First off, RIP Dennis Hopper. Huge fan. Personal favorites, most to least: Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Cool Hand Luke, Blue Velvet.
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I had the great opportunity to meet and learn from Haskell Wexler on both Thursday and Friday of this past week. On Thursday he visited The University of Chicago Film Studies Center's screening of his film, Medium Cool. Friday I was invited to a small Master Class where we screened and critiqued student work.
Medium Cool was fantastic. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical at first, and didn't really know how everything was going to fit together, but by the time I got into the rhythm of it, I was definitely enjoying myself. There are so many questions it asks, so many themes it explores. My favorites were the objective and amoral position of the cameraman (you might watch a terrible scene unfold, but do you do anything to help? no); fiction vs. reality (Wexler had written a fiction film that anticipated serious things happening at the 1968 DNC in Chicago, but he hadn't expected anything close to the violence and tragedy that he actually ended up catching on film); and the parallels setup quite subtly at the beginning and end of the film (car crashes, violence, freedom). After the screening, I found the man himself a lot more rambling and deaf than I'd anticipated, but he was still great.
Interestingly, he didn't seem to enjoy talking about the craft itself. He was more like, it is what it is: someone asked him if he has any certain things he does to achieve such stunning photography, and he replied, "no. It's just cinematography." I was telling DP about this after the fact, and it struck me that there are so many tips and rules that are thrown out there by our teachers, but it doesn't seem that anyone wants to listen. Not to simplify the craft, but stuff like good lighting and composition, the Rule of Thirds, zooming in to focus on the subject, leaving the camera running (capturing as much as possible, as opposed to just trying to get the shot you want, especially in documentary filmmaking), sifting through to find the gem of a shot in the editing room, they're all important, and they can make for some beautiful shots. I think his answer was so apt. There's nothing you can really do but do it well, you know?
The Master Class was awesome, and it really made me miss class. I miss sitting in a room with smart people who think critically, trading thoughts and debating consequences. It was really fun. He was very honest with his criticisms and doled out his accolades subtly. Again, though, he was very matter-of-fact about the whole business, and sometimes it was as if was going between questioning why he even needed to be there and just taking part of the discussion like just another quiet student in one of Judy's classes.
It also made me miss Film in general. One reason I was drawn to the subject was because of its superior balance of theory and practice. I could never be one of those boring schmucks who talks about film in a purely theoretical sense, but it also didn't sit right with me to just go to film school and learn the craft without tapping into the rich history and the more abstract and academic potential of the medium. I've rolled my eyes in the presence of both camps. But the academic aspects mesh really well with the nostalgia I feel sometimes when I think about what drew me into cinema and media studies - film. There's so much there on both sides of the emulsion: a careful and historical practice that takes some serious skill on one side, and the consequences of capturing reality and the history of the ontological image (<3 Bazin) on the other. Nowadays, though, none of that really carries over into the cheaper, more convenient, and DIY video medium. I use it, and I know it, but I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy everything about base, emulsion, halide crystals, mirrors, lights, and everything captured on it.
So what to do when you're just born at the wrong time? Film's expensive and slowly dying. My American Cinematographer magazines splash the latest digital hotness on its pages. I like to think too much about what I'm putting out there to actually go to film school for the craft. Freelance is all about video, where my heart just isn't. Meanwhile film theory is full of ridiculous people who abhor touching cameras. This transitional period in the world of film and video is like coming of age in the town in The Last Picture Show, where the town is dying just as you're old enough to enjoy it, but you can't bring yourself to ever leave.
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