Light Showman

Academy-Award-winning cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt brandishes an Oscar for his home state.

First you create sets and visual effects for drama club shows at Cape Elizabeth High. Next you’re a gaffer for Gone Girl. Now, you’re the Oscar-winning cinematographer for Mank and in huge demand. We caught up with Erik Messerschmidt, 41, in New Orleans while packing for Europe: “Nice to hear from you. I’m very busy prepping a movie and am currently under a press embargo re: Devotion until they decide on a release date.” Whew, boy. Now it’s a press embargo.

His magic may look easy, but he’s worked his way to the top. As a gaffer he was camera-side on everything from Mad Men to Bones to Everybody Hates Chris. As cinematographer, he’s in post-production for Devotion, a story about two U. S. Navy pilots in the Korean War, and pre-production for The Killer (2022), developed from a graphic novel by Alexis Nolent and directed by David Fincher (Gone Girl, Mank).

It is the exquisite Mank that catapulted him to the world stage. The edgy biopic follows high-pitched moments in the life of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (18971953), portrayed in the film by Gary Oldman, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Messerschmidt’s black-and-white imagery in Mank captures the shadow world caught between reality, illusion, and fake news during the golden age of film. His tribute to the motion and texture of films like Citizen Kane and the work of Alfred Hitchcock dares to cut with a postmodern edge.

Here, he talks shop about Mank during the AFI (American Film Institute) Awards: “The political climate we’re in now is certainly relevant, and I think almost unexpectedly the role of fake news and the fake newsreel part of our film—the Upton Sinclair election—is suddenly a little bit more relevant than we initially thought, and I think that that is a particularly important conversation. And it is true that MGM did participate in the production of fake newsreels to promote Frank Merriman…It’s kind of the inception of the media’s participation in the political process. So I think that’s particularly relevant…I also think that moviegoers are interested in nostalgia, and they’re interested in that period, and our film doesn’t necessarily glorify that period in the way that films that tell stories from that period often do, and I think that there’s hopefully something to be gleaned from that.” n

BY COLIN W. SARGENT

…The role of fake news and the fake newsreel part of our film… is suddenly a little bit more relevant…”

Hiding in Maine. With Us.

“Death to the Dracu grandson!” In terror, Iordana Ceausescu of Romania disappeared in secret to Old Orchard Beach with her son while the world

searched for them. She lived a buried life

among us for five years. Drawn from 800 hours of unique interviews with Iordana. Colin W. Sargent’s Red Hands— “an astounding account of the Romanian revolution in the voice of Ceausescu’s

daughter-in-law.” –Martin Goodman in the Morning Star

“Brilliant. If the novel is Macbeth then

it is Romeo and Juliet too, for the pounding heart of the book is a great love story that never fails to move. A tale from last

century and a warning for this one, Red Hands is a novel of rare power that teaches us much about Romania and even more

about ourselves.”

–D. D. Johnston