Putting a screen life on the page

If you, like me, spent any considerable time in front of the television in the 1980s and 1990s, back when an average Irish household was enslaved to the schedules of RTÉ, BBC, UTV and Channel 4, then you are very likely to have been exposed to the work of cinematographer Roy H Wagner.
Indeed, on many nights in 1988 I enjoyed the literate fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, starring a leonine Ron Perlman and a lovely Linda Hamilton, a show stunningly photographed by Roy as if it were made to be seen through the proscenium arches of a grand old movie palace; rather it was just as resplendent unspooling through my 12-inch tube television.
Precociously consumed by cinema from an early age, I took note of recurring names: directors, actors, editors and cinematographers, so much so that I have devoted my life to writing about them. Roy is one of them, as I am just about to release a book in collaboration with him entitled Roy H Wagner: A Cinematographer’s Life Beyond the Shadows.
It was around the same time as being absorbed in the televisual splendour of Beauty and the Beast that I, as a repeat renter of low-budget action and horror movies, discovered Roy’s cinematic work on VHS: Witchboard, Return to Horror High, Pray for Death and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, all sourced at my local Naas video shops, Hollywood Nights of Poplar Square, and Screen Test on the Dublin Road, for £1.50 per night.
Dream Warriors often went overdue as I loved it so much I wanted to keep it. Then as a theatre-going teen I began seeing Roy’s name fade in on the credits of prestige studio pictures with Wesley Snipes and Johnny Depp and on big-budget Disney pictures like Another Stakeout, and later finding him responsible for striking photography on hit shows such as Quantum Leap, Party of Five, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, House and Ray Donovan. I was fascinated by the scope and range of the man’s photographic eye.
Roy’s chameleonic approach to directing photography fascinated me. As an aficionado of the profession, I was very familiar with the works of the auteur cinematographers who emerged from the New Hollywood era: Gordon Willis, Conrad Hall, John A Alonzo, Haskell Wexler, Laszlo Kovacs, Vilmos Zsigmond, all of whom had a very identifiable style carried from film to film, regardless of the story or the director they were collaborating with.
But Roy was a curious one to me as I found it harder to trace his authorial signature. He seemed to adapt his photographic style effortlessly to suit the needs and themes of the story at hand. It is very nuanced and thus harder to recognise a set of obvious recurring aesthetic decisions.
Whatever I loved about his immediate verité work on Nick of Time was not there in the carefully considered lush landscapes of A Rumour of Angels; the deep shadow and shade of Return to Horror High are nowhere to be found in the Technicolor explosion of Drop Zone; but no matter what film or show of Roy’s I watched, in it I found something to satiate my senses.
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He functions like a great session musician who can add their skill and unique flavour to a recording without drawing attention to themselves. Indeed, Roy serves the story, rather than feeding his ego. As I became friends with Roy and enjoyed many conversations with him, I soon understood that his approach is very much that of the Old Hollywood studio cinematographers, those who were his mentors.
The “old men”, as Roy affectionately refers to them, had to adapt their photography quickly and proficiently to the requirements of the various genre styles of the Golden Age factory system, whether it was for a musical, western, film noir or romantic melodrama. This was not an era for indulgence of personal vision, though when we look back now at the works of Gregg Toland, James Wong Howe, Tony Gaudio, Harry Stradling and Charles Lang, we can certainly see idiosyncratic and distinctive genius at work within that system.
I first met Roy when I was researching my book Welcome to Elm Street: Inside the Film and Television Nightmares and in him I found a kindred spirit who similarly felt it important to document the work and experiences of those who contribute to the history of cinema. He had already done extensive work to archive and preserve the legacies of many cinematographers when he began interviewing them in the late-70s.
But now I felt it was Roy’s turn to talk, to share his experiences. And there are many tales from the Hollywood trenches in the pages of the book. But this was not going to be the kind of project I was used to. Having written several books in which the subject of my endeavour is named in the title (Walter Hill: The Cinema of a Hollywood Maverick, or Burt Reynolds on Screen, for example), I have often been mistakenly referred to as a “biographer”, which is incorrect. The focus of those literary works was on the art of the artist, not the particulars of the person.
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As a reader, I have always avoided biographies. Perhaps in an attempt for my heroes to remain mysterious and elusive to me, I have never wanted to know nor cared about the private lives of the people whose work I admire. But having got to know Roy and been made aware of his unique background and the effort he endured in making it to where he is in the industry, I finally felt that the greater narrative scope of a biography would support a comprehensive discourse on his career because the drama of Roy’s journey is as gripping as that of the films and shows he was putting on screen. It is the frankly told tale of the personal and political manoeuvres required to navigate the treacherous Hollywood landscape. It’s a story of struggle, sacrifice and survival.
I connected deeply with several aspects of Roy’s life, despite the temporal and geographical space between us. Roy was born in the 1940s and I in the 1980s; he grew up in rural Midwestern United States and I in small-town Co Kildare, but we were both hypnotised at a tender age by a shaft of light emanating from the projection booth of a smoky screening room – he by Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd in 1957, me by Gary Goddard’s Masters of the Universe in 1987.
We were both also enamoured of the visual language of film to care about much else. We were also mentored into our respective professions by figures of film who were luminaries to us; in Roy’s case it was Harry Stradling, eminent director of photography of many a Golden Age classic including Suspicion, My Fair Lady, A Streetcar Named Desire, Funny Girl, and Hello, Dolly!
Me? Well, I owe my writing career to iconic indie auteur Tom DiCillo, director of art house classics Johnny Suede and Living in Oblivion, and erstwhile cinematographer of Eric Mitchell’s Underground U.S.A. and Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. Tom embraced my rabid enthusiasm to write the first study of his career and across five years making that book he became a dear friend and supporter of this fierce film fan who had barely read any books, let alone written any.
I came to him with zero credentials or experience, but he accepted me openheartedly and offered all the research material and storytelling advice I needed to bring that book to the shelves. All Tom knew was that I loved cinema, and I particularly loved his cinema, and thanks to him that passion has been parlayed into this all-consuming literary endeavour which has become my life.
Going into this book with Roy was a daunting task because it falls out of the circumference of my comfort zone. I am at home critiquing and commenting upon art, being speculative and analytical, not putting on paper the intricacies and intimacies of one’s personal moments offstage or off-set. To chronicle a life is a whole other level of responsibility. Thankfully Roy could bring to the book the subjective perspective that I couldn’t, allowing the work an element of autobiography and thus a level of confidentiality not normally afforded books on a more objective critical course.
But there was still the matter of construction and aesthetics, as not only was one tasked with painting an accurate portrait of a real life but to do it in a way which isn’t rote and boringly linear. However, Roy’s story didn’t allow me to drift into the middle of the road, as it offered me rare and refreshing socio-industrial elements to play with. Indeed, most refreshing in taking this trip into Roy’s soul was working with his acute self-awareness of his place within the class and cultural systems of the film industry and his perspectives on such.
His insights into the structure of labour relations behind the scenes offered me an interesting sociological lens through which to chart his journey. Hard work and toil are a recurring theme, and Roy had plenty of that to do when he decided to leave the Midwest to follow his dreams to Hollywood; unlike many in the business, he was not the beneficiary of nepotism; he fought hard to make it into the union, often making powerful enemies who would endeavour to thwart his ascension.
And yet he made it, winning top jobs and industry accolades. But aiming high also came with the attendant risk of alienating those closest to him, and I had to explore that. Speaking with some of his collaborators and crew members, I quickly realised that this book could never be accused of hagiography, for those people candidly detailed some of their more trying times with Roy as he fought the bureaucracy of the studio suits, and himself. Evidently, Roy could be meticulous and sometimes demanding but always in the name of healthier working conditions for his crew whilst producing the best art possible.
One recurring collaborator recalled times when the pressure would make him weep in frustration, but who also acknowledged the lengths that Roy went to in securing assurances of safety on set, putting his own livelihood on the line for better working conditions for all. Divulgences such as these explain why Roy’s crew stayed with him through the toughest times: he protected them and brought them with him as he broke into the union and became a celebrated cinematographer of big studio films and hit television shows. Through tears and therapy, a triumph of temerity.
So, something, or rather someone, spoke to my soul successfully enough to break form and write a biography, and that was Roy the outsider, Roy the guy who wasn’t supposed to make it (you will have to read the book to truly understand that reference), Roy the guy who learned his craft independently and as a mentee of working practitioners. I could connect with this guy.
Having been turned away from every college I applied for to study film or literature (even a PLC course!) and been told that I’d never be published without such an education, the spurned interloper in me felt some kind of affinity with this bold dreamer, Roy H Wagner, who by sheer force of will, skill and personality made it into the profession that had so enchanted him since his early days on the family farmlands of Sikeston, Missouri.
From here on in, when someone introduces me as a “biographer” I will no longer wince at the fault, for now it is written, the life of a man whose art made an impression on this writer as a young boy.