN: It was a good project. That was another Roger Young film. A feature film called Geronimo came out at the same time. They had big crane shots with hundreds of Indians. Our movie was good enough for me to win an Emmy, an ASC Award and a Cable Ace Nomination, so I’m pretty fond of that film. I think I’ve done 12 films with Roger, including For Love and Glory and The Siege At Ruby Ridge.

ICG:You did another television film that won some awards, Miss Evers’ Boys (in 1997).

MORGAN: That was with Joe Sargent. It was about an experiment that the United States government did on African‑Americans with syphilis. Miss Evers was played by Alfre Woodard who won Cable Ace, Emmy, Golden Globe and the People’s Choice awards. She won five major awards for her performance. They showed it to Bill Clinton in the White House, and he apologized to the last living person who was part of that experiment. That’s the power of films. Its part of why I like doing character-driven films.

ICG:Who directed A Lesson Before Dying? That’s another film that has stuck in my memory.

MORGAN: That was Joe Sargent again. He seems attracted to pictures about underdogs and people who are being discriminated against. I don’t think that movie was based on fact, but it has probably happened many times. We shot it in Louisiana in a place where there were still shacks from the old slave days they had very little maintenance. There were probably 30 of them and an old schoolhouse. You walk into those places and think that people lived in them and about the way they had to live. It’s hard to explain the feeling, but we shot in that atmosphere. The story was about a young Black boy who joins a couple of rowdy youngsters. They go into town to get some wine and there is a fight. One of the guys shoots the owner of the store over a bottle of wine. The owner shoots both of the other guys before he dies. Our main character who had nothing to do with it was arrested. He just happened to be there and kind of got railroaded. The story was about the relationship between him and his nana who raised him, and how she wanted him to die with some dignity, whether he was guilty or not. Don Cheedle played a teacher who tried to help him.

ICG:Another television film I liked was Sally Hemmings in 2000.

MORGAN: The director was Charlie Haid, who has a real visual sense, and he’s great with actors because he is one. He’d see a beautiful sunset while we were shooting inside, and say, we’ve got to get that. He’d make up something right on the spot. We actually met some of the relatives of Sally Hemmings who are still alive, You’d shake their hands and think, their great grandmother slept with Thomas Jefferson.

ICG:You also shot The Arturo Sandoval Story in 2000.

MORGAN: When I read that script, I thought this is going to be the most boring movie. It’s about a guy who was a musician who lied to the Cuban government and said he was going to play a concert in Europe. Meeting him and getting to know him as person was part of the excitement because he’s quite a guy. The music is also great. It was Joe Sargent at his best. Andy Garcia was so intent on doing it right that he practically learned how to play the trumpet. I never heard any music come out of it, but if his finger weren’t in the right place, he’d do it over again. That’s typical of HBO films. They’re wonderful. They also let me take a major part of my crew from California to Miami, and all of my key people to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I have got to hand it to them. They’re a good outfit. They make movies the right way.

ICG:Do you bring your key crew people to locations with you when you can?

MORGAN: I know you can’t bring everybody, but there are key people who you need. You can’t always find people who can do the job the way you want in the time available. I’ve got to say that if you can prove to the HBO people that you need these people, they listen. I’ve worked with Larry Caster, my gaffer, on 26 or 27 films. He knows me well enough to start putting stuff I’ll want up before I ask for it. It’s just kind of hard to break in a new guy and tell them every little thing that you want. It takes time, and I think it’s false economy. That doesn’t mean people who you pick up on location aren’t good people. It doesn’t even mean they may not be as talented as the people you’re bringing. It’s just that when you get a chance to work with people over and over and over again they understand how you think and what your needs are.

ICG:Another fairly recent movie that was totally different is Bojangles in 2001.

MORGAN: Gregory Hines, who passed away recently, played Bojangles. It was another Joe Sargent project. I was proud of it, but it could have been better. They made a tape-to-tape transfer. The whites were blown out, the blacks were crushed and it was hell trying to pull it together. It takes place in the early 1900s. He’s dancing on a stage with these little dim footlights. I used a little bit of diffusion on the camera lens, but they blew those lights out in post. It had this blown out fuzzy look all the way across the stage. It drove me crazy. Maybe its because I’m the cameraman, but you talk to people who aren’t in the business, and I think they do notice those things.

I was shooting in a little town in Tennessee, eating in a little, fast food waffle house. The guy sitting next to me at the counter looked like a farmer. I didn’t know what he did. He could have been a truck driver or whatever people did in this town. We started talking and he asked, ‘Are you with these movie people? What do you do? I told him I was the director of photography. He asked me what that exactly meant and I explained that I was kind of responsible for the look of the picture. He told me what looks real to him and what doesn’t. He said, ‘what really drives me nuts is when people are sitting next to a lamp and the light is on the other side of their face. Sometimes you see people jump into bed and turn out the lights, and it’s still just as bright as when they were on.’ I’ve got to make it look as real as I can or I won’t do the job. I’m talking movie reality. For instance, I wouldn’t light this room the way it’s lit right now. It’s just flat, ugly light. I’d bring a condor in and shoot light through the window to make it look interesting. I feel we owe that to the audience. That guy in the restaurant was right. When the lights go out, it has to get dark. If you still want the audience to see people, you have to figure out how to make that work.

ICG:You did another television movie that I loved, Out Of The Ashes, in 2003

MORGAN:Out Of The Ashes was a very rewarding picture for me. It was about Gisella Perl, a Jewish woman. We started with her as a little girl before the war comes to Hungary. After the beginning of World War II, she’s a doctor living in a ghetto in Budapest. Finally, she’s sent to Auschwitz. She survives the war, and arrives in New York City as a refugee. Each of those situations called for subtly different looks. I told Joe Sargent I don’t want to do black and white on flashbacks. I wanted to make it a different pallet. I used a little flatter, more pleasant look when she was a little girl telling her dad that she wanted to be a doctor. She actually became a doctor and married another doctor. They had a beautiful home until the Germans came and stole everything. I love doing these people-driven stories. This is a story that should be told. My key grip Mark Silver’s dad was in Auschwitz. When I told him we were doing this film, he said he’d do it for nothing. He was actually an important source of information about Jewish tradition. Whenever we’d do anything wrong, he’d tell us.

ICG: More recently (2004), you did an HBO movie called Something The Lord Made.

MORGAN:Something The Lord Made is another Joe Sargent film about an underdog. It’s a true story about a black man named Vivien Thomas and a white doctor. Vivien was a carpenter who wanted to be a doctor. He saved up some money to go to medical school, but lost it in the stock market crash during the late 1920s. He went to work for this doctor and they formed a kinship that was pretty interesting. Together, they pioneered heart surgery that has saved thousands of lives. The doctor used to hire Vivien to serve drinks at his parties to help him make a little extra money, but he never thought about paying him the money he deserved for the work he was doing. Most of the story takes place at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

ICG: You really enjoy these movies that tell real stories about real people.

MORGAN: I get tears in my eyes talking about them. Yeah, I love real stories. What I learned shooting films like A Lesson Before Dying and Miss Evers’ Boys make up for whatever I didn’t get out of school. I learned a lot when we shot Elvis. We had people who worked with him with us everyday. I worked on aerials for an (1968) Elvis movie called Stay Away Joe and actually met him. I sat in the car while he and his buddies were kidding each other. I have a picture at the home of Elvis. I went to one of his comeback concerts in 1969, and was sitting two rows from the stage. He ripped his pants and the girls went crazy. So, I had a little Elvis history.

ICG:You recently shot a movie in HD format, so there is always something new.

MORGAN:The Last Run was written and directed by Jonathan Segal, who’s uncle Erich Segal wrote Love Story. I think the budget was about a million and a half dollars. It was my first experience doing high def and I had fun doing it.. I had a gaffer who knew a lot about 24P so that helped. It wasn’t hard to do. It was just different.

ICG:What was different about it?

MORGAN: I think you need more light. Some people will argue about that, but I saw the difference. We lit most of the film carefully with a lot of light, so that it had a real good rich look. Instead of using a little bounce light, you have to really bang some light in to make it work. We put stands in the middle of the set and dressed them so we had a place to put lights. You don’t need to do that with film. When we went back and did a couple of additional scenes, we had a much lower light level. I noticed when we saw that film projected, it had a total different quality, because we had to bounce the gain up when we shot at a lower light level. Other people might have a different understanding of this than I do. I just did this one film

ICG:What about this notion that you can fix lighting problems during postproduction?

MORGAN: I don’t think those words should ever come out of a cameraman’s mouth. We can enhance it in post, but if you don’t get it on film you can’t fix it in post. I don’t think you’re going to save money in the long run and it doesn’t show respect for what we do as cameramen. Why we would teach young people they could do lousy work and fix it later is beyond me. Bad work is still going to be bad work .

ICG:Are you typically involved in timing the television movies you shoot?

MORGAN: Every step of the way. I think that’s part of my job. On Something The Lord Made, I spent almost three weeks in post. I feel that I have to be there. I looked at effects shots and at the wedges and anything that had to do with opticals. Then, I went to FotoKem timed the prints. HBO always makes film prints.

ICG: It sounds like you still enjoy your work.

MORGAN: Like I said before, I’ve been lucky. I have gotten to work with a lot of great directors on stories I care about. Everyday brings a new challenge. Last year, I shot an independent film in Puerto Rico with James Hunter , a 27‑year‑old director. It’s called Back In The Day. I’m not an old fuddy duddy. I’m willing to try anything. I’ve had a lot of fun in this business. Sometimes I have wished I would have been a little more careful about what I said or wished I had gone in a different direction, but I can’t complain, because I’m still here and I’m still doing pretty good stuff.

ICG:Do you have any advice for younger and future cinematographers?

MORGAN: There’s a long line of people who can do very good, average work. I would say be true to yourself and your dreams can come true. When I was shooting commercials, we created every look and mood you could imagine. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a car, perfume or hair commercials, a television drama or a big feature film, get inside the director’s mind, figure out the mood and make it happen.

ICG: What do you look for when you are recruiting a crew for a new film?

MORGAN: It’s not always about experience. Some of it’s about passion. When I see a guy who really loves what he’s doing, and really wants to do it, I want to give them a chance. I think that’s natural, because enthusiasm and passion was the only thing that got me work in the beginning. It was people seeing that I really wanted to do a good job. Once I had to get into my car at 4 a.m. to drive to the perfect spot to shoot a sunrise. They told me they couldn’t pay for the extra time, but I did it anyhow, because I wanted that perfect sunrise. Certainly there are jobs that require experience, but I believe in giving people who have the passion a chance. That doesn’t mean you can just grab a guy off the street and say shoot my film.

ICG:What are your unrealized dreams?

MORGAN: This is not very romantic. There is a book that I read by a convict who is a pretty good writer. I only know his nickname. They call him Red Hog. The guy is an old bank robber who has done a lot of time in the penitentiary. Someone gave me his book and asked me to read it. In prison, they would put the name of a guy they wanted to kill in a hat along with a bunch of blank pieces of paper. A bunch of convicts would pull those pieces of paper out of the hat. The guy who got the name would have to kill whoever it was. It’s actually a pretty funny movie that takes place in Fresno. It’s about cockfights, whores and hustlers, pimps and murderers and all that stuff. It’s a strange movie to want to make, but the guy does some interesting writing. I’d like to be involved with making that story into a film. But, the truth is that I don’t sit around and dream about doing any particular movie. I guess because of my background, people-driven stories that I’m interested in seem to come my way. I’m sure the name in a hat story isn’t all true, but I know a lot of it is about his life. There isn’t much redemption in this story, but I do like movies where there’s a social statement like Miss Evers’ Boys. It tickles me to think that something we did on film that we’re earning a living on meant so much that the President of the United States of America that he apologized to the one remaining victim. That stuff really excites me and I’m really proud of it. I’d like to be doing some of these big extravaganza movies, but that isn’t the arena I’m playing in today. I can’t go around worrying about that. I think my unfinished business is I haven’t lived today yet. I live a day at a time. I really do. I don’t try to live in the past and I don’t try to live in the future. I try to live in the day, and I think that’s why I’m a pretty happy guy. I think that a lot of people sit around waiting for the next good thing to happen. I don’t do that. The next good thing that happens is right here, right now, we’re doing it.