I was thinking about the great cinematographer Christopher Doyle the other day. I got to hang out with him for a couple of hours back when 2046 came out. He was dressed like a combat photographer and smoking filterless cigarettes. Long hair. Exactly as I imagined him.

I should say “big hair“ rather than “long” because it grows out and up. I learned a lot about how he and WKW shot those great movies. Tons of improvising. A lot of Terrence Malick “looking for the moment“ and finding beautiful lighting rather than constantly manufacturing it.

I had a false impression of those WKW films is being very meticulously produced and in fact they pushed in the opposite direction to the extent that they could. It wasn’t all about making things look great. It was mainly about finding beauty, which is a different thing.

One thing that I thought was very interesting was, sometimes WKW would just have an actor sit and think and he would talk to them and give them mental images and Doyle would get the close-up. By the end they had tons of subtle close-ups they could use for expressive editing.

Doyle made it clear from the way he talked about WKW that he adored him and would do pretty much anything for him. If WKW was making a new movie he would always make that his first priority and cancel other stuff. He said he made modest money working for WKW but he didn’t care.

It was eye-opening because we tend to forget that guys like Doyle exist in the entertainment industry – they do what they have to do to make money but it’s really all about justifying the art they make on the side.

He also talked about how WKW treated the actors as actors but also as sculptural objects and, sometimes, as dancers. Not just when they were actually dancing but in the way that he had to move through the frame and be captured by the camera.

I wish I had recorded the entire thing but it wasn’t an official interview — he was just in a bar! But I love that he’s the kind of person you could just start talking to you about his work and he would go deep immediately.

I’ve learned a lot about photography from watching the films that Chris Doyle shot, because the images are often very harmonious in how they juxtapose the people, the room, and the light.

Apologies for the typos in this thread – I’m procrastinating doing a bunch of household stuff so I’m not sweating every syllable. Anyway, Chris Doyle is a great cinematographer and a great artist and a really interesting guy. Seek out his work.