Five-time Oscar nominated cinematographer Owen Roizman, who shot landmark movies together with “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” “Network” and “Tootsie,” has died. He was 86.
The American Society of Cinematographers confirmed Saturday that Roizman had died after a protracted sickness.
New York-born Roizman, who died at his dwelling in Los Angeles, was given an honorary Oscar for his profession achievements in 2017, having retired from the movie business within the Nineties with out but taking dwelling one of many Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gold statuettes, regardless of the a number of nominations.
Roizman was recognized for his collaborations with Sydney Pollack and William Friedkin. His movie work included “Play It Again, Sam,” “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Three Days of the Condor” and “Wyatt Earp.”
He obtained his first Oscar nomination for 1971’s “The French Connection” — his second movie — which starred Gene Hackman as a violent police detective. After filming the influential Friedkin-directed neo-noir crime thriller, together with its famed automobile chase sequence, Roizman turned recognized for his “gritty” documentary type, a designation he discovered amusing, given the big variety of genres wherein he excelled.
“Immediately after ‘The French Connection,’ I got labeled as a gritty New York street photographer, which I thought was very funny because I had never shot anything like ‘The French Connection’ before that,” Roizman advised the Los Angeles Times in a 2017 interview. “I got a kick out of that. My primary goal was always just to serve the story and to tell the story visually the best way I knew how.”
Roizman, born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 22, 1936, grew up with camerawork in his blood.
His father, Sol, was a cinematographer for Fox Movietone News. His uncle Morrie was a movie editor. After graduating from Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, he started his profession as an assistant cameraman in commercials and labored his approach as much as cinematographer.
He bought his break in a low-budget 1970 movie, “Stop,” that was seen by virtually nobody — aside from some key folks — Friedkin and “The French Connection’s” producer Phil D’Antoni, who appreciated his work.
Roizman moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1976, later establishing his personal TV industrial manufacturing firm, Roizman & Associates.
His different Oscar-nominated work spanned a number of many years, together with Sidney Lumet’s TV news satire “Network” (1976), Pollack’s Dustin Hoffman comedy “Tootsie” (1982) and Lawrence Kasdan’s Western “Wyatt Earp” (1994). “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” “Network” and “Tootsie” have been all nominated for finest image as nicely. “The French Connection” received.
In 1997, he obtained a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers.
He stated he by no means regretted turning down any movie — even “Jaws,” the industry-changing Steven Spielberg summer time blockbuster from 1975.
“We spoke for maybe three hours on the phone, and I really liked him — and I still to this day love the guy,” Roizman stated. “But what he didn’t know is that I was thinking to myself the whole time, as he was describing the story to me, ‘Jesus, a shark terrorizing a town on Long Island — that means going on a boat a lot.’ I get seasick. So that didn’t sound too inviting to me. So I turned it down really for that reason.”
