Dieves sponsored Green for union
membership in 1965, and the next summer Green handled assistant cameraman
duties for a documentary on the film “The Way West,” flying aerials over
Oregon. He subsequently worked with John Lowry Prods., crewing on more
helicopter gigs and moving full-time to Los Angeles in 1968.
Risky aerials became Green’s
bread and butter. He filmed airborne montages that appeared in “Bob & Carol
& Ted & Alice,” chase scenes for “Bullitt” and naval pictorials for
“Tora! Tora! Tora!” He earned his operator chops one set-up at a time, handling
urban flyovers on “Dirty Harry,” Carmel’s enchanted coastline for “Play Misty
for Me” and challenging coverage of rafting sequences for “Rooster Cogburn.”
“My break came with
[cinematographer] Michael Watkins on [producer] Roger Corman’s ‘Fighting Mad,’”
he says. A study in guerrilla cinematography in terms of the schedule and the
crew, the picture required “off-the-cuff shooting” that few but Green could
handle.
When Green was drafted by friend
and cinematographer Rexford Metz to operate B-camera on Eastwood’s “The
Gauntlet,” the action film’s nocturnal schedule — which included crashes and
steel-plated bus shootouts — taught him the Zen of minimal takes and how to
give cinematographers what they want in difficult circumstances.
He was befriended by Bruce
Surtees, who would become his mentor, and more Eastwood fare followed. Green
joined Eastwood’s troupe for ”Every Which Way but Loose,” “Bronco Billy,”
”Firefox,” “Tightrope” and “Pale Rider” -— shooting handheld coverage of the
mining camp attack for the last film. Meanwhile, he continued to work on
crash-’em-up pictures like “48 Hrs.” and “Beverly Hills Cop” to make the rent.
With Surtees’ blessing, he moved
up to director of photography on Eastwood’s “Heartbreak Ridge” in 1986. For the
Charlie Parker biopic “Bird” in 1988, it was Green’s screen test of Forest
Whitaker playing sax in a recording booth that sold Eastwood on the sombre but
high-key look of the film.
The DP became a chameleon of
visceral shooting styles, as seen in movies ranging from “White Hunter Black
Heart” and “The Bridges of Madison County” to “Unforgiven” and “Midnight in the
Garden of Good and Evil.”
Now retired and living in Santa
Rosa with his wife of 51 years, Susan, Green earned his star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame thanks to myriad photographic talents and a focus on what was best
for the picture. He says he always tried to serve the director’s vision and
would happily relinquish his ideas “if the boss’s vision was better.”
His ideas must have been pretty
good fairly often: He received the Cinematographers Guild’s Lifetime
Achievement Award in 2009.
