News

Article Search Advanced Search Christopher Doyle on Paranoid Park By Nick Schager Mar 16, 2008, 14:34 There are cinematographers, there are great cinematographers, and then there's Christopher Doyle. Boasting an eccentric resume that includes stints as an oil driller in India and a cow herder in Israel, and notorious for his hard-drinking ways, the Australian-born cameraman, who was never formally trained, first made a cinematic name for himself with Edward Yang's That Day, on the Beach in 1983. But it's his long-standing collaboration with Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai that's cemented Doyle's reputation as a visionary, his constantly mutating yet highly distinctive style — most often typified by strikingly expressionistic color and lyrical, sharply defined compositions — resulting in numerous awards and a legion of devotees. Having by and large confined himself professionally to Asian shores, Doyle has, during the past decade, gradually branched out into American productions, the latest being Gus Van Sant's aesthetically intoxicating Paranoid Park. Doyle recently traded e-mails with me about re-teaming with Van Sant, his disdain for artifice and the way that spaces provide inspiration. Q: You've worked with Gus Van Sant before, on his 1998 remake of Hitchcock's Psycho. What was it that made you want to collaborate with him again? A: I had shunned Hollywood for many years, for all the right reasons. When Gus came along with the ultimate "conceptual film" that our Psycho is, I felt there was hope for art and that, in his integrity, I could actually find a space. I just had to get the colors right and get to work on time. I think I got the colors okay. So when the producers of Paranoid Park promised to actually get me to work on time, how could I refuse? Click www.ifc.com for the complete interview. Email this article  Printer friendly page