Gordon Willis chosen to receive the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award

Gordon Willis Receives ASC Lifetime Achievement Award When Gordon Willis, ASC, finally received his first Oscar nomination in 1982 for his work on "Zelig," he said he was "honored." There was a brief pause, and then he added, "I'm also surprised." It was just a bit of wry humor.

Willis could have been cast in the role of the invisible man during the 1970s. His credits included "Klute," "The Godfather," "The Paper Chase," "The Drowning Pool," "Parallax View," "The Godfather: Part II," "All of the President's Men," "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," "Interiors" and "Comes a Horseman."

That's a great body of work for a career let alone a decade. In retrospect, the fact that Willis wasn't nominated for an Oscar prior to "Zelig" seems incomprehensible.

Willis is the recipient of the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award presented at the 9th annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards. He is only the eighth recipient of this award, and the first whose career was based outside of mainstream Hollywood.

Why didn't Willis get the peer approval he deserved during the 1970s?

Plain and simple, he was counter-culture. Willis pioneered such visual story-telling techniques as low-key lighting to establish moods. He allowed windows to blow-out, lights to flare, and he underexposed film and used forced processing to alter the look and mood of scenes.

Willis was on the leading edge of a New Wave of cinematographers who were changing the art form in radical ways. In "The Godfather," he selectively masked Marlon Brando's eyes to conceal his thoughts from the audience.

"I still can't believe the reactions," he says. "People said, 'You can't see his eyes (Brando's).' Well, you didn't see his eyes in 10 percent of the movie, and there was a reason why. I remember asking, 'Why do you have to see his eyes in that scene? Based on what?' Do you know what the answer was? 'That's the way it was done in Hollywood.' That's not a good enough reason. There were times when we didn't want the audience to see what was going on in there (Brando's eyes), and then suddenly (snaps his fingers), you let them see into his soul for a while."

Willis was different in other ways. He was an outsider who lived on the East Coast, and did most of his best work there. He was also was an outspoken advocate for the creative role that cinematographers play in the collaborative art of filmmaking at a time when most of his peers believed it was prudent to stay in the background.

Stated simply, Willis was a cipher to the Hollywood cinematographers who doled out Oscar nominations during the 1970s. Most of them came up through the ranks of the Hollywood crew system. They started their careers as studio cameramen at a time when stylized hard light was in vogue.

One veteran cinematographer from that period candidly admits, "I would have been fired if I lit the way Gordon did. The studios wanted to always see the actor's eyes, and they didn't want windows blown out, or flaring lights."

But, the next generation of cinematographers saw it differently. In 1984, John Bailey, ASC, said, "For me, Gordon Willis is the preeminent American Cinematographer. I think he is single-handedly responsible for the support and acknowledgment that cinematographers have now."

The authors of "Masters of Light, (University of California Press, 1984), Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato, wrote, "Gordon Willis is the best cinematographer working in America today. Period. End of discussion."

That's a subjective opinion. But there is no doubt that Willis has significantly affected the evolution of both the craft and the art of cinematography. While he was filming "The Godfather," for example, Willis created a golden amber patina that was integral to the structure of the film. Along with costumes and props, the look he invented became a visual metaphor for period films.

Ask him where that idea came from, and he says, "I honestly don't know. I just know that it felt right."

That's a pretty good definition of instinct. Yet, Willis has never been pretentious about his art. In fact, he has always insisted that the artistic foundation of moviemaking is craftsmanship. In the 1984 edition of Masters of Light he said "...the art comes out of the craft. For example, you might have a great idea for a painting, but can you paint? If you say no, then your idea is worthless, because there's no way for you to project that idea. It's being able to execute the idea that sets you free."

Willis literally grew up in the film industry. His father was a make-up man at Warner Bros. studio in Brooklyn during the 1930s. "There were always movie people hanging around the house," he recalls. "I never thought about it one way or another, but it was part of my life."

Willis wanted to be an actor for a long time as a kid. But after trying acting in summer stock, he discovered that the reality was less satisfying than the dream. His interests turned to stagecraft, including stage lighting and set design. He also began shooting still pictures for the stock company, and found that aesthetically nourishing.

Willis was assigned to a U.S. Air Force motion picture unit for four years during the Korean war. He worked on documentaries and training films, ranging from jungle survival, to how to use machine guns on certain airplanes.

After the war, in 1956 Willis returned to New York, where he worked as a freelance assistant cameraman. The TV industry was undergoing vigorous growth, and New York was a creative focal point for commercial production. There was also much creative work being done in the documentary genre.

"In those days, you could cross back and forth between operating on commercials and shooting documentaries, and in my opinion there was no better way to learn," he says.

Willis worked with many different cinematographers in the commercial business, and with others from California, who were shooting all or parts of features on the East Coast. It was a form of on-the-job training.

"After a few years, I got an opportunity to start shooting commercials," he says. "I shot a lot of film."

Willis shot his first feature in 1969. It was called "End of the Road," and it starred Stacey Keach and James Earl Jones. "The director looked at everybody's reel, and I guess saw something in mine that he liked," says Willis. "We spoke and he hired me. It was dumb luck. It was a big opportunity, although I didn't perceive it that way. I never worried about the next job. I was only concerned with what was happening at the moment."

It was a crossroads in his career. Willis shot two more films, "Loving" and "The Landlord," in 1970. The following year he filmed "Little Murders" and "Klute," and in 1972, Willis shot "Up the Sandbox." "The Godfather" was his seventh film in a three year span.

"Students sometimes ask how I got started," Willis says, "and I tell them luck is a factor. But you have to be able to take advantage of your own luck."

That sounds simple, but remember Willis was breaking rules and taking chances. He blazed trails others ultimately followed, but at the time, a lot of people turned their backs on him.

"I never did anything because I thought it was different. I did it because I liked it," he says.

Willis did a lot of interesting work before "The Godfather," but that was the film which put him in the spotlight. He recalls that the studio initially saw "The Godfather" as an exploitation movie, which would ride the crest of the wave of success enjoyed by Mario Puzo's bestseller.

"To Francis'(Coppola) credit, that didn't happen," Willis says. "They eventually realized something special was happening, but we didn't get the money to go to Sicily until we were almost two-thirds of the way through production. Even though the first Godfather film is regarded as a milestone, I've always thought the second was a classier movie. It was also a lot easier to shoot."

The 1980s wasn't a bad decade for Willis either. His credits included "Windows," "Stardust Memories," "Pennies From Heaven," "Broadway Danny Rose" and "The Money Pit."

Willis earned his second Oscar nomination for "The Godfather: Part III," in 1990. He was faithful to the visual style of the first two films in the trilogy. The biggest challenge was living up to the expectations of the audience. It was like asking Michelangelo to recreate the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

In the original Godfather, Willis pioneered the use of point, counterpoint contrasts in lighting, i.e., the wedding scene was staged in bright light, in a lush and colorful garden. It symbolized a new beginning or hope. There was a quick cut to a dark, ominous interior scene of the Godfather (Brando) sitting in his den planning mayhem in the shadows.

In Part III, Willis contrasted dark and bright scenes, and the camera played the role of dispassionate observer with scant use of motion. He also contained the images within a comparatively tight space by mainly using lenses with focal lengths ranging from 40 to 75 mm.

"Francis (Coppola) and I agreed on a lot, like avoiding the use of zoom lenses and creating a period look. I also believed there should be some distance between an audience in a period movie, and I pressed very hard for that."

Later in Coppola's career there was much ado about his passion for technology. His work with Willis is much more organic. "Sometimes I think the more tools you have, the worse it gets," says Willis. "I'm an eliminator, not an adder. Your point of view is what's important. I'm not fascinated by technology. The process can overpower the results if it becomes more important than the material."

In "A Short History of the Movies" (McMillan Publishing, 1992), Gerald Mast wrote about the role played by Woody Allen in Hollywood's renaissance during the 1970s. Mast compared Allen's early films to Max Sennett's slapstick style of moviemaking. He noted that in such later films as "Annie Hall," "Interiors" and "Manhattan," the cinemagraphic style was much more artistic. Mast pointed out that the common denominator was that those films marked the beginning of a 10 year collaboration between Allen and Willis.

"Woody called one day," Willis says. "I read the script for 'Annie Hall,' and it started a long association, which I thought was a very good. We made a lot of good movies together. It started with 'Annie' and continued through 'The Purple Rose of Cairo.' He always had an idea about what he wanted to achieve. The visual structure for the most part came from Woody, and then I would build on his ideas."

It was Allen's idea to shoot "Manhattan" in black-and-white. Willis convinced him to ratchet the visual level up another notch by shooting the film in wide screen format.

"It was appropriate," Willis says matter-of-factly, as though any fool can plainly see his logic. "It's a romantic story based on reality. Our perception of Manhattan was based on ideas expressed in George Gershwin's music. We used the same logic in designing a look for "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy." It was kind of a warm mellow summer light. I kept it very yellowish."

Why were so many of the films that Willis and Allen made together produced in black-and-white? "It was a natural decision for 'Manhattan,' " Willis replies. "I've always perceived New York as a black-and-white town. 'Zelig,' was appropriate as a black-and-white period piece. 'Stardust Memories,' was a retrospective story, and Woody felt it would be nice in black and white. I think he just liked material which went with black-and-white film."

We asked Willis if the time he spent shooting training films and documentaries early in his career influenced his perception of how things look and feel in reality? Was that a factor in his proclivity for emulating natural light?

Willis doesn't answer quickly. Finally, he says, "Maybe it did, and maybe it didn't. But mainly, I think the look of a film is defined by the story, characters and setting. People select locations for reasons. There is no point in going to the location if you are going to restructure everything after you are there. The whole idea to me is to fulfill the script. The perception of reality is different for everyone. What you do on an interpretive level is more basic to your role as a story-teller."

Willis mentally chews on the thoughts provoked by his own words for awhile, and then he adds, "Listen... the trick is to take something that's quite sophisticated and reduce it to the simplest possible terms, so that it's accessible to everyone. There is beauty in simplicity."

We turned to another topic, the choice of film formats.

"The choice of format is a very interesting decision," Willis says. "It's the same content whether you are framing the images in 2.35:1 (anamorphic) or Academy standard 1.85:1. But, the perception is different, because the structure of the imagery becomes stronger in larger and wider formats. It's knitted together in a tighter form."

Generally, the choice of format begins with the director or producer. Once that decision is made, he says that the cinematographer has to deal with how the content fits the format. If somebody asks, he'll explain why he believes the choice of format is right or wrong. Occasionally, he has convinced directors that a particular movie would be better shot in anamorphic format.

"I shot 'The Paper Chase' a long time ago (1973). I thought it was a perfect story for a wide screen frame. The studio didn't understand that at the time. They saw it as an interior movie about a guy who teaches at a law school."

In those days, anamorphic lenses were perceived as a replacement for Cinemascope wide screen Western films. The lenses were slow and cumbersome, and the fastest color negative was rated for an exposure index of 100.

Willis convinced the studio (20th Century Fox) and director Jim Bridges that content should dictate the format.

"I felt the classroom, and the way we could isolate people within the space of a 2.35:1 frame were ideal for the structure of the story," says Willis. "We composed close-ups with actors on the edges of the frame. The relativity of where characters are placed within the frame can be as important as how you use the contrasts between light and dark, big and small, and good and evil."

It was the same with "Klute," which he shot in 1971. Willis placed the cast within the space of the frame with the precision of a skilled surgeon wielding a scalpel.

"There's a huge section of black in one scene with a face on the right edge of the frame, and a huge section of white with another face on the other edge of the frame," Willis recalls. "There were people at the studio who didn't understand that the important thing is how you use the format that's important. Once they perceived what was happening, they liked it a lot."

There are stories about Willis which have taken on the proportions of legends. There is one tale about him shooting 1,000 feet of test film and ordering a one-light print. Then, he cut the negative and print film into 10 separate 100 foot rolls. Each day, Willis cut five feet from each roll of positive and negative film. That gave him two 50 foot rolls. He told the lab to make a one-light print from the negative. Then he compared the two prints to verify the repeatability of the lab's printing processes.

"It's a very hard test," Willis admits, "but I've seen laboratories when they are functioning properly do it."

We asked Willis how he typically prepares to shoot a film? Does he pre-visualize when he reads a script, or does that come later? Willis says he usually reads a script two or three times before he begins to see the film in his mind. Ideally, he doesn't do that before discussing the project with the director. By then, Willis says, he is cutting the film in his head. But, the totality of the visual structure isn't there yet. In fact, usually that doesn't come until two or three days before he's ready to shoot.

"You need the input of the actors and director," he says. "You need to see the sets, the colors, the costumes and props. If you believe something doesn't work cinematically, you need to be willing to argue. That's part of your job. After you have done all of that, then the structure of the film defines itself. I believe that movies are organic. That's why I don't think directors sitting in a trailer in front of a monitor, talking to the actors over a loudspeaker is the way of the future."

Willis makes it clear that he has no objection to video-assist as a visual reference. But, he fervently believes it shouldn't be used as a substitute for interaction. He sees that as escapist. For Willis, filmmaking is a tactile experience with a malleable medium.

"It's different if you are shooting a television commercial," he says. "You are seeing images on a monitor from the same perspective as the TV audience. TV monitors are extremely helpful, because it's an immediate medium, and the clients and director can see what's going on. It's also superb tool for stunts, slow-motion, or if you are using a remote camera. I just don't think you should be glued to the monitor when you're shooting a movie."

We asked Willis if he prefers working with visually oriented directors or those who tend to let him do his own thing? He laughs, and his first reaction is to say, "If I was absolutely truthful, I'd say, I want to do my own thing, but generally that doesn't work.

"What you really want is a visually oriented director, who understands your role,"` he says. "I'm always a little bit apprehensive about directors who want to talk about sprocket holes, T-stops and lenses. I tell them, you wouldn't try to record the sound yourself. It's the same with cinematography. The director should hire good people, and orchestrate them."

We asked Willis about sub-text, which can be described as using imagery to fill in the spaces between the words in a script. It draws another laugh.

"Someone asked me that same question not too long ago, and my reaction was to tell them to talk to the director, because you can't photograph sub-text," he replies. "The minute the words came out of my mouth, I realized that I've photographed a lot of sub-text. It's not something I like to hear from a director, 'That actor is thinking this or that. You can see it in his eyes. Show the audience what's going on in his head.' How do you photograph that?"

Sub-text can also be an actress, who is saying how much she loves someone, but she is in a dark and ominous setting, which sends a different message. "That type of visual sub-text is interesting," says Willis, "because you're making the audience think or feel something."

It comes down to defining the essence of what makes cinematography an art. Willis cites another example: It took a long time for the industry to accept the fact that it's okay to turn off fill lights and film actors in the darkness if that's what the story calls for. Now it’s done routinely.

"You have to concentrate on dealing with what you want to say emotionally on the screen, and forget everything else," he says. "If you have a good cinematographer, and you're supposed to see something, you'll see it. But, it's your general overall tone that matters."

People who have worked with Willis speak about his empathy for actors and actresses.

"You witness a lot of anxiety attacks as a cinematographer," he says. "I worked with an actress, who shall go nameless. Every day, we would have these conversations. She was worried about how she was going to look, because she was on the edge, she felt, of being brushed under the carpet in Hollywood. Every day, I would convince her that we were on her side."

As a general rule, Willis says that actors and actresses are most comfortable when they feel secure. If they feel that everybody knows what they are doing, and they can get answers, and believe they are going to be properly defined in the picture, then they feel more comfortable and begin to trust everyone.

"I've always tried to give an actor the security that he or she requires," he says. "Sometimes you are going to run into somebody who is not going to be happy with something. But generally unhappiness comes from insecurity. I always tell them what I expect, and they are always very helpful. They know that if it's working for me, it's going to work for them."

It tends to get overlooked, because of the enduring nature of "The Godfather" trilogy, and some of his other credits, but "Zelig" was the prototype of the modern visual effects film. It basically put the main character in a time and place defined by 1920s and '30s-style newsreels.

Willis says that there were actually only two optical composites combining old and new footage. "People think there are more," he says, "but that's an illusion. The rest was seamless intercepting of new black-and-white film with vintage footage from the 1920s and '30s. The trick was to make it integrate properly."

About half of the film consisted of stock footage obtained from different libraries. Then, dupe negatives and fine grain prints were made. A big challenge in postproduction was timing the sound track to match the images. Then, Willis had to match the new footage to the old newsreels scene by scene. Depending upon, who shot it and when, some of it was handcranked at 16, 18 and 20 frames a second. Willis had to undercrank to match specific stock film scenes. Perhaps, a bigger challenge was matching the lighting in each segment. He also located and used vintage newsreel lenses.

"I had to think about and plan every shot," he says. "I had to think about the look, how it was it was originally lit, and the effects of duping it down to a given point. The other hard part was the matte shots. The backgrounds were very old. I had to figure out how they were shot, including the focal lengths of the lenses that were used. The new foregrounds had to integrate precisely."

It seems like every film he has made added at least one idea to his visual repertoire. It was a homemade remote camera in "All The President's Men." He used it in the Library of Congress. The camera was rigged on a winch. The camera pulled back from a close-up view of a desktop right up to the dome, giving the audience a full view of the library floor.

Willis is more forward-thinking than backward-looking. He says it's a very interesting time to be making films.

"The evolution of film technology, including cameras, lights, lenses and stocks, frees you to do a lot of things that you'd like to do. There is no two ways about that."

Since he filmed "Presumed Innocent" and the third part of "The Godfather" trilogy in 1990, his main focus has been on shooting visually interesting commercials. But, he admits to still having unrealized dreams for the big screen.

"World War II was a very interesting period, I guess because I was growing up while it was happening," he says. "I would like to make one very good movie from that period that sustains itself over a long period of time. That's one of my dreams. I was very fortunate to get the opportunities to shoot a lot of good movies. I realize that."

Despite the snub from the Academy during the 1970s, Willis has earned many kudos. The British Academy nominated him for their equivalent of an Oscar for his work on "Manhattan," "All the President's Men" and "Zelig." He won the National Society of Film Critics Award for cinematography for "The Parallax View," "The Godfather: Part II" and "Pennies from Heaven," and the New York Film Critics Award for "Zelig."

After receiving his first Oscar nomination for "Zelig," Willis defined his philosophy with sparse but eloquent words. He said, "Craftsmanship and art are inseparable. If you aren't thinking about why you do something, something important is likely to get lost in the process... you have to consciously think about every shot."