American Cinematographer - June 2020 - 69

Photos courtesy of the AC Archive.

tt In one of the most iconic images of 1970s cinema, Catholic priest Lankester Merrin (Max von
Sydow) approaches the home of a girl possessed by a demon in The Exorcist (1973), shot by Owen
Roizman, ASC. t Insets: A trio of memorable AC covers from the '70s. p The magazine's layout for its
Oct. 1970 Woodstock coverage was "far out." u Director-cinematographer Haskell Wexler, ASC (in cap)
guides a scene for Medium Cool, covered in Jan. 1970. uq Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, HSC (far right)
prepares to shoot a harrowing scene for The Deer Hunter (1978) with actor John Savage (foreground).
uqq Gilbert Taylor, BSC discusses an upcoming shot for Star Wars (1977) with director George Lucas.

Steven Spielberg - the director
of Jaws - was one of the up-andcoming filmmakers who benefitted,
as he explains in Easy Riders: "The '70s
was the first time that a kind of age
restriction was lifted, and young
people were allowed to come rushing
in with all of their naïveté and their
wisdom and all of the privileges of
youth. It was just an avalanche of
brave new ideas, which is why the
'70s was such a watershed."
The situation helped break a
rolling wave of talented filmmakers,
both in front of and behind the
camera. During the '70s, directors like
Hal Ashby, Peter Bogdanovich, John
Boorman, Michael Cimino, Francis
Ford Coppola, William Friedkin,
George Roy Hill, Norman Jewison,
George Lucas, John Milius, Mike
Nichols, Alan Pakula, Roman
Polanski, Michael Ritchie, John
Schlesinger and Spielberg would all
appear in AC articles, detailing their
collaborations with such ASC cinematographers as John A. Alonzo,
Conrad L. Hall, Victor J. Kemper,
László Kovács, Giuseppe Rotunno,
Owen Roizman, Robert Surtees,
Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis and
Vilmos
Zsigmond.
(Strangely,
Scorsese himself made only a cameo
appearance in the magazine's pages
during the '70s, with a brief mention

in its October 1970 coverage of the
music documentary Woodstock, on
which he and his future feature editor,
Thelma Schoonmaker, served as assistant directors and editors.)
Aptly enough, the very first AC
installment of the decade - our
January 1970 issue - featured editor
Herb A. Lightman's article "The
Filming of Medium Cool," a film "written, co-produced and photographed
by Haskell Wexler, ASC, which represents the applications of cinéma vérité
technique at its best." Always a
forward-thinking firebrand, Wexler
commented, "Since I was also the
cameraman, I decided to use the
simplest lighting system I could think
of, so that if I wanted to do a 360degree pan around a room, I wouldn't
have to re-light the set. For this
reason, I used what was basically
bounce light for photographing much
of the picture - adding one or two
hotter lights to snap things up a bit.
However, with the exception of one
sequence where 1,000-watt quartz
lights were used, the lamps I
employed were never larger than 750
watts.
"When you're working with
non-professionals you can't spook
them with the equipment - a lot of
floor lamps, century stands and all
that," he added. "It's bad enough that
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American Cinematographer - June 2020

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