Kemper's breakthrough came in 1969 when he was hired to be the standby cinematographer in New York for Aldo Tonti, a talented Italian cameraman who was slated to shoot Husbands for John Cassavetes. Kemper was reluctant to take the job because he was riding a hot streak as an operator and didn't want idle time. But when the producers promised him that there would be a lot of second-unit work, he decided to sign up. Kemper started on a Tuesday, but by Friday he had yet to shoot a single frame. He informed the production office that he wouldn't be back on-set come Monday. That night, Kemper got a call asking if he could meet with Cassavetes. Kemper had invited Tonti to spend the weekend with his family at their New Jersey vacation home, but he agreed to meet Cassavetes at 9:15 a.m. the next morning.
Kemper arrived early. Five minutes before he was scheduled to meet with the director, Tonti walked out of Cassavetes' office. Tonti and Kemper chatted briefly, arranging to meet later. Then, with no preliminaries, Cassavetes asked Kemper to shoot Husbands. Kemper was stunned; Tonti was a world-famous cinematographer, but Cassavetes explained that the two of them couldn't bridge the language barrier. Later that day, Tonti assured Kemper that it would be okay for him to accept the offer.
"We shot more than a million-and-a-half feet of film during 10 weeks in New York and 12 weeks in London," Kemper says. "That's the way Cassavetes worked. The first shooting day was on a bathroom set that the designer had painted black. Only the fixtures were white. There was also a mirror. The male characters, in mourning for a friend who had just died, were all wearing black. I had the challenge of making black costumes against a black wall visible. There was no contrast. I asked John 'How on Earth am I supposed to light this set?' He answered, 'Why are you asking me? You're the cinematographer.'" Kemper solved the problem by using hotter-than-normal back- and sidelight, which created enough separation between the dark costumes and the wall.
Kemper's second film and his first comedy was They Might Be Giants, starring George C. Scott in the role of Sherlock Holmes and Joanne Woodward as Watson. "We had wrapped production and spent every dime in the budget," he remembers. "The production manager called one day and said, 'We have a serious problem. We never shot any title footage.' He asked if I could do something without a crew."
Kemper told the prop man about the dilemma, and asked him to bring some lab equipment test tubes, vials, vessels, flasks, tubing and burners to his home in New Jersey; the cinematographer had promised his family he wouldn't work for a few weeks, so to keep this agreement he decided to shoot the title background footage at home. General Camera delivered an Arriflex camera and lenses. Kemper put some plywood on top of his bed, and the prop man set up the glassware. They filled the tubes and flasks with bubbling water colored with different vegetable dyes. To create atmosphere, Kemper also used smoke and shot from "weird" angles. "I think it cost around $700 to shoot the background for the titles," he says, "and it was appropriate because Sherlock spent a lot of time in the lab."
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