The inventor of the Steadicam hits the campaign trail with director Warren Beatty and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC.
The best fortune cookie I ever got said: "You have a unusual equipment for success." True enough and I'm most grateful for my ticket into this business, and for the the chance to interact with so many of its legendary practitioners. My most recent excursion with the "equipment" was to Beverly Hills and South Central L.A. to work with Warren Beatty and Vittorio Storaro on Bulworth, a risky, richly dark political comedy about money, race and a U.S. senator who decides to quit lying and begin rhyming. Co-written, produced, directed and acted by Warren and startlingly photographed by Vittorio (who served as a cinematographic Michelangelo to Beatty's rap-spouting Pope Julius II), it will probably create quite a stir. Did I say risky? A lot of us were out on the edge with this one Warren most of all. At the end I told him, "Being Bulworth took some balls." He laughed.
Being Vittorio
A three-time Oscar winner for his work on Apocalypse Now, Reds and The Last Emperor (and a nominee for Dick Tracy), Vittorio Storaro is at the height of his powers famous, successful and charismatic. So, more or less, are a handful of his peers, but Vittorio is unique.
If you watch Bulworth in a perfect theater with wonderful projection and a pristine ENR print, you will of course see what Vittorio has done; but even a googol of film students sitting in the dark at the Googolplex with diagrams of lamp positions, dimmer settings and gels may not discover how he does it, or why, or with what joyous style. Storaro is renowned for his technical mastery, but his success goes beyond footcandles and contrast ratios. I think it has to do with the distinctly unfashionable commodity of character.
Warren compares making movies to repeated trips on a 747: "You can't get off in mid-flight, so when people ask each other back it means there is a shared feeling of confidence and understanding. Vittorio gets better and better. He always has the quality of the picture as his first priority. He's in love with light, he's innovative, he has civility and humor, and he's good for the mood!"
Storaro succeeds where perhaps some of his colleagues falter because of the way he conducts the core relationships at the heart of the business of cinematography. He works for a small number of difficult world-class directors, always with a degree of mutual trust, respect and friendship that is gratifying to observe. I have known him since Reds, and if I could bottle his manner on the set just his enthusiasm and his old-fashioned courtesy I'd sell it at film schools, or slip it like a mickey into the occasional drink. It would improve working conditions industrywide.
Vittorio no longer refuses to do a picture if he can't bring along the Italian crew with whom he did 30 films. For Bulworth, he imported only Fabio Cafolla, the son of his former gaffer, to run the dimmer operation, and he says he is now eager to work with people of different nationalities and views. He has done at least two films each with Fabio, gaffer Gary Tandrow, first assistant Bill Clevenger, video technician Brad Ralston and myself, and he remains deluded that we are wonderful human beings. Gary says that Vittorio has been an inspiration to him: "Not only is he very spiritual in the way he lights and looks at things, but also in the way he treats people. Warren can be very taxing, but Vittorio knows him and sees the best in everybody and says that he is a genius."
Storaro is a good collaborator, which of course requires a point of view and a gift for resolving conceptual differences like an adult. Despite his considerable accent, as of Reds Vittorio was already quite eloquent in English. He is a highly civilized character, and part of his effectiveness lies in the careful formality of his speech and writings, including his "ideations" the extensive Photographic Concepts he devises for each of his films —
We are introduced to the life of Senator Jay Bulworth in Washington, on a night filled with DARKNESS, interrupted by sudden FLASHES of LIGHT that attempt dramatically to illuminate his Depression, that attempt to distance him from the Sensation of life's deprivation that succeeds in enveloping him during this period of his existence.
The BLACKNESS that surrounds him, the imminent ABSENCE OF COLOR around him, pushes him toward a determined, voluntary desire for a SEPARATION of the two principal Elements of which we are composed, and a movement into a conflict between Life and Death — between LIGHT and SHADOW....... p>
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