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Michael Chapman - 'You can't dance unless you're asked to' (69/94)

160 views · Published 12 July 2017 · 1:00 · Indexed 25 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Film & Animation

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To listen to more of Michael Chapman’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyKbX3v4q3w3U_-c2SOkXm9

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: Those were the movies I chose to do, or that I was offered. I don't remember whether I was, you know, turning down some wonderful avant-garde piece of Shakespeare in order to do 'Kindergarten Cop'; I don't remember. I just remember I did 'Kindergarten Cop'. And they were, by and large, large studio movies with big studio directors, you know. And so that... that implies a certain kind of... of coverage and lighting, and camera package and all the rest. And I unashamedly did them, and... and perfectly happy to have done them. I don't know that there were, in those years, as interesting alternatives to that as there were in the '70s, and that's why the '70s is remembered as the last great... whatever it was, that went up everybody's nose, and the '80s wasn't. And I did what I did, you know. I sound as if I was defending myself. Well, I suppose I am. But, no, I'm not. I mean, what the hell else was I going to do, and I did what came... No... And I'm just... You can't dance unless you're asked to, you know.

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