RIP, Gordon Willis

Last week on Sunday the 18th, legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis passed away.  He was 82.

I'm a lazy obituary writer, so here's some links to some kind words written by others:

-NPR
-NY Times
-Deadline
-Rolling Stone

Here's a good interview with Gordon Willis from 2009.

"A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist - moving an audience through a movie … making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark." -Gordon Willis

"People perceive complexity as good.  Complexity is not good.  People don't understand the elegance of simplicity.  If you take a sophisticated idea, reduce it to the simplest possible terms so that it's accessible to everybody, and don't get simple mixed up with simplistic, it's how you mount and present something that makes it engaging." 

 -Gordon Willis

On "ruining" footage to create the look of time-ravaged 1920s newsreels in Zelig (1983):  "The lack of perfection, that's the hardest quality of all, because you're fighting your instincts.  You're trained to want to do things perfectly."

"I like to commit to an idea."

Your commitment was and will continue to be appreciated.

RIP, Gordon Willis