Haskell Wexler Filmography

South Central Farm: Oasis in a Concrete Desert

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Daryl Hannah, Martin Sheen, Willie Nelson, Tom Morello, Julia Butterfly Hill

Cinematographer Style

Actors: Remi Adefarasin, Russ T. Alsobrook, Howard A. Anderson III, Peter Anderson

Synopsis: Over a hundred leading cameramen (and women) discuss the fine art of motion picture photography in this documentary. Cinematographer Style is compiled from interviews with a broad cross section of respected cinematographers, ranging from award-winning veterans such as Gordon Willis (The Read More

Tell Them Who You Are

Crew: Camera Operator

Actors: Haskell Wexler, Mark S. Wexler, Peter Bart, James Becket, Verna Bloom

Synopsis: Mark Wexler is a successful photojournalist who has also distinguished himself as a documentary filmmaker, but in many ways he has spent much of his life in the shadow of his more famous father, Haskell Wexler. One of Hollywood's greatest cinematographers, Haskell is also known as a director (he Read More

Bastards of the Party

Crew: Cinematographer

Who Needs Sleep?

Crew: Camera Operator, Director

Synopsis: In 1997, Brent Hershman had spent 19 hours hard at work as a camera assistant on the set of the film Pleasantville one day before he was allowed to go home. The exhausted Hershman fell asleep at the wheel of his car shortly afterward, and died in an auto accident. The event sent shock waves Read More

Silver City

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Danny Huston, Maria Bello, Billy Zane, Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfuss, Daryl Hannah, Kris Kristofferson, Mary Kay Place, Miguel Ferrer, Thora Birch

Synopsis: Celebrated writer and director John Sayles turns his eye to politics in America in this drama. The son of respected Colorado politician Senator Jud Pilager (Michael Murphy), Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper) is a charming but half-bright man with a bad habit of mangling the English language and a Read More

Bread and Roses

Crew: Second Unit Director Of Photography

Actors: Adrien Brody, Elpidia Carrillo, Frankie DaVila, George Lopez

Synopsis: Leftist filmmaker Ken Loach directs this grim drama about the plight of seemingly invisible office cleaners in contemporary L.A. who often earn as little as $6 a day without benefits. The film opens as Maya (Pilar Padilla), a young Mexican lass, is reuniting with her older sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrilio Read More

61*

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Barry Pepper, Thomas Jane, Anthony Michael Hall, Richard Masur, Bruce McGill

Synopsis: Noted baseball fan Billy Crystal directed this made-for-cable drama set in the summer of 1961, as two of the strongest hitters in the major leagues, Mickey Mantle (Thomas Jane) and Roger Maris (Barry Pepper), find themselves neck and neck in a battle to break Babe Ruth's long-standing record for Read More

Look Out Haskell, It's Real! The Making of "Medium Cool"

Actors: Haskell Wexler, David Sterritt, David Farber, Studs Terkel, Todd Gatlin

Synopsis: In the summer of 1968, cinematographer Haskell Wexler went to Chicago to shoot his first directorial effort, a drama about a television news cameraman who finds it difficult to remain objective about the events surrounding him. Wexler intended to use the National Democratic Convention being held Read More

Mexico

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Martin Sheen, Enrique Rocha

Synopsis: Noted filmmaker Lorena M. Parlee directs this sweeping IMAX spectacular about Mexico. Populated with expansive shots of the country's mountains and city skyline, this film not only traces Mexico's long history -- beginning with Indian cultures through the Spanish colonization, to its eventual Read More

Bus Riders Union

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer

Synopsis: Legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler directs this vérité activist documentary about the pathetic state of L.A.'s public transportation system. Recalling his first film, The Bus (1965), Wexler focuses on the city's appallingly overbudgeted -- and largely useless -- subway project, as well as Read More

Sandra Bernhard: I'm Still Here...Damn It!

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Sandra Bernhard, Denise Fraser, Mitch Kaplan, Soumaya Akaaboun

Synopsis: Actress/comedian Sandra Bernhard is known to millions as a frequent guest star on TV series such as Roseanne and Ally McBeal, but I'm Still Here Dammit! provides a document of her most enduring work: her one-woman shows. Although the piece originally ran on Broadway and was the basis of a comedy Read More

Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends But The Mountains

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: Kevin McKiernan directs this passionate account about the plight of the Kurds, the world's largest minority without a nation. The film opens with McKiernan shopping around his painstakingly researched findings to ABC's Nightline and other news telecasts only to meet complete indifference. From Read More

Limbo

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn, Vanessa Martinez, Kris Kristofferson, Casey Siemaszko, Kathryn Grody, Rita Taggart, Michael Laskin

Synopsis: Writer/director John Sayles once again takes his audience to a place they may never have been before (this time both psychologically and geographically). Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) lives in Juneau, Alaska, where his life has been stuck in neutral for about 25 years. When he was young, Joe Read More

The Rich Man's Wife

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Halle Berry, Christopher McDonald, Clive Owen, Peter Greene, Clea Lewis

Synopsis: This is a domestic thriller in the Hitchcock mode with a legalistic twist involving that modern invention, the prenuptial agreement. Halle Berry stars as Josie Potenza, the unhappy wife of alcoholic, philandering executive Tony Potenza (Christopher McDonald). Josie is unfaithful too, but she wants Read More

The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas

Crew: Cinematographer

Mulholland Falls

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn

Synopsis: Four men just barely on the right side of the law step into a web of danger and corruption in this drama. In the early 1950s, Max Hoover (Nick Nolte) is a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who leads what's been dubbed "the hat squad," a group of sharp-dressed cops who are ordered to Read More

The Secret of Roan Inish

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Mick Lally, Eileen Colgan, John Lynch, Jeni Courtney, Richard Sheridan

Synopsis: The magic of folklore forms the basis of this Irish tale by writer-director John Sayles. Adapted from the book Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry, the 1940s story is told from the point-of-view of Fiona (Jeni Courtney), a young girl sent to live with her grandparents in an Irish fishing town. Her Read More

Canadian Bacon

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Alan Alda, John Candy, Rhea Perlman, Kevin Pollak, Rip Torn

Synopsis: In Michael Moore's political satire, the U.S. president (Alan Alda) decides to wage a cold war against Canada in an attempt to reverse his slipping popularity, and, as a result, he drives a small group of incensed Canadians to take matters into their own hands. Alda is the first president in years Read More

Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography

Actors: Néstor Almendros, John A. Alonzo, Michael Ballhaus, Stephen H. Burum, Sven Nykvist, Vittorio Storaro, Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis

Synopsis: The film equivalent of a stroll through the Louvre, the documentary Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography collects interviews with many of modern-day Hollywood's finest directors of photography and is illustrated by examples of their best work as well as scenes from the pictures which most Read More

Papakolea: A Story of Hawaiian Land

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Richard Chamberlain, Gladys Ainoa Brandt, John Lake, Boyce Rodriguez, Kamaki Kanahele

The Babe

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: John Goodman, Kelly McGillis, Trini Alvarado, Bruce Boxleitner, Peter Donat

Synopsis: John Goodman is cast as the Sultan of Swat, whose excesses -- especially drinking -- and private demons can (in this context) be excused in view of his genuine love of baseball. The facts never get in the way of a good story for screenwriter John Fusco; we're even offered the umpteenth rehash of Read More

Other People's Money

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Danny DeVito, Gregory Peck, Penelope Ann Miller, Piper Laurie, Dean Jones

Synopsis: Norman Jewison directed Alvin Sargent's adaptation of Jerry Sterner's off-Broadway satire of the excess of the '80s, with Danny DeVito as corporate raider Lawrence Garfield -- or, as he is better known, Larry the Liquidator. Larry spends his waking hours searching for companies to take over. One Read More

Blaze

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jack David Harris, Paul Newman, Lolita Davidovich, Jerry Hardin, Gailard Sartain, Jeffrey DeMunn

Synopsis: Blaze is a comic-strip re-telling of the curious late-1950s relationship between famed striptease artist Blaze Starr (Lolita Davidovitch) and Lousiana governor Earl Long (played in gorgeously flamboyant fashion by Paul Newman). Their romance is counterbalanced with the story of Long's efforts to Read More

Three Fugitives

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Nick Nolte, Martin Short, Sarah Rowland Doroff, James Earl Jones, Alan Ruck

Synopsis: Another of Disney's Touchstone Pictures rehashes of a lightweight French farce, Three Fugitives goes the trend one better by importing French director Frances Veber to supervise a shot-for-shot remake of his French original Les Fugitifs. Nick Nolte stars as a bank robber named Lucas, recently Read More

Colors

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Sean Penn, Robert Duvall, Maria Conchita Alonso, Randy Brooks, Grand L. Bush

Synopsis: Colors stars Robert Duvall and Sean Penn as partners on the LAPD's gang crime division. Duvall had hoped to spend more time with his family, but he's pulled back into active service because of a step-up in gang activity. He makes no secret of his contempt for his novice partner Penn, but Read More

Matewan

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Chris Cooper, Will Oldham, Mary McDonnell, Bob Gunton, James Earl Jones

Synopsis: Independent filmmaker John Sayles creates one of his more artistic works with this period feature about a volatile 1920s labor dispute in the town of Matewan, West Virginia. Matewan is a coal town where the local miners' lives are controlled by the powerful Stone Mountain Coal Company. The company Read More

Latino

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Beltran, Annette Cardona, Tony Plana, Rico Lopez, Luis Torrentes

Synopsis: The fighting between the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the Contra rebels backed by U.S. money and expertise is the focus of this pro-Sandinista film by Haskell Wexler. The appropriately named Eddie Guerrero (translation Eddie "Warrior") is a Vietnam War veteran sent to help out the U.S. Read More

Bus II

Crew: Producer

Synopsis: There was a large disarmament demonstration in Manhattan near the UN headquarters on June 12, 1982 and that moment is probably the only interesting segment in this long, 82-minute documentary on a busload of ordinary demonstrators who take too long a ride from Los Angeles to New York for the Read More

The Man Who Loved Women

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Julie Andrews, Kim Basinger, Marilu Henner, Barry Corbin

Synopsis: This remake of François Truffaut's 1977 comedy misses out on Truffaut's subtext that delves into the nature of love and instead simply recounts the sexual and romantic exploits of David, a sculptor who is an incurable womanizer (Burt Reynolds). In order to come to grips with his obsession for Read More

The Kid From Nowhere

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: The Kid From Nowhere is built around the talents of Ricky Wittman, a remarkable young actor afflicted with Down's Syndrome who appeared in several TV programs during the early 1980s. Judy Farrell's script traces the efforts of a California mother (Susan Saint James) to curb the sudden energy Read More

Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Richard Pryor

Synopsis: Just recovered from his notorious free-basing accident, Richard Pryor made a notable return in the much-acclaimed Live on the Sunset Strip. His comments on that event, as well as his notorious comments on sex, politics and race, pepper the 82-minute concert film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide Read More

Lookin' to Get Out

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jon Voight, Ann-Margret, Burt Young, Bert Remsen, Jude Farese

Synopsis: Jon Voight starred and co-wrote the script for this comedy (directed by Hal Ashby) concerning two gamblers on the run from their debts who try to score big in Las Vegas. When Alex Kovas (Jon Voight) loses $10,000 to local New York City hoods Joey (Allen Keller) and Harry (Jude Farese) in a poker Read More

Second-Hand Hearts

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Robert Blake, Barbara Harris, Sondra Blake, Bert Remsen, Shirley Stoler

Synopsis: After a string of box-office hits, including Coming Home and Being There, director Hal Ashby announced in 1979 that his next film would be a "personal" project called The Hamster of Happiness. Two years would pass before this effort would appear on screen, by which time it had been heavily Read More

No Nukes

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Doobie Brothers, John Hall, Graham Nash

Synopsis: Also known as The Muse Concert: No Nukes, this rock-concert film offers a good representative cross-section of old-line show business liberalism. Bruce Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt are the "newest" members of the aggregation by default. They're okay if not brilliant, which can also be said for Read More

Days of Heaven

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz, Robert J. Wilke

Synopsis: Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, the long-awaited follow-up to his 1973 debut Badlands, confirmed his reputation as a visual poet and narrative iconoclast with a story of love and murder told through the jaded voice of a child and expressive images of nature. In 1916, Chicago steelworker Bill (Richard Gere Read More

Coming Home

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Robert Ginty, Penelope Milford

Synopsis: Hal Ashby's 1978 melodrama examines the impact of the Vietnam War on the "war at home" among the men who fought it and the women in their lives. Left alone in Los Angeles when her gung-ho Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern) heads to Vietnam in 1968, proper wife Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) decides to Read More

Bound for Glory

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: David Carradine, Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, John Lehne

Synopsis: Adapted by Robert Getchell from Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Hal Ashby's biopic portrays a few pivotal years in the life of the celebrated folk singer and social activist. In the Depression 1930s, Midwesterner Guthrie (David Carradine) plays music locally but cannot make enough as a sign painter Read More

Land of My Birth

Crew: Cinematographer

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, William Redfield, Dean R. Brooks, Scatman Crothers

Synopsis: With an insane asylum standing in for everyday society, Milos Forman's 1975 film adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel is a comically sharp indictment of the Establishment urge to conform. Playing crazy to avoid prison work detail, manic free spirit Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is sent to the Read More

Introduction to the Enemy

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer

Actors: Tom Hayden

Synopsis: This documentary was made during the most intense period of fighting in the Vietnam War. U.S. participation in that conflict lasted from 1956 (approximately) until 1975. Here Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden travel to North Vietnam in order to show the North Vietnamese as actual human beings with Read More

Underground

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Synopsis: Since most of the members of the Weather Underground interviewed in this film were fugitives at the time it was made in 1974, the FBI attempted to impound it as evidence. After several years of legal battles, it was finally released. These radicals, deeply dissatisfied with the American political Read More

American Graffiti

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark

Synopsis:
It's the last night of summer 1962, and the teenagers of Modesto, California, want to have some fun before adult responsibilities close in. Among them are Steve (Ron Howard) and Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), college-bound with mixed feelings about leaving home; nerdy Terry "The Toad" (Charles Martin Smith Read More

The Trial of the Catonsville Nine

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Gwen Arner, Ed Flanders, Barton Heyman, Richard Jordan, Nancy Malone

Synopsis: Father Daniel Berrigan, at the height of the Vietnam War, was arrested along with eight other protesters (including his brother Philip) in Baltimore in 1968, for burning draft records. Berrigan later penned a didactic play, based upon the incident, which was the basis for this film. The motives Read More

Brazil: A Report on Torture

Crew: Cinematographer

Interviews with My Lai Veterans

Crew: Cinematographer

Medium Cool

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, Harold Blankenship

Synopsis: "I love to shoot film" is the sanguine motto of TV lensman John Cassellis (Robert Forster) in Haskell Wexler's 1969 Medium Cool, a semi-documentary investigation of image-making and politics. With his soundman, Gus (Peter Bonerz), John films such events as gruesome car wrecks with frosty Read More

The Thomas Crown Affair

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston, Yaphet Kotto

Synopsis: Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is a self-made Boston millionaire who masterminds a bank heist in hopes of leaving it all behind. Tired of being part of the Establishment, he has hopes of pulling off the caper and flying to Rio. Erwin Weaver (Jack Weston) leads the cast of crooks who never actually Read More

From Protest to Resistance

Crew: Cinematographer

In the Heat of the Night

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, James Patterson, Scott Wilson

Synopsis: The winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture (as well as four other Oscars), In the Heat of the Night is set in a small Mississippi town where an unusual murder has been committed. Rod Steiger plays sheriff Bill Gillespie, a good lawman despite his racial prejudices. When Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier Read More

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis

Synopsis: "You are cordially invited to George and Martha's for an evening of fun and games." Thus read the ad copy for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which in 1966 went farther than any previous big-studio film in its use of profanity and sexual implication. George (Richard Burton) is an alcoholic college Read More

The Loved One

Crew: Cinematographer, Producer

Actors: Robert Morse, Anjanette Comer, Jonathan Winters, Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Dana Andrews

Synopsis: The satire in Evelyn Waugh's darkly comic novel The Loved One was originally double-edged. The book was not only an attack on the Southern California funeral industry but also a lampoon of Hollywood's "British colony," those clannish, cricket-playing English actors of years gone by who bemoaned Read More

Bus

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Synopsis: This documentary covers the trip made by San Francisco civil-rights activists to the March on Washington. The passengers relate their own experiences in the ongoing, pacifistic fight for their rights under the Constitution. A black man relates his story about the march in Gadsden, Alabama in which Read More

The Best Man

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Edie Adams, Margaret Leighton, Shelley Berman, Lee Tracy

Synopsis: Gore Vidal adapted his biting and bitter political satire from his hit Broadway play. Franklin J. Schaffner directed and Haskell Wexler provided the sharp-edged cinematography. The story concerns the political back-biting and smear politics involved in a presidential election year scramble by Read More

Lonnie

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: In this crime drama, naive Lonnie allows a Spanish revolutionary and his henchman to rent his car. Unfortuantely, the duo use the car to escape after pulling off a diamond heist (the money will be used help support the Spaniard's cause). Lonnie begins investigating and along the way learns that Read More

America, America

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Stathis Giallelis, Frank Wolff, Harry Davis, Linda Marsh, Elena Karam, Paul Mann, Estelle Hemsley

Synopsis: Filmmaker Elia Kazan based America, America on the early life of his Greek-immigrant uncle. Stavros Topouzoglow is the young immigrant, whose starry-eyed impressions of America are soon compromised by reality. Despite the casual cruelties, betrayals, and career setbacks, Stavros forms strong and Read More

A Face in the Rain

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Rory Calhoun, Marina Berti, Massimo Giuliani

Synopsis: In this melodrama, set in German-occupied Italy during WW II, a Yankee spy is concealed in the attic of an underground contact's house. The contact's wife does not want him there as she is having an affair with the German Officer who is looking for him. He remains in the attic, hidden by the Read More

The Runaway

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Cesar Romero, Roger Mobley, Chick Chandler, Anita Page, Nacho Galindo

Synopsis: A young delinquent from a Mexican border town sets out to cross the border and search for his long lost father, in the process befriending a loyal greyhound puppy and a sympathetic priest who helps train the dog to become a champion racer. For Felipe (Roger Mobley), every day above ground is cause Read More

Angel Baby

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: George Hamilton, Mercedes McCambridge, Joan Blondell, Henry Jones, Burt Reynolds, Salome Jens

Synopsis: Based on Jenny Angel, a novel by Elise Oaks Barber, Angel Baby is a gloves-off study of the faith-healing racket. The title character, played by Salome Jens, is a mute whose speech is ostensibly restored by Bible-thumper George Hamilton. Angel Baby is then exploited on the evangelical circuit by Read More

The Hoodlum Priest

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Don Murray, Larry Gates, Cindi Wood, Keir Dullea, Logan Ramsey

Synopsis: Di