This Timothy Rhys feature article in MovieMaker includes an interview with me that is so honest and direct, I think it would be of interest to you. Part of it is about the Director’s Cut of LATINO, which has just become available. The rest of it is about all kinds of things. Check it out.

Wexler wins seat on cinematographers guild board in re-run election

Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler handily won a seat on the board of the International Cinematographers Guild in a new election ordered by federal labor officials.

Wexler won 544 votes, the highest tally among 22 candidates vying for a dozen seats on the guild’s board, according to a summary of the results posted on the guild’s website Friday night.

The 89-year-old director of photography known for his work on the 1966 film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?” was initially disqualified from running for a seat last year because the guild said he had not spent enough time “working in the trade.” The rule, adopted in 2009, stipulates that a member must work 120 days under union contracts within the previous three years in order to run for local office.

Wexler and other candidates maintained they were improperly disqualified because they have been critics of the current union’s president, Steven Poster, and had complained to the U.S. Department of Labor. The Department of Labor that Wexler and another candidate had been improperly disallowed and ordered the guild to hold a new election for cinematographers in the western region.

Wexler said he felt vindicated by the election results. “It’s an incredible showing when, not so long ago, they were saying I was not qualified to run for office,” he said. “It does mean that people think otherwise. This is an unfair rule that was specifically used to marginalize certain people.”

The guild did not issue a statement. “I welcome him [Wexler] to the board, but we’ve got a lot on our plate,” Poster said. “Let’s get down to work.”

This is an excerpt from an excellent speech given by Bill Moyers on October 16, 2010:

All bets are now off. The great American experiment in creating a different future together has come down to the worship of individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power, with both political parties cravenly subservient to Big Money. The result is an economy that no longer serves ordinary men and woman and their families. This, I believe, accounts for so much of the profound sense of betrayal in the country, for the despair about the future. As Gabriel says in James Weldon Johnson’s epic Green Pastures: “Everything that’s tied down is coming loose.” America as a shared project is shattered, leaving us increasingly isolated in our separate realities.

John Gardner would understand this dark reading of our gross national psychology. The workings of the human psyche were his field of study. But the Marine Corps, remember, was his finishing school, and Semper Fidelis his personal code. So I will close with his own words, as relevant today as ever:

We are treading the edge of a precipice here….There is a disconnection between the people and their leaders. Citizens do not trust their government. And a variety of polls indicate that this mistrust extends to corporations and the media. People do not feel they have must control of their lives, and the sense of impotence grows like a great life-endangering tumor. Civilizations die of disenchantment. If enough people doubt their society, the whole venture falls apart. We must never let anger, fashionable cynicism, or political partisanship blur our vision of this point.

Never in history has a drama been watched simultaneously by a billion people. I would have given a fat chunk of copper ore to have been a fly on the wall in that 2300 foot hole, and to have witnessed the social structure of inter-dependence that those 33 men developed to keep body and soul together for those harrowing ten weeks.

Journalists, writers, media, communicators – artists – have an opportunity to run with this extraordinary story, which the government of Chile stage-managed down to the razors, Chilean flag shirts, and the books of tips about how to deal with the media that were sent down to the miners before they surfaced to the flood of cameras. But forget the theater. Can this spectacle bring us together to make the world a better place?  Could it be a rare chance to see what people are forced to risk their lives to put food on the table: dangerous mining work that pillages the planet for minerals and fossil fuel, creating conflict and producing a wealth that few workers share?

Maybe all of us are in that dangling capsule, interconnected in fragile times, wondering just what we’ve traded to get this short time on – or in—the earth.

We were invited to attend a 35th Anniversary Screening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was asked, “What is your strongest memory from that film?”

Harding (played by William Redfield), an inmate of the mental institution, says truths that have relevance to us today, who are encapsulated in a global booby hatch.

by ADAMAFILMS on SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

An intimate portrait ten years in the making, of Hollywood’s pre-digital master craftsmen, “Something’s Gonna Live” celebrates the work, friendship and indelible contribution of renowned production designers Robert F. Boyle (NORTH BY NORTHWEST), Henry Bumstead (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD), Albert Nozaki (THE WAR OF THE WORLDS) and Harold Michelson (STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE), as well as master cinematographers Haskell Wexler (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) and Conrad L. Hall (IN COLD BLOOD).

Written & Directed by Academy Award®-Nominated Filmmaker Daniel Raim
Featuring Cinematography by Two Time Oscar®-Winner Haskell Wexler, A.S.C.

Filmmakers in-person: Please join us Friday September 10th after the 7:10pm show for a Q&A with director Daniel Raim and cinematographer Haskell Wexler.

Additional Q&As with the director throughout all weekend screenings.

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT September 10-16, 2010
Laemmle Music Hall 3
9036 Wilshire Boulevard Beverly Hills, CA 90211 (310) 274-6869
Showtimes:
Friday 5:00, 7:10 & 9:40
Saturday 12:40, 2:50, 5:00, 7:10 & 9:40
Sunday 12:40, 2:50, 5:00 & 7:10
Mon-Thu: 5:00 & 7:10

For tickets, go to http://www.laemmle.com/viewmovie.php?mid=6542 and click on Laemmle’s Music Hall 3.

On opposite pages of August’s ICG Magazine, two cinematographers look at each other.  The President’s Letter gives us information on the new Canon DSLR cameras, all of it loaded with the first person singular and letting us know, from his vast experience, how well he is acquainted with this new technology.

So much for the important information from Our Union President, all of which is available over the counter at Samy’s.  Looking at him from the opposite page is Chris Menges, one of the great cinematographers of our time, an outspoken, progressive union man. He seems to be smiling at Poster. Perhaps it is with indulgence, but I’m sure there is something in the expression that’s asking, “What the hell is he talking about?”  Kodak paid for Menges to be in the magazine.  It costs $500,000 a year to put out a Union publication in which Poster is the only union voice permitted. Perhaps ICG should allow Chris Menges to submit an article that not only excites us about technology, but discusses the fundamental reason for having a union.

- Haskell Wexler, ASC

Lisbeth Scott’s “Hope Is A Thing” is released.  I enjoyed shooting this.  Watch the VIDEO.