American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 46

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Persistence of Vision
Then Coppola asked Michael
Chapman to take over, but then Mike
made this excuse about needing to go
to the bathroom, and suddenly there
was no camera crew!

Top: Willis, actor Robert
Duvall, Coppola and
camera operator
Michael Chapman line
up a shot on The
Godfather. Bottom: In
The Godfather Part II,
Vito Corleone (Robert
De Niro) uses a towel to
silence his weapon as
he guns down Fanucci
(Gaston Moschin), a
neighborhood crime
figure. Willis recalled,
"The shots of Fanucci
were done in New York,
and later on, in Rome,
we did 15 or 20 takes of
Bob firing the gun
wrapped up in
the towel."

Frederickson: Gordon had a sign
on the front of his camera that said,
'Actors think marks are German
money.' He was so specific in his lighting that if an actor moved off his mark
a little bit, he went into the dark. And
that made Francis crazy because he
wanted the actors to be able to freewheel and move around. They would
have big blowups. They had a blowup
one time so big that Francis put his fist
through the wall of a set and Gordon
jumped in his car and stormed away and
we lost half a day. They didn't get along,
but Francis respected him. He said,
'He's a pain in the ass, but boy, he delivers.'
46

October 2014

Sands: There was an incident
during The Godfather where Talia Shire
was coming down the steps after [her
character] had been beaten up by her
husband. The camera was at the bottom
of the steps and I was following focus,
very close, on a long lens on just her
face. But when we rolled the take, she
didn't follow the rehearsal.
Gordon said that she had to
come down the way we marked it. But
she continued to wander around, and
Gordon got angry with Coppola.
Gordy asked him exactly how she was
going to come down, and Coppola said,
'Any way she wants to.' Well, Gordon
gets up off his chair and leaves the set.
American Cinematographer

Hawk Koch (1st AD on Bad
Company, Up the Sandbox, The
Parallax View and The Drowning
Pool; former president of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences): I was a young 1st AD and
had just gotten a job on Robert
Benton's first film, Bad Company. They
told me, 'Gordon Willis is coming in
and we'd like you to pick him up at the
airport. Oh, and by the way, he eats
assistant directors for lunch.' I was
scared. I picked him up and we're
driving. He was kind of quiet. I said,
'We have about an-hour-and-a-half
before your first meeting, are you
hungry?' He asked, 'Do you know
where I can get a good cheeseburger?' I

The Godfather and The Godfather Part II photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Chapman: After
Gordy
stormed out, Francis started looking
around and saying, 'Get me Chappy -
I'll make him do it.' Well, I saw Francis
looking around, and I ran off the set
into the men's room, went into one of
the johns, closed the door, took my
pants down and sat! I just hid in there
until somebody came along after about
half an hour and said, 'Okay, it's safe to
come out, Chappy.' They had finally
made up, and everything was all right
again, so I came out. I wasn't gonna be
the pickle in the middle of that sandwich! Are you kidding? No way!
Francis and Gordy did have a
complicated relationship, and they had
some wonderful, absolutely operatic
fights. But somehow it all worked out;
the imagery and the scenes that were
being recorded were extraordinary.
After awhile, even the suits back in
Hollywood began to see it; they began
to realize that this epic thing was
happening. It all started fitting together
in these marvelous ways. After seeing
all this great imagery in scene after
scene, they had to shut up - and they
did. Eventually, they just let us go.
American Cinematographer - October 2014

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