From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Haskell Wexler (born February 6, 1922 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Academy Award-winning American cinematographer, and a film producer and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Film career 3 Selected filmography 4 Frequent collaborators 5 External links

Wexler was born in Chicago, Illinois to Simon and Lottie Wexler, who also had Jerrold, Joyce (Isaacs), and Yale. After a year of college at the University of California, Berkeley and a tour in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II, he decided to become a filmmaker despite having no experience in the industry.

He briefly made industrial films in Chicago, then became an assistant cameraman. Wexler worked on documentary features and shorts; low-budget docu-dramas such as 1959's The Savage Eye; television's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet; and television commercials. (He would later found Wexler-Hall, a television commercial production company, with Conrad Hall.) In 1963, he served as the cinematographer on his first big-budget film, Elia Kazan's America, America. Wexler, an outspoken political liberal, reportedly clashed with the politically conservative Kazan. Notwithstanding their personal differences, the film was attractive, and Kazan was nominated for a Best Director Academy Award, and Wexler worked steadily in Hollywood thereafter. In 1965, Wexler replaced cinematographer Harry Stradling during the shooting of Mike Nichols' screen version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? after Stradling and Nichols had a falling out over the look of the film. Wexler won an Academy Award for the film's brutal, black-and-white cinematography in 1967. He won a second Oscar in 1976 for Bound for Glory, a biography of Woody Guthrie (whom Wexler had met during his time in the Merchant Marine). Bound for Glory was one of the earliest feature films to use the steadicam in a famous sequence that also incorporated a crane shot. He was also credited as additional cinematographer on Days of Heaven in 1978 which won a Best Cinematography Oscar for Nestor Almendros. Wexler believed that both he and Almendros should have jointly received an Oscar for his contribution instead of Almendros winning the award by himself.

He has also worked on documentaries with human rights activist Saul Landau. The 1980 documentary Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang earned an Emmy award.

One of the central aspects of Wexler's career has been his prickly relationship with directors and producers, especially those he considered—rightly or wrongly—less talented than himself. He was famously and traumatically fired from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, due in large measure to his inability to get along with the easy-going director Milos Forman. Many on the set, including star Jack Nicholson, believed Wexler was undercutting Forman's authority, forcing production delays and setbacks. Cuckoo's Nest producer, Michael Douglas, stated in the Mark Wexler documentary (see below) that he thought Wexler an extraordinarily talented cinematographer—but would never work with him again. Wexler was also fired by Francis Ford Coppola after a week of shooting The Conversation, reportedly over clashes with Coppola. All of the footage Wexler shot was scrapped and reshot, except for a single scene between a then-unknown Harrison Ford and star Gene Hackman. In both firings, Wexler was replaced by his friend Bill Butler.

Wexler has directed only a handful of movies, but among them was the influential Medium Cool, a film written by Wexler and shot in the cinéma vérité style. It incorporated riot footage from the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Another directing project was From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks, an intimate exploration of the life and times of Harry Bridges an extraordinary labor leader and social visionary – “a hero or the devil incarnate, it all depends on your point of view”. [1]

In 1988, he won an Independent Spirit Award for his cinematography on John Sayles' Matewan (for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award), and in 1993, he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers. In 2004, he was the subject of a documentary, Tell Them Who You Are, directed by his son, Mark Wexler.

• The Secret of Roan Inish, 1994
• Blaze, 1989
• Matewan, 1987
• Days of Heaven,1978
• Bound for Glory, 1976
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975
• Medium Cool, 1969 (also director and screenwriter)
• The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968
• In the Heat of the Night, 1967
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966
• The Best Man, 1964
• America, America, 1963
• Face in the Rain, 1963
• Angel Baby, 1961
• Hoodlum Priest, 1961
• The Savage Eye, 1960
• Stakeout on Dope Street, 1958 (credited as Mark Jeffrey due to problems with his guild membership)

• John Sayles
• Hal Ashby
• Norman Jewison

• Haskell Wexler at the Internet Movie Database
• Tell Them Who You Are
• Article about Haskell Wexler's film Medium Cool
• Roger Ebert's review of Tell Them Who You Are
• Hasell Wexler, ASC, Focuses on the Making of Matewan
• Through a lens darkly, The Guardian Interview, June 2006