Laszlo Kovacs, ASC
|
| Memorial service and gathering of friends and family for Laszlo Kovacs, ASC, at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse at 1782 N. Franklin Avenue, in Hollywood, beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 11. Space is limited. RSVPs required: Patty@theasc.com or call 323-969-4333. |
Local 600 member Laszlo Kovacs, ASC, an internationally acclaimed cinematographer, died early Sunday morning, July 22, at his home in Los Angeles.
His body of work includes such classic films as Easy Rider, That Cold Day in the Park, Five Easy Pieces, Shampoo, What’s Up, Doc?, The King of Marvin Gardens, Paper Moon, New York, New York, The Runner Stumbles, Francis, Ghost Busters, Mask, My Best Friend’s Wedding and Miss Congeniality. His life was like one of those old Mickey Rooney Hollywood movies where the good guy’s impossible dream comes true after he overcomes daunting odds.
Kovacs was born on May 14, 1933 on a farm near a small rural village that was about 60 miles outside of Budapest, in Hungary. His mother was friends with a woman in the village who ran a makeshift cinema in the school auditorium on weekends. When Kovacs was 11 years old, his mother arranged for him to hang flyers advertising ms on telephone poles and distribute them to shopkeepers. His pay was a front row seat at the cinema when films were screened. He watched every minute of each screening.
Kovacs traced his passion for movies back to that experience, which he described as a magical escape from reality. His parents wanted a better life for their son.
new fil
When he was 16 years old, they sent him to school in Budapest with instructions to study hard and become a lawyer or a doctor. Kovacs frequently skipped science and math classes in favor of watching movies at a local cinema.
In 1952, Kovacs applied to and was accepted as a student at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, where he developed an interest in cinematography. On Saturdays, when no communist officials were around, his teachers allowed Kovacs and other students to watch American films that were in the archives.
Kovacs remembered being enthralled by Citizen Kane, a classic 1941 film directed by Orson Welles. He didn’t understand the words, but the lighting and camerawork by cinematographer Gregg Toland were a universal language. Kovacs said he learned a new vocabulary for telling stories while watching and discussing those films with other students and his instructors, and then by experimenting.
His life took a dramatic turn in October, 1956, when there was a spontaneous public uprising in Budapest against the communist regime. Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, a recent graduate of the film school, agreed that it was important to document that historic event on film. They “borrowed” a 35 mm camera and supply of film from the school. Kovacs and Zsigmond hid the camera in a shopping bag. One of them served as a lookout while the other one documented compelling images of civilians in hand-to-hand combat with Russian soldiers and tanks. Their mission was a dangerous one – Russian soldiers were executing people on the spot who were caught with cameras.
When the revolt was finally crushed by the overwhelming might of the Russian army, Georgy Illes, one of their teachers, advised Kovacs and Zsigmond to leave the country before they were arrested by the Russians. They took his advice and began a dangerous trek through forests to the Austrian border carrying some 30,000 feet of film in potato sacks. At one point, they came to a village where a Russian patrol was searching for partisans trying to escape. They hid the film in a cornfield and walked into the village pretending to be locals.
Kovacs and Zsigmond were questioned and searched by a Russian colonel. Although Kovacs was convinced that the colonel didn’t believe their story, the colonel wished them luck and let them go. They retrieved the sacks of films and made it across the border.
Kovacs and Zsigmond were paid $100 for their film, which CBS-TV eventually acquired and used five years later in an award-winning documentary about the fall of the Iron Curtain. They were among some 60,000 political refugees from Hungary who arrived in the United States in February, 1957.
Kovacs had a dream in his heart of becoming a Hollywood cinematographer, but he didn’t speak English and had no connections in the industry. Kovacs was assigned to a sponsor in upstate New York who put him to work taking passport photos with a Polaroid camera and tapping maple syrup out of trees. Kovacs was paid $40 a week.
After a while, a distant relative got him a sponsor in Seattle, Washington. Kovacs rode a Greyhound bus across the country to Seattle taking in the sights of America. His sponsor help him find a job processing 16 mm newsfilm at a laboratory.
In 1959, Kovacs rode a bus to Los Angeles, where he and teamed up with Zsigmond to help Joseph Zuffa, another Hungarian ex-patriot, create a short film. Afterwards, Kovacs found a job working in a microfilm laboratory for a title insurance company. After his normal working hours, he shot 16 mm industrial, educational and medical films and free movies for students. He was rejected as an outsider by the Hollywood film community, but never gave up on his dream.
By 1963, Kovacs was shooting occasional National Geographic documentaries and 30-second visual stories for TV commercial directors. He shot his first long form movie that year. It was a Western that was produced with a $12,000 budget over a single weekend. The film was never titled or released, but it was the first page in a new chapter in his life. Paul Lewis, the production manager introduced Kovacs to a young director named Richard Rush. Kovacs worked with Rush on a series of low budget “biker” films, including A Man Called Dagger, Savage Seven, Pysch-Out and Hell’s Angel’s on Wheels. They were modern-day Westerns, only the villains rode into town on motorcycles rather than horses.
Kovacs shot Targets in 1968 for a young new director named Peter Bagdonovich. They went on to collaborate on various other films, including What’s Up Doc and Paper Moon. In 1969, another new director named Dennis Hopper asked Kovacs to shoot his a film called Easy Rider, featuring a couple of young new actors named Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda along with Hopper. Years later, Kovacs said that Easy Rider was his chance to show the world that America was a great and beautiful country.
Easy Rider was a sensation at the Cannes International Film Festival and later at the box office. His mother and practically everyone in the village where he grew up rode a bus to Budapest to see the film when it played for nine months at a cinema there. Kovacs felt that he had opened a window on a new world for them.
That same year, Kovacs shot That Cold Day in the Park for a young director named Robert Altman. In 1970, he teamed up with another young director named Bob Rafelson on Five Easy Pieces, another film that became a classic. By then, film critics were describing Kovacs and Zsigmond as The American New Wave.
Kovacs earned more than 70 narrative film credits during his storybook career. He received the ASC Lifetime Achievement in 2002. Kovacs is survived by his wife, Audrey, daughters, Julianna and Nadia, and granddaughter Mia.