Heading West with Wyatt Earp
by Stephen Pizzello

The article originally appeared in American Cinematographer
in June 1994.

It is well past sundown,and a quiet calm prevails on the dimly lit streets of Tombstone, a Western town once plagued by lawlessness and the mercenary whims of gun-toting despera­does. Since the arrival of a badge-for-hire named Wyatt Earp, Main Street has been made safe again. On this particular evening, how­ever the strapping deputy sher­iff is headed to a local hotel, where Doc Holliday a newcomer of notorious renown, is em­broiled in a bitter boudoir feud with Big Nose Kate, a lady friend of equal infamy.

Striding into the hotel’s lobby, Earp is directed toward the second floor by a group of jit­tery citizens. As he mounts the stairs a gunshot rings out; his instincts kicking in, Earp grips the balustrade and bounds to­ward the trouble. Before he reaches the landing, however, a cry of “Cut!” pierces the air, stop­ping him in mid-stride.

In the moments that follow a hubbub of activity disrupts the illusion of the Old West. The “hotel” is once again reduced to a frigid film set, made marginally more hospitable by an array of strategically placed space heat­ers. As the parka-clad crew at­tends to the secondary actors and props director Lawrence Kasdan and his star Kevin Costner con­fer about the scene’s blocking. Cinematographer Owen Roizman, ASC, chomping on a cigar that protrudes from a beard culti­vated for extra warmth, takes advantage of the break to adjust a group of soft lights that hang over the hotel’s entryway. A short time later, Costner is once again clambering up the stair­case.

Budgeted at $65 million and slated to run over three hours in length, Wyatt Earp is Warner Bros.’ best bid for a sum­mer blockbuster. Shot mainly in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the film covers most of Earp’s life from his teen years to late middle-age. Contrary to most previous screen treatments of the legendary law­man, the story paints a warts-and-all portrait of a conflicted man whose life included bouts of alcoholism and criminality. In addition to Costner the cast fea­tures Dennis Quaid (as Doc Holliday), Isabella Rossellini (Big Nose Kate), Gene Hackman (as Wyatt’s father), Mark Harmon, Michael Madsen, JoBeth Will­iams, Catherine O’Hara, Adam Baldwin, Betty Buckley, Jeff Fahey, Tom Sizemore and Mare Winningham.

As filming of the hotel sequence wraps, Roizman con­cedes that the film’s grueling schedule and the recent Novem­ber weather conditions in Santa Fe (well below zero with wind chill factored in) have made the last weeks of shooting an arduous approach to the finish line. “Most people would think that a 113-day schedule was pretty lib­eral, but every day was packed,” he maintains. “Before the picture started, I went over the schedule with the assistant director, Steve Dunn, and we just laughed at a couple of the days because we knew they were impossible to make. But as we went along, we found out that we were actually doing it.”

One of the reasons the filmmakers were able to hew to deadlines was their determination to shoot in any and all weather conditions. Roizman re­ports that the production went just eight days over schedule, los­ing only half a day to the ele­ments when a torrential down­pour hit during a lunch hour. The cinematographer adds that his director issued an additional time saving edict before shooting began. “Larry, the editor (Carol Littleton), the script supervisor (Anne Rapp) and I made a pact at the beginning of the film that we would not worry about match­ing,” he says. “Larry’s experience was that in all of the great films he’d ever loved, he could see that a lot of stuff didn’t match, but it didn’t take away from his en­joyment. If we hadn’t done it that way, we never would have stayed on schedule. So occasion­ally we’d find ourselves shooting a scene in the middle of the day, with bright overhead sunlight, and finishing when the sun was going down - sometimes when it was already down. A couple of times, I even found myself shoot­ing night-for-day. It would be pitch black out, and I’d be light­ing shots that we had done dur­ing the afternoon, just so we could finish the day’s work. Other cinematographers will no­tice that some things don’t match, but I don’t think the general au­dience will ever know the differ­ence. It was something I just had to live with.”

Wyatt Earp marks the third collaboration between Roizman and Kasdan, following I Love You to Death and Grand Canyon. Roizman has been nomi­nated for four Academy Awards (The French Connection, The Exor­cist, Network and Tootsie), and has also overseen principal photogra­phy on such films as The Heart­break Kid, Play It Again Sam, The Taking of Pelham 123, Three Days of the Condor, The Return of a Man Called Horse, Straight Time, Ab­sence of Malice and The Addams Family.

Given this distinguished list of credits, one would assume that Roizman has always har­bored a yen for filmmaking. Not so; the Brooklyn-born cinematog­rapher insists that his first love was baseball. “My father (Sol Roizman) was a cinematogra­pher, my sister was a script su­pervisor, and my uncle was an editor,” he says. “But all through high school and college, I was a baseball player - that was my dream.”

A promising pitcher, Roizman’s shot at hardball glory ended when he developed a sore arm. After graduating from Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg Col­lege with a B.A. in Math and Physics, he considered becoming a physicist, mathematician or en­gineer, but instead decided to try working as an assistant camera­man. He first trained with New York-based cameraman Akos Farkos (“a Hungarian camera­man from the old school”) and then moved on to work closely with Gerald Hirschfeld, ASC. His association with Hirschfeld led to commercial work and the low-budget feature Stop (1969). Shortly thereafter, he shot the classic police drama The French Connection, which established his reputation overnight.

“When The French Connection came out, everybody labeled me as this gritty New York street photographer, “ he recounts. It wasn’t until later, when I’d done several other very different projects that people realized I could do other things. I know I’ve gotten slicker but I still have the same basic philosophy: I like realism and I like light sources. I don’t want it to look like a documentary but I don’t go too far in the other direc­tion either.”

He adhered to those principles on Wyatt Earp, hoping to stake out new visual terrain in a genre that has been covered from every conceivable angle in an endless array of styles. Seek­ing to make a unique contribu­tion to cowboy cinema, Roizman screened every Western he could find on laserdisc or tape. He also delved deeply into the history books, sifting through reams of information about Earp himself and the period in which he’d lived. “I wanted to familiarize myself with what it was like so I could start to formulate my own pictures of what it might have looked like,” he states. “I didn’t necessarily want to copy any­thing from the films I watched; if anything, I wanted to go against what had been done and make this different than any Western ever shot. I don’t know if I succeeded but that was my goal. Of course, my job was made that much easier by the people I worked with. When you have the kind of palette I was given by [production designer] Ida Ran­dom, [set dresser] Cheryl Carasik and [costume de­signer] Colleen Atwood it makes the job that much easier and more enjoyable.”

As he studied the work of others, Roizman began to feel that his favored approach-real­ism-would ironically be some­thing of a departure. “Strangely general, I stayed true to my sources.”

Roizman also kept filtra­tion to a minimum. He points out that one of the most picturesque and authentic-looking Westerns, Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC), still had a heavily diffused look. “I used some filtration but it’s so subtle I don’t think you’ll notice it,” he says. “I had a plan for the way the film should look in general. I thought the interi­ors should be very warm, with lighting from the candles and

kerosene lamps, and very dark when possible. I felt that the day exteriors should be bright, dusty, smoky and overexposed. I wanted the evenings-espe­cially sunsets-to have a very rich, natural quality, with beauti­ful skies. On the other hand, I let the daytime skies blow out. And at night, it was just dark. We had some lamps working, but the only other source I had was the moonlight. So I always tried to play a little bit of blue moonlight someplace. It’s a tricky thing to do, because if you overdo the blue it becomes very obtrusive. I thought it helped to counteract the warmth, though; if you have too much warmth all the time, it starts to look muddy.”

If a scene was too contrasty, the cinematographer says he would “knock it down” with Tiffen’s UltraCons and SoftCons. His only other indulgence was to occasionally add a black ProMist to the lens.

Roizman was also care­ful in his choice of film stocks. Rather than using Kodak’s richer 5245 or 5248 stocks for day exte­riors, he opted for the new 5293. “I felt that it had a little less color saturation, and it wasn’t as contrasty. It’s a subtle difference, but I felt that it desaturated just enough for me during the day scenes, so I could capture that ‘older’ feeling. The one thing we didn’t want to do was to get into any sepia-type stuff; I just printed slightly on the warm side. We did try to get a more orangey look for the night exteriors, because I felt that’s the way it would have looked.”

When shooting interiors and night exteriors, Roizman went with Eastman’s higher-speed 5296. “I found that stock to be extraordinary, because I also used it when the light went down at the end of the day,” he says. “I often threw it on, sometimes without an 85 [filter,] to continue a scene we’d started earlier. It’s a terrific-looking film at that time of the day. I didn’t want to use it in the middle of the day, because I didn’t think it would match ex­actly right, but I gladly would use it at the beginning or the end of the day, when the light was so low that you could hardly see. That film sees in the dark, and I got some fantastic results with it. We shot some scenes when there was just no light left at all. 1 have a digital meter, and the meter was telling me, ‘It’s time to go home.’ The film often allowed us to do another take for perfor­mance, and when we saw those takes in the screening room it was just amazing how much light and detail there was. It perfectly matched what we’d done earlier.”

On more than one occa­sion, however, shot-to-shot matching was made more diffi­cult by the fact that the crew of­ten covered scenes with multiple cameras. This strategy is fre­quently employed on action-heavy adventure yarns, but Roizman points out that Wyatt Earp, despite the conventions of its genre and the inevitable inclu­sion of the bullet-fest at the O.K. Corral, is a more story and char­acter driven picture. According to the cinematographer, the filmmakers opted to use multiple cameras primarily to save time. He notes, however, that the ben­efits to the schedule were offset by some difficult aesthetic con­siderations. “In order to accom­modate the multiple cameras, I couldn’t be as careful with some of the lighting as I wanted to be,” he admits. “I occasionally would have to illuminate for a wide shot and a close-up at the same time. Sometimes we even cross-shot different scenes; the cameras would be looking almost back at each other, which is a nightmare for lighting. To counter that, I tried to get an overall look so I could shoot in almost any direction and still have the same feeling.”

The multiple cameras also caused some problems dur­ing exterior scenes, which fre­quently required the film’s spe­cial effects crew to try to control the dust effects Roizman added for atmosphere. “There’s a dan­ger to that approach, of course, and controlling dust in an area like Santa Fe is even more diffi­cult because the weather is so tur­bulent; it changes every few min­utes,” he relates. “Because of the natural dust, we had water trucks come through to wet the streets down so we could work. At other times, we had to make our own dust. We had scenes where we put dust in, and it was just right, but all of a sudden the wind would come up and blow it out or change the direction Thank God I had Bert Dalton and his special-effects gang; those guys were great at controlling the dust. They used fans and little hand­held machines, but to keep it looking consistent was still very difficult The same thing went for smoke; in those days, people were always burning things for heat, and cooking on little stoves outside. I had to try to remember from shot to shot what was hap­pening. It would have been a lot easier with one camera; working with two cameras from different angles made it twice as hard. We did the best we could, and all we can hope is that it cuts together.”

The epic sweep of the story was enhanced by the use of the wide-screen anamorphic format. The A and B units (con­sisting of A cameraman Bill Roe; B cameraman Ian Fox; A camera first assistant Alan Disler; B cam­era assistants Jeffrey Gershman and Tony Rivetti; second assis­tants Mike Raspa and Eric Roizman; and loader Mike Martinez) worked with Panavision Platinum and Gold cameras, respectively; Roizman’s lenses of choice were Primo primes and Cooke’s 10:1 and 5:1 zooms. He reports that he tai­lored his photography to the usual characteristics associated with anamorphic, especially the format’s reputation for a de­creased depth of field. “We al­ways had enough depth on the people, and as far as the back­ground was concerned, I didn’t care,” Roizman explains. “It never seemed to bother me if things were out of focus in the background, and I never felt that they were that far out, because we didn’t do that many close-ups in the picture. Larry and I de­cided, especially in light of our research, that in the biggest feel­ing films we’d ever seen, the close-ups were never that close, and were used judiciously to heighten their impact. For a gen­eral close-up, we never got that close, although we still called it a ‘close-up’. It may not work as well on a television set, but on the large screen that approach gives everything a bigger feeling.”

This strategy of restraint also aided Roizman in his at­tempts to “age” Kevin Costner photographically, by allowing him to keep the camera back a bit. Costner himself goes through three transitions, although there are four overall (Ian Bohen plays the teenaged Wyatt). “The first time you see Kevin, he’s sup­posed to be 21 years old, and let’s face it, as good as he looks, it’s a conceit for us to think he looks 21,” Roizman says with a wry smile, risking the wrath of his star and fellow filmmaker. “How­ever, Kevin did a great job in the acting, and I tried to light so you wouldn’t see many wrinkles in his face. I tried to get fill light into his face and under his eyes to light out the few wrinkles there were and make his skin look even smoother. I approached it the way I approach lighting for women. With women, it depends on the shape of the face. If they have a rounder face, I might half-light them to make their face look narrower; if they have a thin face, I might front-light to make the face look a little broader.

“There are several women in this picture, but at the outset there were only two whom I really felt I had to flatter-Wyatt’s first wife and second wife. The other women were sup­posed to be whores or plain Janes who weren’t supposed to look too good. The toughest one to do that with was Isabella [Rossellini.] Her character, Big Nose Kate, is supposed to be a notorious pros­titute and a bitch on wheels, and she played it really tough. Larry and I agreed we shouldn’t make her look glamorous. I took the same approach with the other women. They always seemed happy at dailies, though, so it worked out O.K.”

Roizman took a rougher approach to Costner during the portion of the film in which Earp becomes an alcoholic trouble­maker. “At that point, I let a lot of things go,” he says. “I also tried to shoot him from higher angles when he was down in his dol­drums. Later, after he’s recov­ered, he puts a moustache on, and has more character in his face. During that section the film, I always wanted him to look strong, so I shot him a lot from low angles. Kevin is a big guy, and he’s pretty dynamic onscreen, so I didn’t have to do a lot to help him out. But I tried to add whatever subtleties I could.”

The cinematographer re­sisted the urge to exaggerate the gaunt, weatherbeaten look of Doc Holliday, who suffered from tu­berculosis. Actor Dennis Quaid donned makeup and reportedly lost 40 pounds for the role, and Roizman felt that additional pho­tographic enhancements were unnecessary. “I didn’t do any­thing to accentuate Holliday’s ill­ness or make him look especially bad. I just tried to make him look interesting; to give him a quality of light that always lent his face some character. Dennis even came over to me at the end of the picture and told me, ‘I think your lighting enhanced the perfor­mances.’ It was a nice compli­ment.”

In his desire to fully ex­ploit the anamorphic frame, Roizman shied away from his usual proclivity for long lenses. “Basically, we were on wider lenses, so the background was never that soft even at 2-8,” he says. “On the exteriors, I was working just the opposite of what I might normally do, which is to open up to about 5.6, or 8, to use the best part of the lens. I found myself shooting mostly at 16 out­side. I never would stop down past 16, even if the light said 32, I’d just overexpose it two stops.”

While the cinematogra­pher maintains that the picture offered more than its share of technical brain-twisters, several scenes proved to be especially rigorous. Roizman says that the camera was constantly on the move, and cites a nighttime Steadicam sequence as being one of the trickiest lighting setups of his career.

The scene in question begins in a local jail cell, where a prisoner is peering out of his win­dow; on the streets beyond the bars, flickering lights indicate the approach of a lynch mob. The prisoner shouts for Earp, who’s on guard duty, to save him. The camera glides from the jail cell to Earp, who straps on his gun and heads outside to confront the mob. As the crowd arrives at the jailhouse steps, the camera circles behind the angry citizens to face Wyatt-an arc of roughly 270 degrees.

To achieve this sweeping move, Roizman invoked a bit of old-fashioned ingenuity. “I used a lot of overhead light, and hid some fixtures behind windows,” he reveals. “We also had a firebar on pipes off to the side to aug­ment the torches when the mob got close at the end. The torches basically lit the people, but the street had to be lit in such a way that it didn’t overpower the torches. I had to work at a stop that allowed me to get all of this light in and have it balance. I shot it all at 2.8. I’d been working at 2.8 for most of the picture, and I found that to balance against the little practicals we were using-to simulate candles, and so forth-2.8 worked the best for me. During this particular sequence, I thought about stopping down to 2.3 or 2, but I didn’t because I wanted the lens to resolve a little better. Rusty Geller was the Steadicam operator, and he did a terrific job on a very tough shot.”

As for the O.K. Corral sequence, Roizman is able to sum up his approach in one word, “coverage.” Kasdan wanted to re­create the gunfight as accurately as possible, right down to its ac­tual duration (20 to 30 seconds) and location (an alley beside Fly’s Photography, which was in front of the corral itself). “It took us about five days to shoot the se­quence,” Roizman says. “We spent most of our time on the buildup, as the Earps walk to­ward the corral. We did a lot of coverage-shooting from up high on rooftops, from half a block away over a woman’s shoulder from behind the Earps, in individual close-ups and close-ups of the guns and faces, and with a Steadicam. We used smoke and dust the whole time, and the light changed dramati­cally each day from the begin­ning of shooting till the end; it was really difficult to match things, but Larry’s theory was that each shot would be so quick you’d never see the difference. We were shooting with two cam­eras, sometimes three, plus the Steadicam. The master shot took 20 to 30 seconds, so it’s exactly accurate.”

While shooting the film’s climax, set at a train station in Chama, New Mexico, Roizman found himself changing his tech­nique to suit Mother Nature-and being pleasantly surprised by the results. Bent on avenging the murder of his younger brother Morgan, who has been killed by the surviving baddies from the corral shootout, Earp hops aboard the train carrying the coffin, accompanied by his friend Doc Holliday. When the locomotive arrives at the train station, Earp and Holliday en­gage in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Morgan’s killers, who are lying in wait for them.

“There’s a big buildup from inside the train as it’s pull­ing in,” Roizman elaborates. “When Wyatt arrives at the sta­tion, we played the scene with a lot of steam from the trains. We created a lot of silhouettes, light­ing up the steam from behind and having the actors walk through the white areas, adding little flashes of light to show a bit of their faces. I played the steam very bluish to make it a bit more ominous-looking as the guys are looking under the trains and hunting for each other.”

At a high point in the se­quence, Wyatt shoots a man be­tween two trains, one of which is moving. To stage the shot, the moving train had to be backed up and restarted repeatedly. “Ex­ecuting that sequence was very dangerous, because the trains were close together, it was cold, and there was a lot of steam and soot,” Roizman notes.

After three nights of shooting, the cinematographer’s job was made tougher when it began to rain. “It rained for about half the night on the fourth night, but Larry didn’t want to stop shooting,” he says. “He said to me, ‘Find a way to do it so we don’t see the rain.’ So I had to change my whole lighting style. On the last night of the sequence, it poured steadily all night long, but the production company still didn’t want to stop. Instead of working with backlight, I de­cided to use reflections, silhou­ettes in reflections, half-lights and tricks like that. This made things especially tough for my gaffer, Ian Kincaid, who had to reroute a lot of the equipment, and my key grip, Tim Ryan, who had to protect everything from the rain. But it worked out great; the se­quence might not have been as dynamic if I’d done all of it the way I’d originally intended.”

Reflecting upon his deep involvement in the project, Roizman says that he was happy to have the chance to learn more about the Old West and Earp himself. “Most stories about Wyatt Earp-including My Dar­ling Clementine, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Hour of the Gun-focus on the gunfight, with a fictional orientation that makes Wyatt into a big hero,” he points out. “Earp was a legend, but there’s a lot of controversy. Many of the history books por­tray him as a very bad guy, claim­ing that he and his brothers were criminals and that the gunfight wasn’t a fair fight. They were ac­tually arrested after the gunfight and tried, but were freed.

“In our film, there’s a scene at the end that poses a question about how much of the story was truth and how much was fiction. It’s left open. In terms of the story, this is probably go­ing to be a very dark picture.”