The Cinematographer, the Box of Light, & Magic Hour

THERE ONCE WAS A CINEMATOGRAPHER who had never felt the warmth of a family.

It was in the Philippines, during the gruesome Balangiga Massacre of 1901. At six-thirty in the morning, a band of revolutionaries launched a surprise attack upon Company C of the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment. The guerrillas entered the mess area at breakfast—the Americans unarmed except for kitchen utensils—and unleashed hell. A young soldier from California defended himself against the onslaught as best he could before he was finally overwhelmed and hacked to death, never having met his son, who was born that very day.

Four years later, the soldier’s wife and son had boarded a Hollywood street car, Coach 44, headed home after a fine day of shopping. Carrying more than sixty passengers, the defective brakes failed catastrophically. A massive construct of Detroit steel, the car plummeted down Bellevue Avenue at an insane rate of speed. It jumped the tracks, took flight, and slammed into the brick corner of the Berea Packing Co. The soldier’s wife was annihilated. Her baby boy survived and became a ward of the state.

After a few years at the orphanage, he could barely remember the sound of his mom’s voice, and his father was nothing more than some stranger who had earned the Purple Heart medallion, which the boy kept in a shoebox underneath his bed.

One Christmas, a nun at the orphanage who had grown concerned about how incredibly withdrawn the boy had become, gave the boy a present that would change his life. It was a used No. 1 Kodak Brownie camera. It was made of cardboard, weighed about 8 ounces and cost a single dollar when purchased four years earlier. To her surprise, the kid took to photography like a duck to water. From that Christmas morning to the day he died, not a day went by that he did not expose film to light.

That boy grew up to become a damn good cinematographer. He was fast, efficient, and always delivered a good negative. He was a technical genius who built his own lenses, and he never ever used a light meter. The ol’ boy lit entirely by eye and always nailed the exposure like a hammer. And he was as kind as he was in the know. By the time he hit his forties, he was in demand as one of Hollywood’s most popular cameramen. Everybody loved the Cinematagrapher.

Unfortunately, the Cinematographer’s technical genius overshadowed his artistry and he was never allowed to shoot the masterpiece he craved. He was relegated to B-Movie gangster and science fiction films, with tight schedules and little money. With these limitations, the Cinematographer could only show flashes of his brilliance in one or maybe two scenes in a single movie, if he were lucky.

Yet the kids at his old orphanage loved him and all of his movies. Whenever the Cinematographer finished a film he would treat the kids to a screening, complete with popcorn and an iced bottle of coke. Aftwards, he would escort the kids back home where they listened to the radio while he taught them how to fashion pinhole cameras out of Quaker Oatmeal boxes.

On his fortieth birthday, the children returned the love with a present, a Brownie camera. It was a used 1930 Number 2 Beau Brownie Camera. Produced by the Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York. It cost about four dollars and twenty-five cents when it was brand new, some ten years earlier. The Cinematographer owned far more expensive and professional equipment, yet there was not a camera on this planet he loved more.

By the time he reached the ripe old age of seventy-one, he had photographed hundreds of films, but he had never had a chance to create the masterpiece he knew was in him. In the end, after a very long and busy career, he finally gave up and decided to retire. The old Cinematographer would pack up a few possessions, including his precious vintage Brownie camera, and move to a rest home to live out the remainder of his years in peace. However, what the old Cinematographer didn’t know was that as the 1970s rolled around, he had obtained a cult following with the new generation of young filmmakers, maverick directors who lived outside the confines of Hollywood.