I am a Chicagoan. I feel like I've simply been on vacation for 10 years in Los Angeles. But Chicago is a real place, and L.A. is a motel.
We have a responsibility to show the public the kinds of truths that they don't see on the TV news or the Hollywood film.
I don't attack any kind of script or shooting with some philosophy that is discernible even to myself. It might just be art and love: When I got my Academy Award for 'Virginia Woolf' in the middle of the Vietnam War, I said, 'I hope we can use our art for peace and love.'
I was a sailor. I was torpedoed, spent two weeks in a lifeboat. I was on the Murmansk run; I worked a 20 mm. machine gun, helped bring down a Stuka, all that kind of stuff. I've got letters from Franklin Roosevelt for things I did then. But those kind of credentials didn't work for you in the Cold War.
Movies are a voyeuristic experience. You have to make the audience feel like they are peeking through a keyhole. I think of myself as the audience. Then I use light, framing, and motion to create a focal point.
As a cameraman, I am interested in images and truth. Today, people are conditioned to accept lies if they are commercial lies. What we don't see anymore is ethics.
