Look Who it Was Random video

Michael Chapman - Osip Mandelstam and Haskell Wexler (92/94)

243 views · Published 11 July 2017 · 1:12 · Indexed 30 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: We can afford to be sentimental about how wonderful it would have been to be a painter or a poet in Russia, but they killed them; they actually killed them. There's nothing sentimental about that. You know, they took all those people off and sent them to the Gulag and killed them. So I think in the end it's probably better to be unrecognized and treated as a trashy old cameraman here than to be a... you know, Osip Mandelstam. Osip Mandelstam did not come to a good end. However brave and wonderful he may have been, I don't think I would've liked to die in the Gulag, you know. So yes... in one way, yes, how wonderful it is to have your art be so meaningful that repressive regimes want to send you to the Gulag. On the other hand, how unpleasant to be sent to the Gulag. And so it balances out either way. But as far as Haskell goes, Haskell put his money where his mouth is, and he's always done these things on the side. Like the long thing that's still going on about the bus strike and stuff like that, which is wonderful stuff, and good for... good for Haskell. Good for Haskell, indeed. But, as I say, it is true also that only the very rich can afford to behave as though the revolution had already taken place

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