Frederick Elmes

“Néstor Almendros was a wonderful, wonderful cinematographer, somebody who really influenced my work over the years. I studied him. He shot many films, for Eric Rohmer, for Truffaut, for Robert Benton. He really got around and, you know, the thing I like is that they all feel different, like Terry Malick’s Days of Heaven is a fabulous tribute to his sense of the light, of the mood of a scene. It just really stayed with me as a story and it’s certainly reflected in the photography of Days of Heaven.”

“Visions of Eight is a wonderful, wonderful film. It’s an interpretation of… of the Olympics through the eyes of eight wonderful and very diverse directors. And there’s some of the most brilliant, brilliant photography, including really ultra-slow-motion studies of athletes. The directors are, you know, Lelouch, Forman, Penn, John Schlesinger. You know, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

“So Elaine May is a wonderful, wonderful writer and great director, and this film with Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, Mikey and Nicky, is just a wonderfully constructed script and story about… about two fabulous characters kind of on the run. As it happens, I worked on it briefly, just because John Cassavetes actually directed some scenes and I helped him photograph them. And I’ll never forget, they played out their lines and then they walked off screen and the camera operator, you know, cut the camera. And Elaine said, “What did you do that for?” Said, “Well, I cut the camera because they left frame.” And she said, “Well, they might have come back.” And that was kind of the way she directed much of the movie. We did shoot quite a lot of film on that movie, and it did take a little longer than the studio envisioned, but… but it’s really quite a wonderful film.”

“I love the film No Bears. It’s a fabulous study of a small town. It’s just brilliant in the way scenes unfold. And the director and cinematographer are not afraid to just hold and hold and block a scene in such a complicated way that they keep you, the audience, so involved every inch of the way. It’s a great drama.”

“So this is a favorite, Solaris is a favorite of mine. You know, I put myself through… through college as a projectionist, and in the projection booth, most movies come on 2,000-foot loads, so that lasts about 18 minutes or so on the screen. Well, the Russian film came to the projection booth on 10-minute rolls, instead of 20-minute rolls, and it’s all labeled in Russian. So I think accidentally I did a little editing in the projection, because some of the reels I know came up slightly out of order when I rewound them. So there was an audience that saw a version of Solaris like no other that evening because I… I messed up in the projection room.”

“One of the main, though last, selection: Dr. Strangelove is just such a brilliant film. It’s just fabulous. And it makes me laugh and smile every time. You know, I visit these films from the early ’60s, this one stayed with me better than any of the rest, I think. I just love it.”