Digital Video - November 2007 - (Page 28) CLOSE-UPS OTHER SIDE OF THE LENS HASKELL WEXLER, ASC SITS FOR A DV PORTRAIT. BY DANIEL FRANKEL PHOTO BY OWEN ROIZMAN, ASC H aving long since established himself among a very elite group of celebrity cinematographers (with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame to prove it), Haskell Wexler, ASC has been recently spending more of his days in front of the camera than behind it. In 2004, he let his son Mark make him the subject of Tell Them Who You Are. The documentary that not only chronicled his career through interviews with some of the A-list filmmakers he’d worked for over the years—including Milos Forman, Norman Jewison, George Lucas and John Sayles—but provided an candid portrait of a complex father-and-son relationship. “It’s terrible,” says Wexler, describing the experience of being filmed. Still, on a Thursday morning in Venice, Calif., he sits on a couch in the sunlit living room of documentarian Joan Churchill, and is back in front of the camera, chatting with a magazine reporter—yours truly. Churchill is capturing the proceedings with a Sony HVR-Z1U, dv november 2007 while taking consultation from production partner Alan Barker. Churchill, who recently served as cinematographer on Barbara Kopple’s 2006 Dixie Chicks doc Shut Up and Sing, has a history with Wexler that goes all the way back to the early 1970s, when the latter mentored her into the film business. Now, she and Barker—a veteran sound specialist who also worked on Shut Up and Sing—are frequent collaborators with Wexler. Barker says it’s his job to teach Wexler everything he can about digital production. Notably, the trio worked closely on Wexler’s 2006 documentary Who Needs Sleep?, which chronicled the effects of sleep deprivation on hardworking production pros driven by impossible work schedules. “We’ve been filming Haskell on and off over the last few years,” says Barker, who claims he and Churchill have captured hundreds of hours of footage featuring the two-time Oscar-winner. Wexler is an ideal subject for two reasons, Barker explains. First, “We happen to know that Haskell is an incredible human being and a ball of energy,” he says. www.dv.com 28 http://www.dv.com
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