Michael Chapman - Good and bad memories of 'The King' (35/94)

To listen to more of Michael Chapman’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Michael Chapman (Cinematographer)  

Michael Chapman (1935-2020) was an innovative cinematographer. He worked with a number of acclaimed directors including Martin Scorsese with whom he created his two best-known films, 'Taxi Driver' and 'Raging Bull'. [Listener: Glen Ade Brown; date recorded: 2004]

TRANSCRIPT: There are a couple of nice things in it; I remember doing a... again, the director whose name I can't remember had no interest in shots or angles or coverage, or he didn't know... didn't know and didn't care, so I did all that, but the only thing I remember as being quite wonderful was coverage of a riot, where freedom rioters are coming on a bus and local hoodlums begin to bang on the bus and... and punch them and hit them and I... I covered it with a little 16mm camera and I did it handheld and then I had the camera be hit and fall over on its side and lie on its side and... as if it just was rolling, so the image is on the side – you can see this chaos going on – and that was kind of fun. That was kind of fun and that, and a wonderful... by the way the food... this is apropos of nothing, but you know there's a myth about Southern cooking and how wonderful it is, and it may be but you can't prove it by restaurants; it may be in people's kitchens, but in the restaurants the food is appalling, at least in Macon, Georgia, in 1970-whatever it was – the food was unspeakable except in one little soul food restaurant called H & H Cafeteria, I think, like... F & F... no, H & H Cafeteria, and there it was kind of wonderful, but other than that, boy, Macon is.... You know, Macon... when Sherman marched through Georgia in the civil war he skipped Macon; he said, 'Oh to hell with it', and he didn't burn it because it was so appalling. I mean, that my interpretation of why he didn't burn it: he said it was so appalling, it was more pun... more punishing to leave it standing than to burn it, and he marched around it and didn't burn it; he burned everything else but he didn't burn Macon.