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Lighting the Knight:
Wally Pfister
Page 4

The Bat, the Cat and the Penguin... Again?

In the wake of The Dark Knight's enormous success, the rumor mill was quick to start cranking out speculation and misinformation about the next installment. Cher as the Catwoman (a cougar Catwoman)? Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin? Johnny Depp as the Riddler?

Well, even those close to the "Batcamp" are awaiting the real scoop.

"Chris is one of my closest friends," Pfister said, "but he won't tell me any of this stuff as it's evolving.

"He's writing right now. Honestly, as close friends as we are, I don't know what he's writing; I don't know if he's writing a Batman movie or if he's writing a smaller film. But I know he's locked away writing again. So the master's back at work, back at his desk, thank God for all of us!"

When it comes to rumors and the World Wide Web, it's oftentimes a matter of reader beware. In this case, it's safe to consider all the batty rumors to date as uninformed and inaccurate.

"In terms of all those other things, I think that the rumors are very tricky because anybody can jump on the Internet; anybody can start a rumor and then 5,000 people can confirm that rumor on the Internet. We're into a time where information, you have to be very, very skeptical about where it comes from. And that's what scares me about journalism right now. You know, when The New York Times is starting to get so-called facts from the Internet, how are you able to fact check? How are you able to verify any of this stuff? So the rumors, I think, are even more suspicious.

"For research, it's the Holy Grail. It's incredible for researching anything, for whatever you do. Your kids ask you a question – they don't ask the questions anymore, they go on and find out themselves, they search for the information, It's a phenomenal thing, but there are really creepy things. There's the predators, there's the spread of hate groups. You know, it's a little scary in that regard."

And those observations come from a former journalist; Pfister got his start as a news cameraman.

Pfister Begins

Pfister's grandfather was a city editor of a small town newspaper in Wisconsin and his dad was a well-regarded TV news executive for all three major networks, leaving ABC as Vice President of News. Pfister segued into the field with the help of his father, starting out as a cameraman for a TV station then working as a stringer cameraman in Washington, D.C. Pfister also worked on some documentaries, including the PBS Frontline series.

While working in D.C., Robert Altman came to town for filming on Tanner '88. A friend working on the production encouraged Pfister to audition for a part as, of all things, a cameraman. But, in a nod to the Cassavetes school of cinema verité, he actually became a second-unit director of photography on the production and spent six months working on the film. Watch the movie closely and you'll be able to spot him in a cameo, sporting a Betacam on his shoulder.

That experience gave Pfister the movie bug and he then went to the American Film Institute for film school.

Christopher Nolan: Memento, Batman Begins, Prestige, Insomnia movie posters

So how exactly did Pfister find himself in the enviable position as Christopher Nolan's cinematographer on the string of Nolan's five most renowned movies?

"The origin of our meeting goes back to a little film that I had done called The Hi-Line, which was a little, tiny film we did for $300,000 and it was fortunate enough to get into Sundance," Pfister explained. "So I went to Sundance with the director (Ron Judkins) and that film that year and I was very proud of my work.

"The work was actually immediately recognized. People loved the photography and, although I didn't win the award for cinematography that year, I got a lot of new fans out of that, one of which was Steven Spielberg. He saw the film – not at Sundance, but he saw a private print at his house – and immediately sort of sent a note across saying, you know, I love your work and love to have you do some work at Dreamworks and this and that, so it was very thrilling. And another one was Chris Nolan, who had his film Following at Slamdance, which was at the same time as Sundance."

As it happens, both The Hi-Line and Following were distributed by the same company and the distributor introduced Pfister to Nolan. About a year later, Chris was gearing up to do Memento.

"The way I like to tell the story, his first five choices of cameramen weren't available," Pfister teased. "The big guys; I mean, they went out to the big guys, they knew they had a special script; they went out to some cameramen with much more credits, much more history.

"Thank God for me, it didn't work out with any of them and Chris met me and decided to hire me over a lot of these other guys, which was lovely. So that was the origin of us meeting and he hired me for Memento and the rest is cinema history. That's my history."

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