Q&A WITH CINEMATOGRAPHER
by Janet Dalton
TOM HURWITZ, ASC
T
om Hurwitz, ASC is one of America’s most honored documentary cinematographers. Winner of two Emmy Awards, the Sundance and Jerusalem Film Festival Awards for Best Cinematography, Hurwitz has photographed films that have won four academy awards and several more nominations (most recently for Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, Dancemaker and Killing in the Name).
EDITOR
DP Tom Hurwitz, ASC on Tiger Tiger
Manhattan Edit Workshop (MEWShop): Where did you grow up?
as a gaffer. I even did sound for a little while so I would get to know what the sound person was thinking. In addition to that, I began to shoot documentaries during that time. But most of my effort was in the area of fiction, the traditional route for a young cameraman. After about fifteen years, I was about to move permanently out to L.A., where the main feature work was at the time. We were on the verge of going but in thinking about it, I realized that I wanted to do documentaries because that was really where my heart was. When I went in that direction, I let my income be cut in half and I’ve never regretted it for a second. It was the best choice I ever made, just to specialize in documentary.
Tom Hurwitz, ASC (TH): I grew up in New York City. I did more growing up in New York City than I planned. I went all the way through school in New York City, and then I went to college at Columbia. Over the years, I spent a bunch of time in California, on and off, living there at various times. Also, there were periods of time when I was bi-coastal. That was when I was shooting features and episodic before I decided to specialize in documentary. MEWShop: How did you get your start? TH: I graduated Columbia University in the middle of the Vietnam War, right when the country was tearing itself apart. I thought I wanted to do something about that. So, I didn’t go to graduate school, and instead, I became a full-time community organizer for about three or four years in California. I had some connections in New York, so when I started in film I started apprenticing here as a freelancer and I did that for about eight years. I apprenticed on various kinds of films, features, commercials and documentaries, as an assistant camera person and n
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SIGHT, SOUND & STORY
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MEWShop: Why did you decide to be a cinematographer? Was that something that you always wanted to do? TH: My father, Leo Hurwitz, was mostly a documentary director and editor. He was shooting a film in 1960 and I got to go with him for a few days and see what he and the DP did. It was clear to me n
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