American Cinematographer - November 1988 - 54

are

these tortured

self-portraits.

naturalist in any sense of
the word. But I've always found his

He's not

a

of portraiture and his sense
defining the landscapes and the
complexity of the human face most
interesting. His use of color and
sense

of

tormented, broken, erratic line is

so

strong and so much against the
comfortable

pictorial tradition of

art. Last summer,

I took

some

time

off to go

back to Vienna. It was a
very nostaligic trip because it was
exactly 25 years ago that I had stud¬
ied there. Most importantly, I saw
this incredible show of Egon
Schiele out in the

country near

Vienna.

"Schiele's

sense

of the

of line was tremendous. It
a
flowing sense of line like
Picasso's. It was tormented, jagged
despite which there is a great
parallel to Japanese art - a strong
sense of
spontaneity and a quickly

power

wasn't

...

Davis and Hurt
aboard

an

for Paris.

example.
"I've spoken mainly about
lighting because there is very

as an

airplane
the

little

camera

movement in

The Acci¬

dental Tourist.

Normally I love to
move the camera; in a spherical for¬
mat I intentionally use fairly wide
lenses

so

that little

moves are em¬

very dramatic.
The Accidental Tourist has very

phasized and
camera

movement. It's

But
little

almost clas¬

sically Japanese, and yet it was very
easy to resist moving the camera.
There was very little that camera
movement

could do to contribute to

its

rhythms."
Along with lighting and
movement, the cinematographer
uses angles to assist in telling the
story. While Bailey didn't go as far
as some of his European counter¬
parts might have and free the cam¬
era of all logical points of view, he
did keep the angles low. "I'm not
sure if I can say scene-to-scene why
the

is low," he

camera

"There

are

very

admitted.

few high angles. I

think there is

something about
looking slightly up at a person, as
opposed to looking eye-to-eye.
"Film is very

voyeuristic

and when you are on an eye level
and looking at an actor in a film, I

think the

sense

very strong.

52

American

of intrusion

This is

a

Cinematographer

can

be

subtle thing.

A

penetrating look by the actor
camera
right on eye level

with the
can

almost

be

too

intense

-

especially if you are shooting in a
tight close-up. So if the axis is
slightly off-center or if you are a
little below the range of the look, it
is somehow a little safer. I think by
feeling safer, viewers are able to
extend themselves

more

out toward

drawn line. In fact, the Japanese are

probably the greatest collectors of
Schiele. Anyway, this show just
grabbed me by the throat and had
an incredible
impact on me, even
more powerful than the Van
Gogh
show I had seen right before I did
Silverado.
make

a

"If you were going to
film about Egon Schiele,

the screen. They don't feel so much
under assault. After all, that head

actor to

the screen is many times
larger than your own and can be
very intimidating."
Bailey has revealed in oth¬

life after his

up on

er

interviews that often his cine¬

matic work is affected

by art. He
laughed when the question came
up concerning what type of art
might have inspired his work on
The Accidental Tourist because

su¬

source is very far
removed from the life of Macon

then Bill Hurt would be the

perfect
play him. In The Accidental
Tourist Bill exposes himself and the
torment his character is going
through, trying to find meaning in

not for any
cause

many years one of my
favorite artists has been an Aus¬
trian who lived

a

died very young.
Schiele. He did

tormented life and

His

name is Egon
oils but he

some

mainly worked in water color. He
did a lot of self portraits and some
of his most

prized works are explic¬
itly erotic. He was actually jailed for
a month in 1912, for
alleged ob¬
scenity. But a good part of his work

November 1988

is murdered. As he

technical

there is

no

reason, be¬
technical parallel

apply to film - but the emotional
parallel is overwhelming.
to

"There is

perficially the
Leary. "For

son

says, I'm trying to endure.' I carried
this analog of Schiele with me -

a

visceral

con¬

nection and emotional connection

that you can see in Schiele's work
and it is very similar to what's going
on in The Accidental Tourist. It all

back, once again,
that it is not a question

goes

to the fact

of literally
interpreting something, but it is
that intuitive, emotional life that
you try to translate to the
The relationship
art and

been

a

film."
between

cinematography has long
topic of interest. Most mod-
American Cinematographer - November 1988

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