Haskell Wexler: In "Virginia Woolf" I had a thing which the grips call...

I'd say to anyone trying to break into the business: Don't just be interested in movies. Be interested in life. Be a person. Be in touch.

Haskell Wexler

break life-is trying

We, as film-makers, are privileged. We can make people cry or laugh. We can make them think and feel. It is a great privilege and a great responsibility.

Haskell Wexler

responsibility people thinking

There is a very particular feeling I get when I have the camera in my hand, looking at an actor talk, knowing that what I’m shooting will end up on the screen.

Haskell Wexler

knowing feelings hands

I think that the whole voyeuristic attitude of filmmakers or of me personally - of shooting documentaries and so forth - is an important issue. And it was an important issue to me, personally. And the whole question of when - when do you put the camera down or when do you keep shooting to get the shot. And a number of times in my life I've had that question hit me very hard.

Haskell Wexler

numbers attitude thinking

I've been in wars and in riots and hung out of many helicopters in the early days. And there's a detachment that happens when you look through the camera. You're looking for the shot.

Haskell Wexler

cameras war looks

I don't know where you're reading all this stuff, but it's pretty accurate, yes. It was in 1942. I was on a ship called the Accelo(ph) coming back from the Red Sea and we were sunk off the coast of Africa by a German submarine. And I was in a lifeboat for 14 days and landed and lived with the Pondos in South Africa while - who took care of us and took care of me. I had some wound in my left leg.

Haskell Wexler

submarines reading sea

Lighting was very primitive. And still it was really the way to learn because sometimes some of the modern technology is so extreme and so compartmentalized that we lose sight of exactly what we're doing.

Haskell Wexler

technology sight way

The idea of accountability in Vietnam, Nicaragua and now Iraq - the media never has that in its quiver. When you see time after time there is no possibility of Nuremberg [war crime trials], we're doomed to have it repeated.

Haskell Wexler

media war ideas

When I started, we had just the camera and the person, mostly. And if you wanted to do a dolly shot, particularly working in Chicago where I began, you'd get in the back trunk of a car, and you'd have a friend drive the car, or you'd get in some kid's little wagon that he plays with and have someone pull that for dolly shots.

Haskell Wexler

car play kids

There was no actually stock footage in "Medium Cool." I wrote the script. I wrote the riots. And I integrated the actors in the film in the park during the demonstrations. But nowhere was it like we had stock footage and then later, in editing, integrated it into the film. It was all done at the time.

Haskell Wexler

actors done editing

The helicopter was a U.S. Navy helicopter. There were no civilian helicopters available to film companies, so they just made some stuff out of two-by-four wood. And I would straddle a two-by-four out from the helicopter with a camera and what we call a high hat, which is a low metal stand.

Haskell Wexler

navy cameras two

I used it in a shot where Richard Burton goes down the hall to get a gun in a closet. And I wanted to get some excitement, and the hallway was too narrow for the dollies that they had at that time. So it was quite useful.

Haskell Wexler

excitement used gun

Most people, I believe, when they're asked profound questions about their own persona are not really able to enunciate it, because it's a combination of so many things.

Haskell Wexler

profound believe people

Not one Wall Street executive has been charged with crimes since the 2008 financial crash.

Haskell Wexler

wall crime financial

I had a rope around my waist, and the rope was attached into the helicopter in case I fell off. And the shot was a shot that began with Kim Novak going out of a house and getting into a bus. Then it was supposed to go over the countryside and find a freight train on which Bill Holden was standing. And then after seeing a good look at the freight train, the camera was supposed to move up into the sky for the end credits.

Haskell Wexler

house sky moving

My mother let me know that we're all connected. If some of us become more affluent it's not because we're better or even smarter people - we have a responsibility to ourselves to be a good boy.

Haskell Wexler

responsibility mother boys

I think that the whole voyeuristic attitude of filmmakers or of me personally - of shooting documentaries and so forth - is an important issue.

Haskell Wexler

issues attitude thinking

When I was in Vietnam with Jane Fonda, I was shooting a farmer in a field - just a pastoral scene. And while I was shooting him, an explosion occurred right - he blew up right in my lens, so to speak. And he had stepped on a landmine.

Haskell Wexler

vietnam lenses shooting

If you're making commercials which sell products which are unhealthy or which are unnecessary, I think that you are part of a system.

Haskell Wexler

unnecessary unhealthy thinking

I am part of a system which encourages people to buy things and do things which are not to their best interest.

Haskell Wexler

interest people

In "Virginia Woolf" I had a thing which the grips called the paraplegic which was a wheelchair thing that I had made up years before where I could stand on this bicycle-like device and be pushed down the hall, and then step off it with a handheld camera.