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)
As with all sudden passings, the death of Ray Liotta, aged 67, puts a melancholy focus on his career. What one finds is a catalogue of characters that, borne of the right material and guided by a director who could grasp the actor’s unique physicality and energy, is unlike any in Hollywood’s history.
He was never not working, frankly, with dozens of television roles, from early work in soaps like Another World to guesting on hits like E.R. (for which he won an Emmy) and Hannah Montana (pictured, below) to hardman roles in hits like Shades of Blue, with Jennifer Lopez; as an in-demand voice actor and narrator, notably the landmark 2015 docu-series, The Making of the Mob; and, in a testament to his stature in the industry, seven credits in which he plays ‘Ray Liotta’.
It is inconceivable that any ‘listicle’ could encompass a film career like Liotta’s. He was great in films you won’t see below, like Ted Demme’s Blow (2001), with Johnny Depp; the thriller Identity (2003), starring John Cusack; Narc (2002), for director Joe Carnahan; and, perhaps most adored of all, his ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson’ in the American classic, Field of Dreams (1989). “You want to do as many different genres as you can,” he told Long Island Weekly in 2018. “I’ve done movies with The Muppets. I did good guys and bad guys. I did a movie with an elephant. I decided that I was here to try different parts and do different things. That’s what a career should be.”
The five selected are the ones that defined for us who Ray Liotta was so good at being on-screen - a riveting presence, whether as a tightly-coiled force of dangerous energy or as a gentle character of values and strength.
GOODFELLAS (1990) | Director: Martin Scorsese | Also starring: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesce, Lorraine Bracco | The film roared into the public consciousness as soon as it hit theatres; a work that felt like Martin Scorsese had been building towards his whole career, that Joe Pesci was born to dominate, that De Niro had in him from Day 1. And out front of it all was Ray Liotta, going scene-for-scene with the greatest actors of his generation, as made-man turned stool pigeon, ‘Henry Hill’. He was high on Scorsese’s list of leads, but Warner Bros weren’t convinced; at the Venice Film Festival spruiking The Last Temptation of Christ, Liotta fronted a heavily-bodyguarded Scorsese about the role. Scorsese told GQ in 2010, ““Ray approached me in the lobby and the bodyguards moved toward him. And [Liotta] had an interesting way of reacting. He held his ground, but made them understand he was no threat. I liked his behaviour at that moment. I thought,’Oh, he understands that kind of situation.’”
SOMETHING WILD (1986) | Director: Jonathan Demme | Also starring: Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels | Scorsese wanted Liotta for his gangster epic because he had seen the actor’s electrically terrifying turn as obsessive ex-con husband ‘Ray Sinclair’ in Jonathan Demme’s pitch-black comedy-thriller. Melanie Griffith pushed hard for her friend to be cast in the role that would define his on-screen persona for the next two decades. “I had offers for every crazy guy around,” Liotta told The Los Angeles Times in 1990. His performance earned Supporting Actor nominations from the Golden Globes, New York Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics, and won him the Boston Film Critics trophy.
DOMINICK & EUGENE (1988) | Director: Robert M. Young | Also starring: Tom Hulce, Jamie Lee Curtis | Liotta was determined not to be typecast as Hollywood’s short-fuse psychopath and took on the role of brother and caregiver Eugene to Tom Hulce’s intellectually disabled Dominick in veteran director Robert M. Young’s tearjerker. “The two leading actors do a superb job of bringing these characters to life,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. “Mr. Liotta makes Gino a touchingly devoted figure, a man willing to sacrifice almost anything for his brother’s welfare.” Liotta’s sweeter side was sorely underutilised throughout his career; apart from Field of Dreams, also check out Article 99 (1992), opposite Kiefer Sutherland; Corinna, Corinna (1994), with Whoopi Goldberg; and the Disney romp, Operation Dumbo Drop (1995), for Australian director Simon Wincer.
TURBULENCE (1997) | Director: Robert Butler | Also starring: Lauren Holly, Brendan Gleeson | Of course, no one could bring the crazy like Liotta, as his role as ‘Ryan Weaver’ in Turbulence displayed. This ‘slasher on an airplane’ slice of B-movie giddiness was a critical and commercial dud upon release, but went on to find an appreciative home video audience; it would be one of the most rented VHS releases of the late ‘90s and spawn two direct-to-video sequels. Liotta goes all in on Weaver’s villainy, putting co-star Lauren Holly through the emotional and physical wringer in their scenes together. He did psycho-stalker like few actors ever have - see also Unlawful Entry (1992), opposite Kurt Russell; the barely-released Control (2004), with Willem Dafoe; and, in Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (2012), alongside Brad Pitt.
THE RAT PACK (2002) | Director: Rob Cohen | Also starring: Joe Mantegna, Don Cheadle | This made-for-TV period epic was commissioned in the early days of HBO, a bold statement from the cabler that they were going to be front-and-centre of a new type of prestige television. Liotta delivered a now iconic performance as Frank Sinatra; despite some critics noting he neither looks nor sounds like ‘The Chairman of The Board’, Liotta imbues one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures with the gravitas needed to convey the vastness of the entertainer’s impact on 1950’s America. His scenes opposite William Petersen, playing the charismatic young President John F. Kennedy, are some of the best in either actor’s career.
One of the great leading men of Hollywood’s recent history and an actor gifted with a unique and prodigious talent, Oscar-winner William Hurt has passed away from natural causes. Considered one of the defining stars of his generation, he earned a Best Actor trophy for Kiss of The Spider Woman in 1986, the first of three consecutive nominations in the category. He was 71.
A strapping 6’2” and exuding a WASP-ish everyman appeal that had many comparing his on-screen charisma to Robert Redford in his prime, Hurt was targeted straight out of college as a potential big-screen star. He delivered on that, but did so by starring in roles that often subverted movie-star conventions, channelling nuance and dark emotion that made him a compelling film presence.
A graduate of Juiliiard, he was a naturally commanding stage actor, appearing in more than fifty productions including Henry V, Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, Richard II, Hurlyburly (earning a Tony Award nomination), My Life (winning an Obie Award for Best Actor) and A Midsummer's Night's Dream.
Hurt made his on-screen debut in the lead role of Dr Jessup in Ken Russel’s trippy Altered States (1980; pictured, right), kick-starting a run of major studio films that saw him work with some of international cinema’s finest directors and A-list co-stars - Peter Yates’ Eyewitness (1981), opposite Sigourney Weaver; Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) with Kathleen Turner; Michael Apted’s Gorky Park (1983), with Lee Marvin; Kasdan again, in The Big Chill (1983); Hector Babenco, for …Spider Woman; Randa Haines’ Children of a Lesser God (1986), opposite Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin; James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News (1987), with Holly Hunter; and, opposite Oscar-winner Geena Davis in 1988’s The Accidental Tourist (again, for Lawrence Kasdan). It was a period that established him as one of the defining movie stars of ‘80s cinema.
His choices became more idiosyncratic, and occasionally less successful at the box office, but each exemplified the fearless and adventurous spirit with which he viewed his craft. He would often shine in support parts or lend stature to the cool indies of the period. Through the ‘90s, his significant works included Kasdan’s ensemble black comedy I Love You to Death (1990); Woody Allen’s Alice (1990); The Doctor (1991), reteaming with his …Lesser God director, Randa Haines; Wim Wenders’ Until the End of The World (1991; pictured below); Anthony Minghella’s Mr. Wonderful (1993); Wayne Wang’s Smoke (1995); and, Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998).
In 1998, he gave more than the role of Captain John Robinson deserved in Australian director Stephen Hopkins’ Lost in Space, opposite Gary Oldman and Mimi Rogers, a box-office underperformer that has nevertheless found some cult love in recent years.
The ‘elder statesman’ phase of his career, in which he added gravitas to key roles that demanded maximum impact with limited screen time, proved richly rewarding for the actor and his audience alike. Highlights from his post-2000 career include Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (2001); Tonie Marshall’s Au plus près du paradis (2002), with Catherine Deneuve; M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004); and, Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005), with George Clooney. David Cronenberg directed him to his fourth Oscar nomination in 2005, for his supporting turn in 2005’s A History of Violence.
In recent years, he has found favour with a younger audience as an integral part of the MCU; he first appeared as G-man Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross opposite Edward Norton in Louis Letterier’s The Incredible Hulk in 2008 and reprised the role in subsequent Marvel adventures Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avenger: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Black Widow (2021). His final film in general release was Sean McNamara’s The King’s Daughter with Kaya Scodelario and Pierce Brosnan, a troubled production shot in Australia in 2014 that debuted on US VOD services in January 2022.
Hurt moved effortlessly between big- and small-screen work. Notable television projects over his 50-year career include All the Way Home (1981), with Sally Field; the 2000 mini-series adaptation of Dune, in which he played ‘Duke Leto Atreides’ (pictured, right); Varian’s War (2001), opposite Julia Ormond; a multi-episode arc in the series Damages (2009), reuniting him with his The Big Chill co-star Glenn Close; the iconic role of ‘Captain Ahab’ in the 2011 mini-series Moby Dick; and, his Emmy-nominated performance as ‘Hank Paulson’ in Curtis Hanson’s acclaimed account of the 2008 financial crisis, Too Big to Fail (2011; featured, above).
William Hurt was married twice, first to actress Mary Beth Hurt then Heidi Henderson, with both marriages ending in divorce. He is survived by his children Jeanne Bonnaire-Hurt, Alexander Hurt, Samuel Hurt and William Hurt Jr.
Writer/director Lynn Shelton, one of independent cinema's strongest auteur voices and a leading creative influence within the television sector, passed away from a blood disorder on Friday, at the age of 54.
The Ohio native, who became a prominent advocate for and beloved figure in the Seattle filmmaking scene, was recognised as an innovative storyteller, whose naturalistic dialogue and character-focussed drama made her a critical favourite and indie sector champion. From her introspective debut feature We Go Way Back (2006), which earned her the Slamdance Film Festival Best Director award, and 2008 sophomore effort My Effortless Brilliance (2008) Shelton was lauded as one of the strongest proponents of the ‘mumblecore’ film movement.
Her third feature, Humpday (2009), would prove her breakout festival hit. Labelled by the British Film Institute as, “a fiercely astute, frequently hilarious riff on the ‘bromantic’ comedy sub-genre”, it starred fellow mumblecore figurehead Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard (pictured, right; with Shelton) as straight friends coerced into a ‘homosexual art project’. A Sundance Jury Prize winner and National Board of Review Top Independent Film honoree, Humpday paved the way for Shelton’s distinctive and adored feature film output, which included Your Sister’s Sister (2011), Touchy Feely (2013), Laggies (2014), Outside In (2017) and Sword of Trust (2019).
Posting a statement on Twitter, Duplass said…
The industry response to Duplass' tweet, from such peers as Olivia Wilde, Josh & Benny Safdie, Greg Mottola, Shawn Levy and Chris O’Dowd, was indicative of Shelton’s standing within the film community.
Between feature films, Lynn Shelton made some of the most critically acclaimed television hours of the last decade. Her unmistakable energy and honesty enlivened episodes of Mad Men, New Girl, The Mindy Project, The Good Place, Santa Clarita Diet, Shameless, Touchy Feely, Dickinson and Fresh Off the Boat. Most recently, she directed Reese Witherspoon (pictured, right; with her director) and Kerry Washington in four episodes of Little Fires Everywhere, streaming service Hulu’s acclaimed adaptation of Celeste Ng's 2017 bestselling book. Witherspoon, who also worked with Shelton on the Apple TV series The Morning Show, took to her social profile on Twitter to express her sadness…
In recent years, she entered into first a creative partnership, then a romantic one, with actor/comedian Marc Maron. Having directed episodes of his debut series Maron, the pair became close. She would direct him in her last feature, Sword of Trust as well as five episodes of his hit Netflix series GLOW, opposite Alison Brie, and two stand-up specials, ‘Too Real’ (2017) and his most recent, ‘End Times Fun’ (2020).
Maron addressed her shock passing in a public statement that read, in part, “I loved her very much as I know many of you did as well. It’s devastating. I am leveled, heartbroken and in complete shock and don’t really know how to move forward in this moment. She was a beautiful, kind, loving, charismatic artist. Her spirit was pure joy. She made me happy. I made her happy. We were happy. I made her laugh all the time. We laughed a lot. We were starting a life together. I really can’t believe what is happening. This is a horrendous, sad loss.”
Many entertainment industry figures who were touched by her talent have expressed their grief...
(Pictured, above; Brie and her GLOW director Shelton in a pic courtesy of the actress' Instagram page)
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.”
Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 9:43AM 
