Look Who it Was Random video

Michael Chapman - Studio movies in the '80s (68/94)

228 views · Published 12 July 2017 · 1:09 · Indexed 26 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: I was doing... for many years in the '80s, I was doing big studio movies – you know, 'Ghostbusters 2', and 'Scrooged', and this and that, and working. I mean, my car could find its way to Warner Bros. I didn't even have to be awake. It could drive me back and forth by itself. And I was doing large studio movies which, by and large, entail a certain... certain parameters of the lighting anyway. You're not going to do... you know, you're not going to do wild abstraction, or something. And coverage and... I mean, with all that a big studio movie implies. I did them for 10 years or so, one after another, one kind or another. And did very well doing them and was quite happy doing them. And, you know, raised a family and had two children and settled down to life in LA in a... in a very ordinary, middle class way, you know. And I'm quite happy to have done it. Had I... I mean, I suppose I could have done, or gone, a different route in my career, but I'm not sure that in the '80s there... that route was very interesting.

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