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THE WIZARD OF OZ
WIZARD OF OZ
An interview with Peter Hannan BSC
C inematographers often talk about how “luck” has played
such a important part in their careers and Peter Hannan is no exception. Whether it was landing a job as focus puller on Kubrick’s
sci-fi epic 2001 - A Space Odyssey after virtually stepping off the boat from Australia or, some 20 years on, signing up to light a low-budget comedy that would become the cult classic Withnail And I, he will rather modestly invoke sheer good fortune or else its traditional twin, “timing”.
Beyond dispute is the fact that it was indeed a quite massive piece of luck that first kickstarted the then teenager’s career back in his native Oz. Hannan was working for Cinesound as a newsreel cameraman and along with a phalanx of photogra- phers was lined up on the American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to cap- ture the launch of a rocket off the coast of New South Wales.
Hannan, 57, who recently com- pleted the comedy Milk - showcased in this year’s London Film Festival - and Channel Four’s centuries-spanning true-life drama Longitude, recalls it as if it was yesterday: “I had an Arriflex, turned over and then the camera stopped. At the time I was right next to a guy called Rhubarb, my rival from Movietone, and he had unplugged me. By the time I’d bent down to plug myself back in again it was all over.
“I remember almost bursting into tears and there was this guy covered in braid at the end of the flying bridge who asked me what was wrong. I told him I’d missed the launch and ‘could they do it again?’ He said it would cost about $80,000 and, anyway, why had I missed it. He gave me a cup of coffee and calmed me down then he called up another admiral and told him the story. After finding out what I had been shooting on - black-and-white, as it happens - they gave me a whole lot of cans of film they’d shot themselves of every rocket they’d fired on on their way to Australia. We had rockets going off left, right and centre while Movietone has just the one. So I sup- pose I had the last laugh. Anyway, Rhubarb rang me up to say ‘well done!’
Long before this poignant seagoing saga, Hannan, born north of Sydney in a town best known these days as the location of TV Home And Away’s Summer Bay, had wanted to become the next Richard Avedon probably because he was in love with Suzy Parker, “the first model I knew of.” Trying later to get a job in a stills studio proved a problem but thanks to his eagle-eyed sister who spotted an ad, he applied for a job as a cam- eraman in TV news. “They asked me just two questions at the interview. Did I have a driver’s licence and could I spell? The answer was ‘yes’ to the first and ‘no’ to the second because I was dyslexic. Anyway I got
the job, was sent out as an assistant and then after a week was given my own car, camera, light and sound. I was literally a one-man crew and did everything. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing and basical- ly you copied each other.”
This freewheeling, guerrilla lifestyle, switching eventually from small to big screen, must have seemed worlds away when some seven years on, Hannan fetched up at Dover and then Earl’s Court jobless after 12 months bumming around the globe. Even luckier than the fact he found his passport stamped “resident” was a
call out of the blue from the head of the camera department at MGM Studios, Borehamwood who told him he’d been “recommended.” Hannan thinks it must have been the result of contacts at a very boozy party and couldn’t remember a thing but the upshot was he was soon in his car heading for Elstree.
“It was,” he purrs, “like driving into heaven. Antonioni was there with Blow-Up as well as Robert Aldrich [The Dirty Dozen], Fred Zinnemann [the still-born Man’s Fate] and, of course, Kubrick with 2001. I met up with Geoff Unsworth, who was lighting
Photos top: Peter Hannan and main; on location with Longitude.
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