Johnny Coquillon and minimal lighting

[arthurkent]

First off, Roger and James, thanks for creating and maintaining your wonderful podcast. Often in your discussions with filmmakers the topic of minimal lighting comes up. Perhaps in the 70s and 80s, Roger, you crossed paths with the late Johnny Coquillon, a much loved Brit-Canadian lensman whose breakthrough shoot was Straw Dogs. Johnny went on to film Peckinpah’s Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, Cross of Iron and The Osterman Weekend.

Dustin Hoffman could spin quite a yarn about how Johnny effectively pulled Straw Dogs out of the fire. Early in the shoot, as I’m sure you know, Peckinpah demanded a replacement DoP because he was unhappy with the over-lit interiors of the cottage. The production was on the verge of collapsing. Finally Dan Melnick asked Sam for a solution, to which Peckinpah shouted, complete with trademark expletives, “I’ll tell you who can shoot this picture, the guy who shot The Crimson Cult and Witchfinder General!” Small budget horror movies. Melnick got onto Johnny’s agent, Freddy Vale, who told Johnny to fly in right away from Los Angeles to London—where Dustin Hoffman and Sam met him at Heathrow arrivals. Johnny was, he always said, “gobsmacked and terrified” meeting those two. But production got underway immediately, thanks to the new DoP’s genius for pulling images out of barely-lit interiors. Sadly we lost Johnny in 1987, a real loss, especially for the London and Toronto film communities.

Topic

[Roger Deakins]

I was a great admirer of Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. I didn’t ever meet Coquillion as I was only just entering film school when Straw Dogs was being filmed. I remember all the gossip from that set as it was in the daily papers. Straw Dogs, for me, is Peckinpah’s worst film. That and Cross of Iron. I did get to know Dan Melnick quite well by the time I had shot two of his films.

[arthurkent]

Agreed—The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, Junior Bonner and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid put Straw Dogs and Cross of Iron in the shade. Apart, that is, from the hospital scene in Cross of Iron, one of the best-ever motion picture renderings of PTSD. Well suited to Peckinpah’s emotive time shifts and jump cuts.

Records in the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library show the Cross of Iron shoot was many times on the verge of collapsing. Johnny felt Peckinpah’s plans called for 3 Panavision cameras plus a high speed Pan-Arri IIC. Budget blues left them instead with one Mitchell BNCR, two Arris and a high speed Mitchell. The German co-producer failed to come through with the on-set camera tech Johnny felt would be needed to keep the cameras rolling. Alarmingly, only the British co-production entity’s half of the budget was in place when filming commenced. Chaos ensued.

A Mantis dolly failed to show up. A Fisher crab to take its place was late arriving, then didn’t function properly. Johnny wrote to the German co-producer: “Tomorrow we must continue to shoot with an increasingly noisy main camera, and I must warn when we return to the confines of the studio the noise level could well become intolerable…” And later: “It is suicide for this matter not to be treated with utmost urgency. For three weeks now this equipment has operated under tough, dusty conditions… Can you permit/afford this to continue?” When that didn’t work, he finally wrote: “Now the kidding must stop. I must demand that we have the services of a FULL TIME qualified engineer…”

The picture pulled through, just, at 50% over budget. However mixed the reviews, James Coburn, David Warner and James Mason recalled the film fondly. As did Johnny, who felt it was a miracle the film ever hit the screen.

[Author]

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