The ASC honors Albert Maysles, the "father of direct cinema", with its 1997 President's award.
It can be argued that no filmmaker has come closer to capturing the real lives of everyday people than Albert Maysles. His ability to bridge the barrier between documentarian and subject is not a learned skill or technique; rather, it is his keen interest in the lives of ordinary people that leads him to discover their extraordinary qualities.
It should come as no surprise to those who know Maysles' work that the "father of direct cinema" has been chosen by the American Society of Cinematographers to receive the organization's 1997 President's Award. Along with his filmmaking partners his brother, David, Charlotte Zwerin and Susan Froemke Maysles produced a total of 15 films; their output included the seminal documentary Salesman (1967), as well as fascinating pictures on such diverse subjects as the Rolling Stones (Gimme Shelter, 1970); an eccentric mother and daughter in their decaying East Hampton home (Grey Gardens, 1976); and the artist Christo (Running Fence, 1978 and Islands, 1986). Albert has also collaborated with several other giants of the documentary genre, such as Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Bob Drew. Maysles will be honored at the 12th Annual ASC Awards event, to be held on March 8 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.
"Al Maysles is an extraordinary man," says ASC member Conrad Hall, who used "real people" scenes shot by Maysles to amplify his much-lauded cinematography in the film Searching for Bobby Fischer. "He is one of the few people I'd call a complete filmmaker."
ASC President Owen Roizman agrees, stating, "We don't give this prize simply for cinematography; it's given to someone who's made a unique contribution to the art of filmmaking. I am delighted that Al Maysles was chosen this year, because his films include some of the most unique, interesting and innovative works I have ever seen. He is truly a credit to our profession, and he is known and loved by many, many people."
Silence fed Maysles' passion for art. "As a child, I didn't speak," he explains. "It wasn't a deformity, I was just extremely quiet. No one knew if I was bright or dumb, so I had to repeat kindergarten. But my personality made me an avid listener, which served me very well."
He was seven years old when he bought his first still camera at a hardware store: a 35-cent Univex, made of bakelite and small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. His first subjects were members of his family; his father, a postal clerk, and his mother, a schoolteacher, were Russian immigrants. His brother, David, would later become his filmic collaborator, and his sister, Barbara, pursued a career as an artist.
The young Maysles was able to capture the unique spirit of his family even in his earliest photographs, evoking a sense of reality and humanity which would become a trademark of his later documentary work. "I think photographers, like writers, consciously or unconsciously tend to go back to their childhood and use their early images and experiences," the filmmaker offers. "Perhaps one reason why books are so often more powerful than their translation to film is that during the filming process, [the material] inevitably gets detached from the author's original artistic cravings."
By the time he was 10 years old, Maysles discovered Popular Mechanics magazine. Inspired by an article entitled "How To Build Your Own Enlarger," the young photographer made one of his own, using the lens of a Voigtlander Bessa camera he had purchased. But after several years without a proper still camera, he decided to suspend his burgeoning career. "I was extremely ambitious, and I felt that until I had a Leica, I'd put everything on hold."
In his early twenties, Maysles was teaching psychology as a graduate student at Boston University, and working as a research assistant at a mental hospital. He decided to use his summer vacation to motorcycle all over Europe with a Leica borrowed from a friend. It was during this journey that he shot what he describes as his "first really professional photographs."
Maysles and his requisite Leica crossed the Atlantic again the next summer, en route to Russia, where the budding artist shot still photographs inside Russian mental hospitals. He recalls, "I chose that particular subject because I was interested in what was happening in Russia, but I wanted to get away from the solely political approach everyone else was taking, with everything going on in the Kremlin, but nothing close to ordinary people."
Before he left for Russia, however, Life magazine turned down Maysles' pitch to do a photo essay on Russian mental hospitals not because the publication was adverse to the idea, but because its editors couldn't give the photographer the advance cash necessary to pay his way. As he walked out of the Time-Life building, Maysles looked up at a sign that said "CBS," and decided to give television a try. His cold call was a success; Maysles was ushered in to meet the head of the CBS news department, who loaned him a 16mm Keystone movie camera and agreed to pay one dollar for every foot of his film the network used, with the understanding that Maysles would retain the rights to all of the film he shot.
The wind-up Keystone posed various challenges; the camera was "so amateurish," says Maysles, "that you couldn't even focus the lens. It was no Bolex, and it was certainly no Bell & Howell. But the f2.5 lens allowed me to shoot in the dark conditions often found indoors."
CBS paid Maysles $14 for the 14 feet of footage they eventually aired. The youthful cameraman used his remaining material to create his first formal documentary, entitled Psychiatry in Russia. He had hoped to sell the finished film to NBC, "but the program director at the network looked at it and turned the project down because it didn't have the kind of 'freak value' he was looking for," Maysles remembers. Instead, Psychiatry in Russia was scheduled to air on Boston's PBS station, WGBH.
As Maysles edited his project in a makeshift room in a warehouse across the street from WGBH, he was approached by Smith, Kline and French, a pharmaceutical company that offered the filmmaker $2,500 for the right to make 50 prints of the film for their own use. "They'd heard about my project via the grapevine," Maysles says, "and thought the film would be of interest to American psychiatrists." Psychiatry In Russia ended up paying his traveling expenses after all.
Maysles was returning from his second trip to Russia, this time on a motorscooter, when he had a memorable stopover in England. His brother, David, had finished his service in the army and was working as a production assistant on The Prince and the Showgirl at Pinewood Studios in England. Maysles remembers arriving at Pinewood on his motor scooter and being ushered into Marilyn Monroe's dressing room. "She wanted to meet me because she heard I'd been visiting mental hospitals," Maysles recalls. "She was very interested in psychology, and the questions she asked me were rather clever; she even wanted to know if I'd ever been psychoanalyzed." He had not.
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