Veteran cinematographer John Bailey, whose skill in finding the most beautiful, evocative shot composition in often everyday settings made him a much sought-after studio ally, passed away on Friday November 9. He was 81.
Amassing 86 credits as D.O.P./Cinematographer since his debut in 1972 on Alan Rudolph’s hippy-horror indie Premonition, Bailey very quickly found himself in demand. Lensing Michael Pressman’s Boulevard Nights in 1979 opened the door for Bailey, who next entered into a creative partnership with Paul Schrader on American Gigolo (1980), followed by Cat People (1982); Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985, for which he earned a ‘Best Artistic Contribution’ honour at the Cannes Film Festival); and, the Michael J. Fox starrer, Light of Day (1987).
ORDINARY PEOPLE (Dir: Robert Redford; Paramount Pictures, 1980)
Bailey earned his stripes as camera assistant and operator on such iconic works as Pierre Aldridge’s concert-doc Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1971), Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and, later, Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977) and Terence Malick’s masterpiece Days of Heaven (1978).
GROUNDHOG DAY (Dir: Harold Ramis; Columbia Pictures 1993)
It would be Robert Redford’s Oscar-winner Ordinary People (1980) - only Bailey’s 10th credit as D.O.P. - that solidified his status as one of Hollywood’s elite artisans. Over the next four decades, he would shoot alongside such names as Walter Hill (Crossroads, 1986); Robert Benton (Nobody’s Fool, 1994); James L. Brooks (As Good As It Gets, 1997); Wolfgang Peterson (In The Line of Fire, 1993); and Ken Kwapis (Vibes, 1988; The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, 2005; A Walk in the Woods, 2015).
THE LAWRENCE KASDAN FILMS - CONTINENTAL DIVIDE, 1981; THE BIG CHILL, 1983; SILVERADO, 1985; THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, 1988.
In the latter stage of his career, his lightness of touch visually and experience on set made him the go-to cameraman for romance and comedy. His buoyant colours and composition enlivened such hits as The Out-of-Towners (1999), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002), How to Lose a Guy in 10 days (2003), Must Love Dogs (2005), The Producers (2005); He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), Romona and Beezus (2010), The Way Way Back (2013) and How to Be a Latin Lover (2017). His final film was Richard Pagano’s Ten Tricks in 2022, a two-hander drama starring Lea Thompson shot in evocative black-&-white.
His vast body-of-work earned him unparalleled respect amongst his peers, a following that led to him being elected President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 2017 to 2019 (the organisation that, ironically, never nominated him for an Oscar). Bailey is survived by his wife, Oscar-nominated editor and former Academy governor Carol Littleton.
THE DOCUMENTARIES - SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA (Dir: Jonathan Demme, 1987); THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE (which he also directed, in 1991); A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME (Dir: Errol Morris, 1991); THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE (Dirs: Nanette Burstein, Brett Morgen; 2002)
Cinematographer Allen Daviau, the five-time Oscar nominee whose collaborations with such directors as Steven Spielberg, Albert Brooks, Peter Weir and Barry Levinson would earn him the American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, passed away in Hollywood on Wednesday, aged 77.
His final hours were spent at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his home for the last eight years. It is understood his death is Coronavirus related, making him the fourth resident of the facility to succumb to the virus.
Born John Allen Daviau on June 14 1942, the Louisiana native became enamoured with the moving image in the early days of colour television. In a 2004 interview with Moviehole, Daviau said, “I was 12 years old. I said, ‘I have to find out how that works’. The more I learned about photography, the more fascinated I was with the cinematographer, the director of photography and what that job was.”
Daviau was mentored by fellow Loyola High School graduate and University of Southern California Cinema Department student Bob Epstein. “Epstein introduced me to filmmakers like De Sica, Fellini, Bergman, Bresson, Ozu, and Kurosawa,” Daviau recounted in an interview with MovieMaker magazine. At the age of 16, Daviau gained access to the set of One-Eyed Jacks, the directorial debut of Marlon Brando, and watched as cinematographer Charles Lang lit an enormous sound stage. “I thought to myself that this man has the very best job in the history of the world,” said Daviau.
By the mid 1960s, with a 16mm Beaulieu camera by his side, Daviau became a sought-after cameraman in the music industry (he shot concert footage of The Animals and Jimi Hendrix) and the advertising sector. In 1968, the 25 year-old Daviau teamed with a young director named Steven Spielberg to shoot the now iconic short film, Amblin’. When Spielberg (pictured, above; with Daviau, right) was first contracted to Universal, he tried to bring his friend on board, and the studio sought to sign Daviau.
But the deal was struck down by the International Photographers’ Guild, the hardline cinematographers’ union that oversaw the sector at the time. Daviau recalled, “Back then the union was nepotistic and, if you didn't have a close personal contact, you just did not get in. It literally took me, and a handful of other now-prominent DP's - Caleb Deschanel, Tak Fujimoto, Andy Davis and others - a decade to gain entrance into the International Photographer's Guild. And, we finally had to file suit to get in.”
While Spielberg conquered the world, Allen Daviau spent the best part of the next decade shooting documentaries (including the Oscar-nominated Say Goodbye, in 1971) and made-for-television movies. He lensed three features - Richard Erdman’s western comedy The Brothers O’Toole (1973), Bob Hammer’s martial arts documentary New Gladiators (1973) and the Bruce Dern western, Harry Tracy, Desperado (1981) for William A. Graham - but honed his art and craft on short form work, including commercials and music videos.
He reunited with his friend Steven Spielberg briefly mid-decade, when he shot the ‘Gobi Desert’ sequence of Close Encounters of The Third Kind for one of his idols, the film’s cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. But it would be 1981 when Spielberg and Daviau’s first feature film collaboration came together. Working from Melissa Mathison’s script, then titled ‘E.T. and Me’, Spielberg convinced a sceptical Universal he could make the film for US$10million. Recalls Daviau, in an interview for Henderson’s Film Industries, “I was lucky that it was such a low budget, because he was looking for someone who was fast and inexpensive, and there I was.” (Pictured, above; Daviau, with Spielberg, shooting E.T.)
E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982) became the most successful film of all time and Daviau, with his first Oscar nomination under his belt, gained entry into the top-tier of Hollywood cinematographers. Of Daviau’s contribution to the alien’s lifelike appearance, Spielberg told American Cinematographer magazine in January 1983, “It took a lot more time to light E.T. than to light any of the human beings, and I think Allen spent his best days and his most talented hours in giving E.T. more expressions than perhaps (inventor) Carlo Rambaldi and I had envisioned. He found by moving a light, by moving the source of the key from half-light to top-light, E.T.’s 40 expressions were suddenly 80.”
His working relationship with his lifetime friend continued for another 15 years, with Daviau shooting the Spielberg-directed works ‘Kick the Can’ for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983; he also shot Dr George Miller’s segment, ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’); the Amazing Stories episode, ‘Ghost Train’; The Color Purple (1985), for which he earned his second Oscar nomination; and, Empire of the Sun (1987; pictured, below, with actor Christian Bale), again deemed Academy Award standard and for which he won the BAFTA Best Cinematography prize.
He also shot the Spielberg-produced adventures Harry and The Hendersons (1987) for director William Dear, and Congo (1995) for longtime Spielberg producer Alan Marshall. In 1985, he teamed with veteran director John Schlesinger for the politically-charged true story, The Falcon and The Snowman.
Allen Daviau’s mastery of source light and ethereal imagery came to the fore in three of the most beautifully shot films of the 1990s. He would earn his fourth Oscar nomination for his first collaboration with director Barry Levinson, on the director’s autobiographical drama Avalon (1990), and his fifth for Levinson’s gangster drama, Bugsy (1991), with Warren Beatty. In 1993, Australian director Peter Weir perfectly utilised Daviau’s visionary eye on what many consider his finest work, the PTSD drama Fearless, with Jeff Bridges. “We agreed that image clarity was the critical issue,” Daviau told the Cinephilia Beyond website. “I like images that are open and that speak very clearly photographically. This film is often a study of faces and eyes. Peter is very respectful of the power of close-ups. He speaks about that topic very eloquently, stating that even painters can’t equal the power of the motion picture close-up. We often came in a lot tighter than you normally see on close-ups, often using Jeff’s eyes to pull the audience into scenes.”
His diverse talent was utilised by writer/director Albert Brooks for the afterlife comedy Defending Your Life (1991) and by filmmaker Rand Ravich for the thriller The Astronaut’s Wife (1999), starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. His final feature would be Stephen Sommer’s horror/adventure Van Helsing (2004), with Hugh Jackman.
In the wake of Daviau’s passing, Steven Spielberg released a short statement via his production company Amblin. “In 1968, Allen and I started our careers side by side. Allen was a wonderful artist but his warmth and humanity were as powerful as his lens. He was a singular talent and a beautiful human being.”
One of the great journeyman cinematographers of the last half-century, Fred J. Koenekamp passed away on May 31, aged 94. At a time when Hollywood was opening its doors to continental artists like Vittorio Storaro, Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, Koenekamp was a local craftsman who graduated from television (Gunsmoke; The Lieutenant; The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; Mission Impossible) to become a master of bigscreen spectacle.
Debuting as an assistant on the Jane Russell vehicle Underwater! (1955), Koenekamp would work the studio roster, shooting such films as the Sandra Dee/George Hamlton romp Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding? (1967), Elvis Presley’s trippy Live a Little Love a Little (1968) and the western comedy The Great Bank Robbery (1969). When 20th Century Fox asked him to meet with director Franklin J Schaffer and discuss a project that would become an American cinema classic, a career of high-profile projects was set in motion…
PATTON “Frank asked me how I worked on a set. ‘Do you like multiple cameras?’ ‘Yes, I’ve always liked multiple cameras, and I like a handheld camera on the set all the time. You never know when you’ll need it.’ We probably talked for an hour, and it seemed to go very smoothly. About a week later I got a call, and they said they wanted me for Patton.” – Interview, American Cinematographer, February 2005
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS Koenekamp signed on for his first film after Patton, convinced (as was much of the industry, including 20th Century Fox) that bad boy Russ Meyer’s sinful and sordid shocker would be the new decade’s cause celebre. The DOP clashed badly with the director, who was used to lensing his own low-budgeters; Koenekamp found himself framing X-rated scenes that were unlikely to make the final edit. He ultimately dodged many of the bullets critics aimed at the notorious film, and reaffirmed his post-Patton/pre-Dolls buzz with films such as Billy Jack (1971), Skin Game (1971) and the Raquel Welch hit, Kansas City Bomber (1972).
PAPILLON "To this day, I still think Papillon is one of the best pictures I shot. I think it had a good look, the actors were terrific. There were no battling egos on the set, which I thought might have happened, but it didn't. They would talk to each other, off to the side, then come and talk to the director. I think Dustin made Steve work harder and, I think, that made Steve do one of the best jobs he has ever done." - Cinema Misfits, October 2011.
THE TOWERING INFERNO “I got a call saying Irwin Allen wanted to talk to me at Fox. Oddly enough, I’ve been a fire truck buff all my life. I don’t know why, I just love them. I talked to Irwin, and he said he wanted me to do Towering Inferno. They already had Joe Biroc on it, and Irwin said, ‘Joe’s going to do the second unit with you, but you’ll do the first unit with director John Guillermin.’- Interview, American Cinematographer, February 2005. Koenekamp shared the Academy Award for Cinematography with Biroc, and would go on to work with Irwin Allen on the Swarm (1978) and When Time Ran Out… (1980)
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR Koenekamp (who had the Sydney Poitier/Bill Cosby comedy smash Uptown Saturday Night in cinemas alongside …Inferno) parlayed Oscar glory and his strong commercial instincts into years of top-tier US studio work. His directorial collaborators throughout the 1970s included Michael Anderson (Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, 1975); Kirk Douglas (Posse, 1975); Jonathan Kaplan (White Line Fever, 1975); Ralph Nelson (Embryo, 1976); Ted Kotcheff (Fun with Dick and Jane, 1977); his Patton partner, Franklin J. Schaffer (Island in The Streams, 1977); Stanley Kramer (The Domino Principle, 1977); Charles Jarrot (The Other Side of Midnight, 1977); Stuart Rosenberg, (Love and Bullets, 1979); and, Franco Zeffirelli (The Champ, 1979). The decade ended with his biggest hit since The Towering Inferno, the horror classic The Amityville Horror (1979, for Rosenberg).
THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION Koenekamp kept working thoughout the1980s, although the projects he aligned with found all manner of notoriety. He shot a clearly unwell Steve McQueen in his final film, Buzz Kulik’s The Hunter (1980); Buck Henry’s little-seen satire First Family (1980), with Bob Newhart; the racially-themed comedy Carbon Copy, featuring a young Denzel Washington; and, Ronald Neames’ First Monday in October. He helmed two critically mauled star vehicles – the reteaming of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, Two of a Kind, for John Herzfeld; and, once again for Schaffer, the Luciano Pavarotti showpiece, Yes Giorgio. Cult film devotees will always hold Koenekamp in high regard for his work on W.D. Richter’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a project that allowed him a rare opportunity to experiment in the early days of genre film special effects technology.
FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER His final work would be John Milius’ gung-ho military actioner, Flight of The Intruder, in 1991, retiring at the age of 67. “When I walked off the set that last night, it was a real sad night. My wife was out of town, and I went home and sat there and had a drink. I thought, ‘Is it really over?’ For six or eight months after I retired, I’d get calls every once in awhile, and finally everyone realized I wasn’t working anymore. I didn’t miss a lot of things, but what I did miss, and still miss, is the camaraderie of the crew.” - Interview, American Cinematographer, 2005. (Pictured, right; Milius and crew farewell the DOP on his final shooting day. Photo copyright: American Cinematographer, 2005)
Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 9:43AM 
