Page 34 - Fujifilm Exposure_37 Candy_ok

in production
SEX, LIES & WASHINGTON DC
Chris Seager BSC on the challenge
of Paul Schrader’s latest film, The Walker
T he idea of an elegant, club- bable man who, while
escorting American high- society women becomes embroiled in murder and intrigue, has a distinct whiff of familiarity. Can it really
be more than a quarter of a century since Richard Gere strutted his stuff in Los Angeles as Julian Kay, the epony- mous American Gigolo, written and directed by Paul Schrader?
In what has been described as a sort of “unoffi- cial sequel” to his 1980 block- buster, Woody Harrelson now stars for Schrader in The Walker, as the middle-aged Carter Page III, who profes- sionally squires the rich and powerful wives of Washington DC.
There’s not just a change of location for this updated male escort - from Beverly Hills to the nation’s capital - but also a change of personal prefer- ence, for Carter Page III is gay.
Apart from the final four days of shooting in Washington to get exteri- ors of Capitol Hill, the National Theatre and travelling shots in cars, the main bulk of The Walker’s five- week schedule actually took place - thanks to the vagaries of international financing - on the Isle of Man, stages at Pinewood Studios, and in London inte- riors. The cast also includes Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, Willem Dafoe, Moritz Bleibtrau and Ned Beatty.
According to DP Chris Seager BSC, The Walker, which had its world premiere out-of-competition at the Berlin Film Festival, where 60-year-old Schrader was chairman of the jury, is less a murder mystery and more about an interconnecting set of characters and their fragile relationships. “You really have to pay attention to grasp it, though the clues are all there,” notes Seager.
Seager, although a double BAFTA winner (The Girl In The Café, Sex Traffic), describes how he went to his first meeting with Schrader – perhaps best known as the screenwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull – still wonder- ing modestly why the American film- maker, who last worked with Vittorio Storaro, “would want to work with me.” Certainly Sex Traffic was a partic- ularly potent calling card.
Preparing for the film, he and Schrader watched the work of various DPs, notably Chris Doyle’s on films like In The Mood For Love and The White Countess, regarding especially the use of colour and filters.
“I talked about doing a DI – in fact, I pushed him to do that – and said we could do other things about colour in ‘post’. I also talked him into 2:35 rather than stick to 1:85 which
he’d always done before. Why would we do this for an essen- tially conversational piece, he asked. Because it would give him much more width for those actors, I replied.
“At the end of shooting, he came up to me and said the two things about the film he really loved was working with me and also doing 2:35 ratio. Apart from that, he did- n’t talk much. However, he seemed to value what I thought and he certainly made me think too.”
As for the shooting itself? “ I did my usual trick – for all those
lush, opulent interiors like embassies, big houses and card clubs, I chose Fujifilm, the Eterna 500T, because it has that wonderfully rich feel. It has such good colour and a real ‘film’ feel to it compared with other stocks.”
Seager, who shot the revenge thriller Straightheads entirely on Fujifilm, before moving on to The Walker, has, most recently, been shooting another low-budget shocker, Flick, in South Wales, with a cast including Faye Dunaway and Hugh O’Conor. ■ QUENTIN FALK
The Walker, which will open in the UK later this year, was partly originated on 35mm Fujicolor Eterna 500T 8573; Straightheads, which opens in April, was originated on 16mm Fujicolor Eterna 500T 8673 and Eterna 250D 8663
It was to prove a stimulating though at times fairly enigmatic col- laboration. “He doesn’t tend to pro- voke conversation,” recalls Seager. “I once asked the production designer, James Merifield, if he was having the same problems as me trying to get information out of him. ‘Tell me about it,’ he replied.
“When we were watching rushes at night on the Isle of Man, he’d walk out as soon as they were over without even a comment. I soon realised that he’d only speak to you if there was some- thing wrong. I remember one night – actually it was nearer one o’clock in the morning – he rang me up. Never Christian names. ‘Seager? Schrader here. Have you seen Affliction? [the director’s 1997 movie]. ‘Sorry,” I said, ‘seen Affliction? Yes... Hello’. That was it; he’d gone. If I hadn’t seen it, it would have been on my desk in the morning to take home and watch.”
“I chose... the Fujicolor Eterna 500T, because it has that wonderfully rich feel.”
32 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video