American Cinematographer - December 1992 - 84

Hero in

High Places
by Tom Dey

"My cameraman was a grumpy fellow
whom I came to love. His name was

Grifters. Quiet and unassuming,
with Birkenstock sandals

on

his

adjusting a keylight on the movie's
unlikely heroes, Andy Garcia and

Leon

feet, Stapleton seems the antithesis

Dustin Hoffman. "We don't talk

the

of Shamroy as he goes about light¬
ing a pick-up shot for the movie's
climactic ledge scene.
"I tend to function differ¬

very much. He talks about the char¬
acters and the way the story's being
told. But in a way, you depend on

Shamroy and his nickname with
"Grumble-gut." He im¬
mediately set back the young fellow
from the New York stage (me) by arriv¬
ing for work every morning with only
the vaguest acquaintance with the text
for that day's work. 'What's the garbage
for today?' he'd ask in his rasping voice.
'Why the hell didn't you read the
script?'I'd come back. 'I'd rather watch
a rehearsal,' he'd say. 'That will tell the
story.' I soon came to see that his point
of view, while extreme, was essentially
the correct one, that I should photo¬
graph behavior, not 'talking heads.'"
crew was

-

ently depending on the director I'm

things being emphasized-subtle¬
ties, ambiguities (he seems to un¬
derstand them,
often rather bet¬
ter than I do) -
and on being
able to put them
down on film.
It's very hard
to

Elia Kazan,
from An American

Odyssey,

by Michel Ciment
A mixture of

hint of

reverence

and

vituperative pleasure sur¬

lates what he has read about Leon

Shamroy, ASC and his fiery initia¬
tion of Kazan. "1 like Shamroy's
attitude, and though I'm personally
very interested in the script, I have
the good fortune to have a bad
memory (not in terms of technical
details): when I show up in the
morning, I arrive as if I haven't seen
the scene before. This way I can
judge the work afresh in a way the
director can't. If I have a strength,
it's the talent to be present, to be
very concentrated, and not to come
in with preconceptions that will
clash with what the director has

stayed up all night figuring out."
There is

82

a

noticeable

ease

to

you
ask

me

to express

the

story com¬

wouldn't know
how to. I just

working with," he continues.
"With Stephen I throw out every
idea that passes through my head
because he is ap absolute expert at
selection. One of his great strengths
is allowing others to contribute. It's
not a nice business, directing; you
need to have a certain self-centered
ruthlessness just to get through the

day."
Between takes, Frears de¬
scribes the collaborative process in

way that makes him seem any¬
thing but ruthless: "What aston¬
ishes me is that I meet people who
a

expect it all to be there and every¬
thing to be perfect. Somehow he
makes that happen."
"I'm an entirely scriptbased cinematographer," says

Stapleton. "It's probably because
half of me is a director, so when I
read a script I read it half like a di¬
rector and half like a cinematogra¬

pher. That's the key thing for me. If
you want to form a strong relation¬
ship with a director you have to be
able to help him out. He's got to
know that you know what he's

doing."

somehow make it make sense,
translate it into technical terms, ac¬

concurs.

tually frame it. They can identify
something I'm inarticulate about,

very interesting because he's one of
the few cinematographers who's

Actor Dustin Hoffman

can

in the way Stapleton works with
director Stephen Frears. Few words

concentrate

are

exchanged on the set of Hero,
their latest collaboration in a series
of films that includes My Beautiful
Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears,

what I'm

Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and The

cidence of sensitivities."
The director looks back
toward the set, where Stapleton is

American

December 1992

Cinematographer

if

were

pletely in terms
of
light, I

a rare

faces in British cinematographer
Oliver Stapleton's voice as he re¬

explain, be¬

cause

cise. Oliver

on

it, and make it pre¬

seems

to be able to tell

looking for almost more
clearly than I can. It's a sort of coin¬

very

"Working with Oliver is

involved with the scene," he

says. "Some people are colorblind,
and some cinematographers, not a

lot,

are

kind of sound-blind. They

don't really hear the scene; they just
see it. Sometimes that's disconcert¬

ing because

you

feel like they're
American Cinematographer - December 1992

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