Principal photography on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation began on November 27, 1972, with the highly respected cinematographer Haskell Wexler behind the camera. Wexler, already celebrated for films including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Bound for Glory, had a reputation as a politically engaged artist who took an active interest in a film’s visual and ideological construction. His collaboration with Coppola, however, deteriorated almost immediately. The two men developed severe creative and personal differences, and Wexler was fired shortly after production began. Coppola then brought in Bill Butler, a cinematographer with whom he had previously worked on The Rain People and The Godfather. Butler did not merely finish the picture: almost all of Wexler’s material was reshot, with the technically difficult Union Square surveillance sequence standing as the principal surviving exception. The replacement transformed what might ordinarily have been a routine personnel change into one of the production’s most consequential behind-the-scenes ruptures.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · New Hollywood
Haskell Wexler’s Abrupt Firing from The Conversation After a Creative War with Coppola
The Conversation / Haskell Wexler / Francis Ford Coppola / New Hollywood
Principal photography on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation began on November 27, 1972, with the highly respected cinematographer Haskell Wexler behind the camera. Wexler, already celebrated for films including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Bound for Glory, had a reputation as a politically engaged artist who took an active interest in a film’s visual and ideological construction. His collaboration with Coppola, however, deteriorated almost immediately. The two men developed severe creative and personal differences, and Wexler was fired shortly after production began. Coppola then brought in Bill Butler, a cinematographer with whom he had previously worked on The Rain People and The Godfather. Butler did not merely finish the picture: almost all of Wexler’s material was reshot, with the technically difficult Union Square surveillance sequence standing as the principal surviving exception. The replacement transformed what might ordinarily have been a routine personnel change into one of the production’s most consequential behind-the-scenes ruptures.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.