Gregg Toland: Life Behind the Camera

MAN ON FIRE (2004) Tony Scott utilized an old hand-cranked film camera built in 1910 to make movie magic. No CGI needed. DP Paul Cameron built a "merry-go-round" rig that spun Denzel Washington and the camera 360 degrees to create a hyper-kinetic visual effect.

Marilyn Monroe at a gift shop. Niagara, 1953. I love this style of fashion. Those items are still wearable today.

Scarface is widely regarded as a classic today, but when it first came out, the reception was brutal. Steven Bauer, who played Manny, says it was so painful that for years he and Al Pacino barely even spoke about the film. He explains… “Scarface is great to be a part of now. For years, it was dismal - like everybody associated with Scarface was a leper - people got very wimpy about Scarface really quickly. As soon as the reviews were out… Our peers came to see the movie in the premiere, right? There were two premieres, one in New York, one in LA, and people came to see it and they were like, ‘Wow, what a movie…. The next day, the reviews are out, and all the papers — this is before the internet, okay? - so you get just the conventional news media outlets - and 90% of them gave Scarface a horrible review. Like horrible, really, really insulting, injurious stuff. Personal attacks on Pacino and Brian De Palma, the director, and on Oliver, the writer... It was really, really mean because the country was going through a politically correct sort of thing - they were like, "This is like a new wave of violence in the movies, oh!" It’s nice because when I see Al - we can finally talk about it, because...for years, we couldn’t even talk about it. We’d be like, “Oh yeah, Scarface, yeah, yeah...” It was so sad! Because the movie was so great! And then it was like this thud, and it lasted like 10 years… Anywhere I’d go, it was like, ‘You’re that guy who was really good in that really terrible movie.’ And I’d be like, ‘How could you say that?’ And they’d go, ‘Well, you were good.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, but I don’t care. What about the movie?’ And they go, ‘Oh, come on, you gotta admit it. It was like way over the top. It was like so exaggerating,’ blah, blah, blah, blah.…and I’d be like, ‘You’re a pussy!”