Roger Deakins: The Hollywood Interview

Cinematographer Roger Deakins.


ROGER DEAKINS: IMAGEMAKER
By
Alex Simon


Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the February 2002 issue of Venice Magazine.

One of the cinema’s world-class directors of photography, Roger Deakins was born in the seaside community of Torquay, Devon, England on May 24, 1949. Originally drawn to art, Deakins attended art college, where he fell in love with photography and soon found that he had an even greater affinity for shooting pictures that move. After attending the National Film School in London, Deakins enjoyed a brief stint as a documentary cameraman, then quickly rose to the forefront of his generation’s cinematographers, with a list of credits that reads like a compendium of the 80’s and 90’s greatest films. Here’s just a few titles lensed by this soft-spoken cinematic wizard: Nineteen Eight-Four, Sid & Nancy, White Mischief, Stormy Monday, Mountains of the Moon, Homicide, Thunderheart, Barton Fink (and all the Coen brothers’ films since then), Passion Fish, The Shawshank Redemption, Dead Man Walking, Courage Under Fire, Kundun, The Hurricane, and two of the most acclaimed films of 2001: the Coen’s The Man Who Wasn’t There and Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind. Deakins is currently in Montreal, shooting Levity for first time director Ed Solomon, starring Morgan Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton.
Roger Deakins spoke with us recently about his life as one of film’s great image-makers.

It’s been a big year for you. Let’s start with The Man Who Wasn’t There and what it’s like working with the Coens. I understand you shot it in color, then had it processed into black & white.
Roger Deakins: We (changed it) to black & white on the print stock and all through the intermediaries for the bulk of the release. Working with Joel and Ethan is really wonderful, really productive. They’re fine filmmakers and fine people, as well, so it’s like working in a family, really, since I’ve worked with them so many times. It’s very comfortable. You can take chances and push things a bit further when you know your collaborators well, you know?

There are a lot of great D.P.s out there who always seem to shoot the same film, no matter what the subject is. Whereas, the look of your films always changes dependent upon the subject matter.
That’s one reason I love working with Joel and Ethan: every one of their scripts is actually very different. There’s nothing worse than reading a script and going to an interview with (a filmmaker) and having them go “Well, we want it to look like Shawshank Redemption.” That’s not really what it’s about, is it? Every story is different and photographically you want to bring that difference to it.

It sounds like you take a very painterly approach. Is that a fair comparison: a D.P. to a painter?
I guess so, yeah. (laughs) A lot of filmmaking, quite honestly, is more about planning and logistics than managing to shoot a schedule. The art side, if it’s there at all, is often something you don’t have time to think about.

When you light for color, as opposed to lighting for black & white, it’s a very different process, right?
Yes, in many ways it’s different. The thing about black & white is you’re so much more aware about the composition of the frame, the depth of the frame, and the way the light is falling in the frame. Quite often, it’s easier to make an attractive picture if you’re shooting in color. I think that black & white focuses you, the viewer, on the subject of the frame.

Even though you shot The Man Who Wasn’t There in color, did you light it for black & white, since that was the final process?
Yeah, very much. We wanted it to have the feel of a period movie, although it wasn’t lit like an old film. It was great to have a chance to do that, to play with that.

One of the things I loved about A Beautiful Mind was the way you captured that 1950’s Technicolor look, and really put the viewer back in that period.
We shot that on Fuji stock, whereas I usually shoot on Kodak. I also flashed it, prexposed it, with an orange light, a warm light, which gives it a flatness, that slightly warm cast that it had. Most color stocks are so saturated, so intense and full of contrast, and tend to make most films look almost zany, actually. (laughs) That old Technicolor look from the 50’s that you mention is really some of the most beautiful color footage that’s been shot, so I’m glad you liked it.

Let’s talk about your background.
I was born and raised in a town called Torquay, a coastal town in southwest England. I spent most of my childhood fishing and on boats. My grandfather was a fisherman. My dad was a builder.

How did you fall in love with movies?
I fell in love with movies as a kid, really. It was sort of a gradual progression. I joined the film society in Torquay and watched current movies as well as films, like Peter Watkins’ The War Game (1967, Best Documentary Academy Award winner). That had a big impact on me. It never occurred to me at the time that being in the film industry is something I could do professionally because I had no connection to it at all. I loved painting and didn’t have an interest in going to work in the local bank or anything (laughs). So I went to art college and took up painting, discovered photography and realized from there that I could get into filmmaking and got involved with shooting documentaries. It was just a whole series of events that led to it, really.

Was there one film you saw as a kid or a student that solidified it for you?
No, I wouldn’t say that. It was much more a progression of watching movies, all kinds of movies, be it documentaries, Italian neo-realism. I remember in the screening of The War Game, this little old lady fainted! (laughs) And I thought ‘God, this is amazing!’ (laughs) Poor old lady! Pretty harrowing stuff, at the time. There was so much that was exciting going on in English television and cinema at the time.

That was the era of “The Wednesday Play” series that launched people like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, right?
Right! “The Wednesday Play.” That was brilliant. Somehow, our generation has dropped the ball on that whole tradition of British cinema, haven’t we? I mean, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, God bless them, are still working away, but they’re sort of the last torch bearers of the kitchen sink drama, aren’t they?

So after art college, you got into making documentaries?
Yeah, after art college I started working as a still photographer recording country life in North Devon for a year, and started an archive down there that was eventually taken over by another cameraman for about 15 years until he died. Then I found out about the National Film School in London was opening. A friend of mine told me about it, so we both applied. Luckily, I got in.

Did any of your classmates go on to have successful careers?
Well, Michael Radford (Nineteen Eighty-Four, White Mischief, Il Postino), whom I worked with for a long time. We started doing documentaries together, and then the first few features I did were with him. That’s what started my career, really. Once I did Nineteen Eighty-Four I had a track record and never looked back, really. I was lucky.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was Richard Burton’s last film. Did you get to know him, at all?
Yeah, he was wonderful. He was a very approachable guy. On the first day of shooting with him, we were all terribly nervous. I was maybe 30, 31 at the time. We were a very young crew and were all nervous. Then the call came from the first assistant director that we were all to gather outside Richard’s trailer. So of course we all thought that we were out on the carpet, right? (laughs) And Richard came out and said “I just want to thank you. When I showed up this morning and saw all these young faces, I was absolutely terrified! But I just want to thank you for one of the nicest days filming I’ve ever had.” So it was really nice. I had such a good time with him. I used to hang out with him at lunch and he’d regale us all with stories about his life and career.

Let’s talk about Sid & Nancy next, another terrific film.
Alex Cox is a wonderful filmmaker and hasn’t been able to get a lot of projects off the ground, of late. He’s had a lot of things almost come to fruition and then they don’t happen at the last moment, it seems. He did one film fairly recently called Highway Patrolman, which I thought was just terrific. He’s very uncompromising, which is a problem in Hollywood, and Sid & Nancy was a very uncompromising film, and a really crazy shoot. But because of that, I think it really added something to the picture.

You guys really captured that time and place beautifully. The concert scenes seemed really authentic. Was it just a matter of doing a lot of hand-held, guerilla-style filmmaking?
It was, really. I was thinking of the scene where Gary and the band were playing in Ealing, or somewhere in some dingy little club. We got this audience in, dressed like punks. I was shooting the audience and the band, and had to wear a mask, finally, because all the audience were spitting! (laughs) It was just a matter as kind of hanging on, really, and recording it all.

Another film you shot that I’m a big fan of is White Mischief. You shot Africa like it was reimagined by Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain.
Yeah, and that’s what it was, really. It was a true story, and also this wonderful sort of film noir murder mystery, drenched in decadence. It’s still never been solved. It was such a surreal environment. I mean, the war was going on back in England and these people were living by Lake Navasha in Africa and having these weird sexual parties. A very strange really world they were in. It was completely surreal. The Gin Palace where we shot is an actual place. We visited so many of these colonial houses where these elderly, wealthy people were living out their last days. There were all these wild animals, flamingos and hippos, living around these Scottish mansions, built of Scottish granite, surrounded by these huge hedges, little croquet lawns…and these people never went out of these houses! Africa didn’t exist for them. Their servants would just go out and get them supplies.

I’m a huge Mike Figgis fan, and think Stormy Monday is one of his best films.
Yeah, that was a fun movie. It was lucky, actually. When we did that there was an actor’s strike in America and got Tommy Lee Jones and Melanie Griffith, which was great because it gave the film a profile it probably would have never had. We wanted to give the whole thing a sort of Edward Hopper look, unlike the Newcastle of Get Carter, which was a great film, but had a very gritty, grimy quality. We wanted more of a sort of American, glitzy, colorful look. Mike Figgis is a really nice guy, wonderful guy. He’s got a very eclectic background in theater, and music and has an overall understanding of what he’s doing. He shoots a lot of his own stuff now. I don’t blame him! (laughs)

I’ve always felt that Bob Rafelson’s Mountains of the Moon is an overlooked great movie, and Rafelson is an unheralded American master.
That’s nice to hear you say that because I’ve got a real soft spot for that movie. We had such a wonderful time making that film. I totally agree with you about Bob. I think if you look at his body of work…Five Easy Pieces alone should have given him icon status. But, he’s a crusty old bugger, you know? (laughs) He upsets a lot of people, but I got on with him great and love him dearly. I think he’s an amazing filmmaker.

His work is such a study in contrasts, isn’t it? On the one hand, you have Five Easy Pieces, which is such a study in minimalism, and on the other there’s Mountains of the Moon, a sweeping epic worthy of David Lean.
It’s interesting. Robert always dreamed about doing Mountains of the Moon, and he’d been contracted by Carolco to do Air America (eventually directed by Roger Spottiswoode, 1990). But there was a writer’s strike and the script for Air America wasn’t ready. So Carolco said, “Do you have anything else you want to do?” Robert said “Yes! I’ve got this script, Mountains of the Moon.” They asked what it was about and, according to Bob, they never even read it, just asked how much he needed. He said “I can do it for about 12 (million).” They said “Okay.” (laughs)

Amazing! That movie looks like it cost $80 million!
No, we had six weeks in England, six weeks in Africa with a very small crew. Then we stayed for another six weeks in Africa doing second unit stuff. Hard to believe in the final product, but it actually was fairly low budget.

On Homicide, you worked with David Mamet. Tell us about working with the director as writer.
Well, all directors are different. Mike Figgis is very all-around knowledgeable. Someone like Rafelson is very into the feel of a scene somehow, not the written word and not the images, but how the scene hits you, an untenable thing that he’s searching for. Mamet is really very into the dialogue and script-oriented, obviously. My job in that was much more about creating the visuals for it, really. It was a hard shoot, but a very interesting one to work on.

Tell us about John Sayles and Passion Fish. He’s another unique American artist.
Boy, have I been lucky over the years working with some of these guys, or what? John’s just a lovely man and is such a warm guy and it comes out in his movies. He’s so in love with people, just the way they are. That was a wonderful piece just because it was so simple, just these two characters in this old house on the bayou. He’s very organized, John. He had that whole film storyboarded as thumbnail sketches in his script that we’d go over each day. It was all planned out in his head, really.

Most directors I’ve spoken with have all said that the D.P. is their most essential partner during a shoot. Is the same true for a D.P. with a director?
Oh yeah. Really, a cinematographer’s work is only as good as the director, really. That’s why I love working with the Coens and with Norman Jewison. They really push you to do something and you feel like you can work from a position of strength and take chances and risks. It’s hard when you’re on a film if a director doesn’t have the experience to understand the visual language involved, and there is a whole language involved. And if the director doesn’t understand that or isn’t confident enough with himself to let you, the cameraman, to take what the script requires and create the visuals it can be frustrating.

What advice would you have for an aspiring cinematographer?
I usually say to students that they should find their own way of doing it and not try to copy anybody. They should watch old movies and love movies, but it’s not something you can do by copying somebody else. You have to find your own style and your own way of seeing things.