Seen it all, Done it All:
Looking Back on a Lifetime of Achievement
By Bob Fisher

Originally appeared in American Cinematographer Magazine in 1993.

It's a cliché, but Haskell Wexler, ASC, really is becoming a legend in his own time. Everyone seems to have a story about him. Some are probably myths. But many are based in reality. And like that battery commercial, he keeps going and going and going. Maybe there's a clone or a twin doing some of this stuff.

There's a Wexler who is a minimalist running around Los Angeles with a Hi-8 video camera shooting a documentary about freelance news photographers who cover the darker side of life. That Wexler has some 35 to 40 documentary credits. Reality films run in his blood. But he'll also explain shooting any film is an unnatural act because once you point a camera at someone you alter reality.

There is a Wexler who's maximalistic. He shot the longest IMAX film ever made, At the Max, a 50-minute journey with the Rolling Stones on tour. That Wexler talks about creating an ultimate movie-going experience. He tells you he knows Mick Jagger and the other Stones for some 20 years -- then quickly adds he's much straighter than they are. Oh! Thanks for clarifying that point. It's not his first IMAX film. In 1982 Wexler shot Hail Columbia, a bigger than life depiction of the maiden flight of the space shuttle.

There's a Wexler who's an entrepreneur. He teamed up with Conrad Hall, ASC, another one of Hollywood's most revered cinematographers, in a TV commercial production company for more than a decade. Wexler says unabashedly they were in it for the money. But sometimes it was like a research and development center for exploring new ways to combine film and TV as a form of visual communications. Wexler has shot hundreds of commercials.

There's a Wexler who received the 1993 ASC Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the first active cameraman to receive this recognition which is given annually to a cinematographer whose body of work has made a lasting impression on the art form. The selection of an active cinematographer as the 1993 Lifetime Achievement winner is a break with precedent. ASC President William A. Fraker, says Wexler's peers felt there was no point in waiting to express their admiration. "His body of work is exceptional," he says. "He has already made a lasting impact."

The selection of Wexler is almost symbolic. The baton has been passed to a new generation. The previous recipients were George Folsey, ASC, Joe Biroc, ASC, Stanley Cortez, ASC, Charles Lang, ASC, and Phil Lathrop, ASC. All of them started their careers during the 1920s and '30s, came up through the Hollywood crew system and compiled substantial bodies of work before retiring.

Wexler practically forced his way into Hollywood from the outside. He was regarded as a maverick or counter culture character for much of his career. Wexler has some 35 feature credits. He won Oscars for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Bound for Glory. There were other nominations for Blaze, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Matewan. His body of work also includes The Thomas Crown Affair, In the Heat of the Night, Coming Home, Colors, The Three Fugitives, Other People's Money and The Babe.

It's like a grab bag. Pick any one of his films, and there are stories that go with it. Try Matewan. The John Sayles film was shot with a bare bones $4 million budget. In addition to an Oscar nomination, Wexler won the Independent Spirit award. The latter is given annually by the Independent Feature Project/ West to films produced without any financial assistance from a major studio.

The lack of funds gave Wexler an opportunity to do some serious tinkering. Instead of laying tracks, he had special wheels built for the dolly. That allowed him to use an abandoned train track running through the middle of town for long exterior tracking shots. Shooting in a coal mine on a minimal budget? No problem. Wexler lit faces by bouncing light coming from graphite flame lamps on the miners' hats with reflective aluminum cards. He also sprinkled aluminum glitter from Christmas decoration packages on the walls. It looked like drops of water glimmering in the pitch black tunnels.

"I've worked in the mines," he explains, "so, I knew what to expect. The movie was set in the early '20s, when miners worked in utter darkness except from the glow from the graphite flames on their hats."

Pity the next cinematographer who had to work with Sayles. It was Robert Richardson, ASC, who shot Nine Men Out. "He (Sayles) was filled with stories about how Haskell did things without equipment, time or money and got an Oscar nomination," Richardson recalls.

Paul Goldsmith, the cinematographer who shot Max Headroom and various other films, once told about getting a phone call from Wexler who had seen some of his films on a cable channel. Wexler asked if he was interested in shooting second camera for a commercial. At first Goldsmith thought it was a joke. He couldn't believe Haskell Wexler was calling him. It was no joke. Goldsmith ended up spending two years working with Wexler. He called it a pure filmatic experience.

Tom Sigel had a similar experience. Sigel had worked as a second unit camera operator for Wexler on a documentary filmed in Nicaragua. Wexler asked if he wanted to shoot Latino. It was a very important and personal film for Wexler; a feature about the inner soul of a country caught up in a violent civil war. Wexler wrote, produced, directed and in large part, financed the film.

Why did he choose a young cinematographer who had never shot a feature before? "He has a sensitive eye and understands lighting and composition," Wexler answered. "What else is there?"

That's vintage Wexler -- experimenting, trying to satisfy a seemingly insatiable appetite for filmmaking, and all the while nurturing talented young cinematographers like a missionary sending disciples out into the world.

Here's a different kind of story. It comes from documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles (Salesman, Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter, etc.). It was 1968, and Maysles was in Chicago shooting a documentary against the background of the civic insurrection surrounding and disrupting the Democratic party's national convention. Another crew headed by Wexler was working at many of the same locations. The two filmmakers had crossed paths many times. In fact, Wexler shot some scenes for Maysles on Salesman in 1968.

This time Wexler was shooting a feature film that he was also directing and co-producing. It was called Medium Cool. It was a different type of film. It was almost like Wexler was inventing a hybrid artform. He was mixing hyper-reality with narrative filmmaking.

"He (Wexler) asked me to appear in his film as an actor playing the role of a reporter," Maysles recalls. He told Wexler, he couldn't do it. He couldn't become an actor. It was like asking a mute to sing. "So Haskell asked if he could borrow my jacket. I was wearing a wool Norfolk hunting jacket that he envisioned this character wearing." Any warm body would do. It was the jacket he wanted.

It's like Wexler was born with an inner eye that allows him to envision how the audience will see his films.

"Movies are a voyeuristic experience," he says. "You have to make the audience feel like they are peeking through a keyhole. I think of myself as the audience. Then I use light, framing and motion to create a focal point."

Wexler once defined himself as a camera-man, making it sound like a hyphenated word. "I like the idea of being a camera-man," he says. "I shoot a lot of documentaries. I like the idea that I am the one who is closest to the camera. Me and the camera; somehow we are helping the director make the picture. I like to be close to the moment of photography."

Wexler was born in Chicago in 1926 and grew up in that city. His only occasional childhood encounters with a camera occurred while making home movies during family vacations. He spent a year at Berkeley, attending the University of California.

Wexler volunteered to become an ordinary seaman in the merchant marine during the second world war. Twice he survived torpedo attacks while tankers he was on were running the gauntlet of Nazi submarines in the North Sea on the way to Murmansk. Another time, a tanker he was on sank off the coast of Africa. He spent a month living in native villages. At the end of the war, Wexler was a second officer. "All you had to do to get a promotion was stay alive," he quipped.

After the war, Wexler spent a few months working for his father in a stock room at Allied Radio Company in Chicago. It was apparent that he wasn't a chip off the old block. "Almost in desperation, dad asked me what I wanted to do," Wexler recalls. "I thought of something really outlandish. I told him I wanted to be a filmmaker."

Wexler started at the top, or so he thought. His father helped him open a studio in a suburb of Chicago. Wexler was equipped with the latest camera and lighting equipment, and he hired the prettiest receptionist available. His father prevailed upon business acquaintances to hire his son to produce industrial films.

Wexler realized only the barest modicum of success. But it wasn't wasted time. Years later, looking back on those experiences, he recalled what it was like to shoot film in a factory in Alabama. It was the first time he saw how people lived and worked in those circumstances. He learned about the uniqueness of the texture of the look of reality. He also discovered that the moment of truth in photography is a fleeting and delicate thing, but it is the stuff that touches the soul.

Wexler began to put his priorities in order. In 1947, he joined the International Photographers Guild in Chicago, and re-started his career at the bottom rung of the ladder, as an assistant cameraman. That's when he really began learning about cinematography as a craft. There was a particularly memorable experience shooting second unit for James Wong Howe, ASC, on Picnic in 1955. The shot for the last scene in the film was made from a helicopter.

There were no Tyler mounts in those days. They used a helicopter rented from the Navy. Wexler was sitting in an open doorway on a 2 by 4 held down with C clamps. At the end of the board there was a High Hat holding a Mitchell camera with a big CinemaScope lens. "I was riding that board like a cowboy on a wild horse," he says.

A few days later Wexler was sitting next to Howe watching dailies. His heart was pounding while he waited for the helicopter shot, because he didn't know what he had gotten on film. Finally, the scene was screened, and the footage was spectacular. "Jimmy said to me, 'Very good. Very good.' Sometimes to this day, when I make a good shot, I can hear Jimmy's voice saying, 'Very good. Very good.' It's still a thrill knowing you have made a good shot."

By then, Wexler was regularly shooting documentaries for Encyclopedia Britannica, including Living City which won an Oscar for its producer. Later in the '50s, Wexler spent much of his time filming commercials for Kling Studios, which became Fred Niles Studios. Shooting 30- and 60-second fantasies was the opposite end of the visual spectrum from documentaries. When Niles purchased the Charles Chaplin Studio in Los Angeles, Wexler was slated to become its chief cameraman, until there was a snag transferring his Guild membership to Hollywood.

By then, he was determined to try his hand at narrative filmmaking. "I met Roger Corman, and he had an idea for an independent film called Stakeout on Dope Street," he recalls. "Each of us put up $15,000. The director was Irvin Kershner, who was also a documentary cameraman. Today, it would probably be called a docu-drama."

It was one of six films Wexler made under pseudonyms, because of the difficulties he was having getting into the Guild. This one was filmed under the name Mark Jeffrey. Sometimes he called himself Phil Lewis. In 1959, Wexler attracted attention to his work with another stark, black- and-white semi-documentary, The Savage Eye, a brutally honest and provocative visualization of Los Angeles.

In 1961, he shot The Hoodlum Priest in St. Louis. It was directed by Kershner, and while it had some of the gritty texture of a documentary, it was a little slicker and more stylized than any of his previous films. Wexler followed that with Angel Baby, filmed in Florida; and A Face in the Rain, which he shot in Italy with Kershner again. All of these films were shot entirely at practical locations, on black-and-white film, and they all had the aura of realism.

There's a chase scene in A Face in the Rain which Wexler shot with a handheld camera while he was running down an alley. It's too bad he couldn't get a patent and collect licensing fees, because that shot has been emulated in hundreds or maybe thousands of subsequent films.

Wexler says his "big break" came in 1963, when he shot America, America in Greece and Turkey with director Elia Kazan. It was his first film with a well known director. It was also the first time he did substantial lighting sets on sound stages on a feature. "Kazan had seen The Hoodlum Priest, and I guess he liked it, because he decided to take a chance on me instead of working with a 'regular' Hollywood cinematographer," Wexler says.

It was his ticket to Hollywood. Finally. In 1964, Wexler filled in for a while as an assistant cameraman on several TV series, mainly Ozzie and Harriet. That was kind of like officially paying his dues. After that, Wexler was allowed to enroll in the Hollywood International Photographers Guild as a first cameraman. He shot his first mainstream feature that year, The Best Man, starring Henry Fonda. The following year, Wexler shot a film titled The Loved One and a documentary called The Bus.

He was preparing to shoot a film called A Fine Madness with Kershner at Warner Bros., when he met Mike Nichols and Harry Stradling, ASC, coming out of a screening room at the studio. "I knew Mike from Chicago when he was at the Second City (comedy club)," Wexler says. "He was getting ready to direct his first picture. He and Stradling had just watched a screening of Fellini's 8 1/2. Nichols told Stradling that was the look he wanted for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Stradling articulated what he thought of that idea in very graphic terms. Obviously they weren't hitting it off."

Soon afterwards Wexler was called to Jack Warner's office, where the mogul told him he was going to shoot Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The word for this situation is irony. All of those years, Wexler was doing everything possible to break into Hollywood. Now, one of the legendary impresarios of Hollywood was telling him that he had to shoot a major feature with some of Hollywood's biggest stars, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

It sounds like a script for one of those "Old Hollywood" movies with happy endings. Only it was more of a confrontation than a celebration. "I told him (Warner) that I had made a promise to Kershner," Wexler says. "Warner said matter-of-factly, 'I could make it very difficult for you.' I knew he was serious. So I said, "sure I'll shoot Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But one of the reasons I made that decision was that Kershner was giving me a hard time during preparation for A Fine Madness."

Wexler didn't tell that story until years later. Now it has become part of the legend. "I read in Burton's book that he didn't want me to shoot Virginia Woolf," Wexler says. "Because of my documentary background he was concerned that my lighting wouldn't be kind to his face which was kind of pock-marked. But Elizabeth went to bat for me."

Burton needn't have worried. Wexler made innovative use of single source umbrella bounce light on Virginia Woolf. He also had every light on the set on a dimmer. In Masters of Light (University of California Press), Wexler thanked a gaffer named Flannigan, "who was very, very helpful to me and very supportive... he helped me make the transition from some of the things I didn't know about working in a confined studio setting... often in films, there are people who work in the crew who are really of immense help... you get stuck... everybody gets stuck... and somebody will help... somebody will give you an idea."

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was the last black-and-white film awarded an Oscar for cinematography. When he accepted the statuette, Wexler told the audience, "I hope we can use our art for love and peace." It was a counter-culture statement for the times. The war in Vietnam was still generally perceived as a rescue mission for a struggling democracy. Furthermore, Wexler continued his documentary work with controversial (for the times) films like Introduction to the Enemy and Interview With My Lai Veterans (which won an Oscar for best documentary).

Looking back, Wexler believes a lot of people were either surprised or offended that a cameraman had opinions about things other than technology. "You were supposed to be non-political, whatever that is," he says.

Wexler followed Virginia Woolf with In the Heat of the Night and The Thomas Crown Affair. Both films were directed by Norman Jewison. In the Heat of the Night was his first color film. Wexler stretched silks over the tops of sets and pounded 10Ks into their centers. He also made use of his umbrella lights which inevitably drew chuckles and comments from the crew and cast. The bottom line was that it was kind of a black-and-white desaturated color film which visually augmented the tone and setting of the story.

The Thomas Crown Affair was different. The colors were as rich and vivid as the lifestyle portrayed by Steve McQueen. Wexler also drew on his documentary filmmaking experiences, to create an environment of reality. For example, he covered the exterior of the bank robbery scene with four hidden cameras, which observed normal traffic and pedestrians both reacting and oblivious to an apparent holdup underway. Someone called the police who arrived with sirens screaming and guns drawn.

His documentary work helped Wexler discover how real people react in real situations. "I learned it can be more visually interesting if a main character's back is turned, or an important object or face is partially obscured during a key scene," he says. "It can be very powerful withholding information until the proper second."

Medium Cool came next. The film got an X rating and it was barely seen before Paramount yanked it from distribution. It still hasn't been released in video cassette format. So how come everyone seems to have an opinion about how it influenced the art form? "I was in Europe recently, and strangers came up to me and told me what an important film it was," Wexler says. "If half of them had seen it, I might have gotten my $600,000 back."

$600,000? "That's what it cost him to produce Medium Cool," Wexler says, "and it was a union film. We didn't pay the director, producer, writer and cameraman, so that cut the overhead." Of course, Wexler played all of those roles. The film was shot in a part of Chicago populated by poor whites who had migrated from Appalachia. The city was basically the stage for telling this story. Some of the actors were recruited from the neighborhood, including one of the "stars," who was a 14-year-old illiterate boy from Kentucky. However, in general, the crowds and people in the neighborhood were the supporting cast.

Wexler shot Medium Cool with an Eclair camera and a special sound blimp built for him by Carol Ballard. Content aside, it set a standard for visual authenticity which has rarely been matched. There were no sets. Lighting was all based on practicals augmented with very small lamps. The biggest unit used for interiors was 750-watts -- and remember, this was 1968 and he was using a 100-speed (Eastman 5254) film which he "pushed" to 200. All of the original sound was also used. There were no dubs.

It was a film within a film. The actors commingled freely with the "yuppie" war protesters from out of town, ordinary people from the community, police and National Guard troops, all of whom who were drawn together by the political convention.

"I didn't expect it to be as controversial as it turned out to be," he says. "I thought one of the most interesting things about the film was the conflict between the news cameraman being a participant and an observer." Wexler actually intercut some of the film that was in the camera operated by actor Robert Foster, who played the role of a TV news photographer.

There's a love scene, which takes place in a labyrinth-like apartment. Wexler decided it would play better if Foster and the actress were nude. It wasn't written that way in the script. It was no problem for the actress, but Foster wasn't sure. Finally, he said he would do it if Wexler shot the scene nude. So, the cameraman-director cleared the apartment of everyone else and shot the scene nude. Medium Cool opened to rave reviews, but it closed before it was seen by many people. Occasionally it plays on the A & E channel.

During the 1970s, Wexler was listed as being "visual consultant" on George Lucas' American Graffiti, which he shot in 28 nights on a minuscule budget. His other major credits during that decade included One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Coming Home, Bound for Glory, and very significant "additional photography" on Days of Heaven.

There are stories that go with each of those films, but not sufficient space to tell all of them. On one of those films, Wexler and his gaffer were looking at an actress who was around 20 yards away in an enclosed glass booth. "I was trying to figure out how I was going to light her face, which has very flat features, and the lighting was flat," he recalls. "The next day, she asked, 'So, you think I have a flat face?'" Wexler was ready to kill the gaffer, but he discovered that the actress could read lips.

Wexler was once invited to direct a film about Woodie Guthrie's life. "I met Woodie in the Merchant Marine," he says. "We weren't great buddies, but I saw him at meetings and we knew each other by our first names. Occasionally, we had a drink together."

Wexler wasn't happy with the script, and the financing was unsteady, so he declined. It turned out to be a prescient decision because a couple of years later, his friend and frequent colleague Hal Ashby asked Wexler to shoot Bound for Glory, based on the life of Guthrie. "I love this kind of a film because it celebrates something that is marvelous about America -- Woodie was anti-establishment, and much of his life was a struggle, but he really tested the vigor of the democratic process."

It was a landmark film for students and movie aficionados, because it was among the first major features to define the use of the Steadicam image stabilizer invented by Garrett Brown. Wexler first heard about the work Brown was doing while it was still in the experimental stages. He hired Brown to operate the camera using a Steadicam for a scene in a tennis shoe commercial.

That was just before he shot Bound for Glory. There is an incredible, unforgettable scene where John Carradine, playing Guthrie, is striding through a milling crowd at a migrant camp. The camera moves steadily from a viewpoint high above the scene to a perspective directly behind Carradine's shoulder, and it flows fluently right behind him as he moved through the crowd. The audience is instantly transformed from a third-party voyeuristic perspective to being part of the crowd. It's so realistic, you literally feel like you can reach out and touch by-standers.

"I think every cameraman has dreamed about the visual impact of walking off a dolly with a camera in scenes like this," Wexler says. "There are times when it is better to handhold a camera or to ride a dolly track. But there are other times when there is nothing like the smooth gliding motion you get with the Steadicam."

Wexler earned two of his Oscar nominations during the 1980s for Matewan and Blaze. Both films were also nominated for ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards for cinematography. He won the ASC award in 1988 for his work on Blaze. Both were period films. The setting for Blaze was Louisiana during the 1950s. Matewan was based on an actual event that took place in a small West Virginia mining town in 1920.

Matewan was produced right around the time Kodak put its Eastman 5297 high-speed daylight film on the market. Wexler shot 90 percent of the movie with the new film. Only a few other cinematographers were experimenting with it at the time. There are always some risks in this type of situation. Sayles wanted an ultra-rich look with deep stops, and Wexler figured that was the way to get it considering that he had a very limited budget for equipment, and not much time to set up and shoot.

For Blaze, Wexler almost totally liberated the camera to move as free as a bird. There were at least 70 Steadicam shots made with a custom Panavision camera weighing only around 15 pounds. Sometimes he used the lightweight camera in combination with a Steadicam on a dolly. The image stabilizer acted like a shock absorber, allowing the camera to glide even on bumpy ground.

We asked Wexler about his apparent proclivity for experimenting and pushing the craft in new directions. Is that a means for advancing the art? "Our job is full of compromises," he says. "You take thrusts into the future by experimenting. You hope they work. If they do, you soar. If they don't, you are miserable. The more experience you have, the more it should be possible for you to experiment. What I see and put on the screen is in a sense the sum of all I have learned from all of the people whom I have worked with throughout the years. But the problem is that the more experience you have, the greater the possibilities that you will become lazy -- and do what you have always done and be content."

Is this an art form or a business or both? "I think the people who run the industry today, think of this as a product, like we are manufacturing shoes or cars," he says. "The idea that this could also be an art form is relegated to a lower spot on the priority list of those in authority. In a way, calling something an artistic film is like giving it a kiss of death. Art films aren't supposed to be popular. That doesn't mean a popular film is less artful.
But there is a certain sense of scorn for people who speak of this as an artform. Anyhow that's my speech."

Does he consider himself an artist? "There are other cameraman who think of photography itself in a more artistic way," he answers. "I'm really more interested in where photography leads me. The experience of filmmaking is what I find interesting -- and what I can learn from that experience."

On responsibility: "People in this industry speak with a louder voice than the average person. We can make people feel passion, hate or love because of the potency of our voice. We can't separate the content of the movies we make from the art of recording images on film. It's a great privilege and a great responsibility."