Profiles: Oscar Nominees, A New Breed of Filmmakers Stakes a Claim

Originally published in FILM & VIDEO Magazine in 1995

It only happens once in a lifetime.  You are nominated for an Oscar for the first time.  No words can describe the feelings that evokes.  When the nominees for cinematography talk about their feelings, they make it sound like a surrealistic experience.

“I’ve only met Gordon Willis, Haskell Wexler and Owen Roizman recently, but they and many others have been a part of my life since I was first drawn to the cinema,” says Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, who was nominated for photographing The Shawshank Redemption. “Conrad Hall’s work first turned me on to the idea of shooting movies instead of stills.” Now, Deakins was no longer an outsider.  He was one of them. 

It was also the first nomination for three of the other four Oscar nominees.  Don Burgess for Forrest Gump, Piotr Sobocinski for Three Colors: Red and John Toll for Legends of the Fall.  Chances are that you can’t name the title of another film shot by any of them.  Maybe Wind photographed by Toll is the exception. Burgess and Toll both previously received ASC nominations for Outstanding Achievement Awards in Cinematography for telefilms.  Burgess for The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson.  Toll for The Young Riders pilot.  All of Sobocinski’s previous dozen or so credits have Polish or German titles.  This was his introduction to the Western world.    

In contrast, itwas the fifth Oscar nomination for Owen Roizman, ASC, for his work on Wyatt Earp.  His other nominations were for The French Connection, The Exorcist, Network and Tootsie.  That’s a worldclass body of work in itself.  There’s more, including Three Days of the Condor, Grand Canyon and Absence of Malice, to name just a few.

Still, Roizman has a lot in common with the other nominees, including his unquenched passion for his work.  Roizman says an Oscar nomination never becomes commonplace.  It tasted as sweet as The French Connection, his first feature. Roizman shared something else with the other nominees.  Despite his four previous nominations, it would have been his first Oscar.  Many insiders expected Roizman to win, in part, because he is long overdue.  Also, many cinematographers consider period Westerns with big exteriors the ultimate creative challenge.  Nearly half of the Oscars for cinematography are for films with a lot of geography and big vistas. 

Some insiders favored Burgess.  Forrest Gump had already grossed nearly $400 million, and it had fostered a mini-industry for marketing everything from cookbooks to baseball caps. After years of shooting low- and no-budget features, and second unit work for many better known directors of photography, Burgess was suddenly in demand.  After Forrest Gump, he shot Richie Rich and Forget Paris.  The latter features Billy Crystal, who also directed.  It’s an early favorite in the 1996 boxoffice sweepstakes. 

Deakins, Roizman, Toll and Burgess were also nominated for the ASC Outstanding Achievement Award along with Hall for Love Affair.  Deakins took top honors in that contest.  He was his peers choice.  That was a clue for what to expect in the Oscar race.

Sobocinski was the long-shot.  Yet, a few months earlier he won the Golden Frog Award at CamerImage ‘94, the International Festival for Cinematography, in Torun, Poland for Three Colors: Red.  Admittedly,it was Poland, his native county.  But, he vied successfully for honors with some 30 cinematographers from every corner of the world.  Their films were chosen by the directors of the world’s top film festivals. The majority of judges at Torun were from the U.S., including Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, John Bailey, ASC, and Adam Holender, ASC. Sobocinski also earned kudos from critics at Cannes. 

“And the winner is John Toll,” said Paul Newman.

The actor stuttered and giggled He seemed embarrassed and bemused.  Newman had omitted identifying the nominees before naming the winner.  He gestured at the teleprompter. “Should I read it again,” he asked?  It was a rhetorical question, because no one answered.  A billion people were watching.  Toll instinctively knew what to do. 

Toll recited the names of the other nominees and their pictures.  He congratulated them for their accomplishments before he accepted the Oscar.  It was only his second feature length film.  But don't let that fool you.  It’s been a long and sometimes arduous journey.  The Oscar is a giant step forward on his career.

Toll, Deakins, Sobocinski and Burgess are in the front ranks of a new breed of talented cinematographers who are staking their claim on the future.  It’s not a new phenomena.  Last year, it was Gu Changwe, Farewell My Concubine, Stuart Dryburg, The Piano, and Janusz Kaminski, ASC, Schindler’s List.  All of these emerging talents share a sense of continuity with the cinematographers who blazed new creative paths during the 1960s and ‘70s.  None of them is a child protégé.  Without exception, their current successes are dividends paid on many years each of them invested in mastering their craft.   

Toll is the only cinematographer among the 1994 nominees who followed the traditional path of apprenticing in the Hollywood crew system.  He grew up in Ohio, where he developed an appetite for movie-going.  Toll can still tell you where and when he saw Lawrence of Arabia. Freddie Young’s cinematography made a deep impression on him. Toll was a photographic hobbyist during his teens.  Looking back, Toll says that’s when he started telling stories with pictures.  Toll moved to Southern California at the age of 19, and matriculated as a political science major.  That year, he got a job running errands for David Wolper’s documentary film production company.  Toll quickly became a production assistant, and then an assistant cameraman.  He earned his degree in political science, but eschewed a career in that field when he was able to claim a spot in the ranks of the International Photographers Guild.  Toll worked his way up through the crew system. He was the A camera operator on 15 features with Allen Daviau, ASC, John Alonzo, ASC, Robbie Greenberg, ASC, Jordan Cronenweth, ASC, Hall and others.

In retrospect, he muses that perhaps he spent too much time operating.  But Toll confesses to enjoying every moment of those experiences, and he believes that it added immeasurably to his makeup as a cinematographer.  The common denominators, he says, was the passion those cinematographers feel for their work. 

Toll started shooting in 1988.  He earned an ASC nomination for The Young Riders that year.  He subsequently earned several other telefilms and TV special credits, did some second unit work and shot more than 100 TV commercial credits.  He segued to features when Carroll Ballard selected him to photograph Wind.

Toll remembers seeing videocassettes of Lawrence of Arabia and Days of Heaven on director Ed Zwick’s desk the first time they met.  That gave him his first clue that this relationship could be something special.  Zwick made his reputation on TV with thirtysomething.  His first feature credit was Glory, and Freddie Francis, BSC earned an Oscar for cinematography on that film. 

It was immediately evident to Toll that Zwick is a very visually oriented director.  All of those years he prepared for this opportunity were about to reap dividends.