An accomplished writer lands his first directing gig while a noted cinematographer reaches new heights, literally.
These two artisans are front and center in this installment of Talent Show, a prequel to SHOOT’s annual The Road To Oscar series, which will get underway in November.
The writer has to his credit director David Fincher’s Zodiac, Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Roland Emmerich’s White House Down. Zodiac earned our writer a WGA Award nomination in 2008 for Best Adapted Screenplay. Now he’s penned another adapted screenplay, which marks his directorial debut.
Our cinematographer has enjoyed a long, ongoing collaborative relationship with director Ron Howard, spanning such films as Frost/Nixon, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Missing, The Dilemma, the documentary Made In America, Cinderella Man and Inferno. The latter is slated for release in 2016. Our DP’s other notable credits include Any Given Sunday for director Oliver Stone, the upcoming Xmas Day release Concussion directed by Peter Landesman, and a just released Imax 3-D film which is a focus of this Road To Oscar prequel.
Here are insights from writer/director James Vanderbilt on Truth (Sony Pictures Classics), and cinematographer Salvatore Totino, ASC, AIC on director Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest (Universal Pictures).
James Vanderbilt
“As a working writer, I was lucky enough to be around great directors and to watch them work,” related Vanderbilt who naturally evolved into an aspiring director. “I thought that I’d like to carry the ball all the way down the field at least once. I had gotten to see a lot of good people operate, been on a bunch of sets, seen what that world is like. I’ve seen writers, friends do it [direct] with different degrees of success. There are times when you just get to direct one movie. If I was going to get one swing at the plate, I wanted to make sure it was something that I was really drawn to.”
That “something” turned out to be Truth, based on Mary Mapes’ book “Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power,” which tells the story of Mapes (portrayed by Cate Blanchett, an award-winning CBS News journalist) and Dan Rather (Robert Redford), the reporter/anchor for whom she served as producer. A 60 Minutes II investigative segment produced by Mapes and reported on-air by Rather revealed evidence purportedly proving that President George W. Bush had been AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard for over a year during the Vietnam War. But within days after the 60 Minutes II piece broke, it wasn’t President Bush but rather Mapes and Rather who were under public scrutiny as the documents supporting their investigation were denounced as forgeries. The 60 Minutes II staff was accused of shoddy journalism and/or being duped. Eventually Mapes lost her job and reputation and Rather would step down prematurely as CBS Evening News anchor. CBS News itself lost credibility.
Vanderbilt was drawn to the story. His affinity for journalism came to the fore in the movie Zodiac based on the book of the same title by Robert Graysmith, a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who attempted to decode letters written by the Zodiac Killer and became obsessed with the case, personally investigating it for years. “I learned from Zodiac just how much I love that world of investigative journalism,” said Vanderbilt. “I read an excerpt of Mary’s book in Vanity Fair and was drawn in again. I thought if half of the stuff in this book is true, it’s fascinating—how a story was put together and how it fell apart. I love movies about ‘how a sausage is made’—you learn how to rob a bank in a heist movie, how a nuclear submarine works in a war movie. To get a chance to show how news stories are built, put together and handed to us—and then how all of that crumbles away—fascinates me.
“I went to Texas to meet Mary who was reticent to option the book, which I understood. She hears we want to make a movie about your life—actually about the worst thing that ever happened to you, and there’s bound to be resistance. Spending time with her and Dan Rather, I felt absolutely there could be a great film here.”
Asked about his approach to Truth as a first-time director, Vanderbilt observed, “I find that writers who become directors can go one of two ways—one being, ‘I’m going to be the director because I want to make sure my words aren’t messed with.’ The other way is not to be so precious about it, to view it as more of a collaboration. My approach was very much the latter. Rigidity never works in a creative endeavor. My approach was to try to create an environment where people are encouraged, excited and can explore what they love. They’re professionals too. Directing your first movie makes you the least qualified person on the set doing your job. The craft services guy has more experience doing what he’s doing than you do—and you are in charge. I wrote the script but realized I couldn’t direct this without the help of the other incredibly smart and talented people who were brought together for this film.”
Among those who came together was Mandy Walker, whom Vanderbilt described as “an incredible DP,” citing such credits as Shattered Glass for director Billy Ray, and Australia directed by Baz Luhrmann. “When I hired her, we had a 135-page script, mostly of people talking in rooms. I told her we have to make this visually exciting but in a way that wasn’t in your face shaky cam. I wanted this to feel like a classical film, kind of like All the President’s Men, which is more of a locked-down vibe. We wouldn’t move the camera unless the story or character required it. Mandy was able to make this interesting visually, always advancing the story.”
Another big consideration for the movie was Redford portraying Rather. “Everybody knows what Dan Rather looks and sounds like—the same for Robert Redford. I had written this for Redford. I thought there was something interesting in an icon portraying another icon. Both have the baggage of being in our collective minds for so many years. If Redford isn’t believable as Rather, we’re lost. We needed the audience to make that transition, and he [Redford] was so great, he made that happen. I didn’t want to use a lot of makeup or prosthetics to make Redford look like Rather. We grayed his hair and he did some little vocal things. We thought it we can make this work, the rest will fall into place. Thankfully, it did.”
Regarding the directors who influenced him, Vanderbilt cited those he grew up watching and admiring, including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone. Vanderbilt then got to work with Fincher and Emmerich, “two guys very different in their approach, in how they attacked or approached a story but I learned so much from both of them. I had an incredible experience working with them. David was a great guy, always available to talk stuff through.”
Vanderbilt also grew up knowing director/producer Dean Parisot, a long-time family friend. “Dean directed Galaxy Quest, was involved in seemingly every great TV show of the last 20 years,” said Vanderbilt. “When I came out to film school at USC, he and his wife were the only people I knew in L.A. And when I asked him how to go about directing a feature film, he walked me through what his day was like and how he approached it, what he did first and so on.”
Also helpful has been Mikkel Bondesen, Vanderbilt’s manager, who served as an executive producer on Truth. “We’ve been together forever,” said Vanderbilt in reference to him and Bondesen. “I was his first writer client. He executive produced the film with me. I spent my own money to option the book, which violated rule one of Hollywood. Mikkel offered me some good advice. He told me, ‘This is something you love and want to do. It’s a movie with big actors. You should look at it as an experiment.’ I didn’t tell that to the actors. As it turned out, I loved working with them. I got to work with some of the best actors alive. Going in everyday and trying to find the best version of the scene was something I really dug. I would love to do it again.”
Salvatore Totino, ASC, AIC
The Kormákur-directed Everest—which stars Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes and Jake Gyllenhaal—takes us back to a day in 1996 which was one of the deadliest in climbing history as a catastrophic blizzard claimed the lives of eight people on the world’s mightiest peak. In immersive Imax 3D, the film shows us spectacular mountain vistas but the brilliance of the cinematography by Salvatore Totino, ASC, AIC lies in his ability to place us right alongside the climbing teams. It’s an atypically intimate and human approach to an epic adventure.
“I simply try to make the audience feel as though they’re right there,” said Totino. “All my work is different. The films I’ve shot are quite different from each other in look. But one thing I’ve always tried to do is place the audience right in the story. In Any Given Sunday, we put you on that football field. In Cinderella Man, you’re in the boxing ring. In Frost/Nixon, you’re in the room being interviewed. As an audience you can relate more to the characters going through their experience if you’re put right there with the characters. For Everest, it was painstaking to get the camera in the right places to promote that feeling that you’re with the climbers and their guides. But we had to do that so that viewers would subconsciously have that shared experience with the characters, so they could feel what they were going through. If you do too many wide shots, then you’re looking at an Ansel Adams photo—which is amazing, but our job as filmmakers is to tell the story, for the audience to feel the characters and the story to make for an all encompassing experience.”
Totino in one respect would have liked the experience to be a little less encompassing. Despite wearing mountain climbing boots, Totino had his feet freeze as the temperature dipped and the altitude rose. He sustained nerve damage in his two big toes which still causes him to wake up in the middle of the night in pain. “My parents are from southern Italy. My lineage goes back to one town there for 500 years. That town is at sea level. My DNA is not meant for the altitude of cold weather,” he quipped.
Shooting took place in several locales, including Nepal (Everest itself) and largely the Italian Alps (with studio work in Italy’s Cinecitta and the U.K.’s Pinewood Studios). Totino deployed ARRI ALEXA XTs. “I enjoy shooting film when I can but the locations, this type of film lent itself to shooting digitally,” Totino explained. “I feel ALEXA is the closest thing to film, I like the look. ALEXA is made by a film camera manufacturer so it’s very user friendly for those who shoot film. They are workhorse cameras, with no real problems in extreme conditions, in this case high altitudes, constantly changing weather, and sub-zero temperatures in the Dolomites [mountain range in the northern Italian Alps].”
Totino valued his collaboration with director Kormákur, noting that together they met many challenges, including not having as much prep time as they would have ideally liked. “We started to prep the movie, but lost financing and the movie shut down,” related Totino. “The producers scrambled and were able to get different financiers. But by that time I had gone back to L.A. to do some other jobs, including commercials. I couldn’t go back right away to work on the film. So we wound up with a very short prep, meaning that we had to do a lot of our prep on the fly. While shooting in Italy, we were prepping and designing stages in London, for example.”
While Everest marked his first collaboration with director Kormákur, Totino by contrast has a longstanding working relationship with director Howard, their latest film being Inferno. “Another incredible experience with Ron,” said Totino of Inferno. “Ron is probably the hardest working director you will ever meet. He loves what he does, always pushing the work to be better. Inferno is funny at times, violent at times. We’re still working on it. I love collaborating with Ron.”
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Totino began building his reputation with noted work in commercials and music videos. Today, he has more than 500 spots to his credit, having contributed to high-profile campaigns for the likes of Nike, Jaguar, Jack Daniels, The GAP and H.I.S. Jeans (which earned him a Clio). Totino’s music video endeavors involve such artists as Radiohead, REM, Bruce Springsteen, Sound Garden and U2.
Totino’s first theatrical feature as a DP came in 1998 with director Stone’s aforementioned American football drama Any Given Sunday. Since then, Totino’s feature filmography includes the assorted Howard-helmed movies, Changing Lanes directed by Roger Michell and People Like Us for Alex Kurtzman. The upcoming release Concussion returns Totino to football as the Landesman-directed film stars Will Smith as the real-life forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu who discovered that chronic brain damage figured prominently in the deaths of NFL players. It too is generating Oscar buzz and SHOOT will delve into that film during the course of our The Road To Oscar series.
Editor’s note: Also in the Oscar conversation are several films from directors profiled in this issue’s Directors Series, including Lenny Abrahamson for Room, Scott Cooper for Black Mass, Cary Joji Fukunaga for Beasts of No Nation, Todd Haynes for Carol, and Ridley Scott for The Martian.
