American Cinematographer - January 2001 - 97

the differ¬
the matte
box and looking directly at the lens,
there is enough of a difference. If the
movie is a comedy, [that technique]

While you can barely tell
ence between looking at

makes it

even

funnier, and if it's

a

drama, it makes it even more intense.

Barry Markowitz said you
would shoot

close-ups with every¬
thing from a 180mm lens situated
10 feet away to a 40mm lens maybe
three feet away.
Thornton: Yes,
extremes a

way

like

we went

lot. We shoot

with

more

the

they did in the 1940s and '50s. I
to shoot a lot of things in a

master

[shot].

I also like things to be

really dark
night scenes. Cinematographers, of
course, always want things to be seen a
little bit. [Laughs.] One of my
running things with Barry is that
he'll light something forever, and
when I get to the set I have to turn off
all the lamps. There is one scene in
the movie that takes place at night in
in

field, and I wanted to show the
house and the darkness and then
a

pick
crew

up our two guys talking. The
lit for five hours, and I got out

there and told them to shut off all of
the

lights.
All of the

no

lights? There

were

movie lights at all?
Thornton: There

in the house and

a

were

lights

little bit of light on

manufactured light. If it
up to me, you wouldn't see their
faces at all, but you can't do that. The
way I shot it may not make it into the
the guys

-

were

final

cut.

There's

a

lot of stuff that

make the final cut. For
example, there's one scene in which
Matt [Damon's] character sees his
may not

father for the last time, and I let the
father walk away down the sidewalk
for about two minutes. If that shot
were

in

a

movie from the 1940s,

people would
You shoot

say

a scene

was astounding.
like that now, and

it

they look at you like you're crazy.
Barry says you don't shoot in
a

traditional

master, a

manner

of

doing

a

close-up of one actor, and

looking-right-into-the-lens

then a close-up

on,

that you

close-ups. John's character says, 'You
seem like a deep thinker.' And I say, 'I
was just thinking about wanting

of the other. He says
prefer to create a sponta¬
neous feeling.
Thornton: When I got into
this business, I thought that the idea
was to try and capture real life and
move people - or to do pure
fantasy. The Coen brothers shoot [in
a style that's] the opposite of mine:
everything is planned out and edited
in their heads. I see the picture, too,
but in more of a spiritual sense. I see
it as this sort of long story.
Oprah Winfrey saw All the
Pretty Horses and said, 'It's not a
movie that you watch; it's a movie
that you feel.' And that's pretty much
the way I do things - it's what I feel.
We don't do storyboards; we don't
have

a

shot list;

we

don't have

some more

of these french fries.'

That

makes

it

funnier. When he asks
that

means

from

me.

much

so

questions,

me

he needs information

In that instance, I want to

my character from John's POV, so
I cut to a close-up of myself. I wanted

see

show exactly what he sees when I
deliver this absurd line. Then I cut
to

back to his reaction.

Barry said that you asked him
High Noon and The
Searchers before starting work on
All the Pretty Horses.
Thornton: High Noon is my
to

watch

favorite

movie

-

for

more

rehearsals. I just make sure that Barry

emotional and

gives the actors enough freedom to
go wherever they want, and then I
cover the scene based upon that.

humanistic reasons, than for film-

I like two-shots with actors

-

three-shots, or however many
shots, depending on how many
people are in the scene. I like to stay
or

with that

[approach]

as long as

esting thing is the person who is
listening; the words may hit you
differently when you see that person.
In real life, when I am looking
at you, I am looking you in the eye,
and that's why I have actors look into
the lens. They say it's breaking the
fourth wall. I thought you kind of
to

do that. You want the

audience to feel
the

actor on

they

are the person
the screen is talking to.

For example, there's a scene in
Sling Blade when John Ritter and I
are sitting in a diner. A lot of that
sequence was done as a two-shot so

that the audience

can see

the whole

picture; you can see how the charac¬
ters are reacting to one another. The
real humor in that

scene

is the fact

that John is going on about this very
serious thing and I'm just kind of

sitting there, eating french fries. The

pay-off comes when you cut to closeups of each of us. They are square-

reasons.

reasons,

The Searchers is

a

great story and it has a great look.
Also, the movie goes on for awhile; it
takes you over a period of time. If I
came to a studio with The Searchers

today, they'd tell me I was insane.
Those two movies

I can,

because sometimes the most inter¬

wanted

making

spiritual

ful. I wanted

are

beauti¬

High Noon
mainly for the mood, and The
Barry to

see

Searchers for both the mood and the
look.
Is there a sequence in All the
Pretty Horses that you're particu¬

larly proud of?
Thornton: The opening of the
movie. The book describes horses

running, and I wanted them to be
ghost horses. I told Barry I
wanted them to sort of appear out of
the earth as if they were ghosts rising
from the dead. We got a great shot.
A couple of our buddies came
to town to help out on that shot. Jack
Green [ASC] came down for one
night, just to shoot that opening
sequence, and Fred Murphy [ASC]
with whom Barry had started his
kind of

-

career

do

in the business -

came

down

second-unit

photogra¬
phy. We had a great night of shooting
horses. That sequence sets the mood
to

some

for the whole film.

■
American

Cinematographer 95
American Cinematographer - January 2001

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