A Conversation with John Toll

Originally published in ICG Magazine in July 1999

Prologue: Many people believe John Toll, ASC, has set the contemporary standard for success as a cinematographer. Toll is one of only two cinematographers in history to earn consecutive Oscars^®. Leon Shamroy, ASC, did it in 1944 and 1945 at the back end of his career. Toll earned Oscars for his second and third films, Legends of the Fall and Braveheart. There was another Oscar nomination for The Thin Red Line. In addition, Legends of the Fall, Braveheart, and The Thin Red Line also earned ASC Outstanding Achievement Award nominations, with Toll receiving top honors for the latter two films.

Toll grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and moved to Los Angeles when he was 19-years-old and attended college there. While still in college, he got a part-time job working at David Wolper’s documentary production company. Toll started as a production assistant, but soon gravitated to the camera department.

Metromedia acquired Wolper’s company, which resulted in Toll getting an opportunity one summer to work as a second assistant cameraman on a movie-of- the-week that was shot by Andy Laszlo, ASC. It was done under an I.A. contract and that gave him the required number of days to qualify for the experience roster and union membership.

Toll continued to work on documentaries and commercials, as well as low budget features, until he was accepted into the Guild as an assistant cameraman. His first regular job after joining the Guild was working as a second assistant for one season on the TV series The Rookies.

“I was working on (director of photography) Archie Dalzell’s crew. It was my first good opportunity to watch how a large film crew is organized and a set is run,” Toll says. “Archie was great. He was extremely efficient and ran a tight ship. He was definitely in charge and the crew respected him and worked very hard for him.

“Up until that time I had worked mostly on documentaries or on chaotic low-budget features with crews that had very little experience. Archie had been in the business for 40 years or so but he was still very enthusiastic about the quality of his work. He had all these great old stories about working as a camera operator on Cecil B. DeMille and Raoul Walsh films and would tell me how they did various in-camera effects or shot the cavalry charge in They Died With Their Boots On. I thought it was fascinating.”

The following year he began working as a first assistant cameraman on TV commercials with several top director-cinematographers, including Melvin Sokolsky and Steve Horn. Toll worked primarily on commercials for two years until he got the opportunity to work with John Alonzo, ASC, on Black Sunday. He worked as an assistant on five features with Alonzo until

promoted to camera operator on FM, a feature directed by Alonzo. He was also Alonzo’s operator on Norma Rae and Tom Horn.

In 1979, Toll operated for Ray Villalobos, ASC on Urban Cowboy. He was camera operator for Allen Daviau, ASC, (Falcon and the Snowman), Conrad Hall, ASC, (Black Widow), Jordan Cronenweth, ASC, (Peggy Sue Got Married), and Robbie Greenburg, ASC, (The Milagro Beanfield War). He also worked with several other cinematographers compiling more than 20 feature and TV movie credits as a camera operator during the 1980s.

While working as an operator during this period, Toll was also shooting documentaries and commercials. In 1988 he stopped working as an operator and began shooting commercials full time. He shot second unit for Haskell Wexler, ASC on Blaze in 1989, and earned his first mainstream narrative credit for the pilot for The Young Riders TV Series. Toll earned an ASC Outstanding Achievement Award nomination for that effort. His first feature credit as a cinematographer came in 1991 for Wind, which was directed by Carroll Ballard. Following are excerpts of an interview with Toll:

Question: You chose to work your way up through the camera crew system. Looking back, do you have any regrets?

Toll: No. Before I joined the union as an assistant cameraman, I was working freelance either as a cinematographer or as an assistant on documentaries and very low-budget features—extremely low budget. I would take any job I could get. I was trying to get as much experience as possible. I had always been interested in still photography, but hadn’t been to film school or anything like that. I was pretty much faking it, really.

Question: What was your goal?

Toll: I wanted to work on large-scale features that told great stories about people and did it with wonderful imagery. The work I had been doing was as far from that as you could get. I was really enjoying the work, especially the documentaries, but I was working with people who had just a little more experience than I had. What I wanted was to move on to larger scale projects. However, all the worthwhile pictures were union pictures and I wasn’t in the union. Then, by pure accident, I worked enough days on a union job to qualify for the experience roster. Unfortunately, these were very dark days for our union. It was nearly impossible to get into the I.A. The attitude of the leadership of both the I.A. and of the camera locals was the opposite of what exists today. At that time the union leadership was actively working to exclude people. It wasn’t easy to get into the union, so I took advantage of the opportunity to get in when I could. I joined the union as an assistant and worked my way up because it seemed like the most direct route to working on the types of films I thought I wanted to do. It took a while to become the director of photography on those films, but at the time it felt like the right thing to do. Today, thank god, we have progressive leadership that is working for the members and trying to organize and bring people into our union.

Question: Would you make the same choices today?

Toll: Quite honestly, I don’t know what I would do. I think there are more opportunities for younger cinematographers today. There are many more film schools and a greater variety of work is available to new cinematographers. But, I also know that I am a better cinematographer today because I had the opportunity to work for the directors of photography who included me on their crews. Young cinematographers ask me this question all the time, and I don’t think there is one simple answer. I just followed my instincts most of the time and it seemed to work out okay. Some cinematographers have worked on crews and some haven’t. For a short time Conrad Hall worked as an assistant and as an operator. Bill Fraker (ASC) was Conrad’s operator for several pictures and Jordan Cronenweth worked as both an assistant and operator for Conrad. But excellent cinematographers like Allen Daviau and Steve Burum (ASC) have only worked as directors of photography and never as assistants or operators. I’m a great believer in following your intuition. The only advice I ever give to aspiring cinematographers is to tell them to start telling stories with images as often as they can by any means available to them. I also tell them I would try to join the Guild as early as possible. Guild members are still working on the most impressive films. And even more importantly, camera crews have common interests that can only be addressed collectively by the Guild. We really do need a strong national Guild with good leadership. It is in all of our interests.

Question: Were there specific cinematographers whom you wanted to work with, or was it fate that you ended up with some really talented people?

Toll: I always had ideas about specific cinematographers, or at least the type of cinematographer I wanted to work with, but I never thought I could orchestrate it and never really tried to. Things just worked out. It sounds pretty corny, but what I really did was to just concentrate on the work. Whatever job I happened to be doing, I just tried to do it as well as I possibly could. I felt that if the work was good everything else would fall into place. I wanted to learn as much as I could about the film business and the art and craft of cinematography, so I just kept working as much as possible and eventually started to get calls from the type of cinematographers I had hoped to hear from. When given a choice of who I could work with, I would always go with a cinematographer whose work I admired.

Question: What were the most important things you learned about while you were working as an assistant and operator?

Toll: I learned that it isn’t specific technical things that are most important. Everyone I worked with had different techniques, just as mine are different from theirs. I think what is important is the idea that great cinematography comes from having a passion for telling a story with images, and having perseverance in making the imagery a vitally important part of the film. Of course, this is no secret. But it is amazing how often the visual design of a project gets buried in the various agendas which are brought to a film that really have nothing to do with what is on the screen. I learned that it is not enough to just have technical knowledge of cinematography or even the creative ability to design great visuals. It is being able to give those visual storytelling ideas a priority and making sure that everyone else on a picture understands what that means. Cinematographers must be passionate about their work and be willing to fight for its visual integrity. That is as vitally important as technical knowledge or creative ability. The cinematographers I worked with all had different ways of working, but they shared this common attitude.  They believed in the importance and integrity of their work. It didn’t really seem to matter whether it was a feature or TV or commercials. It was a common characteristic. 

Question: How did you decide it was time to give up operating?

Toll: I was always looking for opportunities to move up while I was working as an operator, but I waited for two reasons. One, I was having a great time, and two, I wasn’t getting the kinds of offers I wanted as a director of photography. I would get periodic offers to shoot some really bad low-budget scripts or a series or something, but I would pass. There was good television being made, but the shows I was offered didn’t seem that interesting to me. This was during the time I was working with Allen (Daviau), Jordan (Cronenweth), Conrad (Hall), and Robbie (Greenberg), so there was usually something really interesting going on with someone like that on a feature and I found it difficult to turn down those pictures.

At one point I was offered a picture that would have been great. It was with a fairly well known director who I had worked with as an operator. I was offered the picture but it was non-union. That was okay, because during that period a lot of people in the Guild were working on non-union pictures that were organized while in progress. I said I would like to do it, and then the producer told me I would have to go financial core or quit the Guild in order to do the picture. Those were unacceptable options, so I turned it down.

This was type of situation that was happening to many other Guild camera operators who were trying to move up during this period. There was a large pool of talented non-I.A. cinematographers and crews available, and producers were using them (to shoot) non-union (pictures). They didn’t hire I.A. cinematographers, because they were afraid the pictures would become organized. So, most of the lower budget pictures that had traditionally been available to first time cinematographers were being shot non-I.A. This was a situation the I.A. had partially created inadvertently by excluding experienced cinematographers from becoming members. We actually helped create an experienced non-I.A. labor pool. Fortunately, our current leadership, George (Spiro) Dibie (ASC) and Bruce Doering have gone to great lengths to help open up the Guild to qualified cinematographers.

Question: When did you actually begin shooting?

Toll: In the 1980’s I worked with Jordan (Cronenweth) and Robbie (Greenberg) on a lot of commercials in between features. Robbie recommended me to a director he knew, Robert Black, who was doing a big Caribbean cruise ship commercial. That was the beginning. Just before I left on this job, I had met Judy Marks. She was just starting out as an agent and was looking for clients. I told her she could be my agent if she got me some work. When I got back from the Caribbean she had some commercials lined up and so I became a director of photography. I felt it was time to be shooting full time, and commercials were the most visually interesting work available to me.

Question: How did shooting commercials affect your career?

Toll: It was great. I was exposed to many different shooting situations in a very short time. I worked with lots of different directors and was able to experiment and use a great variety of styles and techniques. One week I was shooting in the Caribbean or Alaska, and the next week it was a car commercial on a stage. Many of the jobs were built around storytelling ideas. The commercial directors were practicing for their first feature, like they are today, but with a different emphasis than you see now.

Question: How did you happen to shoot The Young Riders pilot?

Toll: The director was Rob Lieberman. He did both commercials and television. We first met when he was looking for someone to do a commercial. The commercial didn’t happen but then he called me about The Young Riders. He liked my commercial reel and thought my experience on features as an operator would qualify me to shoot the pilot.

Question: What was it like finally shooting a main stream film?

Toll: It was really good, although fast and furious. Rob is a very talented and well-organized director. We came up with a good visual style for telling the story, and designed the picture in away that allowed us to do interesting cinematography and do it on a 17-day schedule.

Question: How did you get your first feature?

Toll: I was shooting some car commercials with Carroll Ballard. He told me about this picture he was going to direct called Wind. It sounded like a nightmare. It was about 12-meter yacht racing, and half the movie was going to be shot on open sailboats in rough conditions. He was very enthusiastic about Wind. I told him I thought it would be a great project, but I was actually thinking that it would be pure hell to shoot. I kept remembering my limited experience on small boats had been spent watching my lunch go over the rail.

Question: Did you tell him that?

Toll: No. He had told me he had asked an Australian cinematographer to shoot the picture, so I knew I wouldn’t be involved in it. I had really liked working with Carroll, and knew him to be a wonderful filmmaker. He was very excited about it all. I just kept sounding enthusiastic about how great it was going to be and how much fun they would all have. We were working in Boston and flew back together. He spent the whole time talking about the picture. He asked me about the documentaries I had done and about The Young Riders. When we got off the plane he said, “Maybe I’ll give you a call if it doesn’t work out with the other guy,” I said “OK. That sounds great,” thinking I’d never hear from him. Four months later I get a call from Tom Luddy, Carroll’s producer, saying they had been delayed and now the other cinematographer had a scheduling conflict and Carroll wanted me to do the picture and could I be in Australia in three weeks? So of course I said yes.

Question. Did you end up having problems with seasickness?

Toll: No, I kept so busy with the challenge of actually shooting the picture that I never really had any problems like that. Working on the boats was so exciting that I didn’t really think about much else and I did fine. It was just too good a project to even think about saying no. It was a chance to work with a classic visual storyteller on a picture with unlimited visual potential. And, just as I had told Carroll, it was really a lot of fun.