Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler (born 1926 February 6) is an award-winning American cinematographer and director.

Wexler was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. After a year of college at the University of California, Berkeley and a tour in the United States Merchant Marines during World War II, he decided to become a filmmaker, despite having no experience in the industry. He briefly made industrial films in Chicago before becoming an assistant cameraman, largely on documentary and docu-drama shorts and films, such as 1959's The Savage Eye, and gaining experience working on commercials. (Wexler would later found Wexler-Hall, a television commercial production company, with Conrad Hall.) Wexler worked on several low-budget films and as an assistant cameraman on television's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet before breaking into feature films as a cinematographer in 1963, for Elia Kazan's America, America. In 1965, Wexler replaced cinematographer Harry Stradling during the shooting of Mike Nichols' adaption of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? after Stradling and Nichols had a falling out over the look of the film. Wexler won an Academy Award for the film's cinematography in 1967. He won a second in 1976 for Bound for Glory, a biography of Woody Guthrie (whom Wexler had met during his time in the Merchant Marines). Bound for Glory was one of the earliest feature films to use the Steadicam.

Wexler has directed only a handful of movies, but among them was the influential late-1960s docu-drama Medium Cool, a loose adaption, written by Wexler, of the story of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1988, he won an Indepedent Spirit Award for his cinematography on John Sayles' Matewan (for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award), and in 1993, he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers. In 2004, he was the subject of a documentary, Tell Them Who You Are, directed by his son, Mark Wexler.

Selected filmography

• The Secret of Roan Inish, 1994
• Blaze, 1989
• Matewan, 1987
• Bound for Glory, 1976
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975
• Medium Cool, 1969 (also director and screenwriter)
• The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968
• In the Heat of the Night, 1967
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966
• The Best Man, 1964
• America, America, 1963
• Face in the Rain, 1963
• Angel Baby, 1961
• Hoodlum Priest, 1961
• The Savage Eye, 1960
• Stakeout on Dope Street, 1958 (credited as Mark Jeffrey due to problems with his guild membership)

External links

• Haskell Wexler at IMDb
• Tell Them Who You Are
• Hasell Wexler, ASC, Focuses on the Making of Matewan