American Cinematographer - January 2001 - 81

restored

but

-

been better for

nothing could have
lighting its massive

hall from the outside.
Luck

also

screenplay), is artistic repression:
"Does political oppression actually
breed rather than stifle

favored

Rogier

Staffers, the 38-year-old Dutch cine¬

matographer whom Kaufman
tapped to be director of photogra¬
phy. "For me, [working with
Kaufman] was a very frightening

provocative
art?" the playwright asks. "What
happens when we silence our
extremists? What happens when we
give them voice?"

Quills is set. The filmmakers pored
of material detailing the
period's architecture and insane
asylums, and they also examined
French paintings of the era. On a
over reams

table

was a

Vso scale model of the

entire Charenton set, then under

idea," Staffers admits. "He has
worked with

[ASC members] Caleb

Deschanel, Michael Chapman, Sven

Nyquist, Philippe Rousselot - all of
these famous people - and I had
done

'real' film!"

one

However, that film, Karakter,
an
Academy Award for Best
Foreign Film in 1997. By that point
in his career, Staffers had graduated

won

from the Amsterdam Film School,

shot a Student Academy Award¬
winning short, and shot 21 episodes
of a popular L.A. Law-type TV

series,

well

as

as a

Dutch version of

Heimat. Karakter, his first 35mm

feature,

directed by his filmvan Diem, and it

was

school friend Mike

demonstrated that Staffers

possessed
cinematogra¬
pher infused the Dickensian story
with dramatic pools of light that
a

distinctive talent. The

infiltrated

a

world of bleak darkness,

and contrary to convention, the
period film made liberal use of a
Steadicam

to

throw audiences into

the midst of class
father-son

upheavals and

confrontations.

"In

Holland, people said, 'You used
Steadicam

on a

period movie? Why

would you do that?'" Staffers recalls.
Kaufman got it, though. "I was

highly impressed by the lighting
[and] the kind of constant
the director says, adding

motion,"

that he
sought just such a style for Quills. "I
was
looking for someone who could
create a period look, yet move the
camera in a
way that had a contem¬
porary vitality," he notes, adding that
Doug Wright's Obie-winning play,
on which the film is based, is
"really
meant to

be

a

tale for

our

time." The

story's underlying theme, according
to Wright (who also wrote the

Kaufman

was

also

aware

of

another

parallel. He began working
during Kenneth Starr's
investigation of President Clinton,
and thus wanted its underlying
themes of moral hypocrisy to
resonate. "[Kaufman] wanted that
link to modern times," says Staffers.
"He didn't want [Quills] to become a
beautiful, crafted period movie."
After two meetings, Kaufman
on

the film

and Staffers shook hands

on a

collab¬

oration, and the cinematographer
soon

was

set off for England, where Quills
deep in preproduction. By the

time he arrived at Pinewood

where 90 percent

of the film

shot, historical research

underway.

Studios,

was

was

well

Production designer
Martin Childs (Shakespeare in Love)
had unearthed the blueprints for
Charenton Asylum, where the
marquis was confined and most of

construction. "The model had

tiny

little windows about the size of

Opposite

page:
Fascinated by the

a

Marquis de Sade

thumbnail," Childs recalls. "Rogier
and I spent a bit of time pointing
[flashlights] into those windows to

and his perverse

see

how the corridors and cells would

Staffers says his previous expe¬
riences in Holland helped him make
the most of such

preproduction
"[Given those] low budgets
[the lack of] shooting time, I'm

exercises.

used

planning everything
out," he says. Kaufman, for one,
greatly appreciated that trait: "We
were right on schedule and under
budget," the director recalls of the 61day shoot. "A lot of that was due to
Rogier being very well prepared. He
thinks in advance, plans things out
now

covert

literary

courier Madeleine

(Kate Winslet)

work."

and

prose,
chambermaid and

to

and makes his

own

takes pen to
paper under the
watchful eye of
Abbe de Coulmier

(Joaquin Phoenix),
enlightened
priest who runs

the

Charenton

Asylum. This page:
The incorrigible
marquis (Geoffrey
Rush), unbowed

by the authorities'
attempts to
silence him, stirs

trouble by
provoking and
manipulating his
up

fellow inmates.

little charts."

The Charenton model allowed
Staffers

to

troubleshoot. Childs had

American

Cinematographer 79
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