American Cinematographer - January 1993 - 68

Metromedia in Los Angeles, and he
found himself sharing a Lau¬
rel Canyon house with his old cro¬
nies Abramson and Varhol.
soon

Purdy left Metromedia
after just one year, but his next as¬
signments launched his career. He
free-lanced for Walt Disney, shoot¬
ing second-unit footage for a TV

thing in the world."
Purdy explains that work¬
ing for overseas news bureaus is
never a
straight 9-to-5 gig. "There's
no such
thing as a 'typical day,"' he
notes. "A story breaks, and they
send you out. When you go in in
the morning, you don't know if
you'll be going home that evening."

movie, and then
landed

job

a

on

Here and Now, a

weekly
news

CBS

magazine

show. A friend
from his days in
Chicago, Van

"When I looked around, I saw a

new. It's
of local news, all on
a

lot of time

to kill/ I didn't want to leave

film,

the
wave of the future and told me I
should get in on it. So I agreed, and
I would up shooting specials for

but he insisted that this

was

people like Connie Chung and Pat
O'Brien."

The bureau

system oper¬

ates via S.W.A.T.-like

procedures.
ABC's Tokyo bureau, for instance,
gets its orders from ABC headquar¬
ters in New York. Tokyo, in turn, is
responsible for all news in Asia and
controls ABC's smaller Asian satel¬
lite bureaus, located in places like

Hong Kong. Shooters like Purdy
have to be ready at a moment's
notice. "I might get a call at two or
three in the morning, and they'd tell
me, 'You're booked on a flight to
New Delhi.' That

means it's
scramble time; I'd have to get up,

using the HL-77 camera, and
they were counting on me to oper¬
ate it because of my experience at

packing, rush to the bureau
and get the gear ready. And most
of the time you don't know what
you're in for until you get there. It
could be a hijacking, or a major
coup, or a secret rendezvous with
a key figure for an interview. In the
States, you go in overnight and
come back the next
day. Over there,
you might not get home for a
month. You really live out of the

CBS."

suitcase."

Purdy collected three
Emmy Awards for his efforts, and
in 1979 ABC offered him a job in its
Tokyo bureau. He jumped at the
chance. "They were still shooting
film there," he says. "I was the first
guy to take video to the Tokyo bu¬
which covered all of Asia. I

was

start

News

The cameraman's success¬

cameramen

also

Tokyo led rival
a job in Hong
Kong. After two years there, Purdy
trekked to Israel (2 Vi years), Lon¬
don (2 years), Hong Kong again (2
more
years) and Manila (2 years).
"Looking back," he says now, "I
think was trying to avoid getting
permanent anywhere because I still
wanted to go back to film. But it
was a
big adventure for me. I was
no
longer under the military blan¬

live, often quite literally, under the
gun. Purdy recalls being sent from

ket; I

was

ful 2 Vi-year stay in
NBC to offer him

Hong Kong to Israel in 1982, after
the Israelis had invaded Lebanon.
cameraman and his
regular

The

partner, sound man Peter Yu, were
slated to team up with producer
Mike Mosher and an up-and-com¬

out and

telling you to go on. But
you went over that line, you
were at
your own risk. In order to
get to the west side, you really had
to drive like a bat out of hell. Luck¬
once

ily, we had a good driver!"
Once through, the journal¬
ists suddenly found themselves in
the lap of luxury when they
checked into that famed journalists'
haunt, the Commodore Hotel. "The
Israelis would

never

bomb that

hotel," Purdy points out. "It had the
most fantastic food you could want.
You could

get anything there; you
get Perrier or Evian water,
you could get your laundry done,
could

could receive telegrams or tel¬
They had prime-rib steak, the
best wines, everything! Journalists
you

exes.

from all

over

the world

were

stay¬

ing at this place, which was right in
the midst of a war zone."
In the middle of his first

night in the hotel, Purdy was awak¬
ened by the sound of the Israelis
resuming their shelling. He fell out
of bed and began groping for his
camera, but suddenly wrenched
his knee badly. "I was in some seri¬
ous
pain," he says, his face contort¬
ing slightly at the memory. "I
should have called a doctor to get
me out of there, but
you have to
realize that in this line of work, your

ego

and pride keep you from say¬

ing that you're hurt. If it's not a vis¬
ible hurt, people will say, 'Oh, this
guy can't take it.' So I had to suffer
through it. I tied as many handker¬

foreigner. I wouldn't

part of a dual anchor team with
Roger Mudd. They were bringing

but I

experiences I had for any¬

people in from all over to cover this

was

actually living in these

as a

Cinematographer

ing nightly

snipers took potshots at each other.

news anchor named
Tom Brokaw. "It was the first time
I had met Mike, and at that time
Tom had left the Today show and

countries

American

occupied by the Palestinians. "The
west side was very dangerous; you
had to go along the waterfront and
through the no-man's-land border

of them!"

video, and we'll have

66

the west side of Beirut, which was

On the Israeli side, there were guys
coming out from corners with their
faces all wrapped up, checking you

forever. "Van told me, 'I'm

trade the

bit
dodgy when the four-man team
decided to negotiate their way into

known as the Green Line.
Both sides watched that line, and

going to start something

reau,

knew I had to do well."
The assignment got „a

zone

pair of shoes scattered on
the ground - people had run right out

president of L.A.'s KNXT, ap¬
proached him once again with the
offer that would change his for¬
two hours

correspondent like Tom Brokaw, I

thousand

Gordon Sauter, who had become

tunes

story. Working with a seasoned

January 1993

chiefs

as

was

camera

I could around my knee,
carrying a TK-76, an NBC

designed by RCA. It was a
American Cinematographer - January 1993

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