Salvatore Totino - Craft Truck - Through the Lens - S01EP5

I remember once I was doing a commercial with Alex Proyas for Nestea. Right. And I was lighting this stage. It was like a theatrical set. I was lighting it very dark. And Alex was like, wow, it's really dark. I said, yeah. He goes, how dark is it? I said, I don't know. I haven't gone this far yet. And I said, are you okay with that? He said, well, yeah. You know, if it's no good, then we'll have time tomorrow to reshoot it. I said, okay. So, you know, it's like, how are you ever going to know the limits of film if you don't push the film? And the next day, Alex saw the film before I did. And I came in the stage. He said, so, you found the edge and you fell off. Welcome back to another Regularly Special episode of Through the Lens. And we are genuinely honored today to have with us somebody who I thought was Salvatore Totino. But now I understand, having met you for about five minutes, it's really, it's Sal. Well, everybody calls me Sal. My proper name is Salvatore. So, Brooklyn. Brooklyn, New York. Italian family. Parents immigrated from Italy. Oh, so you're first generation. First generation American. My first language was Italian, actually. Okay, let's start off with this. I'm sitting in a theater, I think it was 2000, maybe 1999, 2000. And this movie that we went to go see because, you know, high school we were football fans. We were movie fans. We were Oliver Stone fans. And we go see this, this movie hits the screen any given Sunday. One of the most aggressive, you know, action-loaded and at the same time heavily dramatic sports movies ever made. And this is a, if I'm not mistaken, first time. It was my first feature film. First feature film. How did that happen? How did that come about? As you know, Oliver was working with Bob Richardson for the longest time. Bob wasn't available for that film. So, Oliver has a very good relationship with my agent. Asked him to recommend some young, new DPs. And my agent sent over a bunch of reels, including my own. And Oliver liked my work. And I went in for a couple of interviews. I was interviewing a few other people and got lucky. Well, I mean, it's just... Got lucky. It was like pulling the draft. Right. You know, you say you got lucky, but it was also the first day of principal photography, Oliver looked at me and said, welcome to Vietnam. And that's what I meant by pulling the draft. It's like, was this a good thing or not, you know? Did you think you were like still on the set of Heaven and Earth or one of those other... No, no, no, no. What he meant by that is like, look, you are either going to survive... Sink or swim. Or you're going to die. Right. You know, it's going to be all up to you. When he said that, I walked away and was like, what the fuck is he talking about? And in the next couple of weeks, I've come to realize what that was about. And what was it about? You know, it was about surviving. You know, it was like trying to find a way to be creative while having... being pulled back on every single angle possible. Oliver would do odd things, you know, like he'd call on his way to set and say, hey, I want to shoot this scene, blah, blah, blah. I'll walk in on the door and I'm like, well, that's not on the schedule. It's not even in the script, you know? He's like, don't tell me. You set everything up for that. Set up for that. And then he'd be like, what is this? He just told me on the phone. He said, didn't you read the script? The schedule was supposed to be inside. You just wasted 20 minutes. So I was like, okay, so now this is what it's going to be like. So, you know, you're constantly dodging bullets. You're figuring them out. Look, Oliver, I have a lot of respect for him. He's a genius. The man's very smart. And we all have our time. Right. I saw the movie in the theater. Haven't seen it since again. I've never rented it. The scenes that jump out to me from memory, LT sawing a car in half, this crazy, aggressive angle, you know, and just sparks flying all over the place and stuff like that. Night exterior. Scenes in Al Pacino's character's house with Jamie Foxx, where he's making him lunch a jambalaya or something like that. And you have Ben-Hur in the background, on the Plaza screen in the background. And it's like, how do you make a two-hander into something, you know, with the level of a war movie, you know, aggressively done, you know, just like a constant. Well, that's Oliver's brilliance right there. But I'll tell you something. Cap Rooney's been doing it for years. And his time is over. And yours is, too, unless you start taking some risk and start playing this game the way it's played today. It is not about the pace. I lived this game for three decades, kid. I know football. Now, those men on the wall, they want it to win. Okay, there's a rumor. I just want you to know if you can confirm it or not. The scene where, you know, it's Al Pacino's halftime speech, is it you just get the focus puller to grid the floor and Al's going to go wherever he's going to go, or does he actually keep to whatever the marks are? Al goes where Al goes. He was incredible to work with. I can only imagine. I love Al. Tell us a little bit about that, just about, like, your first time seeing Al Pacino work. Is it just like... You know, I've always respected and looked up to Al. So you're kind of like pinch me, I'm dreaming? Exactly. And I'll be on set and, you know, my back towards the door, and Al will walk on set and just tap me on the back and say, hey, Sally boy, how you doing? And I'm like, wow, Al just called me Sally boy. You must have called your mom and told her. And I would still feel like that today if I worked with him. Right. So now let's go back in time. You are growing up in Brooklyn in a rough neighborhood. What gets you into cinematography? How did that happen? I'll try to keep it short. Yeah. My family, you either went to college or you learned to trade. And when I was young, I wasn't doing so well in school, and they encouraged me to go to a trade high school where I started picking up my grades and I started doing really well in math. And I took college-bound classes and I wound up going to college for engineering. Two and a half years of that, I was like, oh, my God, so boring. I quit. That summer, I was contemplating taking some photography classes. The idea of making a living as an artist in my house did not... Wasn't even... No. Your father was a... Well, actually, my father's a hairdresser. He's a hairdresser. Okay, well, there's some art involved in that, for sure. You know Tony Sirico on the Sopranos, Paulie? That's my dad's work. Really? And that's just by coincidence. Tony Sirico going into my dad's shop in the neighborhood with my father. That's a whole other story. So you were involved in movies. I was going to start taking some photography classes. 20 years old and you go, I'd like to take some photography classes. 21. But I didn't take them. Didn't take them. No. What happened was I met somebody who was in the film business and I went and saw him at work one day. I was like, wow. I was just enthralled by the whole thing. And he said, look, if you want to get in the business, you have to become a PA and quit your job. So the next day I quit my job and I went looking for work as a PA and I wound up going to work for the company where he worked and I wound up staying there for a year and a half. And in the meantime, I had bought myself a still camera and taught myself how to print black and white. And the math part of your mind now is liking the fact that a stop up and a stop is like this. Yeah, it's kind of like that. I never took it so mathematically. I think the mathematical aspect of it is a very good foundation that you need to know, but you need to be free about it. It's like a recipe. You're cooking a dish. You could follow it down to the last gram or you could put a little bit of your soul into it. So you would say you light very much. I love the analogy of the cook. You're saying you light and shoot very much. If it doesn't feel right, it doesn't matter what the... Yeah. Rules are there to be broken. And sometimes they're broken and they're wonderful and sometimes you're like, oh man, why did I do that for? So flashing forward now, you start getting jobs on music videos and then commercials and then you get hired on any given Sunday. And you're like, pinch me, I'm dreaming. And you made it through. Oh yeah, I made it through, I lost 22 pounds and I did not want to do a feature film after that. You did. And you were like, that's it, I'm not doing that. I was like, if they're all going to be like this, I'm not interested. What changed it? 2001, I think it is. Roger Michel and Scott Rudin. Scott Rudin sends Changing Lanes. Roger's very opposite of Oliver. British director. British director, theatrical training, very much about the actors, very collaborative, cards were on the table, you knew exactly what was happening. You didn't look over your shoulder, you didn't have to worry about any of that. And it was a great experience, such a lovely experience. Let's talk a little bit about cameras, actually. Film versus digital. I've heard every attitude across the board, purists to, scared of technology, not scared of technology. If I had to venture a guess, which I don't, because you're here, if I had to venture a guess, I would think your attitude is, these are changing things, and pictures are pictures, and they each have their own qualities that they bring to the table. That's true, but I want to hold on to film as long as I can. Oh, you do? Well, only because it is going to go away. And I do love it so much. It's more alive, where digital is more clean and antiseptic. I also like the fact that you're wondering, what am I going to see tomorrow from yesterday? It's that mystery. That mystery. How much do you play around before, I mean, because this is moving into another thing, not one of your two movies looks the same. There is not one of your two movies that looks the same. I've seen all of your movies, or most of them, there's one or two that I haven't seen. You haven't seen People Like Us yet? I haven't seen that yet. You have to go see People Like Us. Kurtzman and Norwich, we've got to talk about that in a second. But I've seen most of your movies, and none of them look the same. You know, I find something that I really like to do, material-wise, and put myself into it. So, the way I refer to Cinderella Man, is I say it's the best movie Roger Deakins never shot. Yeah. I mean, period piece, right? There's this classic argument about period pieces. You know, well, we know that going back, they had less light, therefore they should be brighter, they should be darker. That movie, to me, there wasn't one frame of Cinderella Man, whether it's drifting across Russell Crowe's apartment after the Depression hit, you know, we get in the movie, he's on top of the world, and it flashes forward, and we drift across the board, it's very dim, there's no light, you know, it's just, there's nothing, he's impoverished. Or the huge crowd, with all these hats, and all these long coats, or Giamatti's empty, sparse apartment, you know, I mean, none of it, there wasn't one shot in the movie that felt like it wasn't part of this perfectly designed whole, you know, that you constructed this full world, and every scene just sort of linked into that world, and, you know, so, what was your plan going in? Thank you. Well, the plan was to really try to make the audience feel as though they were there. For example, in Russell's apartment, I went through very painstaking steps, not to remove walls, it was a set, to work out lensing so that we were in the room, so there was only one time I took a wall out to get behind so I could come across the table. Other than that, I really tried not to, and my crew was starting to get a little frustrated because there was only one door in and out, so we agreed to open a wall in the closet in the back to get equipment in and out. And it forced me to be on certain lenses because of the distances that I needed to be. So, you know, sometimes it might not have been as flattering if I had the distance to go on a longer lensing, and I think that really comes out in the film, and also in the boxing. I was in the ring... Let's talk about shooting boxing, because this is something that I think... I'm not a DP, but if I was, I'd be scared out of my mind. Everyone thinks of Raging Bull, but then every DP has done boxing. You look at Raging Bull, and it was very innovative for the time, but when you go frame by frame, the punches are pretty far off. Ron was like, okay, how are we going to do the boxing? And we went to a gym out here in the valley way before and just got some video cameras, and I said, Ron, we'll just get in the ring with the cameras. He said, well, how are you going to get in with the cameras? You know, you're going to... Actors are going to get hurt. We're going to get hurt. I said, no, we won't. I said, I think we can do this. And we did a little test with some video cameras here in the valley. It kind of worked out, but he said, but those are small cameras. And I'm like, look, you know I can do it. Let's... When we're in prep, let's do some tests. And that's what we did in prep. I got in the ring with Russell and another boxer. We'd study the choreography first, and then move around the choreography with them without the camera so they could see where I was, I could see where they were going. And it was like doing a dance. Yeah, it was like doing a dance. Your spot. Let's talk about lighting the movie. Is it just every scene, you just get in, you figure out your... I mean, are you a figure out the framing first and light second? You know, I do a lot of prep in pre-production. You know, scouting locations with the director and then afterwards going back with my crew and talking about the sets and what I'm thinking and where I want the light to come from. So, on the day, I'm pretty much roughed in. Very rarely do I go, no, no, no, let's just scrap this all and do it differently. Right. You know, because you are telling the story. There are some DPs who do that. Yeah, there are. But, you know, I'll make a commitment. And afterwards, I don't always make the right choice. And afterwards, I'll look at it and go, fuck, you know, it should have done it. Are you ever wanting to play the role of the artist more or less? I mean, it just doesn't even occur to you. No, it doesn't occur to me. I don't think of playing an artist. Uh, Frost and Nixon. That movie, again, as I said before, none of your two movies look the same. That movie, it almost felt like everything photographically was heading, building into the footage between them in the interview. First time I heard that. That's interesting. It just felt like it had a look to it that you were capturing, you know, just documenting this thing, almost like a newsreel that's moving along and moving along, and then it just barrels into, can this guy do it? Can he actually pull him out of this? Well, you know, in a way, it was also like Cinderella, that movie, because it's about these two opponents training. Robin's like, how are we going to make these interviews not feel boring? Right. So, in that case, will you accept, then, to clear the air once and for all that you were part of a cover-up and that you did break the law? Oh, my God. We can... Shit. This is so wonderful. Or I'm looking at Frank Langella, and I forget, and I'm like, my God, I'm in the room with Nixit. They really made me feel like I was in the room with Nixit. I have made statements to this effect before. All that was Haldeman and Ehrlichman's business. I knew nothing. Okay, fine. Fine. You made a conclusion there. I stated my view. Now let's move on. No, hold on. Hold on. If Haldeman and Ehrlichman were the ones really responsible, when you subsequently found out about it... People Like Us, your latest film. Oh, my God. Yeah. So Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, two of the highest, most regarded writers working in the business right now. Were both Alex and Roberto on set the whole time? No. Were they working like the Coen brothers? No, no, no. Roberto was out. He came by once or twice. It was Alex's movie. Absolutely. Alex directed the film. And obviously for him, I mean, it's... It's based on a true story. Right. And true events. You know, unfortunately, there's a little suggestion in some of the media now that it's just horrible that they just tried to put this target on his back because it is different than what he's done. He's done an amazing, amazing film. It's his first film. Right. He's taken a personal story and made it so accessible to everybody. And it just gets... Some of the critics are just... I don't know what they're thinking. You know, it takes a lot of fucking balls to take a personal story and to actually bring it to fruition. To actualize it. Yeah. I mean, how many people can say they do that? Look, he fictionalized the movie. He has to. And he had to do it. But it caused a lot of friction in his family, too. So that's a very difficult task to overcome. And he did an amazing job. It sounds like you were very... Not only was it a partnership to work on that movie, but you're very proud of him. I'm very proud of him. Fantastic. He went to any battle. As far as... Oliver would put it. It's kind of funny. We're talking about your last movie, your first movie. Do you get emotional on set? I have, yeah. You know, I... On People Like Us, twice, Michelle Pfeiffer made me cry. Not that she made me cry. But I operate a camera, and during one of the performances, she's having a fight with her son, Chris Pine. And through the lens, I just felt it. And I just started to cry. The hair on my neck stood up, and I just started to cry. And it's just incredible when an actress or an actor can take you there. Say her name. Say it. I don't know what you want me to say. Say it. Say her name. Say it. I am not going to have this conversation with you. It's Frankie. Who told you? We moved past this a long time ago. It's over. And then another time, she apologizes to Chris and tells him the truth of what happened. And in that moment, too, she's carrying the whole weight of the world on her, and you feel it. When you're in the room, you almost feel like I shouldn't be in this room right now. I made him choose. And he chose us. Marriage, Sam. Well, you're going to find out. I love what I do, and I want to keep doing what I do. Any particular types of stories that you haven't yet told that you'd like to tell? What kind of movie would Sal Tatina like to be in? You know, I want to do a Bourne identity. I want to do a Bond film. I wouldn't like to do a good one. Any words of advice for young cinematographers who are watching, who admire your work, because there's many. You know what? Take chances. Take risks. Figure things out in a direction that you want to go and take a chance and see how wonderful it could be or how horrible it could be and learn from that and be good to other people.