American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 49

a reason for existing. [To Gordy's
thinking,] the word 'coverage' wasn't
really about shooting the same thing
from a bunch of different angles. If in
one shot you excluded a particular
character or just showed a piece of his
arm, then in the next shot you [would
reveal] who that arm belonged to. In
other words, every shot shouldn't have
to do everything; the lens was very
selective in what it showed, and each
sequence was like building something
out of bricks. Each brick contained a
reason why it was the next brick - it
had more information, or it showed
something.
There were shots he called
'shoe leather' - shots that showed
people going from here to there. To
him, that was just a waste. I guess he
got all of that from observing as he
was coming up. There was a lot to
learn from him, and I did learn a lot. I
was young, so it was good that I had
that opportunity.
We shot pretty much 90
percent of The Godfather with one lens
- a 40mm. And whenever we
provided a shot showing a character's
point of view, we would use a longer
lens - a 75mm or maybe longer. He
had a theory that by shooting a closeup of a person and then going to that
longer lens, it showed you that the
character was looking at something.
[The camera] was always about
4½ feet from the ground. He believed
in that [kind of perspective], and I got
into it as well. [On the Godfather
movies], he didn't like high-angle or
extremely low-angle shots; he always
felt that you shouldn't have a camera
looking down from a balcony unless
there was someone up there looking
down.
We had one argument over that
on The Godfather, while doing the
scene where the gunmen shoot at
Marlon Brando out in the street.
There's a high-angle shot in that
sequence, and it's not from anyone's
point of view. Gordy argued about it,

but I did it anyway, because I wanted to
show the guys running with the guns,
and the baskets of oranges getting
knocked over and rolling in the streets,
and it had to be a high angle to see that.
It's in the picture, and it's the only shot
in the film that does that. It expresses
something about the chaos because the
camera's in the wrong place.
By the time we did the second
picture, I understood who Gordy was
and what he was all about, and we got
along much better. The conflict on Part
I was more [about] personality. But I
knew he had done an unbelievable job
on the picture, and there would be no
way that I would think of working with
someone else [on Part II]. Of course, on
a personal level, success does a lot to
mend [relationships].
The third Godfather happened 15
years later, and only because I was going
through bankruptcy. Gordy hated being
in Italy; he didn't like working there.
We literally were getting a shot a day,
and sometimes [we went] a whole day
with no shot at all!
Let's face it: As a younger man I
was fortunate to work with two
absolutely brilliant [cinematographers
who were] probably among the most
important of their time: Gordy and
Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC]. But they
were complete opposites in terms of
their styles and temperaments. Gordy's
is the style of structure, where every
shot tells a specific thing, and Storaro's
style is that the camera is like a pen, and
it just moves throughout the whole
film. It's so opposite to Gordy it's
ridiculous. Vittorio sticks the camera
high, sticks the camera low, moves it
around - Gordy would have a heart
attack! I never thought of Gordy to
shoot Apocalypse Now; he wouldn't do
well in the jungle.
[Editor's note: Willis agreed, and
once joked, "If Francis and I went into
the jungle together, only one of us
would come out alive."]

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where the seeking of the truth
existed. Once the reporters went out
of that newsroom, they entered the
dark. That was a concept that was
very much Gordon's - light and dark
[representing] the truth and what's
being hidden.
Dustin Hoffman (actor on All
the President's Men): All the President's
Men doesn't go in the column of
'dated.' It's as fresh now as it's ever
been. It's indelible, and without
Gordon that wouldn't exist. The film
was visually elegant, but at the same
time it had that verisimilitude of a
documentary, which I thought
[Gordon] really captured. [When you
worked with him,] you knew you were
in the hands of a maestro.
He was doing something that
was going against, for lack of a better
word, the Hollywood grain. Originally,
certainly in the Thirties and Forties,
the idea was to put the light in the
actors' eyes, and he purposely went
against that.
The [newsroom] set was very
hot, and at one point the makeup
[artist] was beginning to wipe the
sweat off my forehead. Gordon was
there, and he said - he actually barked
it - 'Stop! Stop! Don't do that!' She
said, 'I'm just wiping the sweat off.' He
said, 'No, keep the sweat on! That's
how I'm reflecting the light!'
John Bailey, ASC: [The production of All the President's Men] was
occupying three or four stages at
Burbank Studios, where I was the
camera operator on an NBC television
series. The main set was the slightly
false-perspective set of the Washington
Post, which was all lit with fluorescents.
I remember it seemed like cameramen
would come from all over to belittle the
fact that [Willis] was lighting a set on
a major studio lot with fluorescents
when nobody was doing that.
All the ballasts were stacked
along the south-side stage wall, as I
recall; that had to be done because they
were commercial, industrial-grade
October 2014

49
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American Cinematographer - October 2014

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