You might not be familiar with his name, but if you've ever seen any of these films--"Easy Rider"(1969), "Five Easy Pieces"(1970), "Paper Moon"(1973), "Shampoo"(1975), "The Last Waltz" (1977), "Ghostbusters"(1984), "Legal Eagles"(1990), "My Best Friends Wedding" or "Miss Congeniality", you have seen the excellent work of Hungarian-born Laszlo Kovacs, who sadly died Sunday in Los Angeles.
I include mention of his passing not simply because he was an award-winning cinematographer, but because he also was a good guy who gave something back. Example: Back in the early 1980's, a friend of mine once worked with Kovacs as a crew member on a low-budget student film that was shot in the Bay Area. Why was a skilled and professional cinematographer working on such a non-commercial project for no pay? Well, having met and befriended the young would-be director down in Los Angeles, Kovacs agreed to come up to the Bay Area one weekend at his own expense to work on a short film the younger man was working on. Needless to say Kovac's contribution to "The Little Kingdom" (a film about American GI's pinned down by the enemy in a mud hole in the Vietnam jungle) gave the film a professional look with lighting and shadow that it would never have achieved without him.
It is even more of a credit to Mr. Kovacs that my friend, the T-Man of Geary Street, who later edited several other films, related that Kovacs had a fear of flying and had to get drunk to make the return trip from San Jose Airport to Southern California. As you will find out if you read the article I included about him below, you will see that Mr. Kovacs was no stranger to facing down his fears one way or another. For doing what he did for some young filmmakers, he showed he was a good mensch plain and simple. I have a feeling from interviews I read of him over the years that he was not a guy with as swelled head and undoubtedly was generous to other young filmmakers to boot.
http://www.hollywoodawards.com/kovacs/
He was also a lifelong friend of another great Hungarian cinematographer, Vilmous Zigmond, another award winning "painter with light" who, among other credits such as Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (see the last post) shot the Steven Spielberg classic, "Close Encounters of a Third Kind" (1977) . Mr Kovacs also did uncredited work on the film, which has some of the most striking examples of great visual art ever made for any movie I've ever seen. They were both worthy collaborators with Spielberg, Scorsese, Bogdonavich, and many other successful directors.
Here's a clip from the classic "Paper Moon":
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WohIwBhxH6g
Rest in Peace, good sir.
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